Happiness Runs..

...and I am not sure where to start. I had a good day and an ordinary day...but a lovely day.

I had to work today from 3 - 6:30. Midday to close on a SUNDAY!!! (In my opinion, no one should be working on Sundays...it just seems wrong.)...but I worked with the people I would've picked to spend that time with...and it was fun. Maybe more should have been done, but I am opening so I I'll be mad at myself tomorrow.

I came home to dinner being going made. Jamaican Jerk Chicken...all kinds of lovely smells...cooked by John (my husband's twin brother born of a differant mother) and my husband. Just wonderful. We set the table and the Vince Guaraldi Trio was playing in the background...(the "Good Grief, Charlie Brown" CD ... it has the Charlie Brown theme.. which does make you want to do the Snoopy dance.)

I love being around Bob and his best "peeps"...I know that is such a stupid word, but I love it anyway. It is comforting to watch them interact...they are all such strong personalities and such different men....but so complimentary to each each other without any extra thought or effort. They just are with each other. I am priveleged to have them in my life. Tney make me feel safe.

I always ask this question of others...What was the best thing that happened to you today? There ALWAYS is a best thing...you may have to look, but there ALWAYS is.

My best thing is coming back home after making a beer run and smell of cinnamon and all the Jamican jerk aromatics wafting up oour stairway along with the voices of people I love.

"is this Heaven?"
"No..it's my house.
(Stealing from "Field of Dreams"]

Find the best in each day and dance at least one time this week in your underwear to really loud music...even if you think somebody is WATCHING. They probably aren't paying attention.

....DAMN THEM!!!

Laugh at yourself...

I have a little bicycle. I bought it a couple of years ago when my car was having problems and I didn't want to have to impose on the ladies I work with to have to come and get me. It was spring...I needed the exercise. It really is a small bike because I am short and I can touch the pedals nicely and not feel like I'm going to kill myself...an important fact when you haven't ridden a bicycle for 30 some years and the idea of traffic while in a car doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy.

A friend from work gave me streamers for my bike on my birthday a couple of years ago. They were iridescent pink and fun and just...streamy. Bob and I were running errands a couple of weeks ago and stuffed my bike in the back of Bob's car so we could put air in tires. On the way, I had a conversation with Bob about how much I loved these dopey streamers. We stop to get the air...he does the inflating of tires...didn't take the bike out of the car...was in a hurry...gets back in the car and tells me "I broke your streamers off." I was crushed and got poopy to him. In keeping with the idea that five year olds love their streamers, he told me I was being bratty...and I was.

When we got home, I tried to put my basket back on my bike. It was not going on and was sticking out at a ninety angle to the handlebars. Bob and I got into another little set to over trying to get the basket to work correctly and once again I got called bratty. I do highly recommend living in a second floor apartment on such occasions because stomping in a huff up the stairs is highly effective. Mind you someone has to be paying attention to the stomping for it to be effective and Bob was not. A quiet evening was had by all. It is hard to live with five year old times ten plus two. Bob should get a medal.

So a couple of weeks have past. I found new lovely streamers at Target. I also ruminated on the basket problem and came up with a solution. I call Bob to the garage because I thought that we would have to hacksaw part of the basket holder off. I said we needed to adjust the handlebars because my knees were hitting them. I thought that they had slipped down from storage and moving. As we talked about how to fix the problem, we suddenly had an epiphany.

The handlebars were facing backwards.

My bike is ready...I plan on riding it...you have been duly warned.

A sidebar from when Cory was visiting:
Friend of Cory: Does your Mom have a bike?
Cory: I think so.
FOC: I think I saw her riding it...and dude, it's got streamers on it.
Cory: Huh (I am sure there was some internal cringing and I know that he laughed)

The moral: It is never too late to embarrass your children...even if they live on the other side of the country.

Bare Trees...

Outside my window on this cold, damp early Saturday I see what looks just like the album cover of Fleetwood Mac's 70's album "Bare Trees". It made me wish I was a photographer.

I closed tonight at work and when I was driving home there was this ethereal, rolling fog on the street. At the intersection of our street I couldn't really see forward...I know this will sound macabre but it made me think of London and Jack the Ripper and how easily someone could have crept out the fog and shadows to do harm. I think that is a movie equation...fog...London...fog being spooky...blahblahblah.

...but it is beautiful. The naked trees are just packed in cotton mist and the street lights all glow gold. Somehow the fog seems so right for the season...ominous and hopeful all at once. It's the kind of night that makes you edgy and sleepless.
It's an itchy time of year...like all new hopes and dreams are bristling under the skin...Spring is right on the cusp.I think we're all ready ready for a new season

Feeling Lost...

I have found myself in a strange little place lately and I really don't like it. I guess for lack of a better word, it could be described as a funk. I am just feeling like I am not sure where I belong, if people like me, if anything that I do matters. I KNOW that sounds way over dramatic but that's what there. Everything just feels to be in transition and I am not sure where I fit in. We have had changes at work and that is all still playing out...some days I feel like I am working with the Borgias or the Medicis. I just don't have the energy to play that game...or the cunning.

Interesting...there is an audition coming up that I really want to go to. The play is "The Lion in Winter". I would to audition for Eleanor. I want to audition because I haven't auditioned for so long and auditioning is painful to me. The play is all about machinations and political maneuvering. I may be totally wrong for Eleanor but more than anything want my lovely Bobert to audition...I think he would be wonderful as Henry and have the best time. He hasn't been on stage in so long...he needs to get back in the saddle. I can just see him doing this show. Kathylynn...are you there? Audition!!! You would be wonderful.

I know that my funk will pass but I hate when it descends with it's darkness and bad tapes. I can find everything to hate about myself and have a hard time finding the nice voice to talk to myself with....that's hard on the best of days.

I think I will chalk it up to gray days in Ohio in more ways than one.

Oscar de la Jesus

Watched the Oscars tonight and yes, I smiled to myself because I am STILL in the back of my mind practicing my Oscar speech....holding my Infant of Prague. I just want each and every person I have ever done a show with to know that you will be thanked when the actual big day happens. Now all I have to do is figure out what to wear.

You know I have this wedding gowny thing that could probably be reworked somehow...

Feeling Eighteen....

It's snowing and soft and quiet and lovely. The sky is that beautiful rosy colour caused by city lights on snowy nights with the trees black and spiky against it. How I do love the view from my window.

Bob and I went to our little neighborhood pub and walking home it just put me in the moment of being college. I went to college in Bowling Green and we always went out on Thursdays and always walked because no one had a car. Today is Thursday and we went out...of course one of the major differences is then we never went out until at least 10:00 and tonight we were home at the latest by 10:00.

...ahhh, but the snow. It reminded me of walking with my friends and feeling free and adventurous...and hopeful. Hopeful about your dreams, your life. I don't think that I really ever felt closer to those people than when I was walking downtown with them in the snow. The snow created our own little world, somehow protective of our conversations. It was just being in the moment.

...so we flash forward some thirtysomething years and I realize that I am grateful to be where I am. I walked home holding my husband's hand and felt all those feelings I felt long ago on those wintry walks...adventure, freedom, hope...but also peace because I know I have a partner who faces the stuff with me I had no idea about back then...the hard stuff...but the conversations we had years ago on those wintry nights was about hard stuff...it was just simpler hard stuff.

Another Thing to Love about Computers...

Bob has become a big fan of iTunes. We recently had a party and he put money into the account and our wish was to have everyone pick songs. We were going to make CDs of what everyone picked...kind of a record of the evening to give. Everyone got so into to talking to each other that only one person picked a song. I guess that meant it was a successful party because people were actually more interested in talking to a person than piddling on a computer.

Tonight is the first time that I played on iTunes and I think that I could become addicted. I know that I would end up picking out nostalgia...ahhh, but nostalgia from OUR younger years. Popped into my head, found it and bought the song. If you were in college around 1973-1974, you will remember Spirit, "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" and "Nature's Way"...well it is now on our computer. It was a sappy song then...it is STILL...but it sure is nice to hear. It makes you sway and want to hold a lighter up in the air.

In the store at Christmas we get these GODawful CDs of "holiday" music that we have to play from preThanksgiving to forever. At the end of the season this year, I popped ours out the CD player and gleefully cut it to shreds. A year ago, snuck in between Mariah Carey, Bing Crosby, twenty versions of "Melaklimekee" some stupid Hawaiian song that I abhor was a golden gem. Whoever programs the CDs must have been a little P.O.ed with their job. We were busy last year and I would keep hearing snippets of the lyrics and I finally looked the song up on the web. It is Bare Naked Ladies "Elf's Lament". It is wonderful. I highly reccommend looking the lyrics up and pasting them in your cubicle. It just tickled me that this song would end up on our CD. A bit of holiday anarchy that applies to the whole year.

The other song that poppped in my mind and found was Leon Russell "A Song for You". I've loved that song from the first time I heard it. I remember being at dorm parties, sitting in some room drinking beer, hearing that song, and loving it and feeling confusedly melancholy. It touched some nerve in me. Leon Russell's voice is not great but it has such a rawness in this song. The emotions he sang about seemed so adult and complicated and so beyond anything I knew. It is one of the sexiest songs to me. I didn't get until much later in life that the song is about intimacy and that what makes it sexy. At 18, it was just a hint of something I didn't know but wanted. It just spoke to me.

One song that took me years to get over hearing is Cat Steven's "Moonshadow". It is connected to a very important person in my life. Hearing the song took me back to such memories and place and time, it was overwhelming. It always seemed that the song and memories, so deeply connected, caught me by surprise. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I heard it and could smile.

...music does that to you.