Pink Martini- Eugene

A little night music for those of us at home this New year's Eve.

The Sunday Morning Muse, December 30, 2012

It is the end of another year. Just for fun I compiled a Top 12 List of Goosepath posts. I picked out some of my favorite quotes from each month of the year.  Here goes:

JANUARY -  The bad news is I have freakin' chickenpox.  It stings and hurts and itches and I feel terrible. And everyday it is getting worse. I imagine myself as one of those poor waifish orphans in the time of the plague in Londontown,  languishing alone in some dreary basement flat. Daily growing more disfigured. 

FEBRUARY - THIS is reality television. The trials and tribulations of the entire world dumped into our livingrooms...as we mull over Superbowl squares and munch on snacks and drink cold beer.  A strange juxtaposition. The battles of good and evil, right and wrong, man versus weather....that'll still be there tomorrow. For today...it's chicken! 

MARCH-  My frustration with all the rhetoric out there is dragging me down. I get emotional and partisan and want to use four letter words and really lambaste people and make my points in capital letters. Hardly conducive to writing a civil post and putting out thoughts worth reading.

But I'll keep working at it.

APRIL- You see, they are mostly all "flat" graves, and they mow around them. It makes life easier for the living.But you don't really get to honor the dead. I stick plastic flowers in there for dad, but I don't feel really good about it. From the road it looks like every other vase with a plastic flower in it.

MAY -  This is where it got kind of far out to me, when the author attempted to remote heal her cat's kidney problems by imagining herself filtering the cat's blood. (Since I know you will never read this book, I'll give you the spoiler. The little cat wasn't healed, but he did fare pretty well in his last few months.)

JUNE - While the IV bag was dripping fluid in me, I laid there and thought of people dying in wilderness. (I'd seen too many cowboy movies lately) What a miserable death it would be to die of dehydration.You and your horse out there on the Conestoga trail.  Out of water. Nowhere to go. The canteen dry. Hmmph.  Then I started thinking of the POW's, in far off lands, way back when, sitting in prisons, dependent on their captors for the basics of life.....food,  water.... I was not in good shape.

JULY- Can you keep your sole by wrapping it with furnace tape? Zen again...I glanced up at him. For a split second, I think he considered it.

AUGUST - Ate some fudge. Admired the new style fancy chicken coops (with windows and shutters and a gabled roof). Sat on a bench for a while and saw far too many ugly tattoos. Why Why Why do people do that to themselves? Am I judging people or just expressing an opinion? Probably both.

SEPTEMBER - I remember an old friend who used to pick the same sheepshead mushroom off the same tree every year. I tried some once on a steak. It was tough and not really that great. I couldn't get the sight of the bugs floating down the drain when he cleaned it out of my head either. 

OCTOBER - Living in a Swing State means that you can't watch TV without your blood pressure going up because of all the war commercials.  The War on Coal, The War on Women, The War on the Catholic Church, etc. You don't really hear much about the REAL war though. Go Figure. I'm sick of the hyperbole. Let's just get this over with. But then it's onto The War On Christmas season... Santa versus Jesus. Maybe they could debate. It would be better than anything on TV right now. 

NOVEMBER -  The combination of chocolate and coffee is a drug itself. One year for Xmas I got Chocolate spoons. A simple concept really. Plastic spoons dipped in chocolate and hardened. Then you stir your coffee with it and it slowly melts....and you keep licking the spoon.  Oh my. 

DECEMBER - As we all continue to get ready for the holidays, let's remember it is really not about giving an IPAD or a Smartphone to your kid even when you can't afford it. It's about love.

What do you say?  You say, I love you. To your kids, to your family, to anyone who means something to you.  And you appreciate those bonds that tie us together, and you remember the ones whose holiday was shattered.... for years to come, by a madman with a gun.

Benny Hill

Saturday Morning Snow

All revved up on caffeine and no way to get out. Have high hopes of hitting the gym, maybe work off some of the pizzelles. Cat and I are looking out the window at the snowy trees and beyond that the snow covered and slippery roads. Have to dig out the driveway again in order to go anywhere.

 Hardly seems worth the effort to get all worn out and then go to the gym tired. Big snow blower in the garage, but I'm afraid of it.

 Decided to wait for someone to come and effortlessly and self propellingly do the driveway for me. Someone who enjoys that sort of thing. Flinging snow 14 feet away.


 More pizzelles. More coffee.

 Trapped here with three boxes of candy. Wisely I put them in the freezer. This way if I do lose all willpower it will take time to eat them.

 All kinds of animal tracks on the side of the house near the woods. Worried that a pterodactyl took up residence when I saw tracks about 6 feet apart. The eleven turkeys I saw the other day are tucked away. Looked for mouse tracks to see how they got in. Another dead one yesterday in the attic. No clues.

 Hmmm.

 Snowing harder now. Nice not to really HAVE to go anywhere.

There's always laundry to do. And the new vacuum cleaner showed up yesterday from Amazon. It really SUCKS. And that is a good thing.

 Or I can kill more time on here watching Youtube. Until the musical cat clock starts playing Christmas songs again. All work and no play makes me a dull girl.

Everybody's Talkin- Tedeschi/Trucks Band

Day After Christmas Update

Hello out there. Sipping coffee and procrastinating setting up a wireless router and waiting for the snow storm to hit.

I got what I wanted this year. My wish was for no one to be in the hospital, and for a new blow dryer and
a hot water bottle. Anything else was gravy. I don't know why I'm sharing this, but maybe it has to do with my New Year's Resolution to be more grateful.  Here goes:

Two beautiful scarves that are exactly what I would have bought if I had to choose them. Long and flouncy and modern. Earrings, gloves, candy, homemade cookies and treats, specialty cookies delivered to the house, homemade soup, an umbrella, a soft fleecy purple night shirt,  Susan Tedeschi/Derek Trucks band double live CD from King Bhumi, an electric screwdriver, more chocolate, money, gift cards, Christmas dish towels, two medical books--one on GERD and one called Anxiety for Dummies (thanks sis), and the cats got a ferminater and cat treats.

I did a good job resisting the urge to buy stuff for myself while shopping. Only two things: A Kevin Spacey movie and a bagless sweeper (Dirt Devil).

Ho Ho ho.

The Sunday Morning Muse, December 23, 2012

I hate wrapping Christmas presents. This is something pretty much everyone knows about me. This morning I am looking at a mountain of presents and wrapping paper and bags and...a cat in the middle of that somewhere. I put it off thinking the world would end and I didn't want to use my time wrapping gifts that wouldn't be opened anyway.

So now I face this task.

Oh some people put so much joy into it. I have gotten gifts that are meticulously wrapped. Even, tight
corners.... colorful bows....even the printing on the paper matches up on the bottom somehow keeping the pattern just right. Those presents are never from me. I put thought into the gift itself, but the wrapping? Not so much. I usually sit on the floor with two cats tearing up tissue paper and fighting over the wrapping rolls... struggling to cut the paper, leaning over it and eventually tearing it and, then just taping it up and folding it over somehow and making it work. I bought bows, but I don't know where they are.

One time at a wedding shower, the bride to be opened my present and found the empty tape roll inside the
bowls I bought her.

Speaking of tape I have 4 rolls of mostly used up tape from last year. I started with one roll and probably lost it, started another, used most of it.....started another...and here I am a year later.

That said, gift bags are the answer for me. But somehow, it takes all the anticipation out of opening the gift. I remember I had this friend...one of THOSE PEOPLE, the meticulous ones....who not only carefully wrapped and hermetically sealed the edges and put a tight ribbon and bow on the package, but also TAPED THE BOXES shut with a million  little pieces of tape. It took like 10 minutes to open the gift.

When it takes that long to open a gift it better not be socks.

Wisdom

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world." -- Mister Rogers

Along Comes a Singer...and a Song

Stay with this... it really kicks in and kicks ass!

Happy Solstice, Anyway

The End of the World

Anthem- Leonard Cohen

What Do You Say?

What do you say?  Mostly you just stand there speechless and stare at the coverage of the tragedy and wait. More questions than answers in the school shooting that left 28 people dead. 

I've seen renewed arguments online about more aggressive gun control. This quickly spirals downward into a shouting match over "taking away guns" from honest citizens and the bad people will get them anyway. Or snarky questions, too, like "What regulated militia did this guy belong to?"

Or if you are Mike Huckabee on  Fox you blame it on "taking God out of schools."

Right. And movie theaters and malls....  C'mon.  He's not HELPING.

But situations like this do bring out the "good" people.  The "helpers" as Mr. Rogers used to call them.  "Look for the helpers," he used to say to the children in a bad situation. The police, the firemen, the first responders. The friends and neighbors. Families who reach out to one another in a great time of need.

As we all continue to get ready for the holidays, let's remember it is really not about giving an IPAD or a Smartphone to your kid even when you can't afford it. It's about love.

What do you say?  You say, I love you. To your kids, to your family, to anyone who means something to you.  And you appreciate those bonds that tie us together, and you remember the ones whose holiday was shattered.... for years to come, by a madman with a gun.

The Sunday Morning Muse, December 9, 2012

It's a gray start to this Sunday morning with more rain expected. A good day to pay bills, write out Christmas cards and watch football and eat pizza.

Every day can't be a sunshiney bright day, right? If it was, I believe we would enjoy those days less. Here in PA, those perfect days are few and far between so we are used to gray and gloom. Some of us even take
Vitamin D just because we get so much less sunshine than the rest of the planet.

Inside though, it couldn't get more colorful and cheery. When I lived alone, I really didn't care all that much about decorating for the holidays. A wreath on the door, a small table size tree and a few snowmen, a sprig of mistletoe over the door frame and that was about it. Now that I'm here with mom, the holidays take over every corner of the house. Yes, it's all a bit overdone, and perhaps a bit cluttered, but you can't deny the spirit of the season here.

Except for the cats. I think Sweet Pea is Israel, trying to occupy more and more of the prime spots in the house, displacing Sambo who lived here first.  The battles are endless.

I wish Hillary would cut her hair. She is doing a great job, but her hair is getting in the way. Pulling it straight back is too harsh. When she wears it down she has good days and very bad days. Overall a shorter cut for her would make for a more consistent, classic look. I probably should take my own advice here too, but not just yet.

The Sunday Morning Muse, Sunday, December 2, 2012

The rain and 60 degree temperature today is really going to clash with the Christmas music. That said, I won't really complain all that much. I am musing about what it will be like here maybe a hundred years from now when I am long dead and this is beach front Pennsylvania property with Tampa-like Winters. The rising of the ocean water from the melting icecaps and climate change is going to be a big real estate boon for my

neighborhood someday. But I won't be around to see it. Sigh.

I didn't hit the Powerball this week. Strange but unlike past Powerball fever frenzies, I didn't spend more than five minutes dreaming about what I would do with all that money. Instead, and maybe I'm getting jaded and older, I spent more time pondering how the heck I'd resolve the practical mess that comes with that amount of winnings. A million or so? Manageable. Hundreds of millions? I'd have to call Romney and ask how I can stash some of it in the Cayman Islands and how best to set up trust funds and such. He has time on his hands right now, I'm sure he would help. I'd probably have to start with a lawyer.  A pretty good one.

Expensive. I don't know any good enough to help me. I'd have to find someone to recommend one and I don't have any rich friends. 

You see where this is going?  Suddenly being rich is a big jolt of reality. After you buy a new house, a new car, take a vacation, and come back home, you have to decide what the hell you are going to DO with all this money? It can take over your life. Perhaps that is why my automatic first response when anyone asks

me what I'll do with a lot of money, I say I'll build a moat.  I need to preserve my solitude. Keep space for myself to think. Maybe even ban Christmas music from that space for all but two weeks of the year.