Connections

Old news-writing it backward

Mid-December: Decorating was a total family experience.

With snow, holiday activities and adding a new family member, we were so busy living our lives that time to write about it just wasn't there.  We actually received that rare snowfall on Christmas Day (only 12% of the Christmases in Colorado).  We celebrated with the local Grandkids on Christmas Eve:  Tian's first Christmas.

Clio, Tian and Ethan on Christmas Eve.

We were housebound for a few days after the snow--a welcome time to catch up on reading and relaxing.  For not the first time in our 43 Christmases together, Bob and I gave each other the same book.  We both kept receipts--just in case.  I spent a good amount of time "listening" to books on my Creative Zen V Plus MP3. This little gadget has become a favorite way to "read" while doing things around the house, driving (with a small, portable speaker--not earphones) and while walking alone.  The public library has a good selection of audio ebooks that have been out for longer than a year.  If I just have to have the "latest new thing" I have a basic membership to audible.com.  I'm actually spending less money on books--and storing them, until I get around to them,is certainly easier.  On my 2G MP3 I can put 10-12 ebooks depending on the size.

I have also spent a lot of energy being fearful that we can't get rid of Bush soon enough--before he brings about another catastrophic event.  I am watching the Democratic campaigns and following the top 3 with almost equal fervor.  I would be happy supporting the one who can convince me that he/she will put the "public" back into public servant.  We've had enough "corporate servants" during the last 8 years,  I will also use that criteria to choose local, state and national congressional candidates.

I had wanted  to get started again with my blog and will make an effort to write/take photos more often to jump-start my appearances here.  A belated Happy Holidays 2007 to everyone.

Every Day is Saturday!

A neighborhood sunset at 4:30 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon

When my husband and I both retired, a friend sent us a card saying, "Congratulations!  From now on every day is Saturday!"  In some ways it is true.  We can see more weekday sunsets in Winter, fewer weekday sunrises and more mid-day matinees.  However, if I am not careful, every day can become Monday.  I am now my own boss and cannot take a vacation from balancing my life.

I have often said that since retirement there are fewer negative people in our lives.  That does not mean that unwelcome situations cannot impose themselves upon us.  This past year has been full of illness, stress, death, grieving and uncertainty.  It is true there were some good times but the sad, unpredictable ones predominated.  It was difficult to plan or be spontaneous.  For six months during my mother's illness  we kept our travel bags packed--just in case--and made five emergency 12-hour drives each way during those six months.

For the first time in a very long time, I feel that I can approach the future with optimism.  My New Year Resolutions are full of plans--mostly of the "Use it or Lose it" variety.  I have begun walking 30+ minutes 4 days a week.  I ordered and began a 24-lecture DVD course from The Teaching Company on Peoples and Cultures of the World.  I am once again being pro-active rather than re-active regarding causes I care about.  I am determined to write more regularly in my blog--even if I don't have photos.  I have assembled--again--a sketchbook kit, with the intention to do quick-capture moments and people on paper.

I also hope to be more others-directed this year.  Last year I not only neglected my own intellectual and artistic development but folded inward and, except for my Monday afternoons with my granddaughter, neglected my social interactions with others as well.

The above are my goals for 2006.  Please, those of you who read regularly, hold me accountable!

Limited to words.

I had/have every intention of returning to my blog on a regular basis.  I have photos picked out to share and write about.  Now due to an increasingly annoying glitch in my computer, I cannot browse, open or insert photos into typepad.  It's not that I don't enjoy writing.  I definitely do, but I am a visual person and I want my blog to be a visual blog with photos accompanying my thoughts and stories.  Until I--or my more computer savvy son--can figure out how to solve this problem, I am limited to words.

I've had an eventful week.  We hosted a Servas traveler from Dunedin New Zealand and talked and shared our opinions, cultures and lifestyles almost non-stop for three days. When we took him to catch his Am-Track train, we felt we had said goodbye to a close friend. I am so impressed with the thought of New Zealand that it is now on my short list of places to visit.  I have also definitely decided to renew our host membership in Servas for the coming year. (We had taken last year off in order to be available to my mother who was very ill which made it necessary to make many 12-hour drives--no airports near to their town--to be with her.) 

The Good, The Bad, The Scary

                                                

This entire year, so far, has been a runaway ride on an emotional roller coaster, reaching the lows and highs of grief and exhilaration, sometimes within days or hours of each other.  In one month I lost my 87-year-old mother and my 13-year-old dog after both had been ill for more than a year.  Between the two losses I was introduced to our precious first granddaughter, Clio, and a new dog that have both firmly claimed heart space. One month and ten days after my mom died we managed a wonderful celebration of my Dad's 90th birthday.  In addition to all the personal stress, the constant antics of the dysfunctional administration running our national government have kept me on the edge of anger and hopelessness—and that was before the horror, chaos and mismanagement of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The good:  We returned Sept 20 from Wisconsin where we spent five lovely days enjoying 4-year old H and celebrating P's first birthday.  When we saw P last (in July) he was not walking.  Now 2 1/2 months later he is running and beginning to say words.  Having a local grandchild has made me more aware of how much I miss out on with my two boys in Wisconsin.

More good:  Last Thursday evening W and G stopped over to visit.  When she walked in she was holding something behind her back that she extended to Bob and I saying  "We have a gift for you."  It was an EPT test clearly reading:  pregnant.  She said she called her Mom, a pathologist in Brazil, and she was skeptical of the accuracy of a "pharmacy gimmick."  The next day they took two more tests and all confirmed the same result.

Even more good:  This morning we received a call from W's identical twin C (in Wisconsin) who said that his wife J had also taken a pregnancy test on Thursday night and they also are pregnant--with their third child--but didn't want to dampen W and G’s excitement over their first child--so they waited until today to call.  Grandchildren seem to be "busting out all over."

The Scary: September 14, the day before we boarded Delta flights to Cincinnati and Appleton, Delta Airlines officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  We have now received information that we will lose approximately $1300 per month of our pension and probably our healthcare and dental as well.  Bob is in a better position than some because he worked 20 years for Western Airlines and took his retirement fund from them in a lump sum and has invested it with a professional retirement fund manager.  However, even that is precarious because on 9/11 and afterwards we, along with most others invested in stocks or mutual funds, lost 1/2 of that retirement account.  We can make it--but we will definitely be rethinking many non-necessities in our budget.  Employees who worked all their careers with Delta could likely lose most of their pension. Only a portion will go to the Federal Pension insurance department and it is also under funded and may not have the ability to pay anything to either current employees or retirees.  We are in limbo while this all plays out in bankruptcy court. 

The Chaos and major inconvenience of losing  my computer for two days occurred on Saturday night as it kicked off and on reboot began a frenetic rolling, copying files and links, as part of recovering from "a serious error."  My dear son W spent 7 hours yesterday tweaking, fixing and backing-up files in his portable hard drive.  It seems that some of the problems were caused by having too little RAM and too many digital photos stored on my computer.  Once he gives me the OK that the photos are safely burned to a DVD, I plan to do a major deletion and reorganizing.  This computer is definitely showing its age and inadequacies but, in the face of potential financial belt-tightening, I really don't want to have to replace it right now.

I am really going to try to get back into my blogging and connecting more directly and personally with people in other ways as well.  I have definitely been a recluse for far too long.

Good Behavior!

Today is Cleaning Day and with the deferred cleaning left from the last two weeks, it will be a doozie. While I am up to my elbows trapping loose cat and dog hair, take a stroll over to a blog I read regularly called Skinny Dippping With the President  and read the April 18 entry.  Rhonda presents several stories of parenting opportunities--and world-view attitudes--that I personally would like to see more of.

List ten...

A photo from 20 years ago.  See number 8 below.

List ten things you've done that probably nobody else you know has done.

Those were the instructions given in a prompt on a journal writing list to which I belong.  Here are my answers:

1.I lived full time 3 years, and summers for 6 more, without electricity or plumbing inside the house.

2. At age 10 I participated in two cattle drives that were more than ten miles long.

3. At age 12 I rode in the Queen Contest at the "Little Britches Rodeo" in Colorado.

4. I hatched 45 pheasants from 60 eggs and released them into the wild.

5. Four other people and I toured a mysterious commune in Chile on the day after the Reuters article appeared with an announcement that the commune was, after 43 years, re-initiating contact with the world outside its confines. (We were there November 9, 2004)

6. I have entertained over 400 foreign adults as over-night guests in my house since 1980.

7. I spent a night in a castle in Valsugana Italy as the guest of a woman who was named for the castle. Her father, the first Italian doctor to perform a liver transplant, was born there.

8. I marched in a Fasnacht parade in Germany at 4:30 a.m. wearing a white nightshirt and cap, banging pan lids while following the Burgermeister through the town. He also was dressed in nightclothes and riding on a bed with wheels. Afterwards we stopped at a town cafe for the traditional liver-soup breakfast.

9. I danced at a Rot-Weiss ball in Gmunden Austria.

10. I visited an ossuary in Hallstatt Austria where bones from the on-island cemetery were blessed and stored when disinterred after a limited number of years.

A writing place

Pablo Neruda's solitude shack at Isla Negra.

Anyone who has ever tried to write has experienced writer's block.  Even Neruda suffered from it at times.  It is said that his several volumes of odes came from going into one of the rooms in his house  and writing about the things he found there. When he really needed to concentrate and separate himself from distraction, he would seclude himself in this little writing shack until he was able to get his thoughts on paper.

I too need a writing place.  For the blog, of course, I write at the computer but if I want to create a quiet flow of unexpected ideas I must take myself away from the traffic pattern of the house and into a secluded nook or cranny.  I have a favorite chair where I sit with my feet up on an ottoman and a lap desk across my legs.  I put on very quiet classical or meditative instrumental music as background, light a candle, set a timer and write without judgment for the amount of time set.  I use a smooth-writing pen in my journal and just keep the pen moving and writing first thoughts ala Natalie Goldberg author of Writing Down The Bones.

At one time I  wrote almost daily but lately I meet my need for creative expression  with photography, painting and ATC trading. I'd love to hear how you express your creativity.  Do you have a special place to read, write play music or do art?