I look at the rainbow afternoon and smile. It makes me happy.
The sky has been dark and dramatic and then blue with puffy clouds all day. It has hailed and rained and drizzled. And thundered. Street gutters are flowing – or backing up where drains are stopped by leaves. Trees are dripping. Tree rain. Trees gather the water and consolidate it into big drops. And drip them on those who walk beneath their canopies. Like squirrels throwing nuts on people’s heads. I don’t mind tree rain. I do mind squirrel weapons. I am tired of gray skies. Today’s dark skies are an improvement over dead gray. Gray weather makes me sleepy. Gray weather makes it hard to get motivated to move, to clean, to organize, to plan, to cook, to exercise. To write. I write the same thing over and over. The skies turn blue, plants rejoice after enjoying, or enduring, their soaking. Birds sing. I saw a hummingbird in the Crepe Myrtle. The magical world stirs. The tomato seeds I planted have sprouted. I hope today’s hail didn’t flatten them. I don’t have the heart to look. The lettuce, peas, and beans will be fine. The cosmos are just poking their green heads out of the ground. My herb bed is celebrating. My giddy chickens are laying eggs like crazy. They feel warm weather coming. They are tired of walking on wet hay. They want to take dirt baths while basking in the sun. Their sauna is muddy. The fish look at me when I walk out the back door. They are starting to get hungry again. They don’t eat during winter. Yet, somehow, they grow. Each spring, when they emerge from their sleep-state they are bigger. I sit on my flat rock by the pond and sprinkle food in the water, watching the colorful swirl of koi. Big koi. My husband will be home soon. My kids are well. My friends are well. I am happy. 5 am
Still dark Dozing, half-asleep-half-awake, knowing I could easily slip back into my dreams Oof 15 pounds of cat lands on my stomach, his weight concentrated in 4 very sharp ends I’m awake “I’m hungry and my food bowl is empty” I nudge my husband “Honey, Magnus wants his breakfast. Will you feed him, please? “What? Oh, ok.” Dozing again, sliding back towards dreams Give me 2 more hours, please Still dark “I’m not afraid of you.” I stood tall in my paint splattered clothes facing the 8-foot ladder.
“Yes, you are, but I won’t hold it against you.” I was talking with a ladder. An inanimate aluminum object. That’s not surprising. Or unusual. I talk with inanimate things all the time. But they usually don’t answer back. I was in the new ballet school space preparing to paint one of the studios. Our youngest daughter practically lived in the old ballet school space, coming home occasionally to eat and sleep. She cried when she found out the school was moving. It was such a big part of her life. She’s moved on. The school is moving. Marc and I haven’t moved on. We still love what the school – and the associated ballet company – do. And we still volunteer our time to help them. So, on a cloudy Tuesday – the last day of winter – I found myself talking with a ladder in an empty studio, a can on paint in my hand. With a resolute sigh, I opened the can of paint and poured some into the roller pan. Loading the paint roller, I turned and attacked the closest wall. There’s something Zen-like to painting. Moving the roller up and down, diagonally each direction, dipping for new paint, rolling again. The walls look fresh, clean, new. I even like the smell of paint. But I don’t like climbing up and down ladders. I painted all the wall space I could reach before I faced the ladder again. “What are you worried about? I’m sturdy. I’ve never knocked anyone off my rungs. You’ll be fine.” Assurances from a ladder. “I don’t trust ladders. What if you move your rung just enough to trip me when I’m climbing up? Or what if I lean too far over and shift your balance? Then what?” “Won’t happen. You will be extra careful climbing and leaning. And, you can hold on to me with your free hand while you paint if that makes you more comfortable. It will be like holding hands.” “That’s just a bit creepy, but OK.” We got through it, the ladder and I. We’re good buddies now. We hold hands. The new space is beautiful. Full of light, new, clean, with good sized studios. The lobby has happy, sparkly chandeliers. There is lots of parking. I’m happy for the owner, who has become a friend. I can’t wait for my daughter to see it. And a whole new generation of dances who call it home. I may be the only person on the planet who doesn’t want to think Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” is about hallucinogenic drugs. I also don’t want Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” to have been inspired by a hallucinogenic drug experience when he wrote those wonderful, playful, and deep characters. I love that book because of the playful use of words. Reading it is a joyful romp through a rainbow of words. Cavorting off walls, tumbling on the floor, flying up towards the sky. I cherish them. But there’s a dark side, too. I know it is possible that he was experimenting with mind-expanding substances, but Why, Why do readers go straight to “he must have been stoned to write this book”?
I love E.B. White’s “The Once and Future King” for the same reasons. How fun to take a long-revered fable and turn it into a romp! While keeping its meaning. I may be the only person on the planet who doesn’t think that Disney’s movie “Fantasia” is a drug induced frolic. I love that movie for the music and for the images and characters who move through it. Has anyone accused the composers or the animators of being on drugs? Probably. Imagination does not have to be drug induced. That’s the opinion of those who sadly lack an imaginative brain. Not a problem for me. I don’t need hallucinogenic drugs to see magic, wonder, beauty, fun. My challenge is turning what I see into a coherent story. I tried hallucinogenic mushrooms once (daughters, you didn’t read this). They did nothing for me. I felt like I was floating and couldn’t quite connect with my brain. Ideas and thoughts drifted through like clouds. Not a mind-expanding experience. I didn’t like it. I didn’t need it. I envy people who think in a linear fashion. I worked with many of them for years. I have dear friends who are linear thinkers. I love them, but I don’t understand them. They don’t understand me. My husband is a whiz at jumbles and anagrams. Not me. I look at the scrambled letters and see a word I can define and use. Not a real word. I try SO HARD to unscramble letters into their actual words but get frustrated and give up. Sudoku is more my style. I see patterns in the numbers. And, there are only 9 possible numbers, not 26 letters to unscramble. I’m not good at scrabble, or Words with Friends. I am good at Sudoku. I just wanna write fun (with depth sneakily inserted). With apologies to Cyndi Lauper. Our – recently retired – printer was at least 15 years old. The off/on button quit working months ago. In order to print, we had to disconnect the power cord, count to 20, and plug it back in. Then, listen for the printer to run its diagnostics and send the print command just before it finished – to print one file at a time.
The fact that I put up with this for months is an indication of my dread of buying a new printer and figuring out how to make it connect to our house Wi-Fi. Nothing is straightforward about this exercise. If there is a way to screw up simple instructions, I will find it. And do it. But yesterday, with our annual appointment with our tax guy looming and the need to print tax forms, I gave up and drove myself to Best Buy. In the parking lot, I gave myself a stern talking-to, straightened my spine, took a deep breath, and walked through the door. “HPs are the simplest to set up,” the barely-out-of-his-teens clerk assured me. I nodded my head sagely and pointed to one of the HP printers on display. “Ok, I’ll take that one.” Twenty minutes later I walked out with a brand-new machine that claims to print, copy, and scan – all wirelessly. That printer knew I was afraid of the set-up process. It thwarted every action I took, every button I pushed. Paper was loaded. The blue Wi-Fi button was glowing. My computer said it was connected, but then asked for some random key that I didn’t have and couldn’t find. Our Wi-Fi password didn’t work. The product serial number didn’t work. Neither did the random numbers and characters I typed out of frustration. Finally, the printer spit out a piece of paper with an email address where I could send a print command. I tried that and it worked, but I am simply not going to email my printer every time I want to print a document. I went to bed and tried not to dream about recalcitrant printers. This afternoon, I tried again. I checked the HP help website and ran the troubleshooting application, the same thing I had done last night. But today, the stars were aligned, and my computer started talking to the printer. And the printer talked back accepting my print commands. It was great. For a while. Then, the paper got jammed. I took the printer nearly apart before finding the culprit. I tried to turn off the printer, but it got hung up in its shutting down process. I pulled the plug. Some of us were meant to write things down on paper with a pen. Note: I did eventually get the printer to print the tax forms I needed. I think we have come to terms. I’m not holding my breath for a long and successful relationship. I love boots
Short boots Tall boots Clunky boots Sleek boots Boots with heels Boots with wedges Boots with kitten heals Boots that are flat Brown boots Black boots Blue boots Tan boots Warm boots Sexy boots Cowboy boots I love them all Pindi loves boots, too She envies mine She has fairy size boots With attitude that matches hers Pindi’s boots are fierce We normally fly to Washington and back. This time we drove. Two long days in the car each way. Rain, fog, wind, sun, clouds. Snow on the ground, thankfully not falling on our heads. Trees on the ground, getting in the way of the cars. Mud and rocks on the road, getting in the way of cars. Highway 101 fissuring and falling more than 20 feet, stopping traffic both ways. A 10-mile-long detour on a very narrow, winding road with no shoulder next to the cliffs. A road not meant for this much traffic. Car full of our record albums from the 1970s and 1980s to give to our son in law. I don’t know why I kept them this long.
On the way home, car full of the cradle my father made for my first born. Four grandchildren and one great grandchild have slept there. Each of their names and birthdates have been lovingly and carefully carved in the sides. I need to learn to carve before the next one is born. I am sure I have time. This time, we didn’t bring snow or hail. We brought sunshine. Washington and Oregon have had enough snow. California has had enough rain. We had a reunion of sorts to say goodbye to my father. Cousins on my side of the family who have never met my kids or my sister’s kids. Dad’s sons in law from his second marriage. It was a happy lunch. We drank Dad’s favorite beer, Mac and Jack. Cheers, Dad. We attended our grandson’s 6th birthday party. Happy birthday Calvin. He’s a kick. We love him and he loves us. My heart swells. I am a very lucky woman. I enjoy spending time with my in-laws. All of them. We stopped at Marc’s parent’s house on the way up and on the way back. Two delicious dinners. Wine. Conversation. Laughs. Tenderness. Home again. Bliss. Thankful to be out of the car. Four loads of laundry. Our incredible house sitter left us food. Thank you! Magnus has been telling me all about his week with the house sitter. He didn’t make friends with her. His loss. He is happy to be outside having adventures that he will tell me about so I can write them down. I am a cat’s scribe. What am I looking for today? I honestly can’t say. Sleep perhaps. I spent all night fighting bad guys or being chased. I was supposed to save the world. But I could find no weapons. I ran. I hid. I climbed. I looked for anything I could use as a weapon, to no avail. I’m exhausted.
What am I looking for today? Inspiration. My brain feels empty, devoid of stories, of clever phrases, of words. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe ideas will fill the void. What am I looking for today? The pictures of my father with his golf trophies. I promised my daughter I would send them to her for the memorial display she’s making. I put them somewhere very safe when I was cleaning out Dad’s stuff. For all I know, they could be in the freezer. What am I looking for today? Energy. I have a lot to do. We’re going to Washington for our grandson’s birthday. We’re hired a house sitter for the first time ever. I feel a strong need to clean every drawer, every closet. What am I looking for today? Time for a nap. An idea for what to make for dinner. The discipline to go to the gym. The focus to write something for my blog. What am I looking for today? I really need to find those photos. I really need to figure out why I need to save the world when I should be sleeping. Warriors need their sleep. The drone of a lawnmower makes me think of summer. Long days playing in the sun. The oily smell of gasoline overlays the almost sharp, herbaceous scent of freshly cut grass. It smells green. My daughters would say freshly mown grass smells like itchy skin and swollen eyes. Do those smell?
When I was a kid, I used to follow my dad when he mowed the lawn. Back and forth, back and forth stepping carefully in the lanes of freshly mown grass, my keds turning green. In my head, I was a pioneer, walking along the path to my new home. The covered wagon trailed behind us. I was nearly always a pioneer in my imagination. I don’t know why I was so enamored with the idea of traveling in a covered wagon. I thought it was the height of romance. This from a kid who had never been camping. When I wasn’t a pioneer, I was a school teacher. In a one room school house, complete with a fireplace and a chalkboard. Rows of wooden desks. A large playground in back. I don’t know why I thought that would be fun. My friends and I played make-believe a lot. I played make-believe when I was by myself. A lot. With all the characters I played in my head, I was never lonely, even when there was no one around. Torrential rain. Rumbling thunder. Bouncing hail. Gale force winds that blow down trees. Flooding. It rarely snows here. We’re lucky.
Sitting on the couch while reading thick books, cozily wrapped in a blanket, sipping tea – or wine. Stirring hearty soups and stews in a heavy pot on the stove. Baking bread; its rich, yeasty smell filling the house, making stomachs growl. But spring is coming. Rainbows follow rain. Puffy white clouds drift overhead; the sky so blue it makes your heart sing. Then that sky turns dark and ominous again. Here comes more hail. I feel spring rising. Energy and joy bubbling up. I wonder if trees feel the same when sap rises, when leaf buds grow, ready to unfurl. I like to think they do. I like to think plants are as happy as I am to see blue sky after a storm, to feel the warmth of the sun, the kiss of the breeze, as they lift their leaves. I see light almost glow through leaves while cells are busy transforming sunlight into energy. The winter blooming Camellias are nearing the end of their season. Their creamy white blossoms look tattered. The Abutilon is blooming, drawing our resident hummingbird to its nectar-filled flowers. The Winter Daphne is in full bloom, waiting for the warmth of the sun to disburse the intoxicating aroma of its small pink flowers. The Wisteria buds are starting to swell. Soon they will look like fat caterpillars before bursting into purple, scented glory next month. A few early finches flit through the bare branches of the Weeping Cherry tree outside my office window. In a couple months, its branches will be filled with pale pink blossoms. I saw a lady bug the other day, clinging to a parsley leaf. I feel spring rising. |
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|