March

Ah, March! we know thou art Kind-hearted, spite of ugly looks and threats, And, out of sight, art nursing April's violets! 

Helen Hunt-Jackson

What's This That Precedes Me....

into a room. aha...it's my stomach! Eating these lovely, buttery delights has nothing to do with it, I'm sure. Allegra's scones, very good.

Why?

So why did I close off comments. Because I had become a mainlining junkie. I woke up one morning and realized my addiction. When the first thing you do in the morning is turn on the computer to see comments to your blog, before coffee, you have an addiction as strong as any.

When I started to consider what I wrote and how it would impact my following, I knew I had a problem as well. I have never been considered, in my mind as well as by others, as a people pleaser. So imagine my surprise when I realized I was trying to please, not out of kindness, but for ego. This revelation left me a bit weak in the knees.

I may find that writing to silence is uninspiring, as I really enjoyed the interaction with the people I have met from all over the globe. I will probably put the comment feature back at some time. But for now, I need to resume a life in the here and now. Blogland has taken too much of my consciousness. It needs to be put where it belongs; one facet of many in my life.

I am an obsessive personality. I never have done anything by halves. So in this, I can't wean. But please don't think that I wouldn't enjoy an email now and then. I would. I just need to STOP checking the comment box.

Now I need to go finish making chicken soup. I hear it's good for the soul.

Going Silent

Hi all. I have decided to try something different. I have turned off the comments on the blog, as I would like to try doing this without the comment feature niggling at the back of my mind. I feel as if I am being unfair to those who read and comment faithfully and I want you to know how much I appreciate you all, but I would like to try writing a blog without wondering how it will be received.

I will continue to read and comment on my usual list and if anyone feels the urge to communicate with me, my email is available on my profile as well as on the sidebar.

California Dreaming, On Such A Winter Day

It ain't easy living here.

Pretty in Pink

You know, I'm an acquired taste. I know it, everyone knows it. I've often wondered what it would be like to be soft around the edges. To be a person for whom pink is appropriate. To be this. A gentle English rose. A person for whom quiet passages of poetry is a favored read. A person who wouldn't say this is shit if they were standing knee deep in it.

Instead, if I were to be associated with pink it would be this! There are worse things and if you have to play with the cards you are dealt, you may as well play them to win. So this is me getting all philosophical. Sort of makes you all misty eyed, doesn't it?

Observations on a Dreary Morning

Is this the face of America? I'm in a mood, which means I'm thinking about stuff.

The harder a person thumps a bible the less likely they are to possess charity, compassion and empathy.

Crazy talk gets notice and credibility. Reason is dismissed like so much garbage.

Glen Beck is either insane or immoral. Or both. As well as the viewers who subscribe to his vitriolic rants.

One would think a tall man would have quite a length of spine. President Obama may have a spine, but he seems to lack a backbone.

I've learned, by listening to the Average American Who Knows So Much, that we are different so we don't need universal health care. Because we have a Constitution.

The Average American Who Knows So Much does not know that democracy is a system of governance and capitalism is an economic system, and that the two are not mutually exclusive. China is a dictatorship that practices capitalism very well. You, Average American, are not a capitalist. You're just a poor schmuck.

Free enterprise is not free market.  Free market means someone is getting screwed, like you. Or me.

Long-term unemployment in the US is inevitable. Job loss will subside in a couple of months, but job creation of any significance will not occur. We are still sending our jobs out of the country. We need to change our trade policies (remember free market) and put a financial cost to sending jobs out. Fat chance. Wall Street would not like it.

Carl Rove wrote a book. Carl Rove should have been booked.

Cuddly & Cute

I believe I would be wise to take a page out of the Book of Howard.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets to bed!

Promises & Possibilities

Life goes forward, sometimes it feels as if in leaps and bounds. Spring is in the air. The temperate weather is softly speaking to me, promising a new beginning; a better time ahead. I normally never trust whispered promises, but I will make an exception and grasp the hint of spring with both of my hands. Yet, I know winter will have at least one more wallop, but I'll bob and weave and not let it touch me.

The true harbinger of spring would be the shedding of their thick winter coats. The horses know something, as the hair is coming out in big, fluffy clumps. At the end of the day my coat looks like a patchwork of multi-colors of fur as they brush against me on the way in and out of the barn. Although a messy time, the peeks of sleek, shiny bodies under the warm, thick hair is always something that gives me a tingle of glee. Spring cannot be far off. Several feet of snow on the ground says different, but the horses are my seers.

So I am slowly entering the land of the living, back to a normal routine, with bits of my mother's life tossed in. I don't know if she will come out the other side whole. We, her friends and family, can offer support, but she will need to put something into it as well. I'm not sure she believes she can, so I'm not sure she will try. I hope for her sake she does. Life under the mantle of persistent grief becomes a dreadful chore; for the wearer as well as the watcher.

But spring is in the air, with its promise of an awakening earth, so if this frozen bit of land can change its scape so dramatically in a month's time.... anything should be possible in the world.

Farewell

And in the end,

it is not the years in

your life that count.

It is the life in

your years.

Abraham Lincoln

He was a presence. Loud, booming voice; wise-cracking, playful personality. A kind man and an imposing man. My father. I thought him immortal. He proved to be human after all.

A life lived does not disappear. It was lived, so it exists. I like this. He lived his life big, so it still occupies a large bit of space in the continuum of time.

My father would be pleased. He had a large turnout for his final hurrah. The honor guard would have made him so proud. He spoke little of his time in the Pacific on an Aircraft Carrier, but he was proud of his service during WWII. The old gentlemen standing at attention would have brought tears to his eyes.

So we had a day of tears, memories and laughter. We went out and tipped a glass in his name. As my son said, grandpa loved a good whiskey, as long as someone else was paying. My son follows in his footsteps, as I paid for the fine whiskey he toasted his granddad with!

In my mind, my dad is rolling down the highway on his beloved Indian motorcycle, the sun shining eternally, the road smooth and clear into infinity.