Stain-glass Eyes

Picture of Michigan Apples (sent to me from my sister, Kathy) I never considered myself a “Health Nut”.  The term itself I think implies being healthy makes a person crazy or nuts. I do take my health into consideration every day.  I want to live a quality life if I’m going to live.  Being able to do that takes a lot of thinking ahead.   food choices sleep practices hydration exercise stress levels medical follow-ups hygiene practices I don’t believe any of those things I have a strong conviction about make me nuts.  (I have a lot of other issues that make me “Crazy-like”, but I don’t think being healthy is one of them). Do I follow the list?  Pretty much.  There’s a compromise I have to make sometimes, for all of them, but I keep them in my mind all the time.   Homemade Yogurt (My daughter, Elizabeth sent me a picture of her results) A Recipe From Elizabeth (She often inspires me to eat healthy)  ...

NaNoWriMo ( National November Writing Month)   has been a challenge again to write 50,000 words in thirty days.  https://nanowrimo.org 50,000 words can seem intimidating, especially when I skipped writing for a day or two.  The panic hit when I kept seeing there were fewer days left to get the novel finished.  But I accomplished my goal.  Today is the last day of November and I’ve written 50,000 words.   After I Iost a friend to death this month, I didn’t think I could write.  And when the election results came in on the same day as my friend’s funeral, I felt I was grieving two-fold.  My brain was full of sadness.  The sadness permeated all my power to think.  It felt like my thoughts had been put into an apple press and it had mashed up everything, leaving me with liquid. When I began writing, for the NaNoWriMo challenge, I’d look at my computer screen, put my fingers on the keyboard and nothing.  No ideas, no ...

I lost a friend. It hurts and it hurts.   Loving is risky business.  I allow myself to love and I know damn well I leave myself open to pain.  I know you may be thinking, “That sounds pretty depressing and pessimistic!”   But I’m grieving and I’m allowing myself to feel depressed and pessimistic for now.   I’m angry, too.  I wanted….I needed…it’s about me.  I wanted to say goodbye to Doug.  I wanted to tell him how much confidence he gave me every day by being my friend.  I wanted to tell him how much I admired his intelligence, his worldliness  and his kind heart.  And most of all I loved his zeal for living and his sense of humor toward life.   Doug owned the Washtenaw Dairy.  I didn’t know him as the owner.  I knew him as the “Boss” at the end of the table.  He was 90 and he had been around long enough to command the title “Boss”.  When he entered the Dairy in the morning his presence was...

Words limit my ability to describe the essence of my mom. I wonder what she’d say about her ninety years.  I know she’s said that many years of rearing the kids were a blur.  But I wonder if family, national and world events stand apart from her other memories? What did she see, hear, feel and experience in the years of her life, from 1926 to 2016?   She started out in MacMillan, Michigan as a child. Her family, the Neys, lived on a farm.  No electricity, no television, no car.  Twelve siblings and Mom’s mom raising basically alone.  Mom’s father was off working port to port on the Great Lakes ships.   The Era of the Great Depression The Great Depression     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH20lpFu_3Q Mom was raised in the Baptist religion.  The weeks revolved around the chores, school and church.  It didn’t sound like there was a lack of fun, music and adventures, though. When she was five years old Mom ...

Entering the YMCA locker room this week, I heard a conversation between two young women.  I had to walked past them to get to a locker with a bench, so I wasn’t actually making an effort to listen.   They were doing a lot of preening and couldn’t possibly have noticed I had to turn my body sideways to get by them as they flitted their feathers and checked beneath their wings for anything that might make them less desirable than the rest of the flock. They stood by the large mirror with a counter where the hairdryers are located.   “Does my butt look fat in these pants?  I want your honest answer. Do they?” This dark-haired, dark-eyed, beautiful, young woman had a frown on her face questioning her friend.  The young woman who was no less than two feet taller than her, blond hair and thin as a soda straw,  said, “Yes, they do”.  (Well, I spoke too soon on the “Friend” label)   There was silence.  Not a shower was...

My Son, Holden Coping styles vary with each person.  As different as individual designs on butterfly wings. Trial and error coping at times.  Other times planned and plotted like a strategy in a chess game. I use to believe an ability to cope was a matter of luck.  I thought the more fortunate a person was, the better they were able to cope .  I don’t believe that any more.  It could be in the past I was hoping it was just luck.  Because coping isn’t easy.  I think I hung on to my belief in luck or providence otherwise I would have had to admit it was hard, hard work.  Believing it’s luck is an easy way out. Well, actually, it’s not an easy way out.  Not coping is one of the most painful routes I’ve ever taken.  It’s like a long, long stumble through a maze that dead ends and when you get to the dead end you realize you have to back-track all the way, to start a new direction. My son recently wrote a guest blog for T...

Cranes stretching over mountains of building materials, like praying mantises ready to eat.  People in their cars stretching their necks, (beyond what is normal) to find a parking space near Main Street.  Bumper to bumper traffic, due to city street closures and another downtown festival. Temperatures in the upper-eighties making sharing the humid air more difficult.  University of Michigan students moving back in for the new school year… — I left Ann Arbor. Even after I got out of Ann Arbor, I still had to go through traffic stops on 23 North.  60 MPH then 45 MPH then 70 MPH.  Back and forth until I set myself back in my seat and relaxed.  I started focusing more on the scenery than the time I was spending on the road.  Once I decided  to head for the “Thumb” area of Michigan, I figured being prepared was crucial.  I knew the towns were small, in-between each, large, span of farmland.   jugs of drinking water spray bot...