December 15

 2019
Around Beaufort:  Caroling with St John's Lutheran, music at the bar

2018

Straits of Juan de Fuca

2017

Day 7 of b/w challenge

2016

I smell acrid smoke,
I hear raucous crowing, and
I gaze, shivering.

2014

Los peregrinos
Sing loudly nearby as we
Try to rehearse Grieg.
#interesting.blends

2013

Just, wow. I love her, and I love Deb for posting this. For all its obnoxious qualities, FB still brings joy.

Anne Lamott

A friend is on an exquisite cruise in the Mediterranean, eating lavishly low-calorie, exercising a lot, seeing beautiful cities. Another friend just returned from a spa week across the border.
I am bitter and enraged.
My mistake was to have a child, who in turn had a child, so we have a children-y situation here 4 days week. No WAY children or grandchildren make up for spa week--hot rock massages and facials--or a cruise on the Mediterranean--lobster and spin classes. I'm just saying.
Plus one of the aforementioned children has a girlfriend, who has large pit bull, who has eaten the eyes out of FIVE of the smaller child's favorite stuffed animals, not to mention having decapitated the little wolf pup Bruin, which I did sew back together, with a huge button over the stoma in his little throat, so he looks like a Humane Society anti-smoking commercial.
Not to mention that my older brother and his fiancée live here almost half time, too, with their two furry units, so that Connie can be on a clinical trial at UC Med, for her pesky stage 4 breast cancer. One of their little dogs is a dreamboat with Keane eyes. The other is a Nervous Case who has to wear a woolen psychiatric vest called a Thundershirt to calm his infinite anxieties. It's like a festive canine straitjacket. Both dogs have had hard-to-treat yeast infections in their ears, which creates a terrible smell. I have two dogs living here whose ears smell bad! Like I don't have enough self- esteem issues as it is.
But when I woke up yesterday, I noticed something: there were no children here, on whom to blame my holiday unease. There were no pit bulls, or dogs with fetid ears. There was just me, my two aging dogs, the temple cat Gringo, and of course, the bad roommate, my mind. There was nothing really wrong, except it is December; and nothing I particularly had to do; and yet, I was flat and discontent.
You can't go out these days because its freezing cold and the traffic is terrible, and people are complete asshats on the road, and people on the trail sometimes don't even say "Hi," back to me--what the HELL is that about, when you say hi to people and smile, and they pass in silence? All that repressed rage and arrogance--it makes me wish I has a taser. (Am kidding.) (Sort of.)
But then I thought of my brother's dog Baxter, who is the Nervous Case lovebug in his Thundershirt. And I realized it was ME, or at any rate, the bad roommate, anxious, over-protective, desperate for love, with tiny distressing body issues. So first I took a long hot shower--I THINK I smell good, but maybe my friends call each other and say, ""Oh, I love her so much, but her ears are so smelly. You should tell her." "No, you tell her, Al."
Then I took my limpy dogs for a walk through the 'hood, and flirted with every single person I saw. My two-year-old friend was crying in his carseat, because he has a 5- month old sister, who, while cute, has basically ruined his life by her very existence. (I mean this nicely. Let's face facts.) (I ruined my older brother's life by being born, which he freely admits. He took one look at my precious infant self, and said to my parents, "Take it back." I'm not stupid: the dogs with smelly yeast infection ears are part of his lifelong thirst for revenge.)
Anyway, I ran back to my house and gave my short friend one my grandson's "Cars" cars--He was happy again, and so was I. Note to self: If you want to have loving feelings, do loving things.
I did stuff like that all day, to create a Thundershirt for my worried, agitated self. I became joyfuI, probably slightly annoying, with love and generosity, beginning with me: I create cruise-ship spa day in my own little tie-dyed town. I made myself do an online meditation (audiodharma.com) at gunpoint. Well, a gun made of my forefinger, but very threatening none-the-less. I made corn tortillas with cheese and guacamole for breakfast. I bought myself a pomegranate and the new People, which is about as spa as you get. Then I went for a hike, where THREE people did not say Hi back to me; and I smiled. I laughed gently to myself, shook my head. And it was good.
Then I made a bed on the couch, and looked up poems by Rumi that mention pomegranates. Wow. and thanks: back in the saddle. I'll leave you with this one:
The words that make the rose bloom were also said to me.
The words told to the cypress to make it grow strong and straight,
The instructions whispered to the jasmine,
And whatever was said to the sugarcane to make it sweet,
And to the pomegranate flowers to make them blush,
The same thing is being said to me.

Juncos, jays, finches
Provide endless enchantment
Even when they fight.

2010
She left half her scone.
Now I know how she maintains
That slender physique.

2009
I love my new hydraulic desk!!!