travel notes

I am writing this from the 11th floor apartment of my daughter in Beijing China.    I have not ventured out much as  my purpose was to spend time with my granddaughter.  And that I am.  I can't comprehend 17 million people in a city.  We took a walk the other evening.  On one side of the street were hair salons, stores and on the other side, just back along the side of a building was a piece of what looked like  metal sheet roofing marking a space with a man huddled and  doing some kind of shoe repair.    There are lanes for  driving cars and there are special lanes alongside for those riding bikes.  Some of the bikes just look old and worn.  I wondered how many miles some of those simple frames have carried their riders.  And I haven't figured out the rules for parking.  Maybe there are no rules.  But, I am sure there are.  There are lots of rules in this country.

While my days here have been only a few,  I have some more venturing out to do.

special friends

I serve as an adviser to a group of self-advocates and I am not sure I always like that.  I mean, I like that I am doing it but don't always like what I have to do in that role.  They were making plans for some things they wanted to do as a group.  There were great ideas....go to a movie, learn to paint pictures, have a picnic, start their own newspaper, play bingo with prizes....great ideas.  Then comes the hard part, helping them understand what is needed to go to the movie or plan a picnic and watching some of their faces shout disappointment when the 'T' word is mentioned....transportation.  It is easy to ask for a donation or contribution but not so easy to find someone to drive them home  and the person drive themselves back.  Some of these round trips are over an hour. And what about the families....they don't have the gas money, don't have the time, don't drive at night, are too busy, don't want to go out of their way and some are so old they don't drive themselves.  And me, I just put on my road warrior hat,  load up my car and away we go.  Great ideas just have to happen.

joyfulness within

From my window, which looks out to the pond, I noticed some young boys  making an effort at fishing.  While they have done this before, throw the line in and out, make boy sounds, change positions, stuff that I don't pay attention to, I suddenly heard this high pitch scream.  Someone's little brother kept screaming 'you caught one'.  Not only was he screaming, he was doing some kind of boy dance with it.

When  do we loose our excitement over the little things and someone decides it is not  the way to act.  I think we all have that abundant joyfulness within us, we just forget it is there or maybe we are afraid to let it out.

thots

It is amazing how events in life alter life.  While I know this, it is living in it, like being in a fog.  I know the forms, the routines of my life and go in that direction, but it just isn't the same, or is it.  Life is there and all around me, nothing has changed, it is me.  Death has taken friends and recently my aunt.  Those interactions are now gone and missed.   It is not about replacing them, it is about re-establishing myself.  I need to rise above the fog, feel the sun in my f ace again and let it's warmth grow me.   I will probably fall back into the fog but know the sun is just above and will keep a ladder nearby to help go  back and forth.  I need to take a look at my life from the roof top; what I have, what I want to do and where to go next.....knowing my journey will one day end as the sun sets.

Waiting to open

Waiting to pop open

Flowers blooming in mid winter...

Monday

Monday has become a different kind of Saturday.  What didn't get done last week becomes the task for Monday morning.  My hat off to those who walk out of the office with everything done. Maybe there should be some qualifiers in this....for management only.  But, if one went into work with nothing left to work on; would that be stressful?  I don't know.   What's important is to go in with a positive attitude,  finish up and take on whatever the day brings. It is like my own little Super Bowl every day.  I know who the players are, what the game plan is and now, just to pull off the win.

books

1. I have a book that ever so often  I like to review to remind myself how 'easy' we really have life today.  The book is "the Farmers Guide New Cook Book"  an updated edition copyright 1945.  It is a book to help women with everything they need to do. In addition to the pages and pages of recipes, there are sections on 'pickles and relishes'.  The how to make nine-day pickles, mixed mustard pickles, tomato catsup and pickles beet rings. Then there is the section on butchering day recipes and making scrapple, head cheese, liver pudding and bologna sausage; all kinds of things I would not eat.  My favorite is beauty and health secrets.  How to make mild cases of freckles disappear.  How to keep hair in curl - this was apparently before hair spray, gels and all that stuff, but uses gum arabic, sugar, and rose water.  The treatments go on and on...leg cramps, whiteheads, winter itch, curing dandruff, sore throat treatments and making salve from apples. Those women were amazing, doing all that stuff along with gardening, canning  food for winter, laundry, farm work....they didn't work outside of the home, but they did work hard and had to know so much.  Not to say that we don't today. just different.

I think it would be good to skip a Friday and go from Thursday to Saturday morning.  Sometimes Friday is so  full of bits and pieces of everything that everyone else wants and needs; or so they say....and nothing seems to really get done.  What does it really mean to finish up the week?  Just organize or re-organize the piles for next week.   With a Saturday morning it is getting up when I want, taking as long as I want to sip on a cup of mocha,  and decide what I want to do or not to do.  But then again, there are those Saturdays in which I have committed away my day to a worthy cause because I wanted to.   Maybe that is all the difference.

thot

My aunt is 102 years old.  While her quality of life is compromised due to visual and hearing impairments, her memory is amazing.  She has stories of growing up, living through the depression, the world wars and without so much  and yet in that survived and lived so long.  And to be so healthy.  Her life spans so much from phones to dishwashers to cars with voice activated GPS.  I wonder if there will be that many technological and industrial advancement to improve our quality of life during the span of my life.  We have it pretty good.  If too much more is added will it be at the expense of our creativity, ingenuity and  health.  Part of staying healthy is keeping the body and mind active in working and figuring things out.  When all we have to do is to voice activate something to get what we want, will life even be fun or will fun be something undefined that we don't know or have or understand now.

Wordless Wednesday

sun on table setting through skylight.   

Monday

And it snowed.  I was thinking about the different perspectives of snow.  There is the one of looking out of a window from a nice warm interior, sipping on a cup of coffee and thinking it is nice.  Then there is looking out of the car window and thinking that the roads will be getting slick and hoping it doesn't freeze too quickly on the windshield and wiper blades.  From the eyes of a child is when will it get deep enough to build forts and big fat snowmen.  For the lonely widow in the nursing home it means her daughter probably won't be by for a visit as the roads will be getting bad.  There are probably as many perspectives as there are people.  It all depends where we are at and what we are doing.  In the meantime, I am just enjoying mine from my window.

make a difference

A new year but just another day that has a different number assigned to it.  The difference is what we make of it.  Someone told that to me once and it seems to pop back up in my head every New Year.  This little thought should occur each morning.  What difference will I make in the day or in one person's life that day.  Sometimes it really doesn't take much; just a smile to an unsuspecting person, holding a door open, or saying 'thank you'.  Why do we find ourselves so busy that we forget to take time to do the little things, but do appreciate when someone offers them to us?  Even nature has its way of making a difference in our day like the colors of a sunrise or the song of a bird; those little things that catch our attention, cause us to stop and smile inside.