House

June 12, 2022 Sally10 Comments

This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. I’ve fallen behind but haven’t given up! If you want to join me, just add a comment naming something you like and something you don’t like that begin with the letter H.

Also, trying to do Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday (late for this also). Here’s the prompt: Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “a picture from wherever.” When you sit down to write your post, find a picture, whether in a magazine, newspaper, or even product packaging. Write whatever thought or emotion the picture provokes.

I’m such a rule-breaker. I didn’t find a picture in a magazine, newspaper, or wherever. My first thought, probably because of writing about my roots yesterday, was this picture of the house where I grew up.

I found the photo, not where I thought it would be but close. I showed it to my daughter, Mary.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“It’s this house,” she said. Clearly she didn’t hold the deep affection for it that I have.

“But look — there’s the front porch! And the side porch,” I pointed out. “They’re both gone now.”

“There’s still sort of a side porch,” she said.

And she’s right. The side porch in the photo is gone and has been replaced with a room we call the sun porch. I can still remember the year we went to the state fair and my mother dragged my father over to the display of modular-type rooms that could be added to the house. The next year, the side porch was torn down and the sun porch was installed.

The front porch has been long gone. I still remember the hammock that had been hung there and my father telling us ghost stories out there on summer nights.

The house faces west and my parents used to always go sit on the front porch after dinner with coffee (instant — yuck!) and watch the sun sink over Grasslands hill.

I love the house. It holds so many happy memories for me.

Here’s a photo of a house I drive by when I’m going to Syracuse. It’s on a back road, and I’ve watched its slow demise. When I saw that it had fallen, I stopped to take a picture.

When I would drive past it with Mary, she would often say, “I would love to explore that house.”

There’s something intriguing about abandoned houses.

I took the picture to send to Mary. A missed opportunity to explore.

I don’t know that I like abandoned houses. I certainly don’t like the wreckage of a house. It’s sad. I can’t help but wonder who holds the memories of the happy times that may have happened in that house.

Scottish Gaelic:
Is toil leam dachaigh mo leanabachd. I like my childhood home.
Cha toil leam long-bhriseadh taighe. I don’t like the wreckage of a house.

How about you? What’s something you like that begins with H? What’s something you don’t like?

Dentist

June 4, 2022 Sally16 Comments

This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. If you want to join me, just add a comment of something you like that begins with the letter D and something you don’t like.

Also, today’s post is my submission for Stream of Consciousness Saturday’s prompt — irony.

“You invite your dentist to your family weddings?” someone asked one of my children when they were being introduced to Dr. Kate.

I think it was Laurel that I was talking to about it, because she said, “I never really thought it was weird until they said that.”

We don’t invite Dr. Kate to weddings because she’s a dentist. We invite her because she’s a friend. She’s been a nearly lifelong friend to me.

I can still picture her when we were kids with her jaw wired shut and her head with a halo screwed into it to keep her neck in traction. I would go visit her every day after school at the hospital before getting a ride home with my father.

It was probably close to three months that she was in the hospital — so that’s a lot of visits! A friendship grows over something like that.

To be totally honest, I’m pretty terrible at keeping in touch with people, so we lost touch during the years that happened between high school and parenting. She went off to the dental school and Navy. I went off to Wyoming. Eventually we both ended up back in Cooperstown.

And yes, she comes to our family weddings. I love my dentist, Dr. Kate.

So I suppose there’s a little irony in the fact that I hate going to the dentist. It ranks right up there with having a gall bladder attack, another not-fun repeated experience in my life, but I’ll save that story for another day.

In Scottish Gaelic:
Is toil leam am fiaclair agam.
(I like my dentist.)

Cha toil leam a dhol dhan fhiaclair.
(I don’t like going to the dentist.)

How about you? What do you like that begins with D? What do you dislike?

Life

To Stay or Not Stay on the Trail

May 28, 2022May 28, 2022 Sally2 Comments

I’m housesitting for my daughter while she and her new husband are off on their honeymoon. Their home is surrounded by trees, and somewhere back on the property there’s a small cemetery where loved ones were laid to rest in 1800s. The realtor had to disclose that when they purchased the house, but I think it only added to the charm.

I thought about wandering back to find it this afternoon. The cool rainy morning gave way to a breezy pleasant almost-summer day. I knew it would be damp back there, but that’s not what kept me from walking into the woods. It’s poison ivy. I know that’s back there, too. And I know don’t really know the trails.

Where are the trails? Where’s the poison ivy?

Instead, this morning, I tried to drive to the mall. I got part way and the police were detouring cars off the main route. SIRI didn’t like that. Frankly, I didn’t like it either. Especially when the detour signs just stopped and I was heading north instead of south. I figure the last detour sign that was supposed to get me back to the route had either blown away or been swiped by some smart aleck. Either way, it was more trial than trail, so I changed my plans.

I went back to the house and my daughter happened to call. All the way from Iceland. She and her husband had gone for a hike up a volcano.

“I’m so glad we had a guide to take us up the volcano. At one point, he pointed to a trail and said that’s where most tourists go, but it doesn’t take them to the lava fields,” she told me. She had sent me pictures from the hike.

Then she said, “It was so cool walking on the lava field. Our guide also knew when we needed to turn back because of the gases.”

Yes, I was glad, too, that she had a guide who took them off the trail but still kept them safe.

Life is so like that, isn’t it? We need to find that balance between blazing new trails and following old ones.

Sometimes, it’s important to have a guide.

It’s also helpful to be able to identify poison ivy — or poison gases.

This post is in response to Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt trail/trial.

family · Life

Who Knows?

April 16, 2022April 16, 2022 Sally4 Comments

The other day someone called and asked, “Is it going to be busy in the bowling alley this afternoon?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I thought about making a snarky comment about my broken crystal ball.

I think it was the same day that some called and asked how far we were from Woodstock. “I suggest using Google maps for that,” I said.

That was the same caller who asked about what else there is to do in Cooperstown, NY, besides our sports center. “Most people come here for the Baseball Hall of Fame,” I told her.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” she replied.

How or where she got our number remains a mystery to me. Why someone would call a sports facility with questions like that also remain a mystery.

***************

“Where do you see yourself in ten years?” My friend who had asked me about my goals asked me that question yesterday.

Who knows? Literally, who freaking knows?

(Side note: my use of “freaking” indicates what a frustrating question that is, but that’s about as far as I go with “f”-words. Side-side note: I saw an story yesterday that the actor who plays Roy Kent on Ted Lasso had done a bit on Sesame Street about his favorite “f” word — which turned out to be “fairness.” Well done, Sesame Street.)

Where do I see myself in ten years? I started doing mental math on how old my children and grandchildren would be. Laurel, my youngest daughter, would be 28. Wilma, my youngest granddaughter, would be 12. My oldest grandson would be 17. My oldest son would be 47.

The more mental math I did, the more I realized how much I define myself by the people in my life.

So what about me? In ten years, I will be 72.

At the gym I see 72 year old women climbing the rock wall. Heck, I see a 92 year old woman who comes in nearly every day to swim and walk the track.

But if COVID has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that life is fragile and can’t be taken for granted. Health and life can be snatched away with little warning.

Where do I see myself in ten years? Phooey. I hate the question. It ranks right up there with “What’s your goal?”

As hokey as this saying is, I think it holds a lot of truth — “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)

(This post is mostly Stream of Consciousness writing based on the Linda Hill’s prompt: nose/noes/knows for today.)

Blogging Challenge

In the Middle of the Night

January 8, 2022 Sally3 Comments

Dear Kim,

In the middle of the night
I sometimes wake up
No, no — I mean
I often wake up.

I hear the coyotes howling
And lately I’ve heard an owl

But that’s not what wakes me up

It’s the thousand thoughts
Racing through my mind
Of this and that
And nothing particular
And everything all at once

The thoughts scurry around
Like the mice I hear in the walls
Occasionally
Not as much since we got the cats

The mice, I mean
Not the niggling thoughts

But just like the cats keep the mice
At bay
I think the coyote howls chase the thoughts

There’s a strange comfort
In those howls

You’ve struggled with insomnia
And I know you pray your way through it

I need to work on that.

Love,
Sally

_______

Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS) means no editing and little planning. You get what you get here.

I also tried my hand at Six Word Saturday which requires a six word title.

Blogging Challenge · Life · Writing

Dear Kim

January 1, 2022 Sally13 Comments

Gah — It’s New Year’s Day and I really want to get back into writing.

“I resolve to write every day in 2022.”

That sounds so pretentious. And lofty. And ridiculous. Yes, that’s it — utterly ridiculous because I barely posted anything in 2021 and I probably made the same resolution.

That’s where you come in, Kim. As I sat here squirming in my chair, feeling knots in my stomach — knots of both of anticipation and dread — I thought, what if I just wrote a letter to Kim every day?

I can picture you reading it. I know you’ll be kind in your responses. I owe you so much.

I think that‘s it, too. I owe you so much. So many thank you’s. So many responses to your faithful checking in on me. You know the road I’m walking — and you know how to encourage me on it. Have I ever thanked you for all that?

And here you are — unbeknownst to you at the time of my writing this — helping me again.

For the month of January 2022, I resolve to write to Kim every day. I’m going to use the prompts from Linda G. Hill’s blog. She calls Saturdays “Stream of Consciousness” and I’m not allowed to go back and edit. This may explain some of the blather in this post. I would ordinarily cut some of it out. But, then again, I probably wouldn’t end up posting because I would say, This is total blathering. Or blithering as the Scots might say.

Wednesdays are “One Liner Wednesdays.” Not exactly sure what happens there, but I’ll jump in and give it a go. At least for January.

All the other weekdays will have a prompt. So if I write to you about gobbledygook or unicorns, just know that that may be the prompt and I’ll try to work it into something meaningful I’d like to say to you.

Because I do have so many things I want to say to you — most of them centered around gratitude. You’ve been a good friend.

And if I fail to write you any of the days of January, just know that the failing is mine, not yours.

You’re the best.

Love,

Sally