News you can use
News you can use
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Up at 6:30 and out the door to walk Lola. The sun is almost up, the sky spread cool with night clouds. These days, when Lola and I go walk-about, I have an entourage. A few months ago Josue and family adopted a pup, named him Hunter. He is mild-mannered. Most of the time. He thinks I am his. When he hears my belled gate open, Hunter bounds like Tigger, meets me with wet tongue greetings. Lola takes lead. Hunter races between me and Lola. Hunter does not walk. Pup, remember. A...
Thank you, Ram Dass. I confess, I’ve not read his book of above title. But I understand the concept, some. I do be, and I be where I am planted, and I be where I am right at this moment, glorying in the beauty (even when mixed with pain) I am given, every day. I often say, I am the luckiest woman. However … An unusual thought-want-desire-plan sprang nearly whole into my mind the other night while my eyeballs ran over the first paragraph in a new book I’d just sat down to read....
Our gardener, Leo, was gone for a week, off to the beaches of Cabo San Lucas with a group of friends. "No worries, Leo. I can water my own plants. I'll do a section every day. Go have fun. All will be well." Easy to say, yes? Harder to live the reality. I figured three sections: front of house, back and sides of house, back yard. One, two, three. Easy, peasy. Plants, however, are not logical. If a plant is gasping, pleading, "Feed me, feed me," what is a woman to do. I...
We Human Beans are strange creatures, are we not? Oh, maybe not you, but me, my hand is raised. My mind works in strange ways. Take yesterday. Yesterday, I seemed determined to feel sorry for myself. Temperatures were flirting with 100 degrees, a mere kiss away, lips smooched into a pucker. It is our hot season. Not unusual for here. April, May, mid-June. Then the blessed, glorious rains and cool perfection at 85. Big deal, right? In July and August in North-central Montana,...
This is the way we wash our clothes, early Monday morning. Mid-cycle, my washing machine quit working. I mean quit. Dead in the water. I mean, dead, full of water and soggy clothes. The machine gave up, quit, somewhere in rinse cycle. So I had to swish and wring the entire soggy mess out by hand and pin everything on the line, slightly drippy. I knew the clothing would dry quickly, afternoons hang out in the high 80s or lower 90s these days. The day the machine quit, my...
Remember when you couldn’t wait? When each additional year brought joyful anticipation, jumping up-and-down glee? What? When you were 6. Then 10. 18. Even, in a different way, 21. That was then. I have a dear friend who still gets that excited. For years she has extended birthdays from The Day to The Birthday Week and celebrates herself every day. She’s healthier than I am. Me, I skulk around hoping nobody remembers. I don’t want any fuss. So I keep schtum. I also have frien...
John stopped by and plunked a book the size of a dictionary onto my table. When we get together we invariably weave words into a maze of history, philosophy, politics: world situations as we see them. “Ah, just what I need,” I said as I scanned the title. “A large dose of depression.” He and I speak a similar style of tangents, so John rejoined with, “I read an article in the WP yesterday that implied we are lacking one main element in our outlook.” “Intelligen...
A few weeks ago, well, several weeks ago, well, a whole lot of weeks ago, Michelle ordered a throw or small bedspread made from pieces of used saris. She spread out the throw for show and tell, differently patterned on each side, stitched together with white cotton thread, in a long running stitch, lines spaced a half inch apart, a very light quilt. I guessed the sari throw to be about 60 by 90 inches. Despite being made with used saris, the colors were vibrant, the patterns...
I grew up reading Hans and the brothers Grimm and Aesop. I love fairy tales and fables. Back then, we had the unexpurgated versions, full of blood and guts. I’m not saying that was better. I’m simply saying that is how it was. The stories, which I read over and over, never gave me nightmares nor did they leave me pining for the handsome prince to hack his way through the brambles and rescue me from the wicked step-mother. Naïve as I was, I knew that wouldn’t happen. A few mo...
Lola is a dog. See Lola run. Lola barks. Hear Lola bark. Lola is a working dog. She takes her duties seriously. She makes sure her master (Mistress? Mattress? Whatever.) goes outside her garden gate for regularly scheduled walks along with frequent unscheduled walks. Lola sees that I get regular doses of cool wet nose on my knee. She assures that I sink my fingers into her thick neck hair with great regularity. Lola keeps me safe. As Lola became acquainted with my friends and...
“The pain ran from the outer edges of my rib cage, across my diaphragm, here to here,” I told Kathy. “It started right after I got out of bed and got worse during the morning. It hurt to move.” “Sondra, you had a heart attack!” she said. “Did you go in to the hospital? What did you do?” “Funny, that’s what Dee Dee said, too, but I didn’t tell her about it until yesterday evening when it was all over.” “What happened? Do you still hurt?” “I figured it was a pulled muscl...
Back when the earth was still cooling, back when I was a student at Harlem High, algebra was a high school subject. Now they start the kids learning simple equations in pre-school. Or near enough. Up until algebra, I’d made A’s in math. Our algebra teacher was an aerospace engineer the year the field was overbooked, clogged, with aerospace engineers and those who could not follow that path, taught math. Class consisted of Mr. X, or was it Y, ordering us to memorize the equ...
Please don’t grimace like that, Mrs. Hunter. I’m drunk on spring love and language is ours to play games. Spring arrives quickly here in Jalisco, the Garden State of Mexico. I declare, we are definitely in the Sprang stage of Spring. Boing. Boing. Boing. What fun it is. Light opens the sky a little bit earlier. Not much, here closer to the Equator, but a little. And it stays around a little bit longer in the evening before it drops behind the mountains. And the day warms up...
I went to Oconahua to Jane’s birthday celebration for cake and homemade ice-cream. Ninety-five full years. From the stories Jane has told and from stories her daughters told with great glee, that woman was a pistol. She’s still a pop gun. She lived fully and outrageously, a registered nurse, from NYC to Alaska to Washington to Mexico. In what order, I don’t know. There are chapters I’ve not heard. Jane is Michelle’s mother and has a casita on Ana and Michelle’s land a shor...
Some say confession is good for the soul, and growing up Catholic, I’m a believer. Here is something I seldom talk about. First, though, the catalyst. For the past week, on my sunrise walk with Lola, I’ve been singing. Here is what you need to understand. I don’t sing. Ever. I love music. Songs weave through my days, mostly in my head. Silently. I don’t allow the songs to exit my mouth. Unlike bad words which squeak through frequently and often appropriately. My fear of bein...
My Grandma came to live with us when I was four so that my Dad didn’t have to farm me and my sister out to relatives. Grandma was a good cook and taught me the learn-it-by-doing-it method. She told me that she had to bake bread every day raising her own seven children and she didn’t intend to bake another loaf of bread. Funny, she made bread rolls every Sunday and the pies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, cookies that rolled out of her oven were bountiful and delicious. There were thi...
Some days, it is a great comfort to me. Other days, a rather delightful joke, makes me chuckle at myself. I can still hear the laughter in my friend’s voice as he said to me, all those hundred years ago, “Tomorrow things will be different. They may not be better. They may not be worse. But they will be different.” I was a bit of a drama queen back then, a bit hooked on adrenaline. Even tragedy held excitement. I was prone to jump to conclusions, to make decisions and leap into...
Dear Most Wonderful, Most Precious, Beautiful and Intelligent Beyond Compare, My Loving Son and Daughter, I am writing to let you know that it is time for you to put your heads together and figure out a plan for elder care. With great sadness I report, it is the beginning of the end. I left a burner on beneath the egg pan this morning. Ate breakfast. Went outside and puttered in the garden. Came back inside to the odor of hot metal and burned butter. Fortunately, the pan did...
A friend introduced me to a new word: epicaricacy. An Olde English word. Means joy upon evil. Like schadenfreude. Like when someone else stubs his toe and stumbles, you gloat that it wasn’t you. Which has more than a sniff of self-righteousness. I know the word intimately. I try to keep it swatted away and like a mosquito, it returns. What strange creatures we are who live much inside our own heads. And what a strange head, speaking for myself. I cannot trust everything I t...
“I love, I love, I love my Calendar Girl, “Yeah, sweet Calendar Girl, “I love, I love, I love my Calendar Girl, “Each and every day of the Year.” Thank you, Neil Sedaka, wherever you are. I had to share this ancient song from the last century with you. Now these cheesy lyrics will possess your mind like they possess mine. Why? Well, that is the story. It’s a new year upon us. Yep. 2023. Who’d a thought we’d make it! I like old-fashioned paper calendars. I like to keep mine, a...
And so it goes. We folks with more miles on the chassis put away the old calendar and open the new calendar, 12 blank pages of promise, blank pages of mystery, of wonder whether we will make it through next December. That sounds grim but said above, we older folks. I’m not sure how the younger people measure time. Maybe by that big thing similar to a watch on their wrist — that device that does everything for them. Someone told me it even tells them to “quit slouc...
Last year, I realized I had come to dread Christmas obligations. I like to give to others. But when it becomes an obligation, trying to find that just right small gift for the families on the Rancho, seemed overwhelming. Years ago, my own children and I agreed to not give adult gifts, but to focus on their children. Last year I told my neighbors here at the Rancho, that instead of joining the usual gift exchange, I would give a gift to a family in the community who had...
Christmas is a-coming soon and although there are only five couples and me in residence at the Rancho at present, plans are afoot and afloat for communal gatherings. Me, I’m trying to respectfully decline invitations while ignoring judgmental comments without cringing. I cringe. We all would prefer our friends to understand us, right, to support us unconditionally, right? Back-story first. When the COVID pandemic hit, most of us here masked, bought disinfectants and hand sanit...
I own a revered and older washing machine. A washing machine is possibly the most wonderful tool ever created by man for the use of women. I never did like lugging laundry down to the river to pound it on rocks and dry it slung over prickly berry bushes. I highly recommend men learn to use a washing machine also. My washing machine is ancient. It was old when I bought it. I live in Mexico. When something breaks down, somebody will be able to fix it. That’s what we do here. T...
The other day I said, “I was worried that Jane (nearly 95 and frail) might not hold up during your special dinner at the restaurant.” Immediately I was scolded, “No, no, no. Don’t say that. That is a negative thought. We don’t need negative thoughts. That is bad.” Whoa on me. I was taken aback. And I felt uncomfortable. I hadn’t meant that I was immersed in worry, sending sure death pulsing into the Universe. I’d had a fleeting thought, perhaps improperly expressed, that my fr...
