Tag Archives: life

Looking Back and Going Forward

Sometimes I talk like I’m ancient and on deaths door. When I’m gone, before I die, life is short, time to downsize so my kids aren’t left with this colossal mess….stuff like that.  Pretty sure it’s annoying, and not a particularly healthy state of mind to be in for long stretches of time.  Especially considering I’m seventy, not a hundred and ten.

It no doubt comes from a lifetime of worrying about every possible disastrous outcome to even ordinary situations and scenarios.  Unusual ones just raise my anxiety level further.   I like to be ridiculously prepared for everything.  Not a fan of surprises, even if they’re pleasant.  I truly try to live in the moment, breathe deeply, let things go, calm my mind, count my blessings, be grateful for everything I have.  Most of the time I’m really good at that.

But I’m always working on limiting those doom and gloom moments.  One of the biggest reasons for neglecting my writing so much in the last three years or so – people died.  Every time I felt like sitting down to say some profound thing or other, someone much too young to leave this world did just that.  And I was struck dumb and numb, contemplating my own mortality and how fragile we all are, no matter where we are in our lives.  My wonderful father-in-law died in October.  He was 97.  We had a lovely visit with him a couple of weeks prior, and to me it felt like he was just kind of done with it all. Not sad or unhappy, just tired.  So his passing wasn’t unexpected.  Sad of course and he is missed, but I think he had a good life all in all.  It’s the untimely ones that leave me stunned.  They’re the tragedies.  And OMG you just never know!

See how easy that is?  We could all die tomorrow!

Also I have a lot of time on my hands to read the news.  I don’t recommend it actually.  A huge percentage of it is bad and less than truthful.  Misleading and hateful rhetoric is all the rage.  It’s hard not to get sucked in by it all.  But I’m not a fighter.  Passive aggressive for sure, but not a screamer fixing to bash your brains in.  Love and kindness always win in the end, don’t they?  We’re all doomed to hell if they don’t.

And that’s my pep talk for today!  Hope you found it enlightening.  Not totally surprised if you didn’t.  Be kind either way.

So Where the Hell Have You Been?

There, now you don’t have to ask me that question. I appear to have stopped blogging for over a year (because unfinished unpublished posts in the drafts section don’t count) and boy do I ever have a years worth of excuses!  Want to hear them all?  No, I didn’t think so.

I’ve been right here this whole time, taking a long break from listening to myself, making actual real useful stuff with my hands instead of my head, and resting my brain.

I have made hats and mats and blankets and slippers and shawls.  Dolls and bears and zebras and giraffes.  I’ve made so much stuff it’s getting harder all the time to find anyone willing to take my latest greatest project home with them.  But I’m not finished and will keep going for as long as I’m able and for as long as Michaels has yarn sales.  I had forgotten how much I love to crochet, just like I’ve forgotten for a bit how much I love to write.

The memories that pop up on Facebook for me are getting downright scary.  Nine years ago my two oldest grandkids were nine years old.  Now they’re eighteen;  and the fifteen, fourteen and thirteen year olds are right behind them, with a grandma getting progressively more ancient by the minute.

Time for me to tell more stories while I can still remember things.  Maybe these beautiful young people I’m so happy to have in my life will one day have questions I’m not around to answer.  I mean seriously, look how fast one year, never mind nine years, whizzes right on by.  Maybe I have another nine in me, but you never know.

My grandma started saying “Well, this could be my last Christmas!” when she was in her seventies, and kept it up for almost 30 years.  I’d like to be that lucky.  Plus, the older I get, the greater the possibility of uttering totally bizarre shit that will make my descendants laugh and roll their eyes and wonder if that’s how they’re going to end up.  I like that feeling of power.

 

 

Sharing My World 84

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Share Your World II 11-26-18

If your five year old self woke up in your current body, what would happen, what would you say?

I would probably look at my hands and think, wow, I have Grandma skin! Five year olds don’t normally look in a mirror unless they are carefully applying bright red lipstick in a circle from forehead to cheeks to chin just before leaving for church. Then I would be super excited that I could reach things without standing on tip toes. And finally I would find my mom and say “Hey! Look at me! NOW am I big enough to go to school?”

What is a relationship deal breaker for you? Whether you are talking about a romantic one, a friendship or a related to sort of relationship?

This might seem like an odd answer coming from someone who thinks she can tell very credible lies, but I don’t want to be lied to. Or taken advantage of. Or told to quit ending sentences with prepositions. I lie only if it keeps me out of trouble and doesn’t hurt or incriminate anyone else. So that’s a discriminating kind of fib teller I guess. As if there are degrees of wrongness about not telling the truth. Maybe I’m lied to all the time and have no clue, but if I see through a lie I’m doubly offended that someone thinks I’m dumb enough to believe them.

Is there something out there, a thought, an idea, a current event, or a fear that you find deeply unsettling?

Global warming and what sort of horrible world we’re leaving for our grandchildren. Consumerism could kill us all. We can blame the big environment destroyers all we like, but we are the idiots demanding the crap they produce.

And one that is a bit whimsical:

If you were arrested with no explanation, what would your friends and family assume you had done?

Having spent a large portion of my life trying to convince myself that what other people think is not my problem, not important, and none of my business, I am at a complete loss to answer this. So I asked W the question. Surprisingly he was pretty prompt coming up with an answer. He would assume some secret from my past had finally come to light. He used the word “clandestine”. He told me when I say I’m going to Michael’s for yarn, I could be doing something else entirely. How clever he must think I am to come back home in an hour or less with a Michael’s bag full of yarn to cover my tracks. Woman of mystery. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known someone or even lived with them, they can still surprise you. In our case, I guess that works both ways.

Finally

What were you grateful for this week? Something that brought some joy into your world?

My new keyboard for my IPad! Although my fat forgetful fingers are getting better, there has been a lot of fumbling and stumbling and wearing out of the delete button while I get back to what I think of as normal typing with all ten fingers. Its already getting better. Maybe blogging will start to feel like less of a pain again. You lucky blog readers.

The other thing giving me joy is crocheting. Like everything else, I go on binges. First it was slippers, then rugs that look like braided, and now suddenly it’s hats because I found a pattern. And bought a Pom-pom maker on one of my fake trips to the store. Life is good. And for all you know, I’m not talking about my secret one when I say that.

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Sharing My World 63

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Share Your World January 9,2017

If you lost a bet and had to dye your hair a color of the rainbow for a week, what color would it be?

If the choices were strictly red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet,  I would go with red. Bright fire engine apple red.  So that people would stop and stare and make funny remarks about the crazy old lady with the flaming red hair.  But if it was ok to go with any hue you can come up with, I would much prefer pink, the colour of fluffy cotton candy. And maybe not quite so many startled exclamations from strangers.

If you could choose one word to focus on for 2017, what would it be?

Writing.  Or maybe Living.  I can’t decide. They are both things I am trying to focus on, but so far I’m doing my normal lackadaisical hit and miss break-taking job of both.  Nothing happens.  Then things happen that I don’t want to write about.  I have days where I would rather just obsess over them in silence.

Last week I learned of the death of a 67-year-old man I knew through work.  He died two days before Christmas, halfway through his work day.  I joked with him once about retiring, but he said he tried it briefly and got bored because his wife was still working so he came back.  Stories like this drive me nuts.  It’s like people decide to work themselves to death.  He was too old to be working and much too young to die.  And of course it is absolutely none of my business how anyone else chooses to exist.  Or ceases to exist in this lifetime.  Sometimes it makes me sad, and sometimes I think deceased people are lucky they won’t be around to face whatever happens next.  I know, it’s messed up.  I don’t want to talk about it.

What was one thing you learned last year that you added to your life?

I learned a whole lot about cleaning up and sprucing up and redecorating an old house.  Mostly I learned it’s a lot of work and I don’t ever want to do it again.  I also learned you should do it completely for yourself without trying to please anyone else.  It will just make you sad when the next people move in and decide to gut the place.  So I have added serenity.  I have subtracted mountains of clutter.  I have greatly simplified our next move.  If I die before then there’s way less crap for the living to sort through.

If life was ‘just a bowl of cherries’… which fruit other than a cherry would you be..?

A peach.  You have to work your way through the fuzzy skin to get to the good stuff.  Obviously I have no clue what this question means.

Optional Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I am grateful for my knee recovering from whatever its problem was.  I still walk around being cautious and aware of it, just in case.  And probably looking sneaky and weird in the process.

I am grateful for surviving a back-to-back full moon and Friday the 13th.  Although as many sources predict, next Friday could be infinitely more frightening.

Next week W goes for his one year follow-up on his hip replacement surgery.  Other than that madly exciting event, I’ve got nothing specific to anticipate.

More lists, though.  I’m not done with the lists. I will work on being slightly less morbid.  Yay for that, right?

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Sharing My World 34

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Share Your World 2015 Week 34

Was school easy or difficult for you? How so?

By the time I started formal school (before there was pre-school or kindergarten available to us, in a one room country schoolhouse a mile and a half walk from our farm) I was six years and four months old and fairly bursting with enthusiasm to know everything there was to know.  Like a greedy little sponge I soaked it all up and chalked up the A’s.  I remember it being academically easy breezy all the way through grades one to eight.  High school showed me how socially awkward I could be (there’s some skills that are hard to teach) and that I might not be as smart as I had always imagined. Oh, I continued to get marks in the 90’s, but suddenly I was 15th in a class of thirty brainiacs.  Middle of the road!  What? Yep, it’s a big world out there, full of people with all kinds of mad talents.

Teachers College taught me that I did not want to teach.  By the time I got around to going to University it had finally dawned on me that no one really cares whether you pass with a 95 or a 65, except maybe your professor.  Or your mother.  It was kind of nice to slack off and stop trying so hard.

Then I got married in a time when it was normal to set your own goals aside and support your husband in achieving his.  So I worked and had babies while he pursued his career.  I didn’t resent it, I was too damned busy to worry about such things.  We did what we did for each other and our kids.  In comparison to real life, school was just a fondly remembered walk in the park.

However, going back to school when I was about half a century old was not easy at all because of the self-discipline involved in getting my lazy brain to perk up and learn new skills.  I spent four years working full time while taking the optical courses required to become a licensed optician and contact lens fitter.  And yeah, I got 90’s!  I guess it all came back to me.

Now I am retired and the only tests I want to take from now on are the moronic ones on Facebook which make you question your sanity for even reading them.

What is your favorite animal?

I like giraffes, zebras and elephants.  As well as wallpaper borders which prominently feature them, in case you failed to guess that.  I also think tigers are beautiful, fierce and majestic.  However, if any or all of these favourites were galumphing about in my backyard and I had to clean up after them, I might like them slightly less.  I will try to be happy with the magpies and the squirrel.  And the occasional wandering house cat.

If you had to have your vision corrected would you rather: glasses or contacts?

Well I could write a book on this one, but I will take a stab at being precise and brief instead.  You might not have a simple choice  of either/or, depending on your prescription.  So go with whatever your eye care professional advises for you.  Because she is undoubtedly incredibly smart and probably scored 90’s on all her exams.

List: Name at least five television shows (past or present) you enjoyed.

Like the rest of this post, in random order and all over the place:

  1. Once Upon a Time
  2. Suits
  3. Doctor Who
  4. Damages
  5. Sense 8
  6. The Good Wife
  7. White Collar
  8. Covert Affairs
  9. Bones
  10. Psych

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I meant to have some art ready for your perusal by now, but the thing I’m working on is half-finished and needs to cook.  Or sit at room temperature while I ponder what to do with it next.  So, any day now.  I am grateful for having no deadlines.

Next week, who knows?  I live each day as it comes, savour and bask in the pleasure of now, and try not to let my mind wander too far in to the murky depths of the future.  In other words, I will know what I was looking forward to when it gets here.  This way there is little room for disappointment.

It’s a gorgeous sunny late August day, and time for my mail walk.  Or saunter.  Yes, I think this might be a good day for a saunter.  I’m giving myself an A for that decision.

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