FALL 2013 HAS ARRIVED IN NORTH GEORGIA

Every October, our beautiful grandkid turns another year older and at the same time Fall arrives to inspire and invigorate.  It's the best time to be alive and experience grandparenthood, framed by great weather and the prettiest blue skies of the whole year.

Okay i'm a weird old cheerleader, no doubt about it!

Wholly Guacamole!

The best parties of my life are with my little family, when we welcome Terrific Grandkid for the weekend and go out to the current favorite restaurant, Tacos and Tequilas, and have a blast!

This past Friday there was an orchestra rehearsal and Grandkid was there with her upright bass, Jojo, right on time.  She and Jojo always emerge from practice glowing and enthusiastic, the energy shooting out in all directions.  The lady conductor just brings out the best in everyone, I think.

We headed for our favorite eating spot and it was crowded with families, babies and kids everywhere, loud and happy.  We waited a few minutes and got a corner table right behind the guys playing and singing, and we could see right into the kitchen - very clean!

The service and food are excellent, I had wonderful tamales.  They make the salsa fresh there every day, and it's so good.  When my entreé arrives I always pour the bowl of salsa on my plate.

I don't drink and drive, and they don't have non-alcoholic beer, so I get the lemonade which goes great with Mexican food. 

We laughed and talked and hugged each other and shared tastes from our plates.  We have fun together.

Busy Summer, Now Back To School

My terrific grandkid is starting 8th grade very happily, and excited to be back in school.  The first day was great, so I heard.  I am so glad! 

The three times she was with her mom for two week increments, and thus able to visit with us too, were incredibly fun and exciting for us, her Papa and Grammaw.  We made sure to have her favorite meals at home here, eat out at her favorite restaurants, shop in her favorite stores, and let her have down time to watch her favorite tv shows.

Early in the summer she got enrolled in an orchestra camp, and we bought her a double bass to use.  She did so well, she was awarded a scholarship for the orchestra camp in 2014!  She loves playing the bass.  We found a teacher who is happy to provide lessons whenever she can be here, and now the kid is playing Bach. 

She also worked with her Papa planting a vegetable garden and he harvested some sweet 'taters just a couple days ago.  We had lots of cukes and squash.  There were hardly any tomatoes, it's been so rainy there wasn't enough sunshine.

There has been a problem with one of her teeth for a long time, where an infection was resistant and she needed surgery.  We were able to get that done and taken care of, and the antibiotics were over with by the time she had to go back to her father's place.  It was such a relief to get it all behind us. 

She had a good time shopping for school supplies and a few clothes.  We always end up in the bookstore and the comic book store while she's here. 

She is happy to help her mom with all kinds of chores and her grammaw too.  We make sure she has lots of rewards! so she's always motivated.  Not only do we love her like crazy but our funny cat won't leave her side.

I can't think of anything more wonderful than being the grammaw of this extraordinary, lovely and intelligent person as she grows into a fabulous individual.  I only hope she will cherish her own self the way we cherish her.

Five Minute Friday: PRESENT

Five minute time was last Friday but better late than never, so I'm always saying.

"Present" is the topic.  They didn't say what kind.  But I assume they meant THE present, as in Right Now.  Much has been written about the need to live in the present.  But I think living in the future would be a great skill for people to learn at an earlier age.  As in, planning what to get at the grocery store for the week ahead.  Starting in with meal preparation BEFORE it's time for supper - that sort of thing.  If we're not thinking ahead, about the future, all the time, life becomes uncomfortable and everything is in a mess.

Five Minute Friday: Rhythm

 

Rhythm of the seasons grows our food.  Birds flying use a rhythm easy to see.  Rhythm is everywhere and necessary to everything!  Like a dancer and the music accompanying.  We depend on the rhythm of our hearts our entire lives.  Even our guts have rhythm (if we're lucky)!

Whenever we are working happily we're sensing a rhythm.  The hippies used to call it getting into a groove.  It makes everything easier to accomplish.  The rhythm of typing is so satisfying.  Walking along at a regular pace, sometimes i realize how easily I'm moving and i think, I'd love to keep going like this all day.

Listen: 5-minute Friday

Listen - do you want to know a secret?  do you promise not to tell?

I have gotten better at keeping secrets the older I get.  I guess there's more discipline now except when it comes to food!

I means so much to be able to tell someone about something private and know that they can be counted on to keep it secret.

Now I want to treat people as I would wish to be treated.  So there's a huge motivation to keep any commitment I have made to someone who has put their confidence in me. 

Five Minute Friday - FALL

DON'T fall - that's what I think every time I go up and down the stairs.  In March of '09 I tripped and fell in the living room, just days after closing on a house with stairs.  As I rushed around packing to move, my sandal caught on a rug and BOOM!  I fell full length and felt a horrible burning pain in my knees. 

For several years I had trouble walking and put on about 50 pounds.  That didn't help!  These days it has become easier to walk, with the help of a lot of glucosamine and chondroitin and other supplements.

But the fear of falling and losing my freedom never leaves me.  I'm always aware and making sure of my balance before I take a step out of the car or off of a curb.  So that just chips away at self-confidence.  Even though I don't walk fast, I'm flying towards my elderly years.

Five Minute Friday: IMAGINE

Five Minute Friday, the prompt is Imagine, which refers to the first virtual reality.  Our brain has this special app, where you picture something and then you make it come true, once you know what it's supposed to look like.

My imagination is sort of spotty - for instance, I cannot imagine what the furniture will look like and then place it around that way.  No, I have to try all the different configurations and then pick the one I like.  Which takes a lot more time than if my imagining app worked right.

I do frequently imagine food that I like, and can even smell it!

Mae West, Rancher

A little info about Mae West, landowner:

She was a prominent Valleywood rancher and landowner. A quick check of the gossip columns finds mentions of her running a Valley ranch for trotting horses in 1935, and in 1938 she bought fifty acres in El Otono Estates, which was either in today's Canoga Park, West Hills or Woodland Hills. That year, the city planning commission turned down Mae's request to open a diner on the triangle of land formed by Van Nuys Boulevard, Chandler Boulevard and Circle Drive. She still owned corner in 1951. ...
• • "The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb," researched and written by Kevin Roderick, was first published in 2001.

Five Minute Friday - COMFORT

Comfort FOOD is the first thought when reading "comfort."  Food is the turn-to run-to to-do.  If you're happy and celebrating or sad and desiccating, food is the perfect accompaniment.

Cheese of course, then bready things like noodles in soup or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Rye toast with butter and apricot jam.

I mean it makes you feel better if your feelings are hurt or you have to wait for some outcome and the nervous jitters got you paralyzed.  Getcherself a snack!

Five Minute Friday: BRAVE

Brave is when a person ignores their own pain to accomplish something important.

Five Minute Friday: FRIEND

FRIEND:  Friend or foe, how do you know?  It takes time for me to figure it out.  I've been totally wrong many times!  Some people just aren't good for us.  Other people really care about us and those shouldn't be taken for granted!  Friendship really is a thing that can be nourished and developed like a flowering shrub.  Included is appreciation, forbearance, tolerance and recognition.  Deep, close, superficial, fake, long or short, beneficial, destructive are all different kinds of descriptions of Friendship.

True friendship would include equality and only self-control as opposed to being Controlling.

Five Minute Friday: JUMP

JUMP!  I'm on a diving board high above the deep end of the swimming pool.  It's scary...I've never dived in from the board before.  But I do love having that weightless feeling when i'm floating in the pool.  So maybe i'll be okay if I take a deep breath and just fall in.

I did it!  I was somewhere in my mid-30s and for the first time I trusted in my own ability to deal with being in deep water.  My feet touched the bottom and then I began to rise back to the top.  It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed floating back up with no fear to ruin the experience.

I'm grown up and I can jump into anything I choose.  Now at 60 years of age and closer to the end than the beginning, without hesitation I can say, I would never go back to childhood.  I like the freedom and the floating of being old.

Power Seekers

Bombing people to inflict death and misery and pain and chaos is done by people who want power over other people's lives.

We don't know what the bomber's supposed reasons are.  Maybe we'll know if someone or some group takes the credit.

But seeking power is the reason behind the reason.  The power to destroy lives must give murderers a feeling of importance, along with the ability to generate great fear.

Five Minute Friday: HERE

Here is where I always am, that's just how it is!  Once you get there, you're here!  sort of like it's always today, here.

Thinking about here reminds us to live in the moment, since the necessities of life force us to learn how to think ahead so much.  Thinking ahead avoids disappointing our loved ones when they get hungry.  I like those happy faces glowing contentedly every time they discover that I have something ready for them. 

"I'm hungry, what're we having?" 

"HERE, come serve yourself," I tell them, as I shove a serving spoon into the pan. 

Five Minute Friday: AFTER

"After you've gone, and left me crying, after you've gone, there's no denying,
You'll be blue, you'll be sad - you'll miss the dearest pal you've ever had..."

What're we havin' after dinner.  What're we doin' after this.  It's not so bad, after all.  After we're grown up we can do what we want.  I like the credits after the movie.  Run! he's after us!  They were here after us.  Take your vitamins after you eat. 

Five Minute Friday, REMEMBER

Okay, i know it's Saturday but it still counts.  I was gone all day on Friday, Remember?  Hah!

Remember stuff that isn't painful, that's what i tell myself constantly.  Sometimes something pops in that makes me groan aloud!  Then I say, Think of something else!  Think of something else!

Remember that time my cousin and I were aiming hose water at passing cars when we were about five?

Remember that time I was chosen to be part of a young people's concert at Theatre Under the Stars?

Remember that time Steve and I got married at the county courthouse and the air seemed pink as we left the building?

Remember when that Lord Mayor at the Renaissance Festival made me laugh so hard I almost couldn't breathe?

Five Minute Friday - REST

Rest is a quarter of pause in a musical piece.

Rest is the thing you want to retire to after a hard day's night.

Rest sounds like wrest.

Too much rest makes you tired.

Which in turn makes rest addictive.

Babies hate being put to bed for their rest.  They will even cry if you sing Rockabye Baby in the Treetop.  Because you sang it too much and they know what it means.

How Did This Grocery Chain Get So Smart

Going in to shop at this store really is a pleasure, as their motto promises.  In this store a 60 year old grandmother is treated with just as much courtesy by the cashier as the previous customer - a handsome young 30-ish gentleman.

You don't find that in very many places anymore.  The best I can reasonably expect is to only have to repeat myself two times.  It doesn't even phase me if the counterperson at the oil changing place takes the man behind me first.  That's just how it goes, gray-headed overweight old dowdy non rich-looking woman! 

I'm used to being ignored by waitresses in restaurants if I'm unaccompanied by a male person.  I'm used to seeing the lady pharmacist's brilliant smile fade as she turns to me.  That smile was for the executive in a nice suit who was in line ahead of me.  "Yes?" she barks.  "Can I HELP you?"

But Publix has a sacred tradition that seems to have served them well.  Their employees treat customers with a welcoming attitude and they do not discriminate between male and female or between young and old. 

I feel happy when I go there to shop.  I don't feel depressed because I'm too old to be appreciated, or that my business is not wanted.

Everybody gets old.  It's not a choice!  It's something that happens just because time is going by.  Publix is one company that has decided to be polite and kind to all their customers, not just the young ones.

Being perceived as invisible is extremely tiresome but at Publix people can see me.

Five Minute Friday - Home

Home is where the heart is - of course.  Home can be one place or the entire world, depending on the vision of the person.

The backyard here is home to lots of critters who run up and down the trees and hide hickory nuts in the plant pots.  Sprouting hickory trees are at home in a pot of dirt or just in the ground.

Feeling at home means feeling accepted for who and what we are.  You know when you don't feel at home somewhere. 

Being mature is having the wisdom to get out of anyplace where you don't feel at home.  Trust your own instincts.

NO ONE AT NOONE

Nobody is one word.  No one takes two words.  When the words NO and ONE are jammed together they don't make any sense.  NOONE is not a word.

I've never read the word NOONE in any printed material, fiction or non-fiction.  But lately it is cropping up in several blogs I've seen.  I don't know why.

Big Birthday

Birthday showed up today, and it's a big one.  Good excuse to eat cake!

The Truth in Your Lifestream

This one belongs to earth and ground
Within his grasp and reach is bound
the chords and notes and box of sound.
a teacher’s heart with artist dreams.
A living canvas sets the scene
Of the truth in your lifestream

 

To give the price of freedom
Is your whole thought complete
The music in your hands is like the food you eat
The source or force of how you run
is like a forest green
Be kind or sweet for when you meet
with all the truth in your lifestream.


How long will you ask the question,
Can you write what you will need?
You own the thread to sew your bluejeans
and the truth in your lifestream.


If it’s never gonna happen, never get to feel or fight
The person in your dawning morning
Has to crumble from your sight
The particle allowed a scream
but suffocated in the scrimmage
Do not refuse to see your image
within the truth of your lifestream.


Going nowhere takes the courage
you might use for living free
Breath of someone’s tired sighing
brings you sinking to your knees
Failing, twisting in the pitfall
of another’s likes, to please.
Through the fear, let life be dear
as all the truth in your lifestream.

　

　

No Skills

Reading people is part instinctive.  You can tell from the time you're very young, whether someone is mad, happy, sad, tired, etc.

But to fine-tune that skill takes common sense and a little intelligence, two things this big ol' dumb gal is lacking in.

New Year's Day seems a natural occasion for thinking about the past, really my own past and mistakes i've made, especially mistakes in choosing friends, people who were not friends but i thought they were, and how looking back it seems incredible that I didn't catch on that they were anything but friends.

Dumb, i know!  How can you not know?  Even just two or three years ago this refusal to see what was right in front of me, was still going on, at my advanced age.  It took an enormous crisis to jolt loose my rose-colored glasses.

I remember working at a Pizza Inn restaurant near Atlanta, when I had just gotten away from a terrible common-law marriage situation.  I was in my early 20s, in the early 70s, and enjoyed having a job and being on my own, starting over.  I worked in the kitchen and made friends immediately with the new waitress.  She needed a place to live and i offered to share the rent at a rooming house with her, and we moved in together.

Over a couple years we had lots of adventures and wild times and I thought we were just fine and dear friends. We both got jobs at the new Steak n Shake across the street from the Pizza Inn - she was a waitress and i was working in the kitchen, training for food prep.

One day we were riding home together, I remember it was a beautiful day.  She turned on the radio and some popular song was playing, and thoughtlessly I remarked that i didn't care for that song.

Suddenly she turned to me and mimicked me in a high voice:   "I don't like that song, I don't like this, I don't like that!" 

I was shocked!  She had never spoken sharply to me, irritated like that.  I was so hurt, I told her to stop the car so I could walk home.  Then she made fun of me for being hurt at nothing.  I got out and walked home, and when I got there, apologized to her!  I just knew whatever was wrong had to be my fault.  It just never sank in that the girl was sick of me, didn't like me, and was simply using me until she didn't need me to help her pay bills!

After some months, we parted ways and I only saw her two times after that - she had moved to Charlotte, NC and I don't remember what her name was after she got married up there, so we lost touch.  She was only one in a long line of users who could recognize a gullible dummy desperate for friendship and approval.

Had I known better I could have lived better, but I didn't.  It's taken over forty years and many similar situations for me to learn to accept what I see and feel - to trust myself!  and so, to develop some self-protecting, people-reading skills.