The dogs rule the roost

I’m babysitting my boyfriend’s two dogs this week while he is working in northern Manitoba. “The boys” and I are on a learning curve and I’m aghast to admit that I am the student and not the teacher—at least not yet. 

“Pepe” is a short off-white (needs a bath) wire-haired stubborn little mastermind who can hear a bread crumb drop to the floor in the kitchen but was rendered completely deaf when I released him to outside without a leash to pee, wherein he raced off chasing the illusive nothing and ignored my constant bellow of, “Come back here this instant!”

I walked a half-mile to find him rolling in deer droppings. 

“Bear,” is a lab-cross with bad eyesight who has the keenest snout I’ve ever seen, given that he can find the tiny morsel of cooked egg white left on the kitchen table—evident by the long lick of tongue residue I found beside my toast plate when I returned from a split second visit to the bathroom during breakfast.

Old cat “Millie,” perched on the windowsill that faces into the kitchen from the porch, had that flat stare look that said, “I told you so.”

During the first dog night in the house, I found the little one buried under the blankets on my side of the bed, splayed out in an unconscious stupor and chasing rabbits. I woke the little boss up and told it to move its carcass to the other side of the bed. Strangely, “Pepe” was deaf again.

By morning the two canines were wagging tails about the door, eager to get outside and do their “business” and I praised them for holding it through the night—until I stepped in a warm puddle of yellow liquid in my bare foot. Luckily I saw the pile of little brown cylinders on the floor before I stepped in those too.

“Millie” was still in the window, cat laughing.

A sermon ensued with said culprit dogs about the dog rules.

The canine capers sat motionless on their haunches, shifting eye contact with each other as I spelled it out and then told them if they didn’t behave I would put them out in the porch with the cats.

I looked back to see “Millie’s” jaw drop open against the window, struck stupid by the shear thought of canines setting foot in her sunning territory.

Next, our first morning walk—or rather a socket wrenching of my shoulder joints as I was dragged down the field by two dogs pretending to be Great Danes chasing a wild boar.

Using my Alpha voice I threatened to duct tape the mutts to the picnic table if they didn’t slow down. I fell on deaf ears of course, until I mentioned the word “treat” and “home” and “squirrel” in the same sentence.

I leave the dogs in the house when I go to work. “Sit, stay, and be good.”

I come home after eight hours to find the bed sheets in a big ball on the floor, and my favourite “off limits” lounge chair covered in lots of dog hair.

The dog rules. The dogs rule. The doggone rules.

The rulers lie at my feet, look up and slap their tails on the living room floor—Morse code for “I love you, my human.”

I smile. It’s going to be an interesting week.

Wake up and smell the bacon

I believe ice cream has magical properties—and when scooped into a pretty glass dish in big round spoonfuls and topped with homemade caramel sauce and savoured ever so slowly—moves me to write.

Despite the fact that my core temperature has plummeted from eating more than my share of vanilla—and that I can’t feel the tips of my fingers on the keyboard due to the frozen dairy phenomenon—I do believe I am inspired.

Of course, as Murphy’s Law would have it, my old cat “Millie” in calculating a jump into my lap while I sat at my desk, missed, and landed on the keyboard, and with one flick of a paw erased all the work I had done in the past half hour for this column.

I was just about to write about bacon, because as I now understand it—as of Monday, October 26, 2015, at approximately 7 a.m. as the world sat down to breakfast (or breakfast for supper)—we found out bacon is bad for us. Really? Who knew?

When was bacon ever good for us? Hot dog wieners and lunchmeat made the news today, too. Not good for us. Seriously?

We all know what hot dogs are made of. If you do not, look it up. And before October 26th, who out there believed bacon was good for you after what was left in the frying pan congealed into a solid off-white paste?

But bacon tastes good. So does ice cream. The occasional hot dog isn’t so bad either, especially when cooked on a stick over a bonfire. Not much compares actually.

Before October 26^th if I “Googled” bacon I’m pretty sure it would have garnered something other than “bacon cancer” as the first hit, but we’ll never know that now. Bacon’s reputation has been slaughtered.

Pig farmers are royally aflame (my alternate clean description for “ticked off”) at the news that pigs, “the other white meat,” are suddenly and abruptly associated with cancer. 

Beef farmers, are red in the face too, over claims of “hot dog” “lunchmeat” and “cancer” all being used in the same sentence.

I love bacon. I don’t eat it often but when I do, I choose the best I can afford and I enjoy it. Hot dogs sometimes make my list too, and I would still rather eat bacon than smoke one cigarette.

I have two daughters who smoke and have for years. I wish they’d quit. 

They will roll their eyes when they read this because they are well acquainted with my stance on cigarette smoking. 

I want them to live to be healthy little old ladies in rocking chairs watching their great grandchildren play. Chances are good they won’t get the chance if they don’t make good choices with their bad habits. Sorry girls.  

  

I wish for the sake of all our children—who inhale far more nicotine into those lovely fresh young lungs than they will ever eat in bacon and hot dogs—that the health organization would flood the media with enough of THAT travesty in one day’s fell swoop to crash the tobacco industry to the ground for good.

End of story.

Life is a pot of soup

I was sitting at the kitchen table tonight, one hand holding up my head while the other made circles with a spoon in my homemade turkey vegetable soup.

I make a mean turkey vegetable soup. It’s a powerful medicinal bastion that can kill a virus just by its aroma. In fact I believe my turkey vegetable soup is the one and only cure for the common cold.

I sat there stirring the bright colored vegetables and big chunks of turkey meat in a golden-hued broth, steam rising to meet my nose. I watched everything in the bowl take on a speed of its own after I lifted out my spoon.

I was feeling sorry for myself—a self-depreciating talent I am a pro at when I want to be. I was convinced that on the cusp of my 55^th birthday I hadn’t accomplished anything worth celebrating, except for the fact that I was very good at running the two-week marathon from paycheck to pay check. 

Just call me “Stretch Armstrong-Caldwell.”

And I kept stirring that turkey vegetable soup.

“Muffin,” the kitten, who sat like a statue at my feet waiting for a piece of turkey to drop off my spoon, maintained the patience of “Job,”  as motionless as a cat statue in ancient Egypt. She knows it is worth the wait.

Another house companion was outside doing what a grown cat does best—catching unsuspecting birds and mice.

Earlier this evening while working in the barn I followed a trail of  down and feathers to find a robin who won’t be making the fall migration this year, poor fellow. And over there under the “My Barn My Rules” sign is another has-been winged thing, a sparrow. The survival of the fittest hunts here. His name is “Louie.”

I keep stirring my turkey vegetable soup, and my thinking—a revolving door I often lose myself in—takes me places as I try to find good feelings about being 55 and at this juncture in my adventurous life.

The band ‘Five for Fighting’ is singing “100 years” in the background. I flat stare the soup, the kitten, and the falling leaves outside the kitchen window.

It’s difficult not to compare myself to people around me who have the things I don’t have that I wish I did—yet most of those things, my late grandmother would have me know in her spirit whisper, fall darkly under #10 on the big list. Not good.

Then the turkey vegetable soup that I have been staring into for 30 minutes begins to talk to me. Funny enough, I listen to its story.  

“Once upon a time, there was a turkey carcass, some broth, a few spices, a carrot, two onions, some fresh peas, and a scoop or two of elbow macaroni sitting around the table, pointing fingers at themselves for all the things they thought they couldn’t do.

The soup pot said, “Jump in,” and so they did, and something amazing happened. Together they became an amazing soup.

Herein was my lesson.

There is more success in my life and in me than I give myself credit for.

I am a powerful pot of soup.

(One thousand bucks in my bank account would be nice though.)

Now, where did I put that?

20 pieces of underwear, all my socks—each divorced from its mate, multiple pairs of pantyhose of tortuous sizes, and all the trinket junk that covered the bottom of my panties drawer were flung around my bedroom such that a tornado couldn’t have left a bigger mess than I did in about 10 seconds.

I was searching the last bastion of hope for a piece of stainless steel hardware that I needed for the transport of my sailboat mast in the “down” position when trailering ‘Scout” home for the winter months.

I thought I was so smart when I removed the cradle from the bow pulpit last spring and carried the heavy lunker to the trunk of my car, sure to know where I’d store it at home over the summer.

I’d looked everywhere for the missing piece. I must have gone through 30 boxes in the garage, 10 in the shed, and another dozen in the barn hayloft, before searching the basement, porch, kitchen, and finally, my underwear drawer.

The mast hardware is just one in a long list of things I have misplaced over the years. I come from organized stock and I loath to think that I have a list of misplaced things that is longer than my family tree.

The bag of winter clothes is on that list, along with my electric blanket, and the four ft high Christmas tree that I put away two years ago in the basement.

I’ve misplaced my carving tools, guitar music, all the spare light bulbs, 4 D-cell batteries I bought last week for the one flashlight that needs them, and 200 ft of LED lights that I use every year on the tree line of my driveway.

(But I know where the “Doritos Cool Ranch” potato chips are--and the dip—my bag of chocolates and a bottle of red wine.)

A recent update to my laptop required a restart and password verification before I could reap the “El Capitan” benefits. I’d written the secret letters on a piece of paper and put it away a year ago, in case I forgot what it was. And now where it was.

Flat stare.

Misplaced awareness—been there, done that one too. I was engrossed in a television program with my daughter while my grandson sat at our feet, presumably absorbed in the show the grownups were watching. Not so.

There he was quietly sitting with us jamming pieces of Kleenex up his nose until he packed his nostrils so tight that when he sneezed it snowed gobs of white tissue everywhere.

I have revisited the same locations umpteen times in the last week still searching for the mast cradle, hoping I overlooked the shiny hunk of metal and bolts the last time around. 

On the positive side—because there always is one—I found an old lantern I was looking for, and a twenty dollar bill stuffed inside an old running shoe—but not before moving a hair ball—or what I thought was a hairball—out of the way and realizing as I used my bare hand, that it was the thrown up remains of a mouse that my cat had gifted to my shoe.

Misplaced the shoe too. Not sure where it landed when I threw it but I’m not going looking for it.

Remembering the woman who was Florence

A few nights ago, in writer’s block, I pulled two books from the bookcase on “things to write about.” I opened a section and read the first thing I saw.

“You’ve long suspected that your best friend is a CIA operative. Now your child is in danger overseas, and you need help.”  Not touching that one.  

“Your cat (or dog) has a Twitter feed. What are its first three tweets? Flat stare. Try again.

“One of your grandparents teaches you something important.” Bingo.

Then I stumbled on a handwritten note dated July 7, 2006, that I’d penned after tending to my grandmother’s farmhouse a few months after she had died, and in preparation for the new owner---me.  

She was 91. The house was virtually untouched; dressers full, cupboards tipping with dishes, clothing in closets  . . .

“I had decided when I got there that I didn’t want any music playing because I wanted to ‘feel’ the house. I didn’t want to be interrupted in my ‘feeling’ by a song, a commercial, or the news.

Cleaning out a kitchen drawer I found a thin, white triangle of flour sack similar to one I’d seen in an old picture of Grandma standing between two horses at age 18, with her head wrapped in this white thing. I went into the bedroom and stood in front of her dresser mirror and wrapped the white sack around my head, tied it and tucked in the pointy part at the back . . . and then I started sorting . . .

I think I knew my grandmother pretty well but I learned some things I didn’t know about her that day. It’s a different thing when someone passes away and you have to clean stuff out.  You learn in a way that you wouldn’t have known sitting around the kitchen table sharing coffee or tea or lunch. You learn what was really important to them by the things they kept.

God was really important to Grandma. We all knew that. But cleaning out her dresser, the depth of devotion was crystal clear. It was amazing in the long, handwritten verses she’d penned from the bible, to religious poetry, to pages of prayers.

There was a little shoe box stuffed with old photographs, letters, certificates from 1924, having had perfect attendance at Sunday School, and first place ribbons from the World Fair in 1932, and a trunk with every greeting card I think she’d ever received.

I found enough knitting needles to start a small army on the road to knitting a nation.

We all have these truths that we live by. Our word, our manner, our beliefs, but I don’t know that I will ever be able to explain how the important parts of my grandma’s life fit into a little box and the simplicity she lived by. No rough edges, no cracks.

Whatever the life challenges she had, she never strayed out of those beliefs. Never swayed in her faith. Never used life’s difficulties as an excuse for sloughing off on anything. The rules she set for herself were life long. 

I think of the times when I’m having struggles in my life and I am searching. I know where I can go now and won’t ever have to leave. Any answers I seek will be right here at home.”

The incredible journey that is learning

I had just finished a 30-minute job-related mish-mash questionnaire of 50 hypothetical scenarios—the results of which were supposed to magically reveal what kind of a person I “reeeeally” was.

I answered honestly and felt pretty good about that. Then someone, who had never met me before, came in and pulled the questionnaire and left the room. The door was ajar. 

People should be more careful about what they say when someone is listening. A few minutes later I overheard voices in the next room comment that I was “strong-willed”—based on which multiple-choice circle I ‘d penciled in.

I didn’t get the job. 

I’ve never forgotten that interview and how it made me feel about myself. Someone made assumptions instead of getting to know who I really was.

Some of us also would do well to handle texting words with care and—after using angry thumbs to paint sentences of harsh, vindictive, rather hateful comments compiled when one’s heart is sore, take a moment before hitting “Send.” I wish that someone would have taken a walk first, maybe a deep breath or three.

Isn’t it odd, how some of us can text such beautiful phrases one minute and then spit out words born on razor blades the next?

Sadly, once that four-letter word “Send” is triggered, the writer cannot ever take it back. It taints the color of every little good thing that was.

Life can be difficult to get right. 

Some of us, me for one, me for sure, didn’t get dealt the relationship cards I had hoped for and I have learned over time, and time again, that the greatest lesson of my bumpy little love lane is that there are two paths from which to choose: the one I "should" take and the one I want to take. 

Because of the two paths, I’ve pretty much seen it all.

I have been belittled and punched by a man, long since gone from my sight once I learned to stand up. I have weathered the hindsight after a man I loved a very long time, left for work overseas and willingly chose never to come back.

And I know what life looked like in the face of my most beloved—the one I deserved—whose suicide imploded everything.

I have learned through yet another what giving unconditional love feels like, even when it was a dead end—still know what it feels like—and it will never change.

I also know through another what might have been and what was, sadly, are two very different things.

I’m nowhere near perfect—and I don’t want to be. I make mistakes all the time, but I am considerate and I try to be respectful of other people’s attitudes in the wake of my own, very tough decisions on what I need to do for me.

I spend a lot of time learning and relearning what it means to let go of control over someone else’s choices and to listen to my intuition. It always is right.

Sometimes I’m just naïve. Sometimes I try too hard to keep the bridges behind me passable and sometimes I get my eyes pried open. 

Again, I say, there are two paths from which to choose: the one you "should" take and the one you want to take. 

Do not doubt me. Take the second. Always take the second.

   

I see what I see and that's all

There is an old story about a writer who goes to his teacher and says, “Teacher, all the stories have already been told. There is no need for me to write. Everything that needs to be said has already been written.”

“It's true that there are no new stories,” the teacher said. “The universal lessons have been taking place for a long, long time and the same themes have influenced humanity since time began. But no one sees that story through your eyes and no one else in the world will tell that story exactly the way you will. Now return to your desk pick up your pen and tell the world what you see.”

• I see a whole lot more leaves on the ground than I wish were there.

• I see geese flocking by the hundreds in the fields on my way to work and I should stop and admire the beauty in their numbers. Soon they will be in the southern U.S. basking in the sun while I wipe the frost off my eyelashes as I make my way to my snow blower.

• I see I forgot to take the recycle bin to the curb again, for the fourth time in a row.

• I see a pile of bills stacked on my office desk. The one on top says “2nd notice” and the postmark is July 30^th. Oops.

• I see I am out of toilet paper at the moment I need it. The spare roll is in the trunk of my car for when I travel.  Nice.

• I see I have 763 unread emails on my laptop. Guess I’m spending too much time outside the box.

• I see the Christmas catalogue is now available and I have yet to read the “Spring and Summer” version.

• I see, after I stepped in it, the cat barf.

• I see, after I stepped in it, the dog poo in the grass near my sailboat, which also made it into the cockpit.

• I see I forgot to throw those leftovers out, now a green fuzzy thing. What was it again?

• I see that there are consequences in every decision I make and I sometimes I wish someone else would decide.

• I see that I make mistakes.

• I see change coming. I never know if it’s good or not but it’s coming anyway.

• I see I was right.

• I see I was not right.

• I see I can’t do as many things on my own as I thought I could.

• I see life change in an instant.

• I see the signature of my favorite Miller boy, late Jim Miller, in permanent black marker on a saw blade in my barn from the Drennan Reunion in July. Thank God you were here with us.

• I see random acts of kindness not enough.

• I see stories worthy of writing every day and I don’t write them.

• I see I still have much to learn about the two paths in life. Mine and yours.

• I don’t see if they join up yet. I hope they do.

Proud to be an "Outsider"

The last sunset of August hovered on the horizon as I wrote this. 

If you really want to know how fast time flies, watch the sun set. 

In the time it takes to realize how beautiful the purple-hued light is, reach for the camera, and turn back to the beauty, the magic of the light has changed.

I fully understand that the unequivocal speed in the dimming of the day sums up perfectly what time there is NOT to waste hesitating, fearing, and second-guessing in this world.

“The days pass so quickly here,” is a true statement in this world, too,  “Dorothy of Oz.”

My grandchildren, the oldest now nearly 10 years of age, were all here for Granny’s traditional barbecued hot dogs and potato chip extravaganza on Sunday and as they darted about the farm yard chasing Frisbees, sprinted squealing through the water sprinkler, climbed the old tree, and ran around the barn in an energy burst—all I wanted to do was stop time and freeze frame all of my little peppers in the afternoon sun—forever in their youth, innocence, and zest.

With each successive day where temperatures hover in the zone between being too humid and the season of the falling leaf, more and more memories of my childhood come to the surface.

Oh, the days of black rubbers with the red stripe, used in robust playing fields called puddles. My mother called them “pig boots”—a term my grandkids think is hilariously funny.

I remember using all my superpowers while wearing my pig boots as I jumped up and down to empty a puddle of water in the yard. In those days, I wanted to be a hundred things when I grew up—a pilot, an actress, a psychologist—and a biologist. I investigated everything to do with nature.

I’d venture out along the creek bed plunking along in my pig boots picking up fascinating tidbits of bird feathers, clamshells, and pinchers from crayfish.

The pinchers stood out in deep green or fire red, small, fat, and long, sharp ones that, to a kid like me, were a collector’s item. I stored all these marvels together in an old shoebox under my bed but, like most children with a short attention span, forgot about the box for a month or two. 

When I opened it after that, everybody in the house knew it—could smell it—in a New York minute. 

I would sit for hours in the canoe in the middle of the reeds in the creek scooping up water spiders and investigating the world of insects. Still today, when I see a water spider, I think about those days of quiet, simple times I enjoyed so much.  

I had fun shoving old broken hockey sticks down mud holes in gravel roads, walking the fields with a brown paper bag lunch and spending the day exploring the same fence lines I had traveled down the weekend before and the one before that.

I was an “Outsider.” To this day, I remain.  

This is where I'm at right now

I came home tonight to 12C in the house and turned the heat on, crawled into a wool sweater, sweat pants, and a cup of tea for breakthrough chills. I hit the shower soon after that, and turned red like a lobster as I cooked myself in a steam bath.

I’m almost ready to put the electric blanket on my bed—if only I could remember where I stored it last spring.

It’s the 24^th day of August as I write this, and the crisp night air spills out a pungent pre-autumn fragrance of wet, mulching leaves that I love but am in no way ready for. 

Talk to the hand. I have yet to finish unpacking my summer clothes. There’s 16 spring projects and four summer time ones still waiting to be checked off my to-do list and I haven’t yet planted my garden.

But Mother Nature won’t disappoint. She’ll jack the temperature back up to 28C—but only after I use up the rest of my propane blowing the damp cold out, and after I find the electric blanket and have it tucked snugly on my bed and plugged in.

And oh, yes, only after my fall/winter appetite kicks in and I lick the cookie dough bowl clean and eat all the icing I made for the carrot cake.

Yet no matter where I’m at with my to-do list or where the outside temperature sits, Thanksgiving decorations and Halloween witches on brooms already are swinging from the ceiling in department stores. 

The inevitable future is relentlessly everywhere. No wonder so many of us lacks the ability to stay in the present moment when so much out there influences us and convinces us to live for anything but today.

When I think about what keeps me “here,” it’s children, sailing, books, and a good one on one conversation with someone I care about.

Of particular interest to me are the little people around us who live in the "now," like my grandson did when he was three years old. 

As long as he could jump off the bottom step of the staircase, then he could fly and everything was right in his world. Many grownups could take a lesson or two from that primary school of thought.

Little children aren’t consumed by worries of what might happen tomorrow, or next week, and they certainly don’t let the overloaded soul get in the way of what’s right in front of them.

What they have in their hands, the little morsels of toast at breakfast or the playdoh squeezing through the small holes on the top of the hair mold are all that matter at the moment.

If they’re happy, the moment is lived in joy and there is nothing else but that. If they’re angry or sad, the moment is lived thoroughly with tears and screaming and then they leave it behind and move on to the next now.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I too am trying to learn something here. I do my best to pay attention to living in the present moment, and to listen to my intuition when it whispers to me.

Now, if only that whisper would reveal where my electric blanket is hiding.

Here's to 20/20 vision

I have so much to write about and yet I don’t know where to begin. 

How do I prioritize four weeks of great summer adventures and memories? How do I pick which life byte gets the top spot in this space? My writing cup runneth over.

Above all else, I know for sure that time flies. I can hardly believe it is mid-August and that the sunset hour is falling ever closer to 8:30 p.m. from that day not so long ago when we had to wait until 10 p.m. for enough darkness to see the fireworks.

And while mothers everywhere are practicing the jig for that first school day – where did the summer go?

I spent the thick of mine on a mission to ready this old farmyard and field and my big old red barn for the biennial “Drennan Reunion” and the spirited lot of Irish descendants who move in with their camper trailers, tents, and joviality for the last weekend in July.

We see each other after a two-year hiatus and it’s like we’ve never been apart. We hug and laugh and sing, and connect. It’s medicine for the ancestral souls in all of us.

My old red barn, long since retired from her farming days, came to life again, along with her kin, and radiated into the night as light shone through every old crack and pinhole from the cupola to the foundation. 

It was one of the most beautiful and memorable moments of my summer when I saw that barn that I love so very much reflect such a visible happiness.

At this time of year, I readily admit I have little time set aside to sit and write, but as the weeks pass and I don’t honor my craft, my soul starts to back up from all the thoughts I’ve been hoarding.

Life is short. Share. Write now.

1.          I am still trying to let go.

2.          I will succeed.

3.          I will fail.

4.          I will try again, succeed, fall back, step forward, and grow new branches on my tree of life.

5.          I practice every day the fine art of gratitude. I don’t think I will ever stop being a part of that noun.

6.           Sailing is my greatest passion and yet . . .

7.           I am not as brave in a sailboat by myself as I thought I would be.

8.           I will succeed at being brave.

9.           I will fall short of being brave.

10.        I will succeed again.

11.        I am driven to live the ABC’s of life.

12.        I am Adventurous.

13.        I am Brave.

14.        I am Creative.

15.        I am not the world’s best mother, but I do the best I can and l love my daughters fiercely and equally so.

16.        I am wise and I know more than I know you think I do.

17.        I am not the world’s best Granny. I could do better.

18.        August 19^th is Jon Fistler’s birthday. He would have been 55.

19.        Life is short.

20.        “Tell the truth that is in your heart like hidden treasure. There is no time for anything else.”

Life is an old family recipe

First of all, I wish I could say I invented the title of this column, but I did not.

I opened the cover of the August edition of “O, The Oprah Magazine” and there it was in an “IKEA” ad. Sometimes my themes cook up that way, like instant potatoes, they grow into something really good from nothing more than flakes.   

I’m at a bit of a standstill with my sailing adventures in that my rather antiquated six horsepower motor continues to gum up and give me angst. Nothing worse for a fresh new solo sailor (whose first real adventure was wrought with stormy memories) than to be threatened shortly thereafter and repeatedly with a coughing, sputtering two-stroke disaster.

Who knew one could have a touch of posttraumatic stress disorder after a rag doll affair in a sailboat. Yup uh huh.

So my motor is in the shop and sailing is sidelined until “Little Miss Evinrude” is running like a top.

No doubt I am trying to embrace my own preachings of patience—especially since I’ve waited months to sail and find myself stalled by simple mechanics.

Even so, I could use time at the dock to practice my bowlines. The “rabbit” and I are not seeing eye to eye at all.

I have failed to grasp and put into action the rote lesson, “You make a loop, the rabbit comes up through the hole, goes behind the tree and back down the hole,” more times in the last six weeks from fellow sailors trying to teach me how to tie the ultimate sailing knot, than I did in all the cumulative years of lessons learned raising three teenage girls and learning that I cannot  “nail ‘Jell-O’ to a tree.”

So I lean back into “Life is an old family recipe.”

What does that mean to you?

Perhaps it is simply that old family recipe of homemade bread, rhubarb jam, or a fruitcake recipe handed down by your grandmother and into your kitchen and out among your children.

Perhaps “Life is an old family recipe,” is reflected in your vegetable garden or in your hay field, because it’s the same way your father or your grandfather taught you.

Perhaps it is simply that you raised your children inside the same values you were taught from your parents. Perhaps it is that you raised your children outside of the values you were taught from your parents. Both are your recipe choices.

Perhaps it is the value you place on spiritual growth, a belief or understanding of a power greater than yourself--or a non-belief. Either way, it’s your life recipe, and your choice.

Perhaps “Life is an old family recipe,” is based on always being in control, or in letting go, being cherished or neglected, challenged or encouraged, smiled upon or always judged—and living it forward or passing it on—or not. Choices. 

“Life is an old family recipe.” 

And for what it’s worth, I think it’s worth some thought.

Time out for other stuff in life

Time out for other things in life

There’s a downside to throwing all of myself for months into a passionate hobby like sailing. Nothing else around here gets done.

The grass grew eight inches, dust settled in thick layers on windowsills and end tables and reminded me of what an abandoned house must look like.

The laundry was ignored until I ran out of underwear and was forced to dig out the dreaded “thong thing” I swore never to don again. Garbage day was missed so many times that I needed to buy bag tags—and used the whole package in one day.

What used to be the vegetable garden is now a weed patch overrun with thistles and crab grass. And oh, yes, let’s not forget about Mr. Squirrel, who during my sailboat frenzy found himself a mate and had a family of their own inside my sleeping bag in the garage.

The general lifelessness around here also signaled an infiltration of 32 geese that have been pooping themselves in just about every corner of my yard, including at my back door.

My daughters and grandchildren haven’t seen me in so long that they’ve started to rely on photographs to remind themselves of what I look like.

While my sailboat is a shiny new penny the other three quarters of my life has toppled into the red flag district of neglect.

Sometimes I feel like peanut butter melted to a thin paste in the hot summer sun and spreadable only in transparent layers. Spread thin—very, very thin.

It was my goal this past weekend to answer some of “today’s” questions such as, “Do I remember what a dust mop looks like?” “What is a vacuum cleaner?” and “When was the last time I took a stroll through the field?”

I was amazed to see during my field trip that the hay mixture out there is nearly waist high. How did that happen so fast and how did I miss it?

I also was reintroduced to wood ticks. A walk in the field made me fair game.

I didn’t find the tick on the inside arch of my foot until I was in the shower. I thought it was a piece of fuzz. When I tried to flick it off, the tick got stuck to my index finger causing me to freak out as I tried to boil it off with the shower head and down the drain, where I then imagined it clinging to the side of the pipe until the middle of the night, when it would crawl back up the drain hole and be waiting for me on the toilet seat in the morning.

It’s amazing how scared I get of something so small—right up there with thong underwear and yet am willing to strike out again alone in a sailboat after a rocky adventure in a storm.

Nonetheless, I am back up to speed around here. I managed to clean my bathroom, relocate the squirrel family, cut the grass, do laundry, dust, bake some muffins, and make plans to get reacquainted with my six little peppers.

And then I took my dad sailing and we had fun. I really can do it all.