from the mixed-up files of a middle-aged mind

i planned on reading the book for book club this month. at the risk of being mean, i've decided to attempt to write this post without saying the name of the book i'm talking about, but we'll see how it goes. (or rather, to avoid coming across as mean.) it was not a book i had selected or voted for. in fact at the time we chose it as a group i can't recall if i mistook it for its sister book or if i knew already i didn't want to read it. memory--at leas mine--is fickle like that. in any case, when i heard we were reading it this month at first i mistook it for its sister book. two friends--very funny--write books. my kid who at the time was fascinated by tv comedy and movies and screenplays and all sorts of clever (because he is clever) bought both books. with my money, but still, they were his. in any case, i tried to read the first one and didn't get much past the first chapter. there was an edge, a bitterness, yes, i'll say it, a meanness to ...

my grandfather--well, one of them--lived to be 98 years old. nearly every day i saw him the last handful of years of his life--you know, the five plus years he was on hospice. and oxygen. he would say to me "growing old ain't for sissies." well shoot. i'm just a bit over halfway there and i'm already hurting, so i just don't know about that. i'd like to think that as long as i keep moving--even if s-l-o-w-l-y--i'll be ok. but i just don't know. sometimes i want to live a long time and visit all the places and see and do all the things and love all the people and watch all the babies be born and grow and do things and become who they are and get married and have their own babies. some days i worries this is a hard cruel world and i don't know that i can lose anyone else or watch any more people i love suffer any more and i want to be done sooner rather than later. i just don't know. sometimes i have hope we will clean up...

i don't understand a lot of things. i don't understand why i'm content to not yet understand some things, but discontent to not understand others. this prompt was issued before the latest school massacre. i don't understand why so many this year already, so many the year before, and the year before, since ??, since columbine, since forever. and we do nothing but yell at each other across the divide. i told my son today i'd like to think there are rational people who understand we need to quit yelling at each other and find some common ground and sit down at the table together to find some solutions both sides can live with but that the media doesn't talk about it because they get more clicks from the yelling (i don't hate the media. i know there are good people working hard to sort fact from fiction and get to and reveal the truth. but greed and profit seem to rule the corporate world.) i don't understand why we are tearing apart families and y...

The best posts I read about fruit are metaphorical rather than literal, but the truth is I love grapefruit. Instead of buying soda, I sometimes splurge and purchase the rather expensive fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice available sometimes at Macey's. I work really hard not to see again that time I was there while the Macey's employee was pushing fresh citrus down the machine. Did he wash it first? (I always wash my produce before I cut into it.) Did he wash his hands??? The other day I stopped at the El Salvadoran restaurant on my way home from seeing The Post--by myself (the restaurant, not the movie, where I was met by a friend) and ordered their steak and fries because I knew the steak is marinated in grapefruit juice. (I keep mistyping grapefruit.) Even though I like it so very much, I rarely buy grapefruit. Is it because the best grapefruit are sold at Sam's and I only have a Costco membership? Am I lazy? It takes time to loosen the flesh from the me...

my work is loving the world. that means finding joy in cloudy skies happiness in rainy days enduring a too-warm too-dry winter that wasn't without at least too much complaint, maybe only feeling a little guilty for not hurting from the cold looking up and finding light when your heart is down or feeling dark laugh a little, even when you feel like crying being kind to yourself even when the voices you hear in your head are harsh that's where it starts then it means looking outward even when you feel compelled to retreat inward lifting, loving others whose hearts and heavy and feelings are dark noticing and appreciating and paying forward kindness both small and large remember, there are no small things being of good cheer even on those "fake it till you make it" days maybe especially on those seeking understanding and responding in kindness to those who lash out and wound maybe even removing yourself from target practice or that which dra...

Today I'm proud of getting back on the horse. Several weeks ago I went to write my post and was horrified to see words to the effect that nothing was here. In other words, this is not the blog you're looking for. After losing years of writing before, I was tempted to panic, but didn't. At least at first. It was easy to think maybe the issue was with GoDaddy. "Perhaps GoDaddy got up and went." I thought. But as days went on and after multiple calls by both me and my friend whom I thought was hosting my blog, it became apparent the issue was more serious. Apparently there had been a miscommunication between my friend and I went I took over responsibility for my domain name and while I still don't know who has been hosting my blog since that time over a year ago, or how or why it got disconnected, apparently I am both host-less and blog-less. Well, unless you could my half-dozen other blogs on blogger. I have been stressed at work and loathe to take on ...

"Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend." Martin Luther King Jr. Sometimes I feel I'm a broken record, writing the same stories over and over. I've written before about several people with whom I did not exactly hit it off, but who I later came to view as a close friend. I was thinking about this recently and about how this happens. I love Brene Brown's work on vulnerability and wonder if perhaps the short cut is when someone shows you their heart--even if briefly--which illuminates a path for your love to work it's way in. A friend of mine (Internet friend, of course--we've never met IRL) recently wrote a Valentine's tribute to her husband. It wasn't soft of mushy. In fact in it she mentioned she is not easy to love and described both her husband and herself as hard coolies. But then she went on to pay tribute to some of the great qualities she noticed and admired in him. I think that's the key. When prese...