went to Virginia to attend my oldest grandson's high school graduation and triple loved it because i have three grandchildren so it is triple love and then you add my daughter and her husband and it is triple plus two love. i could add more because i did receive a bunch of love and hope i gave some also. great week-end. left friday and came back today, sunday. short and very sweet trip. i love virginia. my family lives in the country. i mean, really...in the country. beautiful green trees and pastures with light green grasses, honeysuckle aroma that went straight to my head triggering years of memories of the scent of honeysuckle. virginia red clay, gravel roads, country air, the works. can you tell i enjoyed it?
home now and up way too late for my own good but i didn't want to go to sleep before writing a bit.
a man i care for very much is fighting for his life at the VA hospital. he is having dreams or visions of beautiful mansions. he tells his wife they are not visions or dream. they are real and they are too beautiful to describe. he says there are no words to describe their beauty. he is in a va hospital and in a hospital room but he sees it and exclaims how beautiful the room is and tells his wife how beautiful the room is to him. one foot here and one foot in heaven. i am so grateful he is seeing beauty and is not afraid. he is an awesome man. we all love him very much!
night!
Monday, May 27, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Just A Little Something....
http://youtu.be/M9K7mlpgUJ8
Please listen. The rest of this post will make ever so much more sense.
Meet Arrogance and Ego
Listening to a few songs from way back in the day when my mind was under the influence of, well, more than a couple of things. I was 17 when I heard the song I have attached. I was gone...way gone on a drug trip that lasted 13 hours. Yeah, you are right! I should have known better. Good Day Sunshine has been a part of me in an intrinsic way since the day I heard it playing when my own brain did not know me. Writing is about truth either in your face or disguised in stories born of truth. This writing today is the truth. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Behind a mask I hid
myself. Behind that mask
was another and another
and another.
But the truth came crashing in
One day
Despite my clever disguise,
The truth came in.
C'est moi mon ami!
You've been found!
Please listen. The rest of this post will make ever so much more sense.
Meet Arrogance and Ego
Masters of Disguise
Behind a mask I hid
myself. Behind that mask
was another and another
and another.
But the truth came crashing in
One day
Despite my clever disguise,
The truth came in.
C'est moi mon ami!
You've been found!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
It's Me!
Yesterday I quoted Mr. Sponsorpants who has a blog that I follow regularly. Today I am myself. "Ms. Smartypants" comes to mind as a fair moniker for me. A main trait of mine is known in varying circles as "the gift of blarney". I can spin a tale, trade sarcasms with the best of the sharp tongued devils I have met and, on many an occasion, appear to know far more about a subject than I actually know. I know enough to give me the threads of a conversation which coupled with my gift for gab fools some of the people some of the time. There is a saying used in a group I attend. It goes like this: "I am frequently wrong but I'm never in doubt." Voila! C'est moi! (For folks who did not 'parlez the francais' in high school the interpretation, southern style, is "that's me folks!")
Desperate for a change of topic the frogs singing around the swimming pool tonight are loud enough for me to hear in my bedroom. The impact lessens as reality demands that I remind the reader that I live in an aluminum condominium or mobile home or trailer depending on preference. The walls are thinner than in a "real" house. I love the smugness of folks who think trailers are not real houses. Mine has real people in it. Real pets dominating the environment. Real furniture. Real relationships. Real food. It can be seen using Google Earth. How real does a house need to be to qualify for the "house" honor. Yes, I know that the big, bad wolf could huff and puff and blow my house down faster than a brick house or a sturdy home made of wood. If a wolf did blow it over would he be blowing over less than a house? I can hear you suggesting that I am confusing "house" and "home" with each other. I have a home in my trailer. I do not have a home in a house. Why is it that a bit of shame haunts me when I say to someone that I live in a trailer and in a trailer park? I know a woman who, after years of knowing me, still looks at me as if to say, "You poor thing." My first instinct is to punch her in the nose to deflate her a bit. My second instinct is a wee sense of shame as if I have made an unforgiveable mistake by virtue of my residence. I finally coped with this woman by removing myself from her circle of friends. Her house sits on the side of a golf course and has a lovely yard and a beautiful interior with deep carpet and expensive furniture she bought in her first marriage when she was wealthy. I like it. I won't lie. I don't want to live there nor do I envy her but I can be honest and tell you that her house is lovely and in a lovely neighborhood.
Time to switch subjects. Oh how I do ramble on about one thing or the other. I worked today. I work from home. I am a customer service agent using a telephone and computer from home. I like the work and the flexible hours. I am beginning to notice the personality differences of customers associated with the company that is hosting their conference. Financial companies tend to have participants who are nice but easy to frustrate. Fast food companies have many Hispanic managers. Customers who call in that work for auto part companies are friendly, kinda down to earth in their responses. A demographics of sorts is developing in my mind based on my interactions with customers who work for different types of companies. I spend an average of 45 seconds on line with each person. Those short periods of time spread over a length of time develop discernible patterns, predictable conclusions that I draw from while answering calls. It is not my imagination. A true call center agent with a curiosity about people and a head for drawing conclusions from multiple sources of data can infer with a high degree of predictability how defined groups of people will respond on the average. Or, to keep it southern, "Folks is folks." It is a "fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly" parallel.
Putting on the brakes now! Preparing to close out. Building the courage to face a sink full of dishes, two bossy cats and a litter box. Might watch Criminal Minds and learn how make-believe psychotics kill people. Might come in handy if I ever want to be a make-believe psychotic. "Back off 'varmints' I'm a make-believe psychotic with an inferiority complex. Them's the worst kind!"
Sweet dreams!
Desperate for a change of topic the frogs singing around the swimming pool tonight are loud enough for me to hear in my bedroom. The impact lessens as reality demands that I remind the reader that I live in an aluminum condominium or mobile home or trailer depending on preference. The walls are thinner than in a "real" house. I love the smugness of folks who think trailers are not real houses. Mine has real people in it. Real pets dominating the environment. Real furniture. Real relationships. Real food. It can be seen using Google Earth. How real does a house need to be to qualify for the "house" honor. Yes, I know that the big, bad wolf could huff and puff and blow my house down faster than a brick house or a sturdy home made of wood. If a wolf did blow it over would he be blowing over less than a house? I can hear you suggesting that I am confusing "house" and "home" with each other. I have a home in my trailer. I do not have a home in a house. Why is it that a bit of shame haunts me when I say to someone that I live in a trailer and in a trailer park? I know a woman who, after years of knowing me, still looks at me as if to say, "You poor thing." My first instinct is to punch her in the nose to deflate her a bit. My second instinct is a wee sense of shame as if I have made an unforgiveable mistake by virtue of my residence. I finally coped with this woman by removing myself from her circle of friends. Her house sits on the side of a golf course and has a lovely yard and a beautiful interior with deep carpet and expensive furniture she bought in her first marriage when she was wealthy. I like it. I won't lie. I don't want to live there nor do I envy her but I can be honest and tell you that her house is lovely and in a lovely neighborhood.
Time to switch subjects. Oh how I do ramble on about one thing or the other. I worked today. I work from home. I am a customer service agent using a telephone and computer from home. I like the work and the flexible hours. I am beginning to notice the personality differences of customers associated with the company that is hosting their conference. Financial companies tend to have participants who are nice but easy to frustrate. Fast food companies have many Hispanic managers. Customers who call in that work for auto part companies are friendly, kinda down to earth in their responses. A demographics of sorts is developing in my mind based on my interactions with customers who work for different types of companies. I spend an average of 45 seconds on line with each person. Those short periods of time spread over a length of time develop discernible patterns, predictable conclusions that I draw from while answering calls. It is not my imagination. A true call center agent with a curiosity about people and a head for drawing conclusions from multiple sources of data can infer with a high degree of predictability how defined groups of people will respond on the average. Or, to keep it southern, "Folks is folks." It is a "fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly" parallel.
Putting on the brakes now! Preparing to close out. Building the courage to face a sink full of dishes, two bossy cats and a litter box. Might watch Criminal Minds and learn how make-believe psychotics kill people. Might come in handy if I ever want to be a make-believe psychotic. "Back off 'varmints' I'm a make-believe psychotic with an inferiority complex. Them's the worst kind!"
Sweet dreams!
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Quoting from a blog called Mr. Sponsorpants because I needed to see it often. Oh yeah, I am a sober alcoholic hence the AA part.
Other people's behavior -- either today, or in the past -- no longer dictates my behavior.
If there are monsters in your past, you can be free of them forever...
if you learn to (truly) forgive.
The book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) observes, first and foremost, that "...the world and its people are often quite wrong..."
It then goes on to suggest that the people who wronged us were themselves spiritually sick.
It can be a long hard journey to true forgiveness sometimes, but in my experience, that belief is where it starts.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Call it envy or call it jealousy!
Envy and jealousy seem, to me, to be two sides of the same coin. I am thinking of these two words because overhearing conversations at church today I heard families talking about their vacations either upcoming or recently taken. I felt a pull of angst in my heart. I adore to go on vacation to a beach area about just south of us and have not been in two years due to finances. I have not taken a "stacation" which is my fault. Until today I did not even give that a thought in my head. To be honest while listening to the description of a week's vacation to the mountains for one family I know I simply was green with envy or jealousy...call it what you will...you get my drift.
Interestingly enough I am completely in love with this little motel that sits just off the ocean and is about a 3 hours drive from our home. It is a practical motel for fishermen and their families. There is a pier adjacent to the motel. Separate owners but certainly nicely co-joined. The rooms are simple, made to accomodate sand and the detritus of going to and from the beach. The walk to the beach is ridiculously short. It is a no-frills place. I love it. We go, when we go, in the fall or early winter. No tourists, quiet, sliding doors open with the breeze from the ocean bearing the sound of breaking waves into our room. A small balcony with a couple of chairs overlook out to the ocean. Well, enough of that because the irony of this awesomeness is that I am, at heart, deliriously in love with the mountains of North Carolina. I crave to move there having lived in those mountains as a young girl. My sister lives in the mountains. Visiting her is bitter-sweet as I hold back tears born from the deep yearning I have to stay and never leave again and, yet, the motel on the coast of North Carolina entrances me.
But, at this present time, my finances do not favor travel of any kind other than local comings and goings. So I listened to the several conversations going on about vacations and lusted after the idea of one, As a recovering alcoholic I know full well that expectations of any kind are a set-up for misery in my mind. My best times have been largely unplanned, spur of the moment choices. Given time to think things through I spin tales in my mind; grandiose, dripping in unrealistic expectations. This thinking sets an evil trap for me as there is no chance that my expectations are realistic or attainable in a real world. Best for me to plan quickly and execute before I trail off into a dream world.
My envy and jealously were a part of me that began to effortlessly spin a tale to trap myself. I am the spider with her web and I am the insect caught in the web. I don't want to go to Dollywood for vacation or to go at the peak of tourist season. I forgot that this morning as I spun the web I stuck to in my head.
Interestingly enough I am completely in love with this little motel that sits just off the ocean and is about a 3 hours drive from our home. It is a practical motel for fishermen and their families. There is a pier adjacent to the motel. Separate owners but certainly nicely co-joined. The rooms are simple, made to accomodate sand and the detritus of going to and from the beach. The walk to the beach is ridiculously short. It is a no-frills place. I love it. We go, when we go, in the fall or early winter. No tourists, quiet, sliding doors open with the breeze from the ocean bearing the sound of breaking waves into our room. A small balcony with a couple of chairs overlook out to the ocean. Well, enough of that because the irony of this awesomeness is that I am, at heart, deliriously in love with the mountains of North Carolina. I crave to move there having lived in those mountains as a young girl. My sister lives in the mountains. Visiting her is bitter-sweet as I hold back tears born from the deep yearning I have to stay and never leave again and, yet, the motel on the coast of North Carolina entrances me.
But, at this present time, my finances do not favor travel of any kind other than local comings and goings. So I listened to the several conversations going on about vacations and lusted after the idea of one, As a recovering alcoholic I know full well that expectations of any kind are a set-up for misery in my mind. My best times have been largely unplanned, spur of the moment choices. Given time to think things through I spin tales in my mind; grandiose, dripping in unrealistic expectations. This thinking sets an evil trap for me as there is no chance that my expectations are realistic or attainable in a real world. Best for me to plan quickly and execute before I trail off into a dream world.
My envy and jealously were a part of me that began to effortlessly spin a tale to trap myself. I am the spider with her web and I am the insect caught in the web. I don't want to go to Dollywood for vacation or to go at the peak of tourist season. I forgot that this morning as I spun the web I stuck to in my head.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Stuff
Writing for the sake of writing and making an effort to do so daily is not as easy as I thought it would be for me. I suspect the word "discipline" plays a significant part in my lapses. Disciplined is not the first word anyone would assign to me on the best of days. On my other days they would laugh and make fun. I believe many of us believe we can sit down at the keyboard and write eloquently straight from the brain and be fresh and new each day. I do write straight from my brain...no notes or research or even thinking things through. Most of my posts take under 15 minutes. Imagine what I could accomplish if I chose to develop my writing or what I could ruin. I believe stream of consciousness and impromptu venues suit me best though I could be lying to myself in order to avoid discipline in my daily life. Yep! I will bet that is my dirty, little secret. I don't relish the idea of writing being a discipline. I want to be a writing savant and spend my days pouring out words onto paper that are undeniably the best of the best. Of course once I finished for the day someone might have to feed and bathe me and put me to bed as "savant" is associated with one highly evolved and unexplainable talent at the cost of a balanced mind and body. As much as I dislike the idea of a daily discipline (which I have not achieved to this point) I believe I would choose it over having an amazing talent at the keyboard with no other faculties fully intact.
I wonder how my mind goes off on these tangents. I intended to write about the smells of the night air as I walked home from my mother's home. I intended to mention the faint scent of gardenias wafting through the air evoking a deep southern response from me. A response so tied to the spirit of a southern girl that the scent may be an integral part of my DNA. Steps further towards my home the air held the scent of rinse softener from a nearby neighbor's home as their clothes spun in the dryer. A tall pine tree in the corner of my front yard splayed out in partial view as the street lamp that lights my living room also lit the pine tree until the surrounding darkness took over where the light left off.
It is a metaphor for life. We stand in the glow of the light as it pushes out into the darkness. We avoid acknowledging our fear that the darkness will swallow us whole. At the furtherest end of the light all of us meet darkness and we cannot find our way. Many of us learn to carry light with us to banish the darkness.
Well, our siamese kitten (tongue in cheek, as the once tiny kitten is as big as a full grown cat) wanted to climb into my lap and snuggle. He never knew his mother. A wonderful woman bottle fed him and let him sleep with her when he was too young to be adopted to a family. He fit into our hands at the time. Today, not so many weeks later, he is a poser posing as a kitten in an adult cat's body. Anyway, he begged to get into my lap asking for hugs and stroking of his back and scratching behind his ears .I pulled him close to me so I could continue to type. In short order he grew weary of the laptop and jumped off my lap in search of something a bit more interesting!
I am fading fast. Night!
I wonder how my mind goes off on these tangents. I intended to write about the smells of the night air as I walked home from my mother's home. I intended to mention the faint scent of gardenias wafting through the air evoking a deep southern response from me. A response so tied to the spirit of a southern girl that the scent may be an integral part of my DNA. Steps further towards my home the air held the scent of rinse softener from a nearby neighbor's home as their clothes spun in the dryer. A tall pine tree in the corner of my front yard splayed out in partial view as the street lamp that lights my living room also lit the pine tree until the surrounding darkness took over where the light left off.
It is a metaphor for life. We stand in the glow of the light as it pushes out into the darkness. We avoid acknowledging our fear that the darkness will swallow us whole. At the furtherest end of the light all of us meet darkness and we cannot find our way. Many of us learn to carry light with us to banish the darkness.
Well, our siamese kitten (tongue in cheek, as the once tiny kitten is as big as a full grown cat) wanted to climb into my lap and snuggle. He never knew his mother. A wonderful woman bottle fed him and let him sleep with her when he was too young to be adopted to a family. He fit into our hands at the time. Today, not so many weeks later, he is a poser posing as a kitten in an adult cat's body. Anyway, he begged to get into my lap asking for hugs and stroking of his back and scratching behind his ears .I pulled him close to me so I could continue to type. In short order he grew weary of the laptop and jumped off my lap in search of something a bit more interesting!
I am fading fast. Night!
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Six Minutes
Six minutes before I shut down and go to my mother's and watch a movie. Six minutes to express myself in writing. Six minutes to think, think, think...or not!
I cleaned my neighbor's home today. She pays me. I have found that I enjoy the work of cleaning other people's homes. Much like the proverbial carpenter who does beautiful work on other homes but his own home is always in progress; I have a cluttered home in need of someone to clean it. Oh the horror that it should be me. Seems like I cleaned it just a few months ago or part of it at least.
I also clean the building of the church I attend or rather I do the vacumming and clean the bathrooms. No pay. Goodness knows I gain so much more from my life in that church family than I can ever repay. Cleaning is an act of love and obedience to God. Again, apparently I have not gotten that message about my own home.
One minute...there is a lesson in this post. I don't have a clue what it might be but I am sure there is a lesson in it. As we say in a group I love deeply, "More will be revealed...".
No time left. Shut down.
I cleaned my neighbor's home today. She pays me. I have found that I enjoy the work of cleaning other people's homes. Much like the proverbial carpenter who does beautiful work on other homes but his own home is always in progress; I have a cluttered home in need of someone to clean it. Oh the horror that it should be me. Seems like I cleaned it just a few months ago or part of it at least.
I also clean the building of the church I attend or rather I do the vacumming and clean the bathrooms. No pay. Goodness knows I gain so much more from my life in that church family than I can ever repay. Cleaning is an act of love and obedience to God. Again, apparently I have not gotten that message about my own home.
One minute...there is a lesson in this post. I don't have a clue what it might be but I am sure there is a lesson in it. As we say in a group I love deeply, "More will be revealed...".
No time left. Shut down.
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