Stop, look, listen, time out

I looked out my kitchen window just now and there was my black cat sitting like a statue in the driveway and staring at me with her telepathic flat stare that said, “You must let me in.”

I think “Millie” is feeling the pinch of neglect these days as I race around here like the human version of racehorse “American Pharaoh,” winner of the Kentucky Derby.

I put the spring in “Spring” and the get up in “Go.” I am a machine—the female underdog shadow of middleweight boxer Manny Pacquiao as I fight my way through the chores and to-do lists that multiply like rabbits on my kitchen table.

My cats miss me, my daughter who is home from University for the summer certainly has cause to ask me if I remember who she is, as we pass each other in the porch doorway with my spring causes stuffed under both arms and in my hands. 

And the causes that do not fit there, are thrown in back packs and slung both shoulders. I have lists in my jean and shirt pockets, in my shoes and two wrapped in pencils shoved along the top of each of my ears.

I make a beeline for the barn to do my chores there and I can feel my Grampa Joe’s mission-style focus teeming in my stride.

I was in the grocery store after work tonight, nearly hell-bent on getting home to attack “The List” that my pace nearly put two car lengths in between my and the daughter who’s home for the summer. “What is your name again?”

As I type this Bruce Cockburn popped into the stream of music playing on my laptop with “Last Night of the World.” 

“What would I do that was different?” he chimes, strumming that beautiful guitar of his.

The first thought I had was that I’d bargain for more time, because I’d have too much that I wanted to do on that last night. Then I laughed out loud and said, “Beth, you just don’t get it.”

And then I really got to thinking about what I would do on the last night of the world. 

Here goes;

I’d listen to guitar music while facing the sunset. I’d say the words “I love you” a lot, to a lot of people I care about. I would meditate a little, say thank you a lot and try that expensive red wine I’ve always wanted to taste.

I would watch birds fly and listen to them sing, because they sing anyway. I like that about birds. They are among the most genuinely positive creatures on earth.

I would eat chocolate and write some good thoughts about my life. I’d listen to the late Louis Armstrong sing “What a Wonderful World,” I’d burn my to-do lists and I’d laugh in the face of my misgivings.

And to think I wasn’t even going to slow down long enough to write this column.  

Slowing down is on my list too.

Living life in more gears than one

Charles Schultz once penned, “Life is like a ten speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.”

I think I’m a few gearshifts ahead of the game at this point.

In the last 29 days I have learned about electrical panels on sailboats, deep cycle and “AGM” batteries, pintles and gudgeons (which are not names of fairies from a fantasy movie), what contexts ay good bilge sponge, and what the real definition of “premium” is.

Sadly these days, “premium” is not a financial term that lends itself to fattening my wallet. It is instead the quintessential definition for how much storage space I have for supplies on my boat once I am out on the lake.

I’ve climbed a ladder every day for the last 29 days as I board my boat for “Little Miss Fix-It” jobs, or just to sit with my cold beer and dream.

I’ve contorted myself into strange pretzel-like positions to check small spaces for wiring schematics—all the while hoping I come across another hiding space for food and chocolate when I’m on a long cruise this summer.

I’ve scrubbed the entire boat inside and out by myself, de-oxidized the hull and waxed it back to the beautiful blue that was hiding. It’s been physically demanding and mentally freeing.

I have spent more time on the “Catalina Direct” website ogling over all the parts, pieces, and luxuries I can buy for said sailboat than I have spent on the entire Internet since it was let loose upon us all those years ago.

I’ve also watched “YouTube” videos on how to restore teak hardwood, splice wires together, and remove wires off a marine battery and how to use a battery charger.

All of the lessons on batteries warn against contact between negative and positive wires if one is still in contact with said battery. I should have taken the repeat safety course for dummies on that score. Yikes!

Most of all though; I have dwelt on what defines me as I try to decide what name to give to my boat.

She has never had a name, so the field is wide open to invent just about anything my imagination can muster up—provided I can repeat it three times clearly—and without laughing—on a marine radio.

Knowing that fact eliminated a few favorites right off the top—“All Gulls No Buoys,” “Passing Wind,” and ”Yacht Sea.”

I started a list of boat names in a note file on my IPhone. I’ve brainstormed them, picked one, then another, and second-guessed them all.

I was born in the arms of a good imagination but for the life of me, naming a sailboat takes the cake on difficult.

However, I have made a final choice. It came to me out of the blue as I was falling asleep one night. Quite simply the best name ever.

I’m tempted to let the cat out of the bag but that’s another story.

A snow day breeds positive vibes

I stared out longingly at my sailboat this morning. It looked dejected and beaten down by the skiff of snow that covered her like a thin white layer of wax paper that weighed two tons.

I’ll bet she, too, was thinking “Really? Snow? I just want to sail.”

And then again, she looked so right at home sitting there, waiting patiently for the next round of new paint, a cleaner hull, and a new life for the water.

A little snow wouldn’t keep her down.

It’s Monday night and it’s snowing again as I write this. I have the heat turned up, two sweaters on, and there’s a pot of pea soup brewing on the stove. The warmth feels good. It feels like a cozy winter story.

Mother Nature plays hard to get. 10 days of sunshine, one of snow. She gives and she takes away and she gets us all talking mostly about one cold snowflake event in a score of many sunshine moments.

Life is like that.

My ex-husband Peter used to say, “It is much easier to be bad than good.” He was right.

Don’t allow the negatives to get more attention than the positives.

I’ll bet the person out there with terminal cancer and is still able to stand at the window each morning, didn’t say today, “oh blast, it’s snowing again.”

I’ll bet that person said, “Thank you for another day.”

My grandson stood outside this morning and let snowflakes fall on his tongue and smiled at the tingling magic feeling that those most original phenomena in the entire world left on his palate.

Find something really good to talk about.

Take up positive thinking like my dad and repeat after me, “It’s always a possibility.”

My dad used to say that to my brother and I a lot when we were growing up. It gave us hope for whatever it was we were hoping for. Maybe we got our wish, maybe we didn’t; but we always had a positive spin on things.

Read the life lessons by Regina Brett, written at age 90.

“Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good; When in doubt, just take the next small step; Life is too short to waste time hating anyone; When it comes to going after what you want in life, don’t take no for an answer; If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back; Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, don’t save them for a special occasion, today is special.”

I’m dreaming of future holidays that are on my bucket list. How about horseback riding in Iceland or kayaking the Haida Gwai on the B.C. coast? Italy is on my list and so is the Grand Canyon.

And now I have a sailboat and my adventure list is growing to include not only the fabulous Rainy Lake, but also sailing my boat one day on Lake Superior and to the Apostle Islands, or maybe even a salty dip in the ocean off Florida.

And I’ve been told by a reliable source that recently there was a Catalina 22 tied to a dock in Belize. Just imagine. One day it might be me.

All these great thoughts and all because it snowed today.

New words wash ashore with my boat

If it wasn’t for lists I would never get anything done around here, although I freely admit that sometimes just having a list makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, and sometimes that means nothing the list really gets done at all. I just look it over and cross stuff off and add other things to it.

In fact on the desk beside me right now is a list I wrote in the spring of 2014. It reads, “outside tarp (not sure what that means), new patio flooring, black earth, lawn seed, rocks, cinder blocks (not sure what I was thinking about here either.)

I don’t think any of those “to-dos” were accomplished, but the list still looks good just sitting there beside my coffee cup.

I have lists on the go for spring projects inside the house and out, including a separate one for basement, one for the barn, one for interior painting projects, and one for my garden and flowerbeds.

Of course I now have project lists on the go for my sailboat including a list of questions about what exactly it is that I’m looking for, how to spell it, and what the heck it means. 

Now if I could just learn how to carry on a proper sailboat conversation about it all!

“There are no such things as ropes on a sailboat,” a fellow sailor recently said to me, chuckling over something I’d said. Indeed. They are “sheets,” and no, they won’t double as bed cover for my tired aching skeleton at the end of day on the lake.

A “hatch” is not what comes after the chicken egg, and there is no “front” and “back” of a sailboat nor is there a “right or left” and “port” sadly not a reference to a fortified wine.

“Starboard” is not a term used by Captain James Kirk. “Winch” is not slang for wince and “Aft” is not slang for after. “22” is not a rifle, it is the length in feet of my sailboat. 

“Main” is not a street and the good ol’ “red, white and blue” is not a reference to the U.S. flag. It is the electrical schematics on my boat that I am determined to learn how to read and how to fix.

The “head” is not what is on my shoulders. It’s is the “go-to” for bathroom relief. Curtain please.

“Whisker pole” is not some guy’s beard hair glued to a cedar post and “tiller” is not a garden tool. “Tang” is not a drink; “pulpit” is not from whence the church minister gives his sermon. 

“Gooseneck” is not that which I would love to throttle for pooping in my farmyard and a “traveler” is not the guy on the highway looking to hitchhike. 

“Tell tales” are not the little children in your life who like to out their siblings for misbehaving. “Tang” is not a drink and “block” is not something even remotely related to me during those times when I can’t think of something to write about.

I wonder if chocolate is in the sailing supply manual?  It will be when I’m done.

Here's to uncharted waters

Someone paid me a heartwarming compliment recently, revealing to me that I enriched life during time spent together.

I’ve learned to say thanks for sincere moments of offering like that. 

There was a time when I would have reduced the accolade with “Oh, don’t be silly,” or “I don’t know if I’ve done that,” or “are you sure you mean that?”

Today I love and believe in myself enough to accept it as true when someone says such a nice thing about me. And good feelings are best when shared.

That is not to say that I don’t doubt myself sometimes. Books sliding off the shelf of my life can, on occasion, raise doubts of all kinds. Sometimes a turn of events harangues me enough that I call into question my integrity, gullibility, reasoning, and intentions.

I think even the strongest of us have moments like that. What’s important is that we, each in our own way, find gratitude, lessons, and keep walking our path.

One of my favorite songs right now is “Silver Lining,” by First Aid Kit. I can’t remember how that song dropped in my lap but it certainly came along at an appropriate time.

“There’s no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on,

Gotta keep on going, looking straight out on the road,

Can't worry 'bout what's behind you or what's coming for you further up the road, I try not to hold on to what is gone, I try to do right what is wrong.”

A wise man I know also would tell me in times of hardship I have three choices—“suck it up, change it, or quit.”

Crosby, Stills, and Nash would sing, “Rejoice, we have no choice, we’ve got to carry on.”

I think I’ll do all of those things, because there is no starting over, no new beginnings, time does race on. I must keep going, look straight out on the road I’m on. I will change it. I have no choice. I must carry on.

In celebration of all of these roads less travelled I bought my own 22ft sailboat last week.

I’ve never sailed alone in my life, but I’m going to learn and learn quickly.

I am as determined as the worker ant that carries 100 times its own body weight up hill in a hurricane. Trust me. I know myself very well. I may have a soft shell sometimes, but my core is as solid as they come.

Gratitude abounds. I have been given a silver lining I would otherwise have never known.

I’ve always believed in a Power greater than myself and I pray often to this Power for strength, clarity, wisdom, and often for the courage to accept the things I cannot change.

I also believe one of the greatest gifts of the Universe is free will. Nothing happens until I decide. 

I am mine. I am my own.

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.”

And now, I’m a sailboat captain.

My purse tells a story of its own

Do you remember what was in your grandmother’s purse?

My Grandma’s purse smelled like “Juicy Fruit” gum and there always was at least a stick or two in there for the little kid I was at the time.

I don’t chew the stuff today but if I catch the scent of Juicy Fruit wafting by it takes me way, way back.

By comparison, my purse smells like the old moldy apple I found in the bottomless pit of the thing. 

Remember the old 1970s game show, “Let’s Make a Deal”?

Game show host Monty Hall would walk through the audience and ask people, mainly women, to play for money based on what was in their purse. 

If that show existed today and I was a contestant, I would come out of it a winner, because everything Monty Hall asked for I would have had in my purse—even an old, fuzzy-haired, rotten apple.

And I don’t even like my purse. In fact I loathe the thing. It’s heavier than I am and if I have to show up in public swinging the monstrosity on a strap over my shoulder, I can be assured it will pinch off a nerve and render my arm useless all the way to my fingertips. All I can think about is the packhorses out there that carry burdens like that for a living. Poor souls.

Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher from the sixth century, once said: “To handle difficulties, handle them when they are small and just beginning.” 

I should have applied that little piece of advice before I bought a purse and instead used the small pockets of my jeans to stuff the essentials in.

In my grandmother’s era, all she had in her purse were the vitals of life—gum, a wallet, and her car keys.

Today we are convinced that we need a bigger everything and we carry the house inside our purses. Quite frankly, there’s only one place where size matters and it’s not in my handbag.

However much to my chagrin I, too, have become a part of the larger all-in-one purse collective and now I can’t find anything that I put in there.   

I had the bright idea to carry a small safety flashlight in my purse but I hope I never have to find it in a hurry.

When I do dig around in there, thankfully I do find my wallet. 

There also are seven tubes of lipstick and two tubes of sunscreen chap stick, one of which looks like it expired in mid-summer 2014. By my obviously sunburned lips, that’s the one I’ve been using while on my sunny winter excursions.

I found keys on chains for locks I know nothing about, a never-before-seen USB memory stick in a sealed plastic bag, and a compass?

Suddenly I am transported into a movie with a “secret documents” plot.

I was as surprised by the memory stick showing up in my purse as I was when I was raising windows in my car with the automatic button and a plastic gift card for a local restaurant came up from inside the door. Lucky me for once. It had enough money on it to buy me a hamburger.

And just when I thought my purse was empty, I turned it upside down and shook the thing. Out dropped a micro-screwdriver, (used once to fix a pair of expensive sunglasses that the next day were flattened under the wheels of my car after I left them on the hood,) a worry stone (rubbed nearly in half in the weeks leading up to tax time,) a corkscrew, three pen knives, a “Leatherman,” a magnifying glass, dental floss, ear plugs, tooth brush, Band-Aids, a comb, bobby pins, a mirror, sticky notes, hand wipes, all manner of grocery lists, a pair of slippers, batteries, granola bars, and air freshener.

Heck, that’s not a purse. That’s the beginning of supplies for road trip waiting to happen.

Trust me, take a walk

Allan Gurganus is an accomplished American novelist and although I haven’t read any of his books, I came across a quote of his during a recent detective project.

“Know what Sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.”

It resounded with me, although I’d hate to think that what I perceive as my somewhat intimate relationship with endings and struggles in life happens because I am good at writing about all that malarkey.

I’d like to think there is something more valuable to my living my book of life than that.

I have only to look across the room at “Louis” the kitten sitting perilously on the arm of the chair and batting the swing lid on the garbage can with his front paw to know that he easily is a “cat”-alyst for my column.

And the fact that eventually Louis fell in, amidst the freshly filleted skeletons and guts of six crappie I’d caught while ice fishing (with a license limit of 10 for those who are wondering) means the feline medium just garnered a second unintentional paragraph in this column originally dedicated to stories that happen to people who can tell them.

I meant every word I wrote in last week’s column about gratitude and no regret but I will admit that I’ve recently had unexpected visits from “Mr. Mad” and “Mr. Angry.” Thinking too much about what is behind me opens the dungeon door to these unwelcome beings.

Thankfully I rallied to walk a road less travelled by such dark capes. To clear these harbingers I really did take off walking, so mad at first that I could have decked a rogue bear or buck with my “fist held tight” had one crossed my path. 

Before I knew it four miles and one hour had passed and a quieter mind had returned.

I had suffocated the assassins of peace. They could not keep up. They were dragged to their deaths down a paved road.

That happened days and days ago. Now I’m hooked on the endorphins of the daily hour’s ritual and I put in my four miles “just because” and passing by the dried up skeletons of my arch nemeses cast off in the ditch between here and there and home again.

Of course there’s always a test in frustration and patience waiting for me in the form of a cat when I get back from my walk. 

There are any number of scenarios waiting to ambush me, the first of which is usually a heap of throw rugs that the kitten, high on energy drinks or some such, decided were evil monsters and had attacked and rounded them up in the most inconvenient place—jammed in front of the porch door so that I couldn’t open it. 

Try coaxing a cat through a keyhole to come fetch a rug.

Stories only happen to people who can tell them. Right you are Mr. Gurganus.  Just call me “Sugar.”

Sometimes clouds have silver linings

Did you know that the heart of a woman only weighs about eight ounces?

I didn’t.

It wasn’t until I recently checked ‘Google University’ that I learned the facts.

I was sure mine weighed more like 10 lbs—stone heavy and sinkable.

I’ve been away, caring for that part of me.

Thanks in part to my friend Don (who is wise beyond words and who also knows how to put caring words together) I am back, sitting in front of my keyboard.

Don told me to “just start writing,” which if you’ve noticed I haven’t been doing for a few weeks. The empty page syndrome happens to me sometimes, especially when my book of life falls off the shelf and I go underground to my silent place where I spend time picking up my pages.

Eventually I had to come back to the light when I realized, as Don pointed out through Ralph Waldo Emerson that I, too, do not want to have any “unspent youth” left within me when my time is up.

Time to get back on the horse of life and “ride, baby ride.”

My heart is making a come back to her old self again, though when I run my hand over the space she takes up thumping in my chest, I imagine I can feel the small break lines that have been opened up on her surface.

But these aren’t wounds. They’re channels where new life lessons and gratitude can flow in and take their turn helping with growth.

Thanks to Don’s reflections, I also have added a new book to my reading list—“No Ordinary Moments,” written by Dan Millman. It will be really good stuff.

The first book I read as I was growing up and into a conscious human being was “The Road Less Travelled” by M. Scott Peck. I was 18 years old at the time, the book had just been published and it had a big impact on me.

Peck began the book with the sentence, “Life is difficult.” He went on to explain that once we truly understand and accept this great truth, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

I’ve never forgotten that first read and yet I’ve sometimes forgotten that it is true.

And I’ve more or less tried to live by Peck’s “Road Less Travelled” principles throughout my life, but that doesn’t mean—as I am reminded—that everything along the road is simple to learn or to accept.

Simple is what my new kitten’s view on life is like—and I’m taking notes.  Eat, sleep, take a run up the kitchen curtains and back down again, and then cuff the stuffing out of a toy mouse and then toss it into the owner’s boot when she’s not looking.

What a way to re-focus on the present moment when I put my foot into my boot at 8 a.m. and feel a furry under my toes. Simply a laughable moment (after the squeal.)

This much I know is true for me. Everything happens for a reason and I would not trade one moment of my most recent journey for a different story. I have had the adventure of a lifetime and I loved every minute of it.

And yes Don, bless your heart, life does go on. Stay tuned!  

No theme weaves a grateful path

I have nothing to say—at least that is what I’m typing at this very moment. 

A wise editor once said to me, “Write about the most important thing first.”

I heed his wisdom.

I have nothing important to write about.

My excuses for said nothingness, pathetic at best, are piled up and stuck to each other like the anti-inflammatory medicine capsules I accidentally knocked into the kitchen sink, slick-wet from a wash of dinner dishes.

The gelatin skins, once independent and full of joint pain relief, conjoin and morph into an orangey-white sludge worse than melted creamsicles. 

I manage to save one or two pills and set them aside with intention. I then forget about them until weeks later when I find them covered in dust just like all the hours in the last week that I’d planned to set aside to write.

The next budding column’s theme eludes me.

Deep down in the heel of my winter boot, it is wedged underneath the orthotic insole, seated in glue slapped in there by an underpaid shoe factory laborer from a third world country, who was thinking about how many other jobs he could take on to make ends meet while building my footwear on a hot and sticky humid-thick Sunday afternoon, that also was his wife’s birthday.

Once again, I wait to the last possible hour to compile my thoughts and the last possible minute to write them down.

It’s a time when the people with true intention, who completed their goals well before deadline, have showered and crawled snugly into their electric blanket laden beds.

I pour over the chicken scratch notes on ideas for this column. Oh, the computer memory I have sacrificed for these ideas and yet nothing in them strikes me to task.

The clock ticks on and it’s cold outside.

After fidgeting like a six-year-old I drag my creative side kicking and screaming from inside myself, out through the ends of my fingers and reach for the last eight squares of fruit and nut infused chocolate sitting on my desk. It’s nearly 9 p.m. and eating chocolate at this hour is sure defeat of a good night’s rest.

And just as I was filling my diet quota with the last two morsels, I hear a voice on the radio say, “And how was your Blue Monday? Did you feel like the rest of us today? Did you feel like you’d hit rock bottom, cold, miserable, in debt, out of shape, and feeling like a loser because you’d flushed your willpower from the New Year down the loo?”

Suddenly I had my theme.

Cookies baking in the kitchen, tea with my dad, a swift winter’s sprint down the frozen creek in the sunshine of a Sunday afternoon, the soft light at my parents’ house down the way, a kiss for someone special whom I hadn’t seen in nearly a week, a laugh with a grandchild, a connection, a hearty meal, gratitude—lots of gratitude.

Sometimes I forget how good I have it.

Where I am with all that

Honestly this has been the best, most genuinely “soul filled with peace” holiday season I have had in years.

I didn’t mope about my past, I didn’t pick apart my present day, and I didn’t fret about my future. I quite simply was “right here, right now.”

I won’t be able to express within the confines of the English language how much acceptance is in my heart. And if I had feathered wings I would fly.

I have gunned for the bright side through counseling with gurus and reading self-help books, and writing positive affirmations to launch me forward. I’ve fallen short, pressed on, gained ground, lost a shoe, found it, lost my flashlight, and so on.

And then in a moment of grace in late November a simple yet profound conversation with a very special friend transformed me while driving on a highway in the middle of the afternoon. It changed me inside once and for all. It changed me forever. I know this to my core.

Most of all it transformed me out of dread of the holidays, which have for various reasons over the past four or five years been a dark and melancholy time.

I just knew in that moment on the long drive to where we were going that everything I’d been through had finally come to rest in a good and quiet place.

It was like I turned off a switch and turned on another and there was no need to go back in that room again.

This is not to say I won’t make new resolutions and then regret it after I eat more pizza than I should, or that I won’t kick myself in the shin for—after the pizza binge--consuming the last two chocolate bars left over in the cupboard from my holiday stash.

I will make my promise list for 2015 that will no doubt include getting more exercise, eating regularly and with health paramount, saving more money, and practicing anger management when I find another nesting hole in a box.

I will make good on my list and I will not. I’m teetering right now, having just eaten a second butter tart after I vowed to give the last three to my dad.

I will for sure make good on that squirrel, whose menacing carcass is still on the loose in my garage, having found its way into boxes of old dishes and, yes, into another sleeping bag I had missed when I raided the shelves of all manner of possible rodent attractions.

Who knew one sleeping bag held that much white fluffy insulation?

Who knew a squirrel could shred that stuff into such a high volume disaster, now strewn all over the garage floor when, in momentary madness I channeled my inner child tantrum and flung fuzz everywhere in another attempt to thwart my nemesis.

Hans Christian Anderson once penned, “Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

I think I’m there.

I sure could use a live trap though.