Enjoying Life

         Tuesday was a dreary rainy day and I enjoyed it.  I arranged for our respite worker to stay with the princess for a few hours so that I could meet some friends for lunch with enough time after that to run an errand and visit the library.  Laughing and sharing lunch with friends was wonderful and then sitting in a quiet nook by a window at the library listening to the rain on the roof punctuated by an occasional rumble of thunder was just heavenly.

         The things I consider as enjoying life are vastly different from what is portrayed on the television, in movies and in print ads.  Those images are generally of tropical locales, featuring people wearing bathing suits, romance, dancing, and fine wine.  Oh, and boats.  There always seems to be some type of sailboat, cruise ship or yacht, blue skies and bright sunshine featured.  I’m sure all of those things are very pleasant; but how often does one get to experience them, and for how long?  Once a year or every two years for one or two weeks at a time or once in a lifetime?  What about the rest of the time?   Are we just miserable and not enjoying life then?  If I were to do an ad for enjoying life it would look very different.  For me, every day holds multiple chances to experience paradise.  Lying in bed with the window open listening to the birds greet the sun is a profoundly agreeable part of life.  The tinkling of wind chimes, the aroma of coffee perking, a letter from a friend, going to the park and going to dinner with my husband on a weekday all rank up there with those other ads for me.  Laughing over something silly with any one is quite pleasant, and those spontaneous short conversations I am prone to having with strangers at the supermarket spring to mind as delicious.  The delight of ordering out Chinese food and reading aloud the fortunes from the fortune cookies while watching a ballgame on TV with my husband and girls cannot be rivaled by any fine wine or exotic locale.  I’m enjoying life every day, and if I ever get to take a trip that features blue sunny skies, dancing in a bathing suit and boats I’ll enjoy that too.

Saturday P.M. Thoughts

It's Saturday evening and I am in my nest once again. Although the calendar says April and the sun sets after 7:00 it feels more like late February here. In recent years we've contemplated running the air conditioning a day or two by this time as the weather was unseasonably hot. This year I can't even put my winter coat and gloves toward the back of the closet because I still need to wear them most days. I suppose that soon enough I'll be complaining of the heat but right now it would be nice to sit in the sun on the deck and listen to the birds while sipping iced tea. I stepped outside after dark for a breath of air and despite the chilly breeze enjoyed how clear the sky is and how bright the half moon and stars are. I clearly picked out Orion and thought about how nice it is that I can do that. How somewhere out there in the world is someone who isn't able to do that. Either because they have a disability or illness preventing them, or it is unsafe where they live to step outside after dark, even just outside their front door. Suddenly I thought how blessed I am to have my little house, my little family, and live where neighbors wave and say hi, exchange pleasantries. I know, too, that if ever I needed help I could knock on their door and they would oblige. Sometimes I get so caught up in the chaos of my days that I feel grumbly and discontented with my lot in life. When that happens it's good to take a day and slow down, enjoy what I have, and reflect on how nice it is to be me.

This is the neighbor's cat who enjoys sitting atop our grill on summer mornings. I was able to catch this picture of her last year. I can't wait to see leaves on the trees again!

Saturday A.M. Nest

I'm usually the first one up on Saturdays and I really love the quiet time. I've made a little nest in the couch corner where, cuddled under a red fleece throw I sip coffee or tea and listen to the music of the birds and house waking up. I also listen to the local station on a small battery powered radio while letting my thoughts run where they will.  Today I was thinking about music and those who have talent enough to create it. I admire people who can use either their voice, or an inanimate object to make pleasant sounds. I tried to make music when I was a kid, not very successfully I'm afraid. In our house you were expected to be in school chorus and church choir, and play a brass instrument. I learned French horn. I even took private lessons. Alas! The music gene did not manifest itself in me! My mother played the piano and had a pleasant soprano singing voice.My three brothers all had and still have good singing voices and all play or played brass instruments well. Two of them hold degrees in music and the other married a music teacher. My husband also sings, has played brass and currently plays bagpipes. My older daughter learned piano, violin, and flute, and still plays on occasion. When I was a freshman in high school I broke my front teeth trying to learn the trumpet for marching band. I then switched to percussion. Let me just say that this girl's got no rhythm. Poor Mr. Taylor, the assistant music teacher was tasked with giving me cymbal lessons. Yes, cymbal lessons. I clearly recall his red face as we sat in a small practice room with him shouting out "one, two, crash, crash, crash, two, crash crash!" cueing me waving his arm in time to the beat. I tried, but somehow I was never quite in time. Poor Mr. Taylor! I wonder if he remembers? I guess that like my father, I play the radio quite well, and that is all. I look at it this way, if everyone is making music, who is there to listen and applaud? I clap quite well; just as long as it doesn't have to be in time to the music. So that's where my mind went this morning. I hope you have a place to snuggle into and allow your mind to roam.

Here's a picture of my radio & my nest.

Monday is Not My Friend

         I find Mondays (or Monderdays as I like to call them) to be generally tough.  Sunday’s too short and then Monday is here and I’m showering at 5:00 a.m. so I can start the 5 days of madness known as the work week.  Somehow the first day is the hardest for getting both myself and the princess motivated to get ready for school.  It’s a wrestling match trying to get her dressed and put together on time for the bus.  I always win but she sure puts up a good passive aggressive fight.  Once at work my five hours of fun begins and we run around preparing food to sell to the hungry teenagers that are our clientele, all the while sounding like a gaggle of geese exchanging pleasantries and stories of our respective weekend activities with occasional bouts of venting thrown in for good measure. Nine women in a kitchen is going to be a noisy affair! At the end of the workday I’m exhausted yet find the energy to run an errand or two on the way home.  Once there, in the safe haven, a quick cup of coffee is downed and I’m on to home responsibilities.  Take something out of the freezer to defrost for dinner, make a phone call, laundry, garbage night, and assorted other house duties we all need to take care of. So I coped with my Monderday stress the best way I know how—with chips and dip and cake left over from the weekend.  I don’t want to give the impression that the day was all bad, there were laughs at work and the mailman brought a pleasant surprise.  It was an early birthday card and letter from a dear friend which really ended the day on a positive note.  So that’s my take on Monday, I hope you survive every one with at least one positive thing so that before you go to bed you feel that Monday just might be your friend after all.

What Day Is It?

Guess what day it is?!  So says a camel in a popular commercial for car insurance. This has become a daily question for me.  In the past two weeks we’ve had school & work cancelled due to bad weather 3 times, (or is it 4? I lost track), and a day off in observance of Presidents’ Day, plus the weekend.  We’ve shoveled more snow and chopped more ice than I can even talk about.  I spent 2 days feeling ill from a mild stomach bug which had me sleeping a good portion of the day.  That was mostly Thursday, and part of Friday which was Valentine’s Day. We exchanged cards and treats for V-day, the girls, my husband and I.  We had our V-day date the weekend before because Anna was able to stay with Hillary while we went out to dinner.
The next day (Saturday) we had another “little” snow storm during which I went to the dentist for what I thought was going to begin the repair of a tooth.  The tooth was beyond repair and I was in “luck”—the oral surgeon was able to fit me in right away!  My dreams of pizza for dinner were now dashed and later that evening while my family was munching away on eggrolls and other Chinese take-out I was hungrily slurping down egg drop soup—no small feat considering half my head, including my lips, was numb and I was trying to keep the soup off the stitched up vacancy in my mouth.  The following day we spent outside trying to scrape 4” of ice and compacted snow off the roof of my van, the driveway, and the roof on the house. Do we know how to have fun or what!?  My favorite thing was pulling the huge icicles off the house and stabbing them into the snowbanks. We gave up on the driveway; Mother Nature is going to have to take care of that. After our beef stew and cheddar biscuit dinner I decided to use a cake mix I found in the cabinet.  There were 2 pouches of mix in the box; one red velvet and one green velvet.  I thought it would be nice to make the red one as a V-day weekend celebration.  Mix in the bowl, oil in the bowl, then on the way to the sink for water the bowl slipped out of my hand and made a mess on the floor.  At least it missed my pants and slippers.  I cleaned it up and made the green one.  It tasted really good, but I guess it was more of a “come on spring, hurry up!” wish cake. 
   Yesterday I made a trip to the supermarket through the luge track that our local roads have become.  The cashier noted how it was busier than the weekend had been which is unusual.  I suggested that perhaps, like me, people had been digging out over the weekend and making the trek before the next snow event.  She agreed that was likely. 
 Now here I sit today, writing this when I ordinarily would be at work but, the “nuisance snow” the weather forecasters spoke about yesterday has turned into a “big pain in the you-know-where” snow.  I’m going to have to go out there before Bruce gets home and shovel the new snow off the top of the 4” ice base. I guess Mother Nature isn’t ready to take care of that yet.  At least I’ll burn up some calories to counteract the green cake; and I still have no concept of what day it is.