I now have a website with all of my writing in one place.
Here is the link to my Truth Burps blog. Once you are there, I hope you will nose around the other pages and check out my other projects:
Truth Burps
I have to laugh because it is exactly like having a family room after the kids have long gone.
And I am crazy enough to be feeling sentimental about leaving Blogger.
And hoping I can learn Word Press well enough to enjoy it.
I like lots about the site.
(Other than the usual wanting a better haircut or being ten years younger.)
Here's my favorite part. It has coffee stains that move every time you go to the site.
I love coffee stains---how they look, what they mean and all of my writing is done with a red cup of coffee nearby. And I have put in little red cups to click on just for fun, for photos (if I learn how to add them) and random thoughts like--"Is there even such a thing as a sentence fragment any more? They used to be like a sin in college." That sort of nonsense.
What else" Oh, my most recent Tweet shows up on the bottom. Once again, for the fun of it.
I'm stalling. (My house would be much less cluttered if I weren't so sentimental, but carrying it over to a blog???)
OK--now to test the plasticity of my brain with learning to use a real deal website
I have had a wonderful Summery Summer
I almost take for granted that I live in beauty, that I have ease, that my family people are all healthy, that I can buy food when I need it, and I can be frivolous. And I am a white woman second from the top of white males, thinking of the unfairness of that white man at the top and ignoring all the other rungs of the ladder below that of privilege.
It's so fake humble to say I am privileged as a way to manage the the truth that I am over privileged.
I wrote an inane comment to my black pastor about people learning to love in order to survive.
He wrote back, "maybe". I wrote my comment as an over privileged person who watches awful hate from a somewhat safe distance. Of course nuclear missiles carry long range hate, so I am closer than I think.
I did watch news last night and was amused and very discouraged to see four guests erupt into furiously shouting their opinion at one another. It was out of control. They were re-enacting the Charlottesville riot. Thank goodness for a break for ads. Maybe we need a world wide break to cool our fevered opinions of rightness.
So another beautiful Summer day. I will enjoy it. I will have fun. I will have coffee with a friend. I am too far along in life not to savor what is good. But I have a pebble in my soul as I ponder my
privilege and what to do with it.
I hate it when my mood is one hundred percent out of sync with the day.
The day is magnificent. Hot in the sun, cool in the shade. I'm on the side porch of the house which is my bower territory for quiet. The flower boxes look good and usually make me quite happy. I had a great day yesterday frolicking with my daughter going for a haircut (and a couple of blue streaks) and afterward a lovely dinner and conversation. Perfection. I have a stack of good books to read, an interesting week coming up, writing I want to do, and I am grumpy and moody.
So I took a nap hoping to wake up astonishingly different. Instead I woke up with a thought I wanted to share that made me laugh and now can't remember it.
Burpety, burp, burp, burp.
Why so cranky?
I beep if my husband approaches so he knows he is in the smart ass remark range.
Why so cranky?
As I wrestle this mood to the ground, I begin to hit pay dirt. I have the kind of unrest that Seniors in high-school or college have. Something is coming to an end. The future is unclear. What to do next is a giant distraction from fun and everyone asks about it. Will the right thing, the perfect thing, the crack the world open thing come to me? Urgency with no where to go equals moody.
And the definition of moody is angry, irritable and sullen. I suffer from Senioritus.
Mostly I ignore the fact that my time is limited, very finite. A financial advisor friend reminds me of this fact as he talks about the end of my plan--which means I'm dead or broke!! The actuarial tables say I have ten more good years and a few not so good to follow. I have a 'dead' line. How to meet it? What matters most? Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock. I have kids who ask "Don't you need to sell your three story house? Isn't it too much for you?" (I very snarkily think, "Don't you mean too much for you if we pop off mid-mess?")
As I write, my mood shifts. I love deeply, I attach, I care about the smallest tchatkas of my life, I'm sentimental about Sippy Cups. I like surprise and play. So this is the perfect time of life to not know, to not plan til events make you, to trust the next trajectory will come and to fill all the minutes with the deep satisfaction of creating or loving that makes time stand still. So there. My mood lifts to match the day. To hell with knowing.
I just remembered my waking thought--What ever happened to playing Jacks? Hours and hours of Jacks competition with ten different stages to go through to win? Way beyond onsies and twosies. There were double bounce upsies and downsies and over the fence as well. Tossing the jacks on the backs of your hands to see how many you still needed to pick up was admired. The jacks had to be just the right weight and thickness. It was an art form. That thought makes me very happy.
Mood overboard.
PS--I WILL BE CHANGING OVER TO WORD PRESS FOR MY NEW WEBSITE THAT WILL HAVE ALL OF MY VARIOUS BLOGS IN ONE PLACE SO--know that I may miss a post or two or do strange things with them until I master this new technical challenge. As my 4 year old granddaughter says when scared with fists at her sides, "I can do this!".
We have an wonderful little house in Rangeley, Maine that, of course, I did not want to own but my husband's vision won while I fussed along behind. "Too much money, five kids will be in college, too far from Portland, Maine. All true. And------it's been a great gift.
We paid very little for it. I always say 18,000 dollars and my husband says 35,000. My guess--he told me 18000 and we paid 35000!! He is expert at "act first, apologize later". We gave each of our five kids a room to renovate. So the kitchen cabinets were thick with oil paint drips, the living room floor had a hollow place from an electric sander and lots of divots, the upstairs girls' room was a kind of tangerine orange and the paneling in the boys' room was polyurethaned with a brilliant shine that didn't help the room at all. Luckily we had a chimney fire that covered everything with soot and we had to upgrade to somewhat normal. Normal means the bathroom is no longer attached by the wallpaper holding it onto the kitchen wall.
Rangley is quiet. Not many sounds day or night except the Loons. Deer saunter by on our lawn early morning and evening. We have no TV or Internet connection (for now--Internet is looming).
To get a signal I sit under a pin oak planted long ago in an old fashioned metal lawn chair.
The house is a museum of our family full of displaced things from other locations. My mom and dad's Lazy Boy chairs, blankets, non-matching cups and plates from other relatives, Monopoly set of my dad's, and books, books, books from college and eras or our life including The Whole Earth Catalogue.
People choose Rangely. It has wonderful competent hardy wry born there people and wonderful, incompetent, slightly helpless, romantic eccentrics from away. Actually the generalizations hide
an array of very idiosyncratic people. There is the carpenter who sits over coffee with me and
discusses world religion, the waitress who is a world class quilter. (It's necessary in Rangeley for people to have many skills to earn enough to live there.) There are our dear neighbors, a former school principal and his teacher wife who are pioneers. They move barns and build additions, and float huge logs across the lake for an off the grid house while I decide which book to read.
And it seems that time exists still in Rangeley. We talk and get to know people as very distinct individuals. This trip we met our waitress at a tiny cafe. She loves baking and does all the sweets for the cafe. Her idea of heaven is six hours in the kitchen alone. She loves baseball and wonders about David Price and his sour attitude with the Red Sox. She aspires to an old house to fix up.
She declares with a blush that she likes us. We return the sentiment. She sits with us at breakfast the next day.
And then there is our experience on the way home from Rangeley. My husband likes to take photos of rot and decay and moss and slime. Family pictures, not so much. We tease him lovingly and not so lovingly. I was feeling nice. We take a road we never have to New Vineyard.
There is a lake. (No surprise in Maine) and some slightly falling apart houses. I see a real goody and almost don't point it out to David (I might as well name him) because I know it will be at least an hour delay. I have a book and feel generous so, I point out the house.
It is one scary house. Huge, paint peeling, porch falling, wonderful detailed house with shutters and porticoes and old glass windows. Intriguing but still too much like the house in Psycho for me.
I read. David photographs. I hear voices. There is Don David on the porch with a man chatting.
I approach. We all chat. He is Harvard graduate, college teacher, wife died last February. She bought the house for 10,000 dollars. He has been sweeping out plaster from the 3rd floor for his kids who are coming to visit. He married a woman with six children. As he said, his whole life has been doing things he was not prepared to do, but did. He and I talked about secular humanism and whether that is the next movement in a religions like structure!! He plays tennis and does pottery. He lives in North Carolina but he and his wife have come up to this house for many Summers. There are mattresses but no bed for his family that is coming. There is an artificial Christmas tree in the bay window of the 'parlor'. He said he keeps it up because the neighborhood kids used to be afraid to walk by the house. We leave at my impetus.
As we get in the car, we wonder, what was real and what wasn't. Taking time to stray.
Another gift of a Rangeley kind of mood.
But first, sorry to be late. I am up in Rangeley where the Internet signal is variable and the deer are on the lawn and the loons are looning and we imagine a moose groaning.
I will be very very short. I write from the Inn next door to us. On the porch. And it is cold and rainy.
THE ANSWER TO LAST WEEK'S QUIZ IS-----
(To get the answer, all you have to do is join my club to make life wonderful and your skin wrinkle free by sending your email and paying only 67 dollars. No wait, wait. If you hurry, only 39 dollars.
Well OK
For free
I DO NOT LOVE DIXIELAND JAZZ. ALL OTHER COMMENTS ARE TRUE!!!!
(Including not having watched Game of Thrones. I never read or watched Harry Potter either.
Nor did I see Titanic.) Sometimes you just miss the wave.
These are the days of Jane Austin glut--200 years since she died. Deathaversary?
This Jane Austin quote is how I often feel when I start to write, "Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?"
And so here are some of my important nothings:
—I like popcorn more than red licorice
—My grandchildren ask if they can have a break from playing with me
—I hate to drive
—I have not watched one episode of Game of Thrones
—I miss playing tennis
—I was an excellent violinist
—I have eaten iguana meat
—I like order and create mess—
—I had waist length hair and a leather peace sign necklace
—I paint paintings and cards for special occasions but only then
—I dont' know how to parallel park and don't want to learn
—I love to listen to sports radio in the car
—I love games
—and so which of the above is not true?
OK, this is a very metaphysical thought coming out of ten days of vacation and family.
Then again, it may be very apropos.
When kids from far away come for a long visit there are lovely memorable moments--and usually a few bumps when feelings run high. Too many feelings into compressed a time heat up all the experience. Sparklers are "phenomenal"! Sitting in candle light and talking is "magical"! A cross word is "devastating". You get the idea. I lived far from my parents as an adult and my dad and I always had our moment that ended with me in tears and my dad hugging me. Spill over emotion, I call it.
Mmmm. How does this fit with my truth burp title? Maybe this way. I read quotes from Abraham every day --dailyquote@abraham-hicks.com> It is based on the law of attraction with the basic premise being that you create what you think and feel. And choosing the thought that feels the best to you will support it coming into being. What it does is help me choose the positive. Period.
I think Pollyanna got this right without much falderal. (There's a fun word)
And so I sit here ready for family to leave tomorrow. What thoughts do I want to put into my basket--the night everything went wrong, the irritations of too many, too much cooking, not enough slow easy connection? No.
I choose cousins playing together easily who don't see one another often but feel the family connection.
I choose sitting on Adirondack chairs at the Nonantum Inn in Kennebunkport with my Oregon daughter. Just us. Treated like royalty by Jean Ginn Marvin the Innkeeper and friend. We stepped away and did luxury and waved to the Bush family compound.
I choose the delight of my 4 year old wanting sparklers at home over fireworks and her delight in writing her letters with the sparks.
I choose the mandatory lobster dinner and the same 4 year old being adept with lobster crackers.
I choose my 9 year old (only boy) grandson still wanting the ritual of going to the Cookie Jar bakery with me and treating me to a cookie. (He came back from ten days at Camp Chewonki grown up!)
I choose to remember the Summer front porch with people sprawled and chatting and getting up for Ladder Golf. I
I choose to see two sisters (my daughters) having a connection that will sustain them for life.
But to avoid being totally la-la, I will say my Oregon daughter heads back with a probable broken rib, not all relatives got visited, and each kid can count and name various
"owies" that deserve the count, and I will wish to change things I said--and didn't say.
You know, actually it is esoteric. We do choose who and how we want to be---and what we want to remember.
