Posts filed under ‘Life Preservers’
Yardwork Tips
When you buy a house, you become more than just a homeowner. You become, like it or not, in one way or another, painter, inspector, handyman, window washer, plumber, security guard, and groundskeeper.
I have been the groundskeeper at my little house for nearly 13 years. And, as I gaze out on the freshly mown lawn and the flower beds that line my driveway this summer, I thought it worth sharing a few tips hard won over the years.
- If you have a really steep hill, you can use an S-hook to attach a bull rope to raise and lower the mower (until the S-hook slips and the mower rolls away).
- If you have a really steep hill, you can go out and buy an easier to handle electric mower and cut sideways while rope-wrangling the cord.
- If you have a really steep hill, you can hire someone to cut your grass.
- Small pine trees that are dying when you move in can be revived with some careful attention and regular applications of Miracid. It really works and will greatly increase the challenge in about 13 years when you decide to cut down those big ugly pine trees.
- Beware flowering plants at hardware stores. They often come with a lot of weeds and may not be that hardy. Find a small, local nursery with a kind and friendly owner who knows her stuff. Better plants and a more enjoyable shopping experience.
- Many people get confused about this next one. The difference between perennial and annual is that all of the plants in a flat of annuals will last about one season. And perennials is spelled differently.
- Deer eat the flowers off of tulips. Additionally, deer are careful planners who will travel miles, often by bus or rail, to arrive in your neighborhood on the same day your tulips bloom.
- Miracle Gro really does work. Don’t believe me? Come sit in the shade of my dandelion trees.
- Get a decent set of gardening tools. Cheap ones bend or break. Good ones will last a long time.
- If you purchase 20 or 40 tulip bulbs, they grow better if you plant in the spring or fall—instead of leaving them in a bag in the garage until they rot. (But at least the deer don’t get them.)
- A beautiful garden and a beautiful manicure are mutually exclusive.
- There is one flowering plant that grows well at my house. Sweet peas. Sound delightful. Grow little pinkish whitish flowers on delicate tendrils . . . tendrils which grow as if in a time-lapse video and choke out every other living thing in a 2-mile radius.
- Each spring, set aside $100-200 for your garden. After the last frost, put that money in a shredder and spread it evenly among the bare, dead, brown plant beds.
When I was first house shopping, I thought about purchasing a row house in an area of town where property was cheap. (It has since become popular and kind of expensive.) I decided not to move to that area because . . . I wanted a yard.
Yeah, that’s funny.
If I had all of the money in the bank that I’ve spent on the dang yard over the years, I wouldn’t have to wait to renovate the basement. And I’d probably have enough left to get a stove with four working burners and an oven temperature control gauge that matches the oven temperature.
I have abdicated grass cutting. Part of a hedge is currently being held up by a bungee cord. The flowers are sparse this year. I do not have whatever talent or magic my grandmother had. And, there is certainly irony in me using these green-thumbless hands to type under the heading of Life Preservers.
But. Still. It is a good thing, to dig in the dirt.
What’s growing in your yard?
Lawnchair!
Back to the real world and slowly getting sucked back into the technology in my life after an I-hope-it’s-not-but-very-well-may-be-a-once-in-a-lifetime trip to Ireland.
I was on a 10-day hiking tour from Bray to Dingle (REI Adventures’ “Ireland Coast to Coast,”) and got to share every experience (and, once again, a room) with my original playmate, my sister.
Hard to put all that we did and saw into a readably short blog post. To start, a look at our typical day.
7:00: Alarm goes off.
7:30: Big ol’ breakfast at the B&B. Although I never attempted “The Full Irish” (which includes fruit, cereal, eggs, potato, toast, bacon, ham, and sausage), we ate well.
8:00: On the road.
9:00-5:00: Hiking and/or sightseeing.
Toughest day: 10 miles in Glendalough, which means Glen of Two Lakes. Photo 1: Lake #2 and a view of the mountain we were about to climb. Photo 2: Taken from the middle of the hike, looking back down at the same lake from about 1600 feet up.
Photo 1: Beginning of Glendalough hike.
Photo 4: Ornamental cottage near Cahir Castle. (Where the rich folks used to go, to “play peasant” for the day.)
7:00: Dinner then pub. Live music and a pint of Guinness, Smithwick’s, or (my favorite new beverage discovery) Bulmer’s Irish Cider.
Note: Cheers in Irish is “Slainte!” (slawn’ chə). Our guide told us to think “lawnchair” to help us remember the pronunciation.
For two weeks, I didn’t use a phone or a computer. I didn’t check email. I didn’t make a peep on facebook. For two weeks, I got away from It All to wander in countryside so beautiful that even a 360-degree camera wouldn’t have done it justice (but I snapped off 537 photos without realizing until I got home and sat astounded during the downloading) and so deeply peaceful that even quaint little Ennis (our last stop near the Shannon airport) was physically and emotionally jarring in comparison.
Home again and (mostly) readjusted to work, time zone, noise, and, now, all of my technological connections, it is at moments of rush and routine difficult to grasp that I was actually there but grin-inducing to know that I have, indeed, checked A Dream off the list. (And, despite nearly a lifetime of anticipation and the bold, Fate-flaunting risk of daring to allow expectations to rise higher than mountain peaks, it did not disappoint.)
Fair warning: As I sort through the memories, there may be more blog posts to come of this.
Where would you like to go, for the first time or back again?
The Best Mom in the World
Here is a very short list of wonderful Mom things.
1. My mom packed our lunches every day for school. And she’d leave little notes on the napkin.
2. When we were kids, she would make us (well, me and my sister only) a special Christmas dress every year.
3. Sit down family dinner–every night.
4. Georgie Girl and Galway Bay and a gazillion other piano tunes. She’d play. I’d sit beside her and sing along.
5. She tucked us in at night: prayers, a story, and a kiss with a “Sweet dreams” or “Off to Lily White’s party” or “Shuffle off to Buffalo” or “Don’t let the bed bugs bite!”
6. She taught me how to cook, clean, sew, and iron. Not that the student has gone on to do great things, but I can handle that stuff when I need to thanks to her.
7. Her presentation of “the birds and the bees” was straightforward and loving. (And extra points for poise because it began one quiet day while we were merrily making a puzzle in the living room, and I blurted out, “Hey Mom, what does f— mean?”) (And I didn’t use the dashes that time.)
8. She taught me to walk, to talk, to wipe my bottom, to eat my veggies, to draw, to write my name, to hit a softball, to play volleyball, to put on eye shadow, to pick out a fancy dress, to waltz, to play Perquackey, to drive a car.
9. She taught me the joy to be found in simple things and the fun to be had spur of the moment.
10. She taught us to be honest and fair. And to take responsibility for our actions.
11. She taught us to be resilient, grounded non-wimps—but she also had a great big shoulder, an understanding heart, and unquestionable love when the tragedies of childhood broke me.
12. She is still there for me.
I could go on for days with examples and memories, but I need to stop now to prepare the house and plan a meal for Mother’s Day tomorrow.
(How she did this sort of thing on a daily basis, I will never know.)
One day doesn’t seem anywhere near a fair trade for the most giving person I know. All I can say is that I am grateful. And I know I am blessed. And I know, in at least one thing in life, I am the luckiest person in the world.
Happy Mother’s Day to my very first and most significant life preserver.
What makes your mom the Best Mom in the World?
Wish I Had a Camera in My Head
I wish I had a camera in my head.
No, I don’t mean a photographic memory. I mean a camera. In my head. Lens (with zoom) in the middle of my forehead and wires and stuff all connected so that I just had to hard-blink or push a button embedded in my thumb or carol-burnett my ear lobe to capture images.
I have stated this wish for years and I don’t think it’s completely insane to think that, someday, probably, the technology will exist. And somebody better be willing to push my wheel chair to the hospital if it happens in my lifetime.
I have been fascinated with photography since my gramma and grampap gifted me my very first camera (black inset with faux wood paneling) at age 8. I’m on my sixth, somewhat sleeker camera now, and through the years have developed a bit of an eye (or enough dumb luck) to capture some good shots every now and then.
The problem is, I “see” pictures all over the place. And pretty often, I don’t have the camera handy or I don’t have hands free to click. Like tonight, for instance, as I was leaving the office.
As I sat at the end of the office driveway, waiting to pull out, I noticed the stopped car. A rare sight at 5:00. With cars spilling out of every driveway in the office park and everybody going 50 in the 35 zone. Yes, there was a lot of honking, but not, as you might guess, from the other cars lining up behind the stopped one.
Next to that car, above the high curb, on the lovely grass lawn, stood a mama goose, a papa goose, and four goslings. Below the curb, on the road, waddled gosling number five. The little guy’s family was honking like mad. He was walking fast but, you know, fast is relative when you’re about 4 inches high with really teenie feet at the bottom of some stubby new legs. There was no end to the curb in sight and his nubby wings weren’t ready to fly.
Kudos to the driver who managed to see a little goose. Thanks for stopping. And God bless you for your extreme patience. We waited. We sat and watched.
Then mama goose gave a big wild honk and kind of flapped her wings. I don’t know if it was a maternal freak-out or a very timely lesson, but suddenly the little guy kind of lifted his nub-wings and hopped and somehow crested the curb to join his family.
Traffic got moving. And I imagine those other drivers were grinning from ear to ear. And perhaps swallowing a wee lump in the throat.
I wonder if any of them wished they had a camera in their head?
Would you get one? If the technology existed?
Yes!
About three weeks ago, I was sitting on an airplane with my work laptop. Never used the computer on a plane before; have always been more of a book person when flying. But, it was going to be a long flight, and I wanted some variety. So, I turned on the work-Mac, slipped in my ear phones, and sat back to enjoy some music.
But then the music stopped, and the screen went blank as the computer turned itself off. I turned it back on and got one of those international no symbols, with the circle and the slash?
Now, those of you who know me know I am a bit technology-challenged. You likely will not be surprised by the following confession.
I thought this meant I could not use the computer on the airplane. Not as in “you don’t have permission” but as in “we’re too far from earth or some setting is searching for something and can’t find it up here in the clouds.”
Those of you who are not technology-challenged know exactly what horror that symbol announced. But, for the sake of those like me, I’ll explain. The circle stands for “O crap!” and the slash is representative of the sound “pfft.”
My hard drive was gone.
I lost a lot of stuff. Including:
- About a thousand or so family photos, slides, and movies that I spent about 6 months gathering and digitizing last year. Had been meaning to get those onto a DVD . . . and the road to hell is now paved with my baby pictures.
- Every setting, add-on, preference, bookmarked web page, etc.
- A few work files. (Computer gods be praised, I had done a backup not too long ago.)
- All of my itunes, about 180 purchases and about 10 hours of uploaded (or is it downloaded?) CDs.
I thought my tunes would still be accessible because I had itunes (with the same login) on my home pc.
O crap!
I thought, well, they’ll be on my work backup server.
And pfft!
I figured, well, these were purchased electronically, and the company will replace them. Uh . . . not according to their Help page.
The Official Policy is, basically, “Tough beans you should have done a backup you moron.”
To my credit, I have done itunes backups previously, when leaving a job or changing computers. But . . . it’s been a while.
Well, after trying the click-here-ho-ho-try-this-ha!-how-bout-here?-omg-snicker-she’s-still-trying!-heh-heh snipe hunt for over an hour, I figured that was it. But decided it couldn’t hurt to send a note to someone.
I snagged the next Contact-Us email address I found (which was completely unrelated to my question) and sent a plea. I got one of those immediate emails that say things like “We got your question! And we’ll get back to you,” which younger, less cynical types might feel pleased or even hopeful about.
But I am in my mid(ahem)-forties. It’s been quite a long time since Hope swung it’s little hobo stick over a shoulder, flipped me off, and strolled out the door.
But.
Get this.
I heard back from Apple the very next day. Got a very friendly, very helpful note from a customer service rep (who seemed to be a real person) that demonstrated empathy for the problem, provided easy-to-understand instructions, and granted me a one-time deal of replacing all of the music purchases I had lost. FOR FREE. Couple of clicks and it was all downloading.
I am still a bit astounded.
In this day and age when overworked-ness or over-lawyered-ness or budget cuts or just plain bad manners have amped up the Useless Jagoff Meter in nearly every aspect of so-called service, there is a company—that already has my money—that helped me? Even though their Policy says otherwise? And they did it for free, without secretly adding an automatic deduction from my checking account somewhere deep in the fine print? And they were nice about it?
This my friends is what I call the international symbol for yes:
Thanks Mom
What is it about these curlers?
They look funny and they never hold all the hair you want them to. They sometimes even hurt a bit and they are surely an awkward item to store, but, I admit here to you today that I love my curlers. I don’t use them very often. On a normal day, I barely have time to camouflage a cowlick with the curling iron or a strategically placed barrette.
But. Every once in a while, when I have all the time in the world, I put the curlers in. And I get such a big kick out of them. I walk around. I jiggle my head. I look in the mirror and I giggle.
Today, with a jiggle and a giggle, I pondered this odd thrill. And I found myself back in time.
I am sitting in the kitchen at 312 Pennsylvania with my Mom and my sister. Curlers and pin curls in my hair. A great big balloon of a hat, puffing heat and slipping down my forehead. That balloon-hat of course was part of an old-fashioned hair dryer. For those who have only grown up with the hand-held variety, picture an over-sized shower cap made of vinyl. And picture a big tube connected to that cap, connected to a box-contraption with buttons, connected to an electrical cord, plugged into the wall. And imagine sitting, connected to all this for half an hour or longer.
Sounds awful doesn’t it? So why oh why does the memory make me smile?
Because it is something uniquely girlish – or, more specifically, uniquely mother-daugther-rite-of-passage-ish.
It belongs to a collection of moments in life when you discover the things that are (feminists be damned) distinctly female. How to bake a batch of cookies. How to set the table. How to iron, do laundry, sew on a button. Can you remember when these things were not chores? When they were exciting and new and, yes, fun.
Better yet think of the moments when your Mom let you go through her jewelry, revealing hidden treasures in velvet cases, little pouches, old boxes. Beads and gems and sparkly items. This was my mother’s. This was a gift from your Dad when we were dating. Go ahead, you can try it on.
Entrance to the inner sanctum!
Didn’t every girl, at some point in time, fall in love—and, yes, covet!—her mother’s Pretty Things? My Mom had a pair of patent-leather, ankle-high, kitten-heel boots that, to this day, I think were the most smashing pair of shoes I have ever seen.
There was a kind of magical osmosis that occurred when you witnessed her excitement when getting dressed up. In a pretty dress, wearing the special jewelry, and a bit of makeup. This was not everyday Mom who made you clean your room, stand in the corner, and finish your dinner. To trail after her as she got ready and then watch her put on her good coat and go out the front door with Dad with a big smile on her face, looking even more beautiful than ever. These were real-life Cinderella moments.
That is why, I believe, we women still, years and years and years removed from those front-door moments, get a little inexplicably giddy about things like the perfect shade of lipstick, a pretty perfume bottle, a sexy dress, a new pair of shoes. And yes, even curlers.
Curlers look silly and feel weird, but they also look and feel like a treat because they remind me of having my Mom do my hair; of being allowed to use Her Things; of feeling loved, pampered, and joyfully girlie.
That joy is not, as some may see it—or as today’s advertising and movies may portray it—a symbol of vanity or veneer. I believe these things are symbols of something to be cherished. Pretty Things are a connection to the child we were and the women we adore. Amidst the run-down monotony of work and responsibility, we remember fairy tales. Despite a few extra pounds, gray hairs, or worry lines, we may yet carry a few secret bits and baubles that reveal our true identity, our inner princess.
So, I may be spending a rainy Sunday, wearing sweats and ratty slippers, doing laundry, scooping cat pooh, and putting out the garbage, but my hair looks fabulous.
What’s one of your favorite items from your Mom’s closet, jewelry box, or dress-up routine?
Cheers to the Girls
This post is for a particular group of girlfriends who are life preservers cut from the highest quality cloth that you could ever find (in the irregulars bin).
On the way into work today, I heard a new song by Martin Sexton, Livin’ the Life. He asks:
Are you livin’ the life that you’ve always dreamed of?
Giving your time to the ones who make you smile?
And, although the first line had me thinking “Oh, no . . . ,” the second brought me back with a “Hell yeah.”
This past Saturday night I enjoyed a night out with a group of women who’ve been making me smile for a lot of years. We’ve known each other our entire adult lives, which is between 20 and 30 years depending on who met who at which point in time (and depending of course on how you define adult). But, however you figure it, we’ve been friends a long time.
They are my confidantes and co-conspirators. They’ve been my concert buddies since before there was a StarLake. We have been teammates—the (original and only true) Ms. Fits—cheering as champions, empathizing as losers, or, way more often than either of those, laughing our collective butts off at something-other-than-win-or-lose. (Like that tournament when we spent the three- or four-hour delay between pool play and the championship drinking beer and a bit of schnapps.)
Yeah. We lost. But we were entertaining.
In addition to Ms. Fits, we’ve called ourselves Pikers, Mustang Sisters, and, more recently, the Mutant Middle-Age Ninja Toilet-Paperers. We’ve driven each other’s cars. We’ve slept on each other’s couches. We have painted each other’s houses (and one garage). We sit on the bride’s side. And then go after the bouquet wearing baseball gloves. We’ve watched the Civic Arena roof open up. We’ve watched the Candle Glo close down. We’ve spent many a fine night talking (and a hilarious couple of hours hiding) on each other’s porches. These ladies make it okay to be yourself, whether yourself is happy, sad, successful, poor, dressed up, dressed down, good hair day, bad hair day, half-naked, drunk, smart, stupid, or just an a-hole. We have enjoyed infamous vacations and crazy long weekends. Couple of us even lived together for a bit in a lovely (ahem) duplex down in Sharpsburg. We’ve skied, played, dined, and stayed. We’ve been campfire dancing, inter-tubing, skinny-dipping, moon-bathing, conga-lining, bowling, and practical joking for years. And all of it in (mostly) good (mostly) clean (mostly) legal fun.
I never laugh as hard as when I am with these chicks. These are humans in the rarest of categories who have a tremendous capacity to laugh-with but who may (and do) laugh-at with immunity. If we’re together, for twenty minutes or eight hours, there is a constant whir of giggling, tittering, chuckling, cackling, squealing, guffawing, belly laughing—and, yes, the occasional buck-snort, which only starts us laughing all over again. It’s the kind of hilarity when you can barely catch your breath before the next zinger, one-liner, or remember-when has you gasping. Going out with this group is like going to a very small comedy club to see headliners with great comedic timing and superb material.
The material comes from a distinct familiarity, a simpatico, a frame of reference constructed over years and years and years of shared experiences. And through that history, we gained the other key to friendship: Trust. They trust me around their children. I trust them to guard a port-a-john door. I trust them with my purse (even tho I know they’ll fill it up with sugar packets or silverware). I trust them to watch my beer (even tho I know they’ll pass it around and drink it all before I return). We know each other’s secrets. We walk in without knocking. I would trust them with a pin number, a winning lottery ticket, or a date. Whether we cross paths daily or annually, I trust they’ll be there when needed.
Yeah, maybe this is not the life I always dreamed of, but it’s been a life that’s brought me life-long friendships. And if laughter truly is the best medicine, that’ll be long enough to raise some hell and a few eyebrows at the old folks home.
(Oh, and when the time comes, I’m trusting you guys with some of my ashes.)
Grilled Cheese Wisdom
From Hamlet’s soliloquy about what ’tis nobler to a cry for “Serenity now!” there are many many quotations and inspiring thoughts that we all recognize. Nursery rhymes, parables, fables, and ancient text to teach that it is bad to cry wolf; it is dangerous to swim immediately after eating; it is good to try, try again; and lefty-loosey-righty-tighty.
In addition to this collective knowledge, we each (I believe) have our own repertoire of quotable quotes, personal mantras, words that the original speaker may not even remember but that had great impact. For example.
“Don’t let a grilled cheese sandwich get the best of you.”
I was working as a waitress in a diner. My first job. And, on this particular day, making a forced transition from handing out food to actually making it.
It was a very stressful day. Short staffed with lots of orders and me attempting to do stuff I had never done before. Now, I’m not saying I had never cooked anything, but there is a dramatic difference between slipping an egg into a cute little pan on a kitchen stove and cracking one open on a 6×4-foot piece of flat angry sizzlin’ metal. And there is a dramatic difference between slapping together a grilled cheese at home for yourself and cooking one on above-mentioned monster grill while the person who is going to pay for what you’re concocting is sitting about 3 feet away, watching your every move.
On a big hot diner grill? Cheese really melts good. And the bread tho crisp is greasy. And you try plating and slicing one of those gooey sliding things (using a knife that would stop Crocodile Dundee in his tracks) (in front of an audience) without making a big mess. Each time I tentatively placed the knife edge on the bread, before I’d even begun to cut, things started to shift, slide, ooze.
Customer waiting, other orders piling up. My big chance for advancement. I was flubbing it. I got frustrated. I got nervous. I didn’t know what to do!
And.
Suddenly.
She was right there. The waitress and cook in charge, loved by all customers, my boss, about 30 years my senior. It was Mean Mary Jean. One of the finest mentors I have ever known.
She stepped up, took the knife from my hand, and zip-zap: perfect diagonal. As she performed this miraculous demonstration, she said, with kindness and humor and modest wisdom, “Kiddo, don’t let a grilled cheese sandwich get the best of you!”
It’s not in Bartlett’s. It cannot be searched for on thinkexist.com. It will never be carved in marble on a monument. But it is profound.
- Sometimes, the solution to a problem is to just go at it with confidence.
- The answer you seek might just happen to be very, very simple.
- When you consider what is actually evil and scary in the world and when you consider people who have real challenges in life, it is pretty damn preposterous to let something as mundane as a grilled cheese sandwich frazzle your self-esteem.
- I am stronger and smarter than a sandwich.
Although that epiphany came nearly 30 years ago, it has not lost any of its power. These days, on the job, the tough tasks are a bit more complicated, the consequences affect more people, the cost of failure is a bit higher than $2.95, and a quick cut with a sharp knife is rarely the answer, but, when I face the impossible, when that horrid hairy beastie Fear hooks in a paralyzing talon, when I think “I can’t!” . . . well, in those moments, I hear her voice clearly, chuckle and all. And I marvel at the persistence of silliness. And I shake my head at my slip. And I slice that beastie like a grilled cheese sandwich.
Cheers to Mean Mary Jean (who was not so very mean at all).
Please share your favorite unique line of unconventional wisdom in the comments box.
How to Survive a Blizzard
Been off-line for a bit with no power due to the greatest amount of snow I’ve ever seen while living somewhere that shoveling it was my responsibility. I measured 21 inches on Saturday and have gotten another 5-7 between last night and today. (And it is still snowing.)
I was without power at my house for nearly 80 hours. No lights. No internet. No land-line phone. No stove. No furnace. And, for the first 48 hours or so, no way to leave the neighborhood without a much better pair of boots than those I own.
Am I glad it’s over? Hell yeah. But, it was, as these things often are, not an all-bad adventure and it was, as these things can always be, a learning experience. Here is some stuff I’ve learned.
1. Putting groceries out on the porch is a great idea because food that is ruined because it has frozen does not smell as bad as food that rots inside a refrigerator.
2. Chivas Regal snow cone? Not bad. Not bad at all.
3. In the early 70s, Panasonic made some kick-ass radios. A few posts back, I mentioned that I once had a very cool electric-blue radio shaped like a donut. Well, turns out, that very item was still in a box in the attic. I put in a battery and voi-de-la, after 30 years of non-use, it still worked. (And that is how I got to listen to Super Bowl 44.)
4. My thermostat only goes down to 45 degrees. Beyond that, who knows?
5. If you can see your own breath in your home, you need to be concerned about freezing pipes and . . . makes sense but who knew?. . . freezing toilet bowls and tanks. If turning the water off at the main and leaving immediately for Key West isn’t an option, the thing to do is leave the lowest faucet in the house running at a trickle and add a bit of anti-freeze to toilets and drains.
6. Shoveling snow is a good way to get warm. And, if it is cold enough in your house, even old, out-of-shape muscles do not ache from even the most extreme bouts of shoveling.
7. A well-timed cup of hot coffee can save a life.
8. When bad circumstances arise, people are pretty darn swell. They smile. They wave. They knock on doors. They lend a hand. They invite you in. They help each other shovel it out and laugh it off.
9. When bad circumstances arise, people are pretty damn stupid—like the lady who wouldn’t get out of the street, despite there being a good 10 feet of shoveled space right in front of her and despite the very icy conditions that make it impossible to completely, reliably control a vehicle and despite my very polite, genuinely concerned, and sincerely friendly pre-flight waving and honking before attempting my one and only slip-swerving, white-knuckled, come-on-baby shot to get up hill 1 of 3 to reach Home. Had I not managed to slide by within inches of her motionless, stubborn, hand-on-hip stare, I could have gladly used her fat ass for traction.
10. You can make an almost passable cup of tea with hot tap water.
11. Forget stocking up on T.P. and bread. Stock up on unread books!
12. If you place a lot of candles on cookie sheets lined with tin foil and fashion also a tin foil back drop of sorts, you can generate a bit of heat, do a crossword puzzle without squinting, and throw enough light that a neighbor will call to see if you somehow got your power back on.
13. Mini marts and Rite-Aids do not sell tonic water.
14. If you get dressed in the dark it is impossible to tell if your socks match.
15. You can survive without heat. You can survive without lights. You can survive on a strange variety of foodstuffs. You can survive without internet, facebook, and email. But you cannot survive without family and friends.
Thanks to those who noticed the absence. Thanks to those who tolerated the babbling when I did make contact. Thanks to all who offered help, concern, understanding, and cheer. The cockles of my heart never even caught a chill.
What did you learn in the blizzard of 2010?
Never Tailgate is a gift book with car photos and tips for new drivers. Dare to be Happy is a gift book with advice about life (and doodles). Both are available on amazon.
Life Preservers 
The Winners’ Circle
Yesterday, I played volleyball for the first time in about two years.
My head was in the game. My heart was in the game. My arms and legs? Not so much. Fifty percent of my serves just barely made it over the net. The other fifty just didn’t. My jumps, or the attempt thereof, weren’t what you’d call vertical. My sets were clumpy, lacking the height and the control that, at one time, I was (I’ll admit it) kinda proud of. Oddly enough, I did actually dive a time or two—apparently due to some sorta spastic kamikaze muscle memory—but the current body is way more rock than roll.
Thud.
In short (and I’ve never felt shorter), I played badly.
Worst of all perhaps, yesterday, I walked out of my house wearing shorts to run around in the heat in front of a large group of people, some with cameras.
It should have been a heart-breaking disaster, a big ol’ mid-life bum out, the final crumbling of the little shred of ego I pretend not to cling to.
But here’s the thing.
I wasn’t stumbling around alone on that court. I was part of a team. We do not wear a uniform. We have no locker room. We have no coach or strategy. We don’t even meet at the same gym on the same day of the week anymore. But we’ve known each other a long time and remain connected by a unique mix of memories, simpatico, respect, abuse, alcohol, silliness, and true affection. You know, we’re friends.
I don’t need trophies. I don’t need prizes. I have no need for any new bragging rights beyond this: Yesterday we sat, as the playoffs continued, in the winners’ circle.
We sat in a circle of lawn chairs. Relaxed in the shade. Sharing picnic food and cold beer. We slipped out of our volleyball shoes, peeled sweaty socks, unhooked braces, and laughed our freakin’ asses off.
We used to play volleyball multiple nights a week and tournaments on the weekends. My life pretty much revolved around it. It took pretty much all of my free time and, in gear, gas, travel, fees, and entertainment, a significant portion of my income.
There is a part of me that doesn’t miss it: that’d be my right shoulder. (And the feet, knees, and back.)
But, the rest of me? Yeah. Most of me misses it. A lot.
Cheers my friends. See you next year.
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August 8, 2010 at 7:24 am 2 comments