A merry little Christmas story

“What if I choose not to believe?”

It’s a line from one of my favorite movies of the holiday season, “The Santa Claus.”  

I’ve always believed in the power of mystery and magic and the older I get the more I understand that my attitude towards everything really is everything.

I have an old rotary dial telephone in my kitchen—not wired in—but yet a direct line to the North Pole.

No “elf on the shelf in my house.” I’m the elf.

I can call the big guy in the red suit at any given hour on any given day and have a heart to heart.

My grandchildren know about the phone too, and this time of year it’s an especially popular item in my neck of the woods. It’s mystery and magic.

My grandchildren also know that the North Pole never says a word in return. Instead, the other end of the line has the best listening skills of all. The North Pole is a “mouth closed, ears open, presence available,” kind of mystery and magic connection.

You’d be surprised how many times I’ve picked up that phone, too, and made my own wishes known to the mystery and magic. Granted I’ve asked for “grown up” things—patience (because sometimes mine lasts about as long as my pinkie finger in a clothespin,) world peace, a break on my taxes, and a rush job on getting answers for some of my “issues.”

Why, just the other day after fighting my way into the porch with the “real” big Christmas tree I’d purchased and laying waste to the rug with sawdust after a pathetic attempt to saw a slice off the trunk, did I call the North Pole.

I was good and hot under the collar. I told the North Pole all about it and that I was swearing off the one-woman Paul Bunyan exploration for a Christmas tree. Next year I was going to instruct my “honey-do” to  “pick whatever tree you like honey, it’s not my department.”

Don’t get me wrong; home queens like me have got it together. My mind is a multi-tasking bionic unit like nothing man will ever know. I’m one of a kind. And I also know what a good Christmas tree looks like. I just shouldn’t volunteer to put it up.    

After my rant to the North Pole, a calmer me went back to the tree, now cringing in the corner of the porch—and mathematically evaluated whether or not 15 strings of LED lights, 20 years of ornaments and children’s Christmas art work would be enough to cover the monstrosity I had just purchased. 

At closer attention, I realized the woman with the saw had hacked off the trunk just below the two good branches on the bottom, leaving no room for the tree stand. Awesome. The tree would be just the right height for a dog to pee on—but that’s another story.

Merry Christmas everyone. Don’t stop believing in the mystery and the magic.  

Goldfish looking good right about now

One minute I was having the best of dreams and the next my eyelids dragged themselves up off my eyeballs to reveal the night—black as the inside of a cow. I looked at the clock. It was 2:30 a.m.  The soft jingle of a Christmas bell rolling across the floor pulled my carcass to a sitting position.

I listened. The bell rolled along, bumping into static objects where it stopped jingling until a kitten paw knocked it back across the floor. I flat stared the darkness.

When nothing is stirring—not even a mouse—how does a cat manage to find things capable of making noise?

Nonetheless, I had a mercenary kitten with nighttime vision terrorizing the Christmas decorations on the inaugural evening of my holiday decor.

Yet there I sat slack jaw, a trail of dream drool leaking from my bottom lip. I just couldn’t pull the rest of my carcass out from under the warm flannel sheets to investigate the festive mayhem.

Instead, I took the plunge and fell back upon my memory foam pillow and bed like the girl in the 1970’ s “Nestea” ice tea commercial, and drowned again into my dream world.

In the few precious minutes before my 5 a.m. alarm, the mercenary of the night pounced upon me—a yet unmoving entity—to knead upon my skull. As my forehead got a facelift I pondered about the things I wanted to do today, like “not move.”

I pried my carcass from my cozy nest and dragged it to the kitchen for my routine morning glass of water and contact lens insert.

No sooner had I drank the vital liquid regenerate and reconnected my eyes to the world around me, did I soak up the scene spilling into my waking brain.

Meanwhile, the one in trouble purred and rubbed along my pajama bottoms in a show of pleasure at my morning awakening—seemingly happy to show me the Christmas catastrophe. 

I would have rather found three dead mice presented in a row on the kitchen floor with their heads missing than what I did find. 

Instead, copious beheaded buds of holly berries, ripped from the vines of décor I had placed most creatively on my bookcases and shelving, lay in twisted piles on the kitchen and living room floors.

Handfuls of Santa’s wee elves, uprooted from their holiday posts, were prone on their backs under the kitchen table, legs and arms askew in defense of cat mania.

And how did the kitten make it to the ceiling?  Sprigs of mistletoe from up there, dangled suspiciously, and Christmas lights from windows drooped in near spills of disaster.

The little cat sat down its haunches, fluffy black and white-chested with a big furry tail wrapped ‘round the front of its body like a photo from a Christmas card.

I just couldn’t help smiling at its cuteness amid my firm and pointed finger reprimand. “Next time I’m getting a goldfish.”

Then a mouse ran across the floor and up the Christmas tree.

“Oh no!”

My slant and rant

At the end of my fingertips, every day, there is a story. I see, I feel, I think, I write. 

I could take the next 500 words to expound on what I feel about the media’s obsession with terrorism.

I could take the next 510 words to paint a picture of what I think about the business of racial profiling that I see every single day in the news, when the media giants decide what is the most important story and suck the marrow out of it. 

I could add another 500 words to express my opinion and disgust for how we are drawn to the major news stations each day with a really good cup of coffee, and where we seek and find a stirred and foul pot so full of the bad and the ugly that it makes us bitter.

 Many of us come away with an empty cup, convinced there is absolutely no kindness anywhere, no smiles, no happiness, no friendship, no goodwill, no simple humanity, nor hope. 

I don’t have “cable.”  Call me naïve, it’s okay.  (I learned a long time ago that what others think about my choices is their “stuff” and not mine.)

I woke up one morning in mid-2012 excited that I was planning a trip to Wales, U.K. and the television news gurus were spouting at the mouth about how dangerous it was to fly.

All of the bad and scary news immediately robbed me of my excitement about my trip abroad and I was drawn deeper into the fray. From inside my heart leapt my joy--exchanged in an instant for fear, trepidation, and suspicion. Absolute joy sucked out—and replaced by the second-guessing of “living” for the “what if” of dying. That is when I turned the television off. 

Yet I’m not stupid. I know the world has a tremendous amount of chaos and angry disruption and unthinkable days that bring many of our innocent fellow earth dwellers to an end far short of their expectations. Despite the fact that I don’t have a intravenous line to cable television, I am not clueless. I am not heartless, and I am not ignorant of “what is.”

But, despite all of it, I will not respond in a conversation that begs the question “What is this world coming to?” That way of thinking is a direct result of too much media influences and be sure of this—the big guns—the mainstream media—capitalize on shock value and they are winning. 

And if you are going to spew out negative comments about the Syrian refugees and immigrants who will be given a chance at a new life in this great country within the next few weeks—I, for one, will not fuel that conversation either.

Unless you grew from an amoeba at the river’s edge—we are all the lucky stock of immigrants who long ago came from lands of unrest and poverty to find a better life.

Welcome home.

To paraphrase the best sayings of the moment;

Shut off the television. Dance, sing, and talk to strangers. Smile at everyone. Say “thank you” to someone who doesn’t expect it. Love, and make it count. Take chances. Spend a lot time with kids, laugh every chance you get.

Help someone in need.  Help others, again and again and for Heaven’s sake, be positive.

The little boat that built a story

December 2^nd marks two-months since my sailboat was pulled off the lake for the winter. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was on the water with that little blue-hulled beauty, yet memories of sailing her across the bay to meet up with friends at a favorite anchorage on a sunny warm afternoon were recorded September 27^th in my diary.

I wonder if “Scout” misses me, landlocked in the backyard under layers of blue tarps and a skiff of snow, frozen where she sits.

She’d helped build a bolder “me” this past summer.

I learned to trust and lean in and let go.

She’d helped build me brave, nimble-footed, and into a sequential thinker.

I learned about challenge and what inexperience means when in a storm and unprepared.

I also had learned that paying attention to the lake map is important, because when I didn’t—and when my first mate didn’t either—even a little “Scout” boat like mine could run aground out on the lake on rocks on an otherwise quiet and uneventful evening.

During at the Rendezvous Yacht Club’s annual “Commodore’s Presentation” held recently, we celebrated the outgoing sailing season and the boat captains who made names for themselves by being really, really good sailors and winning races.

We also highlighted the blooper in the bunch.

Just as I was ramping up a loud guffaw for the name of whichever fellow sailor would be tagged as the annual rock tumbler, I was called to the front of the room to accept the “Rock Award” for 2015.

Drats! Obviously my cloaking device out on the lake didn’t work.

The jolly roving tar that had come to my rescue on that rocky day also had a camera around his neck to document the whole incident.

But it was good for a laugh.

Who knows where the lake will take me next summer, but two things are goals—away from storms and rocks.

Meanwhile, in the two months since my boat was bedded on a trailer here in my neck of the woods, it has taken me nearly all of that time to “fine tune” my tarp system to keep the rain and snow from pooling on it. 

I worked and reworked and re-reworked the tarps to a skin-tight fit, only to come home a few hours later and find a lake had formed in the cockpit.

Then two weeks ago, after the last big rainfall when I came home after work to find the tarps drooping again like old eyelids, I lost my ever-so-cool “cool.” 

I morphed into a “Dr. Jekyll” version of “Yosemite Sam.”

It was a good job there was no one around to hear me shouting. I blamed every man who’d ever come through my life and not stayed. Everything I’d wanted to say to each of them spilled out of my mouth in any angry tangent as I tied those tarps down once and for all.

Funny enough, I did such a good job of it I won’t ever have to worry again about that boat for the rest of the winter.

Thank you kindly gentlemen.

For the love of dogs and teachers like you

No word of a lie, it was indeed an interesting week.

I am on a doggie hiatus, having been relieved of my duties by “Mr. P,” who returned from the North just in time to save me from “Little Miss Goes Berserk.” 

And as “Pepe” and “Bear” piled into my boyfriend’s truck and took up their travel positions, a part of me wished the dogs would stay another week, maybe two—but then I slapped myself across the face—twice—and repeated the words uttered by Cher in the 1987 movie “Moonstruck.”

“SNAP OUT OF IT!”

When the dogs left the yard for home, I rubbed my red and smarting cheek and then bolted inside and skidded across my kitchen floor, pumped one fist, and screeched at the top of my lungs,  “Freedom!” as I played air guitar.

I was Tom Cruise in the 1983 movie “Risky Business.”  

I danced the “Funky Chicken” by myself, jumped up and down all over my bed (and the one in the spare room,) line danced with a stuffed animal named “Joe”—the sacrificial monkey with a permanent smile—who survived a week of being thrashed around by “Pepe.” 

Then I cracked open a bottle of red wine and had two glasses before I realized it was only 2:30 in the afternoon.

What the heck. The sun was shining. I took the bottle outside and grabbed a lawn chair and piled into my solo Sunday afternoon like an audience of concert fans.

Surely, yes, there had been doggone good times. There also had been  dogged settings ripped from the 1837 children’s classic, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

I’d come home to a house hurricane with bed sheets set to chaos. Cupboard doors (at dog level) were thrown open and—yes believe it or not—the “Quaker Oats” bag had been discovered, dismembered, and oatmeal had been strewn about in mouthfuls.

As I entered the storybook scene, I uttered the words of my childhood readings, “Someone has been eating my porridge!” and “Someone has been sleeping in my bed!”

“Pepe” and “Bear,” curled up quaintly on my expensive leather sofa, glanced up from their faked daylong housings, with shifty stares of innocence. Guilty as charged.

I’ve since foamed my peed-on carpet, pushed four loads of dog blanket laundry through my washing machine, and picked at least a wig’s worth of dog hair off my furniture.

Yet sadly there are no vociferous “woofs” and dog hugs that signal my furry friends’ excitement to my homecoming from work.

It is very quiet in here. The doggone dogs might I say, are missed.

And for you, Joyce Cunningham, one of the finest English teachers of my high school years, who passed away on November 7^th, 2015, far too soon for this town of your passion, and most certainly before you and I had had one last chat on the controversial subject of using a conjunction to begin a sentence, I end this story wishing you were still here.

But alas, we don’t always get what we wish for and yet no matter what, I will never forget you, the teacher who gave me wings.  

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.