WAFFLE DAY

 

The Swedish like to have extra holidays. Lately I’ve been following

My Life in Sweden - Alexandra always has an interesting blog. In January I reported on Tulip Day. Yesterday Sweden celebrated Waffle Day. I’ll drink to that – with another cup of coffee, to be sure.

 

Saturday is waffle day at our house – I’ll celebrate then.

 

THE ART OF LETTER WRITING IS NOT DEAD - NEITHER IS THE ART OF CONVERSATION

The fine art of handwriting – or the art of fine handwriting – might be dead or dying (I’ve written another blog about that), but the art of the letter is quite lively indeed.

I am just one grain in a big pile of sand, and if I’m carrying on a lively correspondence I’m thinking many, many other people are doing the same. I recently read about the death of conversation. The group under discussion was quite a lofty one. I suppose they were mourning the death of lofty, esoteric conversations. Such exchanges can be fascinating, but the vast majority of us grains of sand are quite content with the more modest level of our own conversations – especially the emailed variety. I’ve a wonderful Canadian friend I’ve never met. We’ve a meeting of the minds and of our personalities, but not of our persons. We’ve been conversing for over a year now, and we’ve not yet run out of conversation. We stay away from the topics of sex, religion and politics: we’re too old for the first, agree that our own brands of religion are tailor-made for ourselves, and we’re both often disgusted with the politics of our respective countries.*

The nice thing about email conversations is that we can take whatever time we need to complete our reply and, unlike a phone call or text, it can be interrupted and resumed later without the recipient even noticing.  Washed laundry has to be put in dryer, bread taken out of the oven, meals need to be made, walls need painting, and even though the other one would never have known the difference, it’s interesting when we let the other one know just what we’re doing on the home front and why we interrupted a letter or where we’re going when we finish.

We converse about clothes and shopping, what the children are doing, what we’re reading these days, or exercise and the lack thereof and our efforts to improve. We kibitz on the care-and-feeding of husbands – especially the care thereof. That in itself could keep us conversing for years.

One favo(u)rite topic is the weather – after all, the differences in climate from London, Ontario to Indian Land, South Carolina can be significant. I must say though that this past summer’s conversation dwelled too frequently on the incessant, mind-sapping heat in both locations. Our winters, so far, haven’t been too bad. We thank the powers that be for small favors. 

I do recommend that you find a congenial correspondent of your own, or if one seems to find you do not let it get away. It’s sharing everything to the nth degree, it’s finding a sister of the heart.

 

* Do go and peruse the postings in Susanna Says here 

and her new blog Susannah's Journey here,

 

 

SPRING HAS SPRUNG AND GRASS HAS RIZ - I WONDER WHERE THE BIRDIES IS! *

                                    

PLANTS!  I WET MY PLANTS.

* I know where one birdie is - and this morning he was right outside my window, doing his incessant tweeting when I wanted to sleep late.  Ah, well - I got up and got a lot done.
As for the grass rising, our Bermuda grass is still a light shade of brown, but this too will green up.

Happy Spring to all my readers. 

                    

THERE'S LITTLE FUNNY ABOUT SENIORS

I am getting a bit tired of making fun of seniors, even if it is the seniors making the fun. And I'm getting a little bit tired of all this stuffing my email inbox, even if it is the seniors who are sending it.

This is a little ditty, enhanced with pictures culled from the internet, that extolls the idea that even with all their bladder and bowel problems, with their arthritic limbs and hearing loss, among other things, Seniors should be happy because they’re on the Green Side of the Grass – that is, not six feet underneath it. “Tain’t funny McGee.”

I BUY BOOKS...

   Or: my answer to Mr. Seinfeld

I don’t smoke or drink or even chew gum. My vice: I buy books. Many are worthy of any good library, many, some of you might think, are not.  Recent purchases in the former category include Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, and the Merriam Webster New Book of Word Histories. The latter? Well, let’s just call them Fiction: Romances, Mysteries, Romance Mysteries – I’ve a long list of favorite authors.

 

Since 1990 when I stopped lumping in book money with the rest of our entertainment expenditures, I’ve spent just over $14,000.00 on books, many of them used. Egad! That’s a nice chunk of change.  I’m sure the lifetime total would be nicely impressive too, and I delight in every dollar’s worth.

 

I was reading Theodore Dalrymple’s essay Why second-hand bookshops are just my type, and I came upon the telling of a bibliomaniac whose library was sold after his death for only a third of what he’d paid for the massive collection. I sold off my college text books – about twenty years later - but I can’t imagine selling my books now. I’ve always given them away when I was finished with them. I’ve read many of my books four or five times, but usually when I’ve read a book twice – or have gotten only part way into a real dud – it goes into the bag to be taken to the library for the sale room.  Sell them? I’ve not got the time: I’m reading!

Dalrymple’s essay mourns the passing of second-hand bookshops. I’ve rarely had the pleasure of browsing in a second-hand bookshop.* I do now have the pleasure of browsing in second-hand book sites on line. My favorite is Thrift Books, and Britain’s Awesome Books is pretty well that: awesome.

 

Really, really esoteric volumes can sometimes be found, used, of course, at Amazon – but then, what can’t you find at Amazon?  I do browse the shelves of the sale room at the library – always going with book lists in hand to be sure I’ve not read that one before, always looking for new treasures. (And library sale rooms are great sources for children’s books. I’ve got on hand new birthday and Christmas books for my granddaughters will into 2016, but used books are great to hand out throughout the year for un-birthdays and such.) 

 

 

I don’t know if you’ll think this good or bad, but though I’ve always belonged to the library wherever we lived and occasionally do check out books, I’d really rather own a book than borrow it. If it is mine I can take as long as I want to read it: though I read many books in a week, it gives me the itch to have a time limit on my reading.  If it is mine I am happy to let it just sit in my stack of to-be-read and enjoy its being there.

 

In one paragraph, talking about the pleasures of finding markings and various papers and bookmarks in used books, Dalrymple says “there is no substitute for being able to hold the physical book in one’s hand.” I agree wholeheartedly – but for another reason on another plane: I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with an electronic book.  A good friend of mine has shown me the wonders of her iPad, and how she can enlarge the type, and how it remembers where she left off, and all the other delights of electronic reading.  Not for me. I want to be able to flip back to that remembered reference to a certain character or place – and I remember it was on the left hand page about two inches from the bottom. Yes, there it is. I remembered the ‘landmarks’.  Can’t do that with an electronic book. 

 

This is just a fraction of th books I once owned. I keep them
and all my litle dustables in our bedroom - this way none of it
has to be dusted very often.

I want to hold the book and not have to be too careful not to drop it in the toilet if I’m in a bathroom reading session – though there I usually read magazines. I want to refer every once in a while to the jacket’s cover picture or inside blurb and bio.  I want to see my books – especially the ones I’ve kept and reread for years.  Just seeing the books on the shelf gives me a fleeting remembrance of the story. I can’t get that feeling with an electronic device.

 

Books are neat and compact, easier to collect and store and dust (though I rarely do) than say salt and pepper shakers or automobilia. Yes, for many reasons on many levels, I’ll stick to books as my vice of choice.

 

 

*but I love pictures of them – so higgledy-piggledy, stacks and stacks.  As the bibliophile’s lament goes: So many books, so little time. 

OBSESSION WITH BOOKS

 

“What is this obsession people have with books? They put them in their houses like they're trophies. What do you need it for after you read it?”

                           ― Jerry Seinfeld

 

In answer to Mr. Seinfeld, I say “read my post this coming Friday.”

GOOD GROOMING

A dear friend of mine delighted me with a narrative about her fun foray into turquoise, one of the ‘different’, shall we say, nail polish colors. The colors are not so new to the world, though I really do think that any but the red and pinkish shades are ugly, but they’re new to senior gals like us. She got me to thinking about finger nails – and there lies (lay?) an essay.

Nails? I just try to keep mine clean and neat. My Mom never used polish on her nails, although she had lovely hands. I must be a throwback: I’ve got short, stubby hands. My father was a pianist and had long fingers, but I can just about reach an octave. To top it off, I bit my nails until just before I was married. Couldn’t have ratty nails when I showed off my new, old wedding ring (it’s my husband’s Grandmother’s wedding ring from Norway in 1901) so I finally let my nails grow. If you know what you’re looking at, you can tell that I bit my nails for years. I know several gals with model-worthy hands and nails. I think they’ve been taking good care of their hands and nails since waaaay back. It’s ingrained in them, not in me.



This wasn't me - I bit my nails for years.

Good grooming is ingrained in many if not most women. As a young girl, the closest I got to any tips and know-how was the Good Grooming Badge in Girl Scouts. It’s not that my Mom wasn’t well groomed – she was. It’s just that she rarely if ever had my sister or me in to see what she did with herself: Mom had too much on her plate to even think about stuff like that. I do know that she was one of those women who couldn’t wear perfume – it turned sour on her and reeked. And she loved the smell of perfume – her favorite was always Chanel N°5. She kept a bottle of it on her dresser and gave it a sniff every once in a while.

I think that my Mom absorbed her grooming knowledge from her older sister. Like me, she wasn’t very good at teaching others the things she had just assimilated from observation. She just did her morning prep and that was that. In my mind’s eye, as I think about such things, I can see myself only watching her cook, clean the house, or take care of chores. I can’t ‘hear’ that she’s telling me anything – I’m just watching her. Oooh yes – she did teach us the proper way to iron. I get a ‘visual’ on that one! I think she hated to iron. I know that in later years she told me that when we were little she had enough hand-me-down dresses for my sister and me and enough playsuits for my brother so she had to iron only once a month. It was economical to be in a family with lots of cousins. She was delighted when we went to school and wore uniforms.

Maybe Mom was unconscious of us is a way. When I started on a ‘real’ job – not just baby-sitting and summer jobs – I bought a lovely, lacy slip with some of my first pay check. Mom commented that she didn’t know I liked such frilly things. No, of course she didn’t. We never thought to complain or comment on what she purchased for us. It wasn’t in us to have comments or complaints. She purchased whatever we needed and what she purchased in the way of most clothing was to her own tailored taste.

The Girl Scout Good Grooming badge showed Cinderella’s pumpkin and glass slipper. Well, I was sort of the pumpkin type. Oh, I was allowed use a little Tangee lipstick on occasion – remember that stuff? You can still get it at Vermont Country Store - but that was about it until I spent some summer money and learned a bit about makeup from a friend. She didn’t use much either, so it was almost the blind leading the blind.

But here I am at seventy, and I think I’ve done all right by myself in the grooming department. Because my hair is blond verging on white, if I don’t want to look blank as my blond aunts did in their old age I have to use eyebrow pencil and mascara. But those and a bit of lipstick seem to do the trick. Sometimes we oldsters go about things wither with complete neglect or with a heavy hand, so I’ve asked my stepdaughter and daughter-in-law to tell me if I make a mess of anything or need more of something in the way of my grooming efforts for my face or body.  I appreciate all the help I can get!

 

I'm more of a plain moth than a butterfly.

 

MAMA AFRICA

Google tells me that today would have been Miriam Makeba’s 81^st birthday. It evokes wonderful memories for me. My sister and I loved Miriam Makeba’s songs. (My sister’s other favorite was Edith Piaf. Shows you how catholic she was in her tastes.)  We had her first two – and to us the best – of her albums: The Many Voices of Miriam Makeba and Miriam Makeba.  We would dance around her living room to the Boot Dance or the Click Song – and we never could say ung-a-twine.  Some of the songs were lively, some were haunting – we loved them all.  What ever happened to my LPs? I think I’m going to check out what’s on CDs.

 

 

I WANT TO BRAG

This is the gorgeous Adirondack Gruide Boat that Frank
made in our New York basement workshop!

Frank is out of commission for a while after his shoulder surgery, so I thought I’d pay a small tribute to him and the body of work he’s done during his retirement years. Many of you know that my husband is one of the handiest guys on earth. There’s very little that can go wrong around the house that Frank can’t fix, and, needless to say, he’s done a lot of work updating and refining this house and our three previous homes in New York. But most pleasing to him – and to me – are the many things he’s made for our home and for our grandchildren.

This cradle was made twenty-four years ago for our first grandchild.
I had the opportuity to make some digital photos of it when it was brought east
from Texas for the three new grandchildren in South Carolina.
It's now back in Texas and has already cradled our first great-grandchild.
The cradle will swing on the stand or rock on the floor. We designed it
around a small cradle mattress and the result, in cherrywood,
is one of our treasures.

This is the fourth edition of the rocking horse made for that first grandchild.
The original mas made of maple from our own property.  This one is cherry.
Of all the things from the shop we are proudest of the rocking horses.
We planned the first out from a photo in a country decorating book. The photo was no bigger
than this one. We marked it off, and judged the sizes, and were so pleased that when the head went on it balnced perfectly!  Kids love this rocking horse, and especially when
they're not feeling too well they can just rock and rock.

Just after he retired I was smart enough to begin keeping lists of what he made and for whom. He’s worked in wood and wrought iron, and even done some stained glass work. Over twenty-five years later the lists are extensive – everything from kitchen spatulas and spreaders to a wonderful Adirondack guide boat. He’s made many toys, large and small, for our grandchildren. He’s made all the beds in our house, and most of our living room furniture and lamps. Do you think I’m spoiled? I am – and I am soooo lucky.

We’ve kept two fat scrapbooks of pictures of the things Frank has made, but not too many of the photos have made their way to my PC files. Here’s a small selection of what I do have for you to see.

All made of cherry, Frank made the side table, mazazine rack, foot stool,
lamp, couch, and the rocking chair made to order for my not-inconsiderable
measurements.

Frank made the wrought iron lamps, the little butterwood chest, the
cherry Shaker style high chair, and the maple buffet. Again, the maple
came from our own property

The wrought iron Owl Court owl.

  

Here you see, on our front porch, a mirrored plant holder and
part of a quatrefoil Frank copied from one we saw in Volterra,
in Tuscany

For post-stroke therapy Frank began chip carving. This box he made
for me is one of my favorite things.

Just rowing along. The guide boat is one of the fastest man-powered things
afloat - and beautiful too.

Post script on Sunday, March 3 - I discovered that I had, elsewhere in my digital picture collection, two pictures of Kate and her first toys made by her Grandfather.



Here she is on the kiddie car, holding on to the doll carriage that Say -
she called her Grandfather 'Say' - made for her.



And here she is on the maple rocking horse.

GIVE THIS MAN A MEDAL

Did you see the NASCAR Daytona 500 on Sunday? Did you even see the opening ceremonies? Well, Give Clay Cook a bright and shiny medal – he sang the Star Spangled Banner just as it should be sung. He might have looked a bit scruffy – this is a sporting event, not the Elks Ball - but he was there and he was good! I’d never seen or heard him before, but you can be sure he and the Zac Brown Band will be on my radar screen now. If you have a minute you can check it out here on YouTube. There was no musical accompaniment, but he sang it without wandering all over the scale, and, moreover, he sang it straight – no jazzing it up with trills and high notes that aren’t there. The only way it could have gotten any better would have been for everyone there to be singing with him. I have a set of bookmarks for my favorite YouTube clips – great Coca-Cola, VW, and Budweiser ads, Jeanne Roberts and The Vicar of Dibley, great cartoons and such - this one is now included in the group.

You might want to read my rant The Star Spangled Banner - or Not. I do hope that this great rendition of our national anthem is a sign of things to come at NASCAR – but I’m not holding my breath.

 

The Curmudgeon says: "and add a red, white and
blue ribbon to that shiny medal."

THE GLASS CEILING

 

This is Friday, so naturally I had an essay all ready to post. It’s a brief bit, complete with pictures, about all the furniture and things my husband has made. You’ll enjoy it, but you’ll have to wait.  A featured article in this morning’s N.Y. Times  really piqued my interest and I had to hazard my own opinion on the subject: The Glass Ceiling.

Here are the lead paragraphs:

 

Before Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, started to write “Lean In,” her book-slash-manifesto on women in the workplace, she reread Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” Like the homemaker turned activist who helped start a revolution 50 years ago, Ms. Sandberg wanted to do far more than sell books.

Ms. Sandberg, whose ideas about working women have prompted both enthusiasm and criticism, is attempting nothing less than a Friedan-like feat: a national discussion of a gender-problem-that-has-no-name, this time in the workplace, and a movement to address it.

 

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I didn’t read the entire article and I’ve never read The Feminine Mystique. Just the topic alone can set me thinking, without need to refer to what others may have thought. I’ve got news for Ms. Sandberg in her quest to spur a women’s movement: all she’ll really be doing is selling books. As for the “gender-problem-that-has-no-name”, if it is still a problem of the proportions imagined, which I sincerely doubt, it will now be with us for nigh on to forever.  Why do I consider myself qualified to comment on this? As the saying goes: “been there, done that, have the business cards to prove it.” 

In the late 60’s I became the first woman officer of the bank at which I headed the computer department. This was all back in the day when a CPU, with less capacity than my cell phone, was the size of my refrigerator.  At that time the banks gave great benefits, but the salaries were relatively low.  Because it was the new field of data processing I was able to command a higher salary than some of my male banker counterparts. I was in the right place at the right time.

Also because it was data processing I got relatively little grief from males in my own bank because they knew relatively little about what was going on. Data processing was a male-dominated field because there were more males in the workplace, but because it was new to everyone, anyone, male or female, was respected if they seemed like they knew what they were doing.

In the fifty years since the publication of The Feminine Mystique, men have come a long way – and so have women.  The men are much more welcoming to women in the workplace. If the gal knows her job, most men are now more than happy to accept the fact. It would seem like the mothers of the late twentieth century have raised them that way. A few misogynistic men will always be around, along with a few misandristic women, and they will have to be dealt with when the need arises. Case closed. 

Many of the gals who’d been with the bank for years were a bit miffed, shall we say, when I was chosen for the computer department: why her?  It sounds mean of me to say this, but they didn’t have the mindset I had for the job. All the bank’s employees were tested before the bank converted to computerized accounting in the early 60’s – I was originally a clerk in the Loan Department – and I came out on top with the aptitude for the data processing field.  When I was made an officer of the bank I had a lot of the female employees asking me how I did it. I didn’t set out to do it: I was just good at my job, and in the right place in the bank’s newest department to be made an officer when they needed one there.

Over these years I’ve come to believe that while many women doing the same job as men do get paid less – that’s a sticky area addressed only when there are exact job descriptions and pay levels in force – many women think they are as good as any man doing their job, but many times they aren’t.  I believe that unless the higher-ups have their head in the sand, the latest crop of executives recognize the abilities of their workers and pay and promote accordingly. Unless they are totally oblivious to the bottom line – profits – they’ll want the best performing people.

As more women realize their potential, decide on what they want to do, and point themselves in the right direction, their numbers are increasing in the upper echelons of business, politics and medicine. I’ve also come to know that the vast majority of women don’t want to reach any heights in any field.  We females aren’t usually programmed that way, and all women aren’t created equal. It’s wonderful that today most women can pretty much lead the life they’d like.

I don’t feel I’m wasting my life because I prefer to be CFO at home – because of my banking experience I do keep the books. I worked to live, not lived to work! When our financial outlook improved, our retirement funds were growing nicely, and we could afford to live on my husband’s income, both of us were delighted for me to retire from the bank. Heck, six years later both of us were retired and we’ve been quite pleased to be unemployed for the last twenty-five years.

I’m sure Ms. Sandberg will be enjoying her “fifteen minutes of fame”, but I don’t thinkshe or her book will have the same effect as that of Betty Freidan, a woman in the right place at the right time with a message we all needed to hear.  

On March 3 last year I posted Women Have a History . March is Women’s History Month, after all.  You might want to read that essay – it was a pretty good one if I do say so myself. 

 

 

 

 

Today is also the birthday of George Washington, Edward Gorey, and Edna St.Vincent Millay.  That’s a diverse group indeed.  Happy Birthday lady and gentlemen.

THE CURMUDGEON AND LOUD TV

This past Sunday, the 17^th, was the birthday of the British mystery writer Ruth Rendell. The biographic blurb in The Writer’s Almanac said this:

Rendell describes herself as a workaholic, follows the same routine every day, writing for about four hours every morning and then eating the exact same lunch: bread, cheese, salad and fruit. But she has said that, despite producing an average of two books per year for almost 50 years, she doesn't feel like she's churning anything out. "If I did," Rendell explains, "I would stop. I am quite happy to go on doing what I am doing now for the rest of my life. I don't see why I should stop."

What struck me as being particularly apropos to my own life was the “I am quite happy to go on doing what I am doing now for the rest of my life.  I don’t see why I should stop.”  Exactly!  I love doing what I’m doing and leading the life I lead.

It amazes me that there are so many companies out there who are bound and determined that I change my ways. These last few days, with Frank just back from shoulder surgery, I’m sitting with him more than usual. The TV will sometimes be on, even though both of us are reading. We’ve usually left it on after watching something on NatGeo or Smithsonian or on of the “educational” channels. He thinks I’m watching and I think he is, and then we both gat a jolt when the ads come on. One thing about these channels is that you don’t get the usual advertising for regular supermarket items like mayonnaise or cereal or decongestants. They yell their messages. It’s ‘In Your Face’ advertising. And don’t tell me the advertisements are now supposed to be broadcast at the same sound level as the regular programming. 

Balderdash!

I don’t want to stop, I don’t want to change a thing, even to save a few dollars. I’ve been happy for years with the things we own, but I’m told I can live better with these knives, that frying pan, and all those leftovers containers with attached lids.  I am pleased with what we have and the services we use now, but I am exhorted to switch companies to save money on all types of insurance, phone, and TV servers. I have to laugh at the thought that I can record up to five TV shows at once on one company’s DVR system. Good grief! If I don’t even have an hour to see one show, how am I going to scrape together the time to see five? I wouldn’t want to invest any of my time in searching out the so-called savings. Excess, excess, excess!

Whywouldya?   

And what have we learned these past few days?

We’ve learned to turn off the @#$%&-ing TV, that’s what we’ve learned!

 

The CALM act was supposed to have gone into effect here on December 13, 2012.
The Canadians were there ahead of us on September 1st.
Many TV stations have yet to get the message.

 

THE GIRLS WITH THE GRANDMOTHER FACES

I must tell you that the name of my blog is sort of a tribute to a gal who wrote several wonderful books, and had a newspaper column called Midlife Musings. Frances Weaver was in her 50’s when she started to write her column, and many of the pieces found their way into a book of the same name. I had a short and lovely round of correspondence with Frances when I was buying her books directly from her. Not much internet or on-line ordering then – though you can get her books through Amazon now – just letters out with checks in them, and chatty letters back along with her books – autographed, to be sure!  The title of one of her later books, one that I’ll always remember, was one she got from one of her granddaughters:  Frances was heading out to lunch, and the little girl, when told that her grandmother was going out with the girls, replied “oh, the girls with the grandmother faces.”  I’d like to have snatched that one for my blog’s name, but I’ll use it just for this posting. 

I must admit that at the (over) ripe old age of seventy, I see relatively few Grandmother Faces. I’m sure it’s all a matter of perspective. When I was young the grandmothers dressed differently than the mothers, their hair styles were different too. I know that my Mother wore slacks, my Grandmothers? Never! And around home they wore housedresses. My Mother wore open shoes; my Grandmothers wore black lace-ups.  None of my friends and acquaintances dress much differently than their daughters do.

I suppose the Grandmother Faces do have more wrinkles.  Here in Sun City Carolina Lakes we’ve gals from fifty-five to over ninety, and few are wrinkly.

My Grandmothers, both of them, were fifty-seven when I was born. As a child I never thought them old and wrinkly, but I guess they were.  Children don’t judge their loved ones by their dress or wrinkles – unless, little pitchers with big ears, they think of and retain comments they’ve overheard.

But I wouldn’t trade my Grandmother Face for all the tea in China.

 

A BODY AT REST

Slothful and smiling!

I don’t know why, but lately it seems to me that Newton’s first law of motion applies to me as well: a body at rest tends to remain at rest. When I’m lazy and/or reading that’s all I want to do for days. I don’t want to have to interact with anyone I can avoid. When I’m in motion and I’ve got lots to do – especially places to go, appointments, etc., – I am more inclined to keep on the go.

Sounds strange maybe, but all the appointments and driving I’ll have to do with Frank out of commission these next weeks are O.K. because first of all they’re not my appointments; second, I haven’t had a long time in which to brood about having to move me bloomin’ arse; and third, I can read while I wait. Oh, lazy me. I’m not even put out by having to shuffle what passes for my schedule of household chores.  In the past I’d be all a twitter. (No, not that Twitter!)  As I’ve reached Medicare age I’ve mellowed a bit and have taken on a new mantra: “It is what it is.”

They – the ubiquitous ‘they’ - say “if you want something done give the job to a busy person” – I agree totally.  Being on the go, running and doing, a busy person doesn’t even have time to contemplate the sneaky additions to the daily endeavors – they just keep on keepin’ on.  A slug, as I have become, on the other hand, has oodles of time to think about what has to be done vs. what they really want to do and what they can get away with not doing.  I have become the master of knowing just what really has to be done and how to do it so that it passes muster.

All this is by way of giving a reason for not posting on Friday. I was so sluggish that I completely forgot to post the essay I’d written a while ago – and that’s just fine because now I can shift everything one week later on the calendar: less work for the sluggish, slothful snail that I am.*

*Poor slugs, sloths, and snails get a bad rap or rep – they’re just going about life as they were meant to. And I’m not going to be able to emulate them too much in these next few weeks. Frank’s going to have surgery to repair a complete tear in his left shoulder’s rotator cuff – and he’s left handed – so that means he’ll really be out of commission for a while.  And that means I’ll be helping to substitute for that left arm – you know: dressing, feeding, and whatever else he’ll need help with. As I said before: “it is what it is.” We’ll do fine!

INSPIRATION

I had a nice chuckle this morning when I read that several of my favorite bloggers are participating in the By Invitation Only topic of the month. This month’s topic is Inspiration.  Even though I am not an invitee, sometimes the month’s topic does inspire me – and this month is no different.

 

Note the pen and journal on the table - ready for nocturnal notes.

Inspiration – as it pertains to my blog – can be fleeting.  I know I’ve told you how I keep a journal and a lighted pen right next to my bed, just in case a random nocturnal thought inspires me.  Of late I’ve been relatively uninspired. If I could define inspiration I’d be ahead of the game. At this time last year I had blog essays ready right into January of this year.  This year I’ve got essays ready into March, and a few date-specific essays to post during the year.  Last year the list of ‘To Be Posted’ was at over 50 – this year I’ve got about 15.  I do have some in the ‘In Progress’ file.  Surely, I’d best stop what seems to be a reading marathon – over 20 books read so far this year, and it’s only

February 5^th – and get into the writing marathon mode.

 

 

Accustomed as I am to post an essay most Fridays and a quickie blog on Tuesdays, I’d say this Inspiration inspiration came at just the right time for today's post. 

 

THE SNEEZE

 

Someday soon you really should pay us a visit and listen to us sneeze. My husband does this frequently each day so you will be sure not to miss his stentorian performance.  His sneeze would knock your socks off. 

His yell reverberates off the walls. It’s painful to the ears.

It almost scares the life out of our grandchildren.

 

 

 

My sneeze, on the other hand, is silent. You’ll have to be watching me to know that I sneezed. I don’t stifle the sneeze; I’m just silent about it. I don’t even murmur a tiny “achoo”, though you’d think my very Brunhildesque physique would be capable of it. 

The reason for this, you see, is that when I was young I knew there were monsters under my bed. Yep! There were! And if I sneezed they’d hear me. But I had to sneeze, you see, and so I learned to do it silently: very, very silently. All the energy of the missing sneezing noise has to go somewhere, and to this day I get a little chill right down to my toes.  I can say unequivocally that it is even a bit pleasant.  I don’t recommend you try it – this silent sneezing is best left to us life-long professionals.

I guess, as with Jack Sprat and his wife, my husband and I were meant to marry sneeze-wise: he cannot be silent and I cannot make noise. (One never knows when the monsters will appear, do one?)