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Blogger, not I, put that word verification there.  If you ignore it and click on "Publish Your Comment," it publishes your comment.

Should it be necessary to institute word verification for comments on this blog, I will certainly make that known to readers.

Blogger goes auto-pilot!

That hugely uplifting post that appeared yesterday was posted all on its own. I had posted it probably a year ago, and would not have chosen it for my reappearance message. If Blogger's going to re-post my posts, I wish it would choose happier ones. So now I am forced to reveal to you that I live and breathe, still, and my brain continues to churn out thoughts the way a sausage grinder churns out chopped meat for packing into tubes whose origin I shall leave unmentioned. Let me add that I am delighted to know that a few of you have missed me and still remember me after my long abandonment of you all. Really, you can't know how nice it was for me to see notes from you!

A few bringer-up-to-daters:

1. Husband remains the answer to my long ago prayer
2. Molly and Peep are still our beloved furry babies
3. I'm still working for Small Pond, although . . . 
4. Morning Boss has left the building! She of the shrieking complaints about my breathing, my dewy hairline in the eighty-degree room, my inability to divine how to perform tasks previously unseen . . . is gone to work at a larger pond, replaced by a Sweet Young Thing who chatters out her every thought. And so I say to you all, as others have said again and again: Be careful for what you wish. I wanted conversation. Boy, have I got conversation now.
5. Afternoon job, downstairs from Morning Job, continues comfortable and happy.

Husband and his friend installed a vegetable garden hundreds of feet long and thirty feet wide. He planted kale, brussels sprouts, romaine, leaf and other lettuces, green and wax beans, cantaloupes, cucumbers, summer squash... But the stars of the show are the seventy-two tomato plants. Seventy-two. They all bow down under the weight of clusters of tomatoes like giant-sized green grape bunches. Some of the fruits have grown between the plants' stalks and the stakes that hold up the plants. Those must be pulled out two-handed, and often break in two at the division of the two halves, somewhat unpleasantly reminiscent of the division in a human's backside. Molly gets those broken ones. Molly likes to help garden.

There is a black chow chow wandering the hillside, chasing cows. The dog control warden is aware of him but as yet unable to lure him (her?) into a crate for carting off to the shelter. The dog has been in our field early in the morning, sleeping . . . has trotted down the country lane ahead of my car and then off into a field . . . sooner or later the poor thing will need to give in to the dog warden's temptation or, I fear, be shot for chasing those cows. A hoof to the head is as likely as the shot, and devoutly to be wished avoided.

We also have a black and white cat skulking around the fields. It yowls at some point nearly every night, and Peep and it have had words, although no combat. As yet. I have only seen the thing at some great distance and it appears to know what it's doing in the hunting department. 

For both of these wandering creatures, winter will be harder than they now imagine. If they imagine it at all. Doubtful.

So, please . . . be reassured, those of you who feared that I might be weaving the noose to end it all. Life here goes on, summer has been a pleasure, yet again, and I continue fatter than ever and as happy as I am wont to be.  The sadnesses of my young life always underlie everything in my brain and heart, but they don't consume me so much as it would appear from the 8/31 post.

Now that Blogger has yanked me back into circulation, perhaps I'll be more fruitful. I would hope, however, that I shall be less fruitful than our seventy-two tomato plants. Nobody's computer could download posts of that size.

Still here

I'm still here.
I haven't stopped blogging. It's just been a long, long . . . pause.

Too much time alone with my own head, undistracted by natural color and sound. Inside my head is not a happy place to be alone. Best way to feel better is to help someone else, but I haven't summoned the energy to reach out. 

Last weekend, more or less on the spur of the moment, and fighting last minute urges to stay in my safe (if morose) nest, I went to visit my friend who lives on the other end of the state. We did nothing special, except the kind of special that comes from being with someone who appreciates you but requires nothing more of you than that you be you. 
Renewal.

Still nothing inspiring springing forth from my fingertips . . . nothing blogworthy.
But I thought I'd just let you all know that I'm still here.
Husband, Molly and Peep, too.

Have you read Margaret and Helen's blog?

I love 'em!
I love 'em!

A link: Margaret and Helen, Best Friends for Sixty Years and Counting 

All right. So . . . what's new, you ask?

I have become lazy with my blog, for which I do apologize, although I feel quite sure that no one is suffering in my absence. 

Perhaps a general update is in order.

Weather: Was rainy day after day after day for a week and a half. When it wasn't raining, it was gray and chilly. March was sweeter than May, and I know I am not the first out which that to point.

Work: Morning Job is answering the phone and little else. Of the little that I do, even less leaves the office sans correction: a fault of my tendency to read the fine print and miss the headlines. I have asked Jane if there is more I can do to help. She smiles, says, "Oh June, don't make me laugh." Damaging to my ego, but from another point of view, I'm being paid to do almost nothing for three hours every weekday. 

Jane and I are getting along famously these days, though. If I had known, two years ago, that she would be so nice to me now, I might have been able to accumulate a great stash of alprazolam.

Pets: Max is still wobbling around in his Huggies Lil Snuggler diapers applied as belly bands. He eats, sleeps, eliminates. Husband says the dog is happy; what do I know? 

Angus and MiMau continue in their happy, selfish, clownlike behaviors, bless their little furry hearts.

Now then, moving on to the cataclysmic: Husband had a heart attack.

He got sudden pain the length of his right arm a week ago last Wednesday, was with a friend whose daughter just graduated from medical school. Called the daughter who said, "If it was my dad, I'd tell him to go to the ER." Husband hung up the phone, said to the friend, "Mike, would you go to the ER?" Mike said, "Hell no! I wouldn't want to go to the hospital."

Husband's arm continued to ache. Just his arm. His right arm, not his left. Not his jaw, not his chest.

Last Sunday he was working with the tractor, brush hogging, felt dizzy and faint, got off the tractor and lay down on the ground for a minute until he felt better. He stopped working, put away the tractor, and rested. (I didn't know about the "feeling faint" part until Monday morning.)

So Monday morning, he got up and immediately took a hot bath because his arm hurt so much. Got out of the bath and headed for bed again. I got out of the shower and said: "This is the plan. I'm going upstairs to get you some clothes and we're going to the ER."

None of the medical personnel seemed too concerned about the pain in his arm until the blood test showed that enzyme that indicated he'd had a "cardiac event," and then everybody shifted into high gear. He went by ambulance from our little regional hospital to the Big Hospital and he had three stents put in: one artery, two veins. He "tolerated the procedure well" and his heart is not severely damaged.

He came home last Wednesday and he is fine. Can't drive for one to two weeks, has new medications to take, but all in all, it was about as not horrible as such an experience could be. He's been advised, until the doctor advises otherwise, not to walk too much, not to do anything too strenuous . . . mostly because of that newly punctured little doorway in his femoral artery.

The irony of the entire situation is that Husband comfortably wears tiny clothing, moves and walks all day long. I, on the other hand, wear large clothing and appear as the Merriam-Webster illustration for "sedentary." 

If he's having myocardial infarctions, perhaps I am in serious danger. Resultingly, I have found a new resolve to move, to walk, to . . . sweat from exertion. I suppose this is good news. Or maybe I'll be breaking loose dangerous substances that might cause me to become the Merriam-Webster illustration for overcooked broccoli. 

Word verification

I think I have turned the blasted thing off.
I hadn't turned it on to begin with. It just turned itself on. Lucky thing.
Frankly, I don't find it all that daunting. Apparently some do find it not only daunting, but absolutely enraging.
Never one to cause unnecessary anger, I have clicked the "no" circle.
I hope that it worked.


I've seen some saying that they just won't comment if they have to do word verification.
To me, that's like somebody saying, "Well, yes, I did phone you. But you didn't answer and I simply will not leave a message on a machine."
I find that a little uppity, not to say offputting.
Far be it from me, however, to cause any nice normal person to become . . . uppity.
So I think I have turned the blasted thing off.

Quote of the Day

See that "Ponder this" up there? 

The Quote of the day for today is:

The true way to gain much, is never to desire to gain too much. ~Francis Beaumont

I wonder if Francis, whoever he may be, ever considered a fat woman eating Valentine's Day penuche fudge for breakfast, when he made that memorable statement.  
Who ever desires to gain much at all, never mind "too much"?

Basically, a hermit

Every now and then somebody blogs about fun times meeting other bloggers. 

"We've known each other so long without meeting that 

it felt very natural to sit down and have lunch and catch up." 

or

"So nice to have a voice to go with the person I already knew!"

I like you all very much but I don't want to take a road trip and meet you in the middle or come to your town and meet you or have you come to mine and meet me. I don't even much enjoy getting together with people I've known forever, to whom I wouldn't be embarrassed to say, "You have a little speck of pepper on your front tooth."  If you and I could meet in a scenic pull-off on a road somewhere, or in a parking lot, get out of our cars, look at each other from ten feet away, and say, "Well! So that's how tall you are!" and get back in our vehicles and go on our way, that would be fine with me. 
I don't think I'm shy anymore the way I was in my younger years, but I am not a chatter. I can email with anybody all day long, but to have to speak, actually speak, with somebody while I'm still getting used to his or her voice . . . well, it just takes a while for me to absorb somebody's presence to the point that I could actually converse. Email allows me to, without a word of explanation, get up and refill my water glass, wander outside, visit the bathroom, move the laundry from washer to dryer, and not insult my companion. I think almost anybody would feel a little odd if I did any of that in the middle of a face-to-face conversation.
I used to be a switchboard operator. It was my first real job and I spoke with people all over the country. It was a lot of fun, and I became very friendly with some of those people. But I never wanted to get together and go shopping with them. It just isn't my style. Neither the getting together nor the shopping, alone or with anybody, either one. All the years that I waited tables . . . I developed real relationships with some of my customers, but the interaction stayed (with one disastrous exception) within the restaurant, hardly even extending to the parking lot,  should we see each other entering or exiting our vehicles. I couldn't indefinitely support the waitress persona outside the diningroom.
Besides all that, you all already know more about me than any six people with whom I might interact on a daily basis. Why meet?


So if you're planning a trip to this part of the country, let me know when you'll be here. 
I'll come out and stand by the side of the road and wear a red fleece shirt, so you'll know it's me. I'll wave as you go by, and we can say we met. Maybe the next time you're in the area we could actually exchange a few words.

Ponder WHAT?

Where's my automatically generated "Ponder this" quote for today?
Am I . . . are we all . . . meant to ponder . . . blank space...?
I have enough of that when I open "New Post" and stare at the screen.


Let's ponder the shrub that blooms all by itself every year at the top of my driveway. I think this is the same plant that Jackie called, in a recent post, wild azalea, and she would know. I thought it was mountain laurel. Either way, it's always a striking surprise when it bursts all at once into flower. This year there are two instead of one . . . a happy find for me. It blooms for only a short time . . . this was a week ago. Now the blossoms have all gone to grayish little puffs of seed, and it's much less noticeable. 

Despite the fact that I would have it bloom longer, it's doing what it's supposed to do. The only purpose of the blossoms, from the plant's point of view, is to make seeds to make more plants. When I think about that, it makes me wonder about the value of childless me and my life. The proper answer would be that humans are innately more valuable than plants. I doubt that.

Sunday 160 - Justice

Justice is not an objective thing.

Justice is yanked about by clever legal minds, 

and is all Wild West justice, 

happening in the OK Corrals of courtrooms.

With thanks to Jinksy, who led me to the Monkey Man.

An award

Thank you, Miss Kim!

As the honored recipient of this award, my instructions are to:
Write a post about the award including a link back to the donor;
Share seven things about myself; 
Pass it on to fifteen seven bloggers I've recently discovered.

As regards that last, Elle, who favored Miss Kim with this little award, began a trend of reducing the number of recently discovered bloggers from fifteen to seven. Miss Kim followed that lead, and I'm counting that as a rule revision.  I don't go surfing through the blogging world very often and I generally find people who've found me first. So . . . a couple of these blogs are ones that I went searching for just so I could give them this award. 

1. I is Roxie
2. Hyperbole and a Half
3. Suburban Soliloquy
4. Rusty's Retreat 
5. Sightings at 60
6. Babyboomer Flashback
7. The Discovering Alcoholic

So, now . . . seven revelations about myself.

1. For an old broad, I'm a little bit of a makeup junkie. I don't overuse it, but I do over-buy it. I think it has something to do with the color charts, which, being colorful, seduce me.
2. I think Maxfield Parrish's art is dreamy. Real artists have told me they don't like his work because "it's too commercial." Doesn't matter to me: I can go away somewhere when I look at his colors.
3. I don't drink alcohol anymore. My sobriety date is September 29, 2005.
4. If I were never to hear a shrill poodle bark again, it would be too soon.
5. According to Peter Urs Bender, I am an Amiable, who, under pressure turns into a Driver.
6. I like being up in the middle of the night, and arrange my weekends to accommodate that quirk.
7. This is my hair. It is all you will ever see of me on this blog:

Unrelated thoughts and stories

I shouldn't have made that promise in the last post. Ever since, I've been feeling unpleasantly pressured to present something worthy of the buildup. 

I have grown worn out with typing thoughts not my own, what with the tape recordings to catch up on.  There were two meetings at work during the two weeks I was out of the office. I prepared for my absence by buying (from my own pocket, mind you, a recent local political debacle involving tape recordings making it inadvisable to submit a purchase order for such a thing) a Dictaphone. The nights that I was at home while the meetings were being held, I sighed with contentment: "There's a board meeting going on right now. And I am not there taking notes."  Yes, but then I had to live through those meetings in real time to get the meeting minutes finished. 

The notes and inspirations mentioned in that most recent post were random impressions that floated into my mind as I sat on the porch admiring a sunny afternoon. They appeared as twinkling sparks worthy of enlargement. Upon these several days' reflection I see that they, perhaps, are neither twinkling and sparky nor worthy of enlargement. But now I need to get something out there, so I can get beyond this and back into the routine of noticing what's going on in my own head.




MiMau and the Lazarus chipmunk
One late outdoors afternoon, MiMau came toward me from the tall grass. Her mouth looked funny. I squinted. She was carrying a chipmunk the size of her head. Having regained her good health she is now working at obtaining another parasite with which to endanger it. But that's what cats do: so be it.  She sat in the driveway facing me, put the chipmunk down. I warmly thanked her for her good hunting skills. I thought the 'munk was dead until she patted at it with one paw, then the other. One hind leg made a feeble up-and-down motion. Ah: not dead yet then. Husband emerged from the barn and MiMau proudly stalked toward him, accepted her praise and lay down fifteen feet from her prize to bask in sunshine and her family's admiration. I went back to my book. A few minutes later, a sudden turn of MiMau's head caught the corner of my eye. Astonishment in every hair of her face, she saw the dead chipmunk roll over, get up, and run for the stone wall. She pursued, but the 'munk reached the rocks first. MiMau sat for half an hour on top of the stone wall, hyperattentively listening, but the 'munk had gone deep.  I feel as if everybody won that one.



I recently read Jean Harris' Five Quarters of the Orange.  
It's set on the Loire in the late 1930s and there are frequent mentions of eels. It reminded me of my father-in-law's story about watching a farm wife he had known beheading eels: "Hold still! I'm only gonna kill ya!" He would laugh as he told the story, laugh so hard he could barely speak.


I have heard that beheaded eels writhe and flop and bang inside freezers for hours and hours when any other creature would have accepted its demise. 
All of it horrifies me. 


The story reminded me of many things, not many of them pleasant. I thought it was a darkish, but intensely absorbing, book. 


I am, at last, past the stage of having to wear the chest girdle, for which I thank the stars above, my Higher Power, all things great and small, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all saints 'round.  A fact of which many of you will be blissfully unaware: Wearing a girdle on one's chest is even less comfortable than wearing a girdle on one's abdomen. 
Nothing, however is bad or good, but thinking makes it so.  The fine thing about the chest girdle was that, using my mirror that showed me only my upper body, I appeared thin as an eight-year-old. 
I always thought that a woman never looked fat unless her stomach stuck out past her chest. I'm in trouble there now. But if I never again look in a full-length mirror, I'll be a happy woman.


Language: Some people can't say "sausage." 
This is one of those memories from my waitress days. 
Canadians always asked for pizza "all dress," ate heartily (and tipped penuriously). I always loved it when Canadians asked for olives noir, because I was the only waitress who knew what that was.  Some Canadians asked for sah'-oo-saj'.
"Sausage" was problematic for several ethnic groups; more often than not some people-from-down-in-the-heart-of-the-city asked for shaw'sheej. So much work of jaws and lips for two seemingly simple syllables.
I understand that Asian-speaking people have no "l" (or is it "r" sound?) and therefore cannot hear the difference. That's why there are jokes about the interchanging of those sounds when they learn English, for which they have my utmost admiration, as a second language. 
It has to do with synapses. 


I have mentioned previously that I like sparkly things, things that dazzle me with color. If I can get both characteristics in one item, I am (see above) A Happy Woman. Imagine my delight, then, at having won this shiny colorful item on eBay:

Look. I know it's crap, but it didn't cost four dollars. And it's pretty. Goes with everything. Reminds me of sunrises and sunsets and the iridescent insides of shells, and just thinking about it lifts my spirits. I figure this giving in to low-class highly-colored jewelry is one of the rights I have gained by having reached . . . let's call it Late Middle Age. It's my right and I'm going to enjoy it. And enjoy it I do. 

Here's a question, a poll, if you like: 

Dare I wear that bracelet with this blouse? 

I vote yes!

Please stay tuned

I feel a marathon blog post coming on once Time and Inclination collide. I have notes of thoughts, inspiration...


I can't tell you all how nice it was to get so many pithy comments on that last one. It is a great quote, isn't it?


Oh, and Jo?  ...I'm awful glad you finished your thought. I read your first response and got to the end and thought: Does she mean, she thinks she congratulates us? ...but isn't sure? 

Boundless

I have been captive to my senses for these last two days. 
When I have written long lyrical posts about the sounds and the smells and the feel of the air, it has been a process of making a mental cast of the feelings, then later taking it out and pouring, sifting, wedging words into it. 
I break open the cast and have a sculpted post.


All weekend I have been an animal alive in the moments.
In remembrance later, in the cold fall wind or watching the winter fire, I will find the cast, put away somewhere in my mind. 
Tonight it is too big, too soft, with no edges or bindings.

Thank you all

I have insufficient time to craft anything like a "post." Today is Friday, which means that within twenty-four hours I should be working on one, prior to going back to bed at 5:30am. The wee hours of weekend mornings are my usual times to float into my interior and put words to whatever I find there.


I had planned to respond to each comment on the last post. Now it's too late for anybody to find my responses, so this is it. Each of you who wished me well: thank you warmly and most sincerely. To those of you who have had similar experiences and felt that I expressed what you, too, had felt: Humbly, thank you.  To the ones who offered praise for the writing, ahh, thank you. 


A friend wrote me recently:  "I've been thinking about how they say cats take pain well. What, exactly, can a cat do but take it? And what can we do, but take it?" I think that's funny, philosophical, and perfectly true. 
The bonus is that, as #1Nana said about her storyteller friend, I got a story out of this experience, and apparently one that touched some people . . . because of their own experiences or those of friends.  I expect more "stories" will emerge as I explore this new landscape. At the very least, I hope that during my recovery I'll be blogging my little heart out. 


And the good news on the employment situation is that 4/20 has come and gone and I am still employed full-time.
Power That Be stopped by my desk in the afternoon of the meeting that he had predicted would either plunge me into unemployment or trim my hours to a "no benefits" status, and told me there would be no discussion about my employment at the meeting. "There's just too much else on the agenda.  But no promises about next month." 
"Okay," I said.

"I thought you'd want to know. . .  I know I would . . . I know you have been worried."

"Well," I said, "I have been, and I haven't."

So I need not worry about having health insurance coverage for another month.

The world grows more beautiful by the minute.

Offense

I use email a lot. Sometimes I have the same news to tell more than one person.  On occasion I copy and paste bits from one sent email into a new email to another friend.

Recently someone sent me a message saying she knows I do that and she knows and understands that it saves time and that's why I do it. But she finds it offensive.

"...offensive"!

She went on to say that she would rather not hear from me than to get excerpts of emails to others. 

Really.

...and that she doesn't read my blog because it makes her feel uncomfortable, as if she were reading my diary.

All right. 

I love The Computer. Email, blogs, checking out random information. All of it.

I checked on email etiquette and nowhere did I find that copying and pasting one's own message is impolite.

In the same email she recommended that I rent a particular movie.  

She loves watching movies (the same ones over and over again....she's probably worn out her copies of Under the Tuscan Sun and Babe).

I responded that watching movies at home makes me feel as if I'm wasting time. I'd rather write something or read, and maybe read myself into a nap. 

Back came, "I feel about naps the way you feel about watching movies."

I'm not responding to that one.  

I am not going to email back and say, "Yes, I know someone else who feels that napping is a waste of time. She just nods off while she's watching television or having conversations instead, as you do."

After all, once you start this kind of back and forth, it's likely to end up with "you-know-I-suddenly-realize-that-I-really-can't-stand-anything-about-you-and-I-have-no-idea-why-we've-been-friends-for-forty-five-years."

People like what they like. 

I'd like to thin out the emails in that particular direction for a while.

Winnership

More gifties!  
To wit, a 7MSN cap and a 7MSN mug! 



Nobody appreciates a good coffee mug more than I! 

I'll have to work on wearing the cap. The hair I have, being short and layered, is subject to bad hat head. Once it's de-poofed, I look like a big wet mouse: nothin' but skull.

I am strongly drawn to the journal as well, as I am drawn to pads of lovely smooth unmarred paper in any form, particularly with cute burros on the cover. (Y'can't hardly ever find those anymore.)

And I could use a new mousepad at work...
If good luck, like bad luck, comes in threes, my string is finished. The elk antler pendant, the cap, the mug.  I'll have to start working on another round. 
Hmmm. Husband brought me some penuche fudge tonight. That's one. 
The state trooper who stopped me Thursday morning because my car's inspection sticker expired three weeks ago, and sent me on my way with a "Have a good day!"  That would be a strong number two.
Does today being Saturday count? 
Yes. I think I'll count this being the weekend as number three.
Yahoo! I can start all over again.
This good-luck-in-threes thing could go on forever! 

Magic

There is magic in long-distance friendships. 
They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes 
beyond being physically together and is often more profound.  

~ Diana Cortes 

I won! I won!

I won Shreve's caption contest at The Daily Coyote!  ...and my prize is an Eagle Feather Artemis necklace! Look at this thing! It's huge! 

Very exciting!

Description

Artemis is the Greek goddess of forests and hills, goddess of the hunt. This necklace is imbued with her strength and purity, connecting you with the earth, helping you find whatever it is you seek. This necklace is made from a 4.25" length of naturally shed elk antler, which hangs from a dark brown leather thong. MC has adorned the antler with a single, stunning eagle feather.  . . . 100% Natural 100% Eco-Friendly 100% Cruelty-Free . . . Elk grow a new set of antlers each summer, and each spring, they drop naturally. I go out on my horse and sometimes I'm lucky enough to spot one in the sagebrush. If any of you aren't familiar with The Daily Coyote, I highly recommend it for a daily dose of natural beauty, the story of Charlie the rescued coyote, and his household.

Sunday Stills: The letter C

Cupboard

Cartography in ice

Corner

See more C's: Click here: Sunday Stills