Category: Life

Blather · Life · Music

From Bluegrass to Opera

Sally5 Comments

~ a stream-of-consciousness post ~

~ aka blather ~

For the record, I had a great week despite it starting off with a high level of anxiety.

I had had one of my hare-brained ideas — and this one involved taking a group of seniors to a bluegrass festival.

My contact person at the festival was one of those people who, like Bartholomew Cubbins, wore at least 500 hats. In addition to being the Office Manager, Contract Coordinator, Vendor Coordinator, Logistics Manager for that festival, she also coordinated a bunch of other events. One day when I called her she was out purchasing food for a camp or something. Another time I tried multiple to times to call her only to learn that she had dropped her phone in a lake where she was working and it was gone, gone, gone.

It stressed me out because I had trouble reaching her. I wanted confirmation of these tickets and didn’t actually get that until the morning of. Because it was my first time going and I didn’t know the lay of the land, I was worried. Add to that a couple of octogenarians, a bunch of septuagenarians, a few people with mobility issues — well, you can imagine how I asked myself many times, whose dumb idea was this?

A week ago I was out for a walk. Sometimes, when I exercise, it’s like the idea generator turns on in my head. I start having ideas — admittedly most of them dumb — but one idea leads to more ideas that lead to more ideas.

I have a friend that I haven’t seen since the last high school reunion I didn’t attend (he sought me out at home). While walking, a song he wrote popped into my head. Idea! Must get him to come sing that song for my seniors! When I got home I immediately reached out to him.

Over the course of a bunch of text message, I learned that he was going to be at the festival to which I was taking this group. To make a long story short, I called him the next day and he told me more about the festival. Then he met me shortly after I got to the festival. While my charges were eating gyros and bloomin’ onions, my friend showed me the lay of the land. Later in the afternoon, when folks were happily settled in various tents listening to or participating in sessions, we sat together and talked.

Have you ever been hungry for good conversation? I left that day feeling full.

The next day I went to the opera — La Boheme.

If you want two diametrically opposed musical experiences, go to a Bluegrass Festival and then go to an opera.

I listened to the orchestra warm up, the clarinet, french horn, and violin all skittering up and down the scales.. I love the orchestra. I could listen to them all day. Even when they’re just tuning before they begin, there’s something magical about it.

The orchestra violin? Just the day before everybody had been calling it a fiddle.

The opera musicians were all dressed in their orchestra black and sat unobtrusively in the orchestra pit.

The day before the musicians were on stage wearing t-shirts and hats and sunglasses. One mandolin player bobbed his huge mop of hair in time with the music. Sometimes the band members were barefoot.

The opera audience listened from their seats, clearly loving the amazing music, but also following the protocol of an opera, where you listen and then clap at appropriate times.

The bluegrass audience danced and clapped and cheered and sang along.

Which did I enjoy more? I would be hard-pressed to choose musically.

But the full day bluegrass experience definitely fed my soul.

Life · poetry

Rashness

Sally11 Comments

I was mad
He had done something
He oughtn’t
It caused work
Excess work for me, you know,
Now I have no time

Take a sec
Vacuum the carpet
Just sit and
Breathe, breathe, breathe
Go to his office to talk
Self-control takes time

When I’m rash —
Act impulsively —
Instead of
Taking time
Weakness rules instead of strength.
I need to be strong

This is in response to the W3 prompt this week:

  • Write a Shadorma of a minimum of 2 stanzas on the topic of strength (physical, emotional, mental, ethical, or of character…)
    • A shadorma is a poem comprised of six-line stanzas with a syllable count of three syllables in the first line, five in the second, three in the third and fourth lines, seven in the fifth, and five in the sixth.

This is also in response to a situation at work, where I chose not to immediately lambast the person who had caused the problem. I literally vacuumed my office and then sat for a few minutes before tackling the issue that needed to be dealt with.

The lesson for me (and maybe for you, too) — when frustrated and angry, it’s important to take a little time.

Waiting isn’t weakness; it’s strength.

Procrastination, however, is a different story.

Blather · Life

About My Week

Sally6 Comments

Following up on a few recent posts —

First, the fawn. It most definitely is the time of year for fawns around here.

One of my co-workers has three doe-fawn pairs that frequent her yard. She has actually named them all. “Do you feed them?” I asked, marveling that she could recognize and differentiate these deer.

She admitted that she did. “I cut up apples for them,” she said, slightly embarrassed.

I thought about suggesting that she just put in some hosta. That seems to work at attracting them to my house. Honestly, I wish it didn’t.

But there is something delightful about those spindly-legged fawns.

The other day I was driving down the road and I saw a doe slowly walking across the street. I slowed right down. One deer usually means more deer.

A fawn leaped out behind her, skittered part way across, saw me and turned back. I was now at a complete stop.

I waited.

The doe waited on the other side.

He jumped out in the road again, but indecisiveness took over, and, again, skittered back to the side where he had started. I got my phone out to try to capture some of the drama.

Mama Doe took a little action. She ran back to her fawn, but he was heading into the road AGAIN. She leaped over him, down the gully, and was gone.

After a moment’s thought, he joined her.

I thought, Learn to be decisive. Indecision is literally going to kill you, my friend.

Second, lifeguarding. I’m still riding a bit of a high from passing the lifeguarding class.

I was talking to the Aquatics Director one day last week, and I said, “I may not be the strongest guard out there, but I will never hesitate to take action.”

I know this about myself. I think it’s generally a good ability. I don’t foolishly jump in, but I can pretty quickly come up with an emergency plan and implement it.

Case in point (not lifeguarding related) — yesterday morning, a member came out to the front desk to report a bat in the women’s locker room.

It wasn’t flying around; it was simply hanging out on outside of the door to the sauna, a warm abode.

Two staff women were already in the women’s locker room trying to clear the area so a male custodian could come in and solve the problem.

I asked for, and got, a container and a piece of cardboard. I took the container and placed it over the bat, trapping it inside. I opened the sauna door so I had access to both sides of the door. Then, I placed the cardboard on one, slide the container along the other side, and trapped the little bat inside. I carried it out and handed the container with the bat trapped inside to a custodian and off he went.

Problem solved.

Third, I’ve been paying attention to the birds on the wire.

Since the post the other day, and my abysmal attempt to snap my own photograph, I’ve been paying more attention.

Last night, I saw two mourning doves above me on the telephone wires.

Yes, wires plural.

One sat on one wire, the other perched on the parallel wire.

One was looking off into the field, the other looking at the back of its partner’s head.

I know I shouldn’t read too much into this. They are just some birds on a wire, after all. Still, it made me sad — because this is the state of too many human relationships. A gulf between. Looking in the same direction but not at the same thing.

And that’s about it.

This week I also cut some peonies and put them in my room,

and I snapped a shot of some roadside daisies.

Beauty abounds this time of year.

This stream-of-consciousness writing began with Linda Hill’s prompt “starts with ab-” and took a meandering route through some ab- words, mostly “about”.

Life · poetry

The Fawn

Sally19 Comments

I looked out and saw a fawn
On the lawn fleeing the road
Toothpick legs receiving weight
Then airborne! Smol greatness flowed

This is a Welsh poetic form: Awdl Gywydd. I liked it because it called for internal rhymes — but, good golly, it was hard! I have to say that I’m not happy with the poem, but I tried.

For the We’ave (W3) challenge, we were to “Write about the first wild creature that you see which inspires you on the day you write your poem.” #30DaysWild

Yesterday, I set out to watch for a wild creature. Almost daily, I see deer on my way to work — but, of course, this was not one of those days. It was rainy-ish, so everyone was staying in, I guess — even the squirrels!

After work, as usual, I fell asleep in the chair in the living room. The trials and tribulations of being old, you know. Suddenly, I was awakened by my daughter in the neighboring chair crying out, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

I jumped up to see what she was looking at and barely caught a glimpse of a tiny fawn racing across the lawn. Where its mama was, I have no idea.

But I can still see those spindly little legs stretching forward, catching the body weight, and then stretching out again as the rear legs caught up. In the midst of each cycle, that little body was airborne.

Sidenote on the word “smol” — one of my kids uses this, and I thought it was just a misspelling. It turns out that it’s a word — it is internet slang for cutesy smallness, like puppies and kittens and, for my sake, fawns.

Blather · Life

A Full Week

Sally15 Comments

I’m not sure when I’ve had such a full week.

For those who don’t know my schedule — which hopefully is the vast majority of you because it would be kind of creepy if you did know — on most days, I start work at 5 AM. Yes, you read that right — 5 AM.

Since I NEED to start my day with reading, I get up between 3:30 and 3:45 AM. I journal. I read. I sit and sip my coffee. Then it’s rush-rush-rush to go to work.

Honestly, I don’t mind that schedule. In fact, I pretty much LOVE that schedule. I love the early morning people — like me — that I get to see when they arrive to work out at the gym where I work.

Like an idiot, however, I signed up to take a lifeguarding class. A class that went from 5 – 9 PM Monday through Wednesday this past week and next.

“Whose dumb idea was this?” I asked myself more than once.

“Oh yeah, mine,” I answered myself.

So — up at 3:30, to bed at 9:30 (at best) and repeat X3.

The first night of lifeguarding class, two of the six students failed the swim test.

The second night of lifeguarding class, I excused myself at one point to go cry in the locker room. The class was physically taxing on me. If you added up the ages of the other students in the class, I still had ten years on them. I didn’t cry though. I just pulled myself together and pushed through.

By the third night I was finally in the groove and class went well.

Then it was Thursday. On Thursday night, one of my sons was arriving with his wife for a short visit. I had offered them my newly created guest room.

Of course, because they were my first guests, I still had a lot to do in the room. I mean, A LOT to do.

I’m living in the house in which I grew up. It contains all my parents’ stuff. It contains grandparent stuff from both sides of the family. It contains stuff from my brother who predeceased my parents. It contains a lot of MY stuff, my kids’ stuff. So basically, there is stuff and more stuff in this house.

The new guest room still had a lot of stuff in it. It still HAS a lot of stuff in it. Putting clean sheets on the bed and cleaning the bathroom was the easy part of getting the room ready. Dealing with the stuff was … umm… not so much.

I kept working away at it, afraid to sit down because I was afraid I would fall asleep because I was still tired from lifeguarding class. Finally, it was 7 or 7:30 and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I called it good, and went to bed.

Friday was a blur. Work and going for a walk with my visiting son are the two things that stand out.

The last thing I filled — and actually I mean OVERfilled — was my week.

Will next week be better? I don’t know. I’ve got three more days of lifeguarding class. Whose dumb idea was that?

This is in response to Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: the last thing you filled.

Blather · family · Life

Saturday Blather

Sally4 Comments

I should have taken pictures last weekend — at the very least, a photograph of the big stick we moved into the storage unit.

Yep, we stored a stick. It’s actually a tall dried stalk of bamboo.

“It’s a staff,” Mary said.

Someone had given it to her. It was cool. She said all that, too.

I agree. It was kind of cool. But when I saw the prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday — stick — it hit me that we had stored a stick.

I’m sure there are worse things out there in storage units. I don’t even want to think about that.

But photographs from my road trip last week were limited to one, which I’ll share in a sec.

I drove to Virginia to pick up her from college. Last year, when it came to moving out, there had been tears. Not the I’m-sad-that-I’m-leaving-school variety. More the I’m-overwhelmed-with-this-process variety.

Packing up and moving is a tough business, don’t you think?

But we successfully emptied the dorm room, stored some stuff in a shared storage unit (including a stick/staff), loaded up the car, and headed home. Without any tears.

I didn’t take a single picture of that process. In fact, I only took one photo — I promise, I’ll share it soon, but it’s really nothing great so don’t build up your hopes.

I wish I had taken a picture of the view from the stables. The school has a riding program, and one of the storage unit sharers was up at the stable when we went to get the key.

First, I love horses. Such beautiful animals. We visited some of the horses in the barn, then Mary’s friend walked us out and pointed out some in the pastures. Beautiful, beautiful animals out grazing in beautiful Virginia fields. The fields were dotted with trees leafing out, flowers blooming, and horse nibbling at the grass while swishing away the flies with their long beautiful tails. I really should have taken a photograph.

Here’s a photograph (nope, still not the one) documenting my early love of horses. I think I was three years old.

And here’s another one (still not the one) showing my continued love of horses. I was maybe ten years old?

Without further ado, I should just show you the picture I took last weekend. Honestly, this is the problem with Stream of Consciousness writing. You start off thinking that you’re going one place and then you end up in another place entirely.

We had just loaded up the car and Mary had run in for one check. I was waiting outside the dorm and started to read the plaque there. It was from 1955 when the dorm was built. The reason I took the picture was to remind me of how far we’ve come. At this all women’s college in 1955, all the married women on the plaque are swallowed up by their husbands’ names. The unmarried women still have their first names. The married ones do not.

To me, that feels sad — that namelessness.

But we’re making progress, aren’t we?

I have a name — and I like it when people call me by name. Most of the time.

Sometimes it’s unnerving when people know my name and I don’t know theirs.

A woman stopped me the other day when I was getting ice cream with Mary. She said, “You’re Sally, aren’t you?”

I have no idea who she was. She knew me from my work with the senior programming I’ve been doing.

But this has nothing to do with sticks. Or horses.

Not that it has to, of course. I’m just blathering at this point.

I should end now.

collage · Life

Puss and Boots

Sally6 Comments

What happens when you look at a bunch of different prompts for the day? You end up with some dumb jokes and an overcrowded collage.

Doodlewash art prompt: Boots
What do you do with someone who can’t learn to tie their shoelaces?
Send them to boot camp.

Your Daily Word Prompt: Restore
I read about a temple for a giant sea cow.
My faith in huge manatee has been restored.

Word of the Day Challenge: Accumulate
When women reach a certain age, they start accumulating cats.
This is known as many-paws.

I went to work at 6 AM. Sometime in the afternoon, I noticed I had two different shoes on. Same shoe brand, but one is leather and one isn’t. I wore them all day. Still have them on. It’s been that kind of day.

Blather · Life

The Last Thing I Emptied

Sally4 Comments

That’s the prompt — the last thing I emptied.

Well, it wasn’t the plastic container under the kitchen sink, although I’ve been emptying it fairly often.

The kitchen sink has been dripping. I watched a Youtube video on how to fix it and bought the parts I needed. I was almost successful, but needed a little help.

But then it got worse.

A lot worse.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Now I turn the water off completely to the sink when I don’t need to use it. When I do need it, I turn it on and hear the dripping.

When I turn it off again, I empty the container.

[sigh]

My two youngest daughters were home on spring break this week. I hardly saw them, though. Full-time job, you know, plus I had something every day after work:

  • Monday: appointment
  • Tuesday: church meeting
  • Wednesday: Gave a talk to one of the local historical societies
  • Thursday: Sign language class at the library
  • Friday: Different sign language class via Zoom

I still fit in several walks with one daughter.

I made some favorite dinners: baked ziti, broccoli cavatelli, and a chili-like dish called Turkey Taco Quinoa Skillet.

When I was making that last one, I found that I had run out of quinoa. I told the girls that I was doing a slight variation on that dish.

“What are you doing?” one asked.

“Skipping the quinoa,” I replied. I threw in handful of barley and hoped for the best. It was fine.

This morning, I said good-bye to one daughter who was driving herself back to school. Then I drove the other daughter to stay with her oldest sister before she flies back to college tomorrow. It was another long day for me.

The last thing I’ve emptied is me. My energy is gone.

I tip my hat to all you working women who for years and years have been working 40 hours a week outside the home. I’ve been a mostly stay-at-home mom. I know, I know — that’s work, too.

There’s something to be said, though, about getting up and dressed in the morning, and leaving the house every day.

There’s something to be said for working 8-9 hours away from home.

There’s something to be said for coming home to a dripping faucet.

On Friday when I got home, my daughters said, “The microwave is broken.” Sure enough, it wasn’t working.

I looked to see if the GFI had tripped on the outlet for the microwave. No GFI on that outlet.

I went to the basement to look at the breaker box. Everything looked okay. I flipped some switches back and forth, hoping that would do the trick. It didn’t.

I called the electrician.

Mind you, the last time I had called him it was because of a flickering light. I live in an old farm house and was sure something had nibbled the wires. He changed the lightbulb and solved the problem. He explained to me the likely cause for the flickering. I was embarrassed.

You can understand why I was reluctant to call, but I did. Our wi-fi was also on the same circuit as the microwave.

“Hi, this is Sally,” I said to his voicemail. After leaving him my phone number and address, I continued, “I don’t need you to change a light bulb today, but I’ve lost electricity to some things in my house –”

He picked up and cut me off. “I’m going to tell you what to do and I want you to follow these instructions. If it doesn’t work, you can call me back and I’ll come tomorrow.” He gave me some specific instructions and told me to call him back either way.

Suffice it to say, it worked. The microwave worked. The wifi worked. Everything worked.

I called the electrician back.

“Good job,” he said. “I’ll be sending your Junior Electrician certificate in the mail.”

“You really need to send me a bill,” I said. He wouldn’t let me pay him when he changed the lightbulb either.

He laughed. “No, I’m glad you got it. Call me, though, if you have more problems.”

I guess I’m really not empty. I’m full — with family and kind people in my life.

Do you think the plumber will be this nice if I call him?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Blather · Life

A-to-Z Theme

Sally7 Comments

There was an occasional blogger
Who was something of a slogger
She decided to see
If she could go A-to-Z
Using finish-my-limerick fodder

It looks like I missed the Theme Reveal for the A-to-Z Challenge. I read March 12-18 as INCLUDING March 18 — which is today. When I went to the site though, it said that the theme reveal was closed.

I’m learning to take these things in stride.

Seriously, does it really matter? Does anyone really care what my theme is?

The older I get, the more I realize how few things there are that really matter.

The self-portrait exercise (from my Lenten devotional) was meant to force an eye to the basics, to the things that really matter. My 15-second self-portrait could have been drawn by any child who recognizes those basics: eyes, nose, mouth, hair.

In my room, I often stare at the row of portraits that my parents had done of their five children. The boys are all looking off to the right. My sister and I are looking at the artist. Mine is the only one with a tilt to the head.

I do that still — tilt my head. When I realize it, I upright it. I like to think, though, that the head tilt is a listening posture. Listening, and trying to understand. I do that, too.

The Stream of Consciousness Saturday word is “tape.” In my room, I often also stare at the many things I have taped here and there. On the back of the door. On the wall. I even have something taped on a piece of artwork to cover a place it’s damaged and to remind of a poem that the picture brings to mind.

Tape is a handy-dandy thing.

Back to my theme-reveal. I realized that limericks neatly fit the 23 word limit I’ve given myself most days. Especially if I let YOU finish it. Also, there’s no ache in writing a limerick. They’re light and silly. I have enough struggles in my days that I thought, maybe a month of silly — with an occasional collage thrown in — would be fun.

So starting April 1, I’ll post the first four lines of a limerick, and you can tape your answer on to finish it. The A-to-Z part will be the name of the person in the limerick. For example, “A” might begin “There once was a man named Arnold” — but I can’t really think of anything that rhymes with Arnold, can you?

And even though I missed the theme reveal, I’m revealing it today, because, you know, it doesn’t really matter. Right?