October 2015 – Page 2 – *the gratitude-a-thon

gratitude-a-thon day 717: when it’s there, but you don’t see it

October 12, 2015UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Sometimes I pretend I’ve never been to where I live before. (With the way my memory is going, it might not be a game soon.) Anyway, I walk around as if I were someone from a completely different country, and ask myself what I see. Because the thing is, there are lots of pretty things around me, and sometimes I completely miss them because I’m so used to them, so as a reminder I play the “foreign visitor” game and I see my surroundings in a new and different light

Yesterday I did it at Jamaica Pond. This place is really beautiful, but often I forget to take in its good looks and charm, on account of I’m exercising. One foot in front of the other, busy, busy, busy. But today, I just looked around as I walked, and took in all it had on display. Because of the Holiday weekend, it didn’t have the usual crowds, which was helpful for my little game. I imagine there are lots and lots of people leaf peeping up North. It was nice. I really liked what I saw. I’m going back tomorrow to appreciate it all over again. Sometimes you need a reset to see what’s right in front of you.

gratitude-a-thon day 716: blooming

October 10, 2015October 10, 2015UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Damn, I love flowers. I took all these pictures this morning. Without cleaning up, mind you. But just to show you how many petals I have on a random day, hanging around my house.

It’s kind of funny that I’m not a florist, or like someone who lives on a big farm and grows flowers, because honestly, I have a thing for them. Like, a real thing. I’m maybe a little obsessed. Or not. They feel like oxygen to me. Absolutely essential.

My parents had an acre of land, and it had flowers all over it, so my mom was always just going into the yard and coming back inside with a handful of colors. She had them all over the house. Queen Ann’s Lace in the bathroom, some peonies on the dining room table, a tiny bouquet of lily of the valley in the kitchen. My dad was a flower person, too. Every March he turned his antique/second hand store into an Easter emporium of lilies, and chrysanthemums, tulips, and hyacinths. Rows and rows of yellow and lavender, white and pink. The store, which normally smelled musty and old, smelled fresh and sweet.

The den. I don’t know what those green flowers are. Whole Foods. They have lasted a long time.

I’ve always been a doodler. On the phone, I will make designs, or when I was a kid, in class, instead of taking notes, I would scribble. I almost always drew flowers. Big petals, intricate roses, daisies. For God sakes, look at the border of this blog. Even much of my favorite jewelry has a flower motif. Flowers are like a trustworthy best friend. I want to spend as much time with them as I can. They soothe me, improve me, increase my happy.

This unidentifiable bunch of green flowers has lasted quite a while. I really need to track down what these are.

The Cat Mint in my front garden is still growing here on October 10.

These zinnias broke coming out of their wrap, so now they’re living in glasses.

Aside from their obvious gorgeosity, I have begun wondering exactly why I like flowers so much. And I am thinking maybe it’s because they remind me that it’s essential to keep growing no matter how old you are, to keep evolving, and changing within yourself, but also, to just stand there and do your thing in the world, whatever that is. To stay rooted, own your beautiful, but also to always stand your ground. It’s a good lesson. To hold on to who you are. Who YOU are. To bloom.

gratitude-a-thon day 715: small bites friday

October 9, 2015October 9, 2015UncategorizedLeave a Comment

This Craigslist “Missed Connection” is GORGEOUSLY wirtten. Who cares if it happened, or not.

Some people do not think before they speak. Maybe Ben Carson has been hanging out with Trump for too long. Better for the Democrats.

Not a big Disney fan myself, but you gotta love this story. Way to think about someone else.

I LOVE a makeover!

I want to see this in real life. Man! (Literally!)

Nicely put.

And the Nobel Prize goes to A NON-FICTION WRITER. Must read.

Another story that proves we have got to talk about mental illness for what it is–ILLNESS.

Balmain and H&M. Affordable glam-ah.

gratitude-a-thon day 715: that english accent

October 8, 2015October 8, 2015UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Ok, this kid needs his own show. I’d watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWwU0lTzPGc

gratitude-a-thon day 713: birthday candles

October 6, 2015October 7, 2015Uncategorized2 Comments

People are getting old around here.

My son turns 21 in just a couple of weeks. TWENTY. ONE. This means he can now drink legally (as opposed to illegally). I don’t know whether this is exactly a good thing. It’s probably a wash. Back two hundred years ago, when I did it, turning 18 was a big deal, not 21, because at 18 you could vote and drink (of course, not at the same time).

I could paint you a picture of my three year stint as the poster child for infertility, and how miraculous it was that I got pregnant, but we’ve boogied around on this road before on this blog, so I’ll save you the trip down memory lane. But really, give me this, I do feel like I was just changing his diapers, like this morning.

My daughter turns 18 in a little more than a month. She will be doing Oxycodone on her birthday. And she has my permission. She will be just eight days out from her ACL surgery. Yeah, she’s not going to be dancing this year, but she will probably be high. I also remember like it was four minutes ago, how I didn’t think I would ever get pregnant again after I had Jake, but just two months into trying, I got two pink lines. I actually thought maybe the baby wasn’t mine (I have been using this joke for almost 18 years now. I should probably retire it). She is graduating from high school this year and heading off in the direction of a college, where she will play soccer. I can’t even. Don’t ask me to, because I cannot.

Anyway, having adult kids is easier and harder. it’s not so back-breakingly physical. It’s more fun in some ways, but there’s no soft skin and chubby thighs to pinch. And they don’t get dressed up for Halloween anymore, which means they don’t get candy, so you can’t steal it. And you can’t really put them in a bouncy seat and know they’re safe, which was a really a nice luxury.

You worry a little more about them making good decisions, and not just about whether they’ve said please and thank you, and didn’t eat too much sugar. And you no longer are involved in personal hygiene, so there can be bad mustaches, and beards, and interesting eyebrows.

You can’t really say anything anymore. The roles are reversed. Remember when you told them what and when they could eat, how much tv they could watch, exactly what they could wear. That is so OVER. You keep right on giving them your advice, but it’s like you’re just moving your lips, because they’re not hearing a word of it. Think Charlie Brown’s teacher. Wah, wah, wah.

I like talking to them as the quasi-adults they are. Especially when they’re not referring to me as “the nag.” I am wondering how you ask a teenager to do something without being called a nag. If anyone has the answer to this million dollar question, I would sure like to know it.

Yep, people are getting old around here. But you know, it doesn’t really matter to me how old these kids get because they will forever and always be, even with graying hair and snot-nosed crying kids of their own, MY babies. That’s just how it is. Whether they listen to me, or not. I will always be their mom, full of opinions, good intentions, and concern. That will never change, no matter how many candles on the cake.

gratitude-a-thon day 712: shhhhhh

October 6, 2015October 6, 2015UncategorizedLeave a Comment

images-7 — You think my brain listens to me? Not a chance.

Stillness.

It’s an interesting place to be, my mind, when I am trying to get it to stop talking.

“Settle,” I say. “S-E-T-T-L-E.”

It’s like an A.D.D. toddler, up in there, (and I know about them, because I had two of those cwazy critters) going in all directions at the same time, speaking four languages, none of which are audible, while performing with the Rockettes, and sounding like a cross between National Public Radio and Access Hollywood. You do not want to be in there, my brain. It’s like noisy as a carnival, and impudent, and completely disrespectful.

But stillness. It seeks stillness.

And I can sometimes achieve it. Well, sort of. I mean, I can get it to be kind of quiet-ISH.

And when I do, it’s such a relief. I practically fall right to sleep when I can get all that noise to stop. It seems like most people can tame the chatter. I feel like I am someone special (but not good, special) because I find it so hard to convince my brain to travel in the quiet car.

But perseverance. I have perseverance. I just keep trying. I just keep on keeping on. They say it won’t be so hard one day, to make my inner chatty Cathy take a vow of silence for 30 minutes of my day. I find that as unbelievable as thinking there’s anybody alive who doesn’t think Amy Schumer is a pee your pants, laugh riot. Ok, now. “Quiet on the set.”

gratitude-a-thon day 711: phone home

October 5, 2015October 5, 2015Uncategorized1 Comment

Matt Damon gets left behind on Mars in The Martian. It sounds like it could be a really boring movie.

But it’s not! It’s about working hard, and what we need to survive. It’s about inner drive, and hope, and growing potatoes!

Matt Damon gives a really fabulous performance. I realize how much I just love that guy.

I also realized there is so much math to do on Mars to survive, I would have died twelve times, so like, I’m glad that my career path was writer and not astronaunt. 🙂

Ridley Scott, the director, 77 years old, hit this one out of the solar system. See it.

absurd-a-thon day 710: here we are AGAIN

October 2, 2015October 2, 2015Uncategorized2 Comments

pistol+tag+cloud — We’re shooting the next generation in the head.

Is there even anything left to say about another school shooting?

It’s just another day in America.

I noticed that even the Facebook posts ignored this news, like it was just another stupid thing Trump spat out. (And btw, Donald, how ‘about you gather all the guns and DEPORT THOSE.)

It seems to be ok now to take out your anger/depression/lonliness/issuedujour with artillery on the campus of a school.

While our flimsy gun laws are part of the reason, there has to be something else at play, too. Have video games, where the object is to kill as many people as we can, de-sensitized us to the point of thinking this is a real answer to real problems? Is the stigma of being mentally ill so enormous and shameful that we do everything we can to ignore it? is getting help for depression so expensive and hard to come by that we just don’t bother to even try? ARE POLITICIANS TOO FUCKING DIVIDED TO TAKE A LOOK AT THIS PROBLEM?

Since Sandy Hook’s December 2012 shooting, there have been 142 school shootings in America.

Next time it could be your child. It could be mine.

Think about what we can do as a community, as a country. This has got to stop before it becomes acceptable. Or has it already?

gratitude-a-thon day 710: everything at the same time

October 1, 2015Uncategorized2 Comments

A baby is born. A family wakes up with no food. A cloud disappears. A tree turns from a verdant green to a shock of yellow. A puppy leaves the warmth of its mom. A film finale blows everybody’s mind. A man gets down on his knee to and asks, “Will you marry me?” A texting driver kills three people. Peace wins. A spider weaves an artistically impressive web. Cancer strikes again. Flooding takes out a neighborhood.

Someone who works in a factory wins the lottery. A truck breaks down. The sun comes up. The pothole that almost ate your car gets fixed. More refugees find a place to be free. A pretend-politician says more stupid things. A piece of art is created. Weight is lost. Love is found. It is the first day of a brand new job. Music is made. A horrific crime is committed. A sacred piece of jewelry is lost. An acceptance letter is delivered. A dancer leaps onto the scene. A flower is planted. A war begins. A room gets a new coat of paint. A lamp sheds light. A marriage ends. A story begins.

Life keeps happening in simultaneous moments of spectacular and spectacularly bad, and all that is in between. Sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug. And the only thing you have control over is the way in which you react. And that is all. That is all.