Like I've been iron'n with ma high heels on.......and it's a sin!

Today I decided I would tackle some much needed ironing.  You see we've moved, lock, stock and barrel...a long long way from Maine.  And when the movers came to pack us, they told us....you can fill the chest of drawers and dressers with clothes if you like.  That would save us the rather hefty cost of "wardrobe" boxes....so pack those dressers and chests of drawers, I did...pack those babies to the gills. I'm sure the movers wished they'd never told me that when they tried to lift those pieces of furniture.

Well when you pack (oh come on let's be brutally honest)...when you cram clothes into drawers so tightly you can barely shut the draw, guess what happens to those clothes.....yes, you in the third row madly waving your hand, that's right....they get unbelievably wrinkled...and moving van trucks are not always  the most pristine places in the world.  So of course being the clean freak that I am, they all had to be washed and yes....ironed-- before I put them in my new closets.  I've had them stacked in my spare bedroom like a clothing store exploded.  Slowly I've been shuffling them, put them in laundry baskets, then to this side of the bed, to that side of the bed...sorted, folded, resorted....gathering the courage to fill the steam iron with water, plug it in and wait for the steam to pour out of those tiny little holes.

Today I worked up the courage to do a basket full (32 pieces to be precise)....and I realized IT IS A SIN that we should have so many clothes......most of which we rarely wear........especially now when we've come to a place where the "dress de jour" is shorts, tank tops and flip flops....It's just a sin!  How does a person acquire so many pieces of clothing and so many shoes (OK OK....those of you who know me well know "you can never have too many shoes").  But seriously you can....especially  spiked heels that you haven't worn in almost 6 years.  I ironed 32 pieces today, and I'm ashamed to say there are more piles! I'll try to gather the courage to do those another day.

That ironing made me think of an old friend of mine from the time I worked for Sun Oil in Dallas.  His name is Ken Horn and he is a great guy with a wonderful family.  He lived through several major heart attacks and bypasses, a heart transplant, a kidney transplant and other hospital stays.  I've just learned that he now has leukemia and isn't doing well.  I am saddened by this news....but he made me smile today....because years ago (in the late 1980's) when he was really really tired at work he used to say (in his East Texas drawl)...."I'm so tired, I feel like I've been iron'n with ma high heels on. "

That's how I felt today.

 
Ken, thanks for making me smile....and making me realize that a few piles of clothes that need to be ironed, a few more boxes that still need to be unpacked, and workers hammering on my roof, are very very small nuisances.

Ken......where ever you are I hope you are resting and hanging in there. 

Time has flown - my world is new - where are you?

Time has really flown since my last posting....shame on me!
My world is new and I have so much to tell you....and that WILL come in time!
Where are you?...is probably what you're wondering about me!   :)

Well I'm here and busier than a spider trying to get out of a plate of molasses....think about it....all those little legs stuck in that gooey sweet syrup, trying to pull one leg out as the others sink farther in, taking one step forward and seven steps back, going around in circles.....yep that's me.  But we'll get there.  We'll get all the boxes unpacked and the furniture arranged and we'll find a place for everything....but for right now I'm busy..and loving my new adventure called "retirement".....I'll be thrilled when the actual "retirement" part starts!  Although I must admit we've spent more afternoons at the pool in the last two weeks then we have in the past 10 years!

I really do have a tale to write, but for now I thought I would write a short post so that those of you that follow me will know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

And speaking of following me...I've added a new "gadget" to my blog that you can click on if you'd like so that I know you are following me....I'd love it if you'd do that.

I guess you might say that tomorrow is my official 'retirement' day because tomorrow would be when I would report back to my job at the school but the commute would be a tad bit long...give or take 2100 miles!  So I guess tomorrow, it's official.

No matter where you are today, I hope have a good day.

I'll be back here soon and I hope you will be too....or as we like to say down here.....

Y'all come back now ya' hear...........Cute shoes....tell your momma Hi!

Preparing for the echo sound--FOR SALE!

Well it's official!  John and I have decided to retire.  We've come to this point through many many many nights of talking, calculating, and getting all of our ducks in a row.....


We finished out the business things (that needed to be finished and sold) and now we have come to the task of selling our home.  It's one of those things that takes forever to finally sink in and make you realize that this is really happening.  But this weekend John took down all the pictures and things on the wall in the kitchen,dining room, pantry and hall closet to wash and put a fresh coat of paint on all those walls. He did a fantastic job...he truly paints like a professional....the house looks fresh and new.  (Thanks Honey for such a great job!)


It wasn't until this evening when I walked past the hall closet and shut the door that I heard it....the "echo sound" of moving.  You know the sound when there's nothing on the walls, nothing in the closet to muffle the vacuum of air that happens as a door closes in an empty room....the sound your heart and mind will make when you walk out the door of the place you've called home for many years.....(even if you want to move).  There will be that sense of loss for what was a part of your life that will no longer be.  We'll miss the friends we've made here  (some John has known for over 30 years).  We'll miss the family we are leaving behind (but they will visit and so will we).  We'll miss the people we've worked with, the familiarity of going to the grocery store right down the road or the route we always chose to drive to Portland.  We'll miss watching the birds and occasionally the deer out the window of our beautiful 4-season sun room.  We will miss all of that and it will all start with the echo of an empty closet or room.

But tomorrow we will fill the pantry again.  We'll put the pictures back on the walls and the coats back in the hall closet and snuggle into the coziness and comfort of our home....and wait........... for someone to come along who will leave the echos of their old home and who will want to fill this house with laughter, love, family and no echos of emptiness....and make it their new home......

We are ready to start this new chapter in our lives.......if you need a new home...we're waiting for you ....bring on the "echo sound" of moving....we're ready.

APRIL FOOLS????

Can it really be?  That what yesterday was beautiful grass (albeit still on the brown side) and tiny sprouts of flowers poking their heads through the still cold ground, this morning be covered in a fresh blanket of snow?  Oh yes it can!  It's Maine! School will go yet another day longer because there's no school today.  Oh well, guess I'll have time to read Already Home by Susan Mallery.  I just finished reading The Postmistress by Sara Blake.  What a wonderful wonderful book.  There are so many talented writers out there.  I could stand to have a year of snow days....but then they'd have to pry my skinny butt from the recliner or my frail feet off the treadmill because I feel like I could read for a year and not do anything else (save take a bath and drink some water).  If you're in New England and it's snowing....don't think about the extra day it's adding to the end of the school year....just enjoy it and read. If you live in the south and it's going to be 80 degrees today.....please don't tell me...that would just be mean!

I'm a fair weathered friend...

Friday the yard was beginning to show through. Small spots, circled around the trees.  Then they got bigger and spread.  The warmth of the sunshine (rare for this time of March in Maine) was melting the snow at a rapid pace, even though the weatherman called it a "slow melt"--the kind much wanted to avoid flooding of the streams and rivers. The tiny hands of a Crocus and a Tulip appeared out of the ground waving shyly to show they were bravely coming out of their long sleep.  I had visions of impatiens and blue plumbago, roses and violets.  I felt the joy of walking outside with only a light cotton sweater on.  Life was once again wonderful.  Hope was renewed. The grass longing to be combed free of all the sand that had blown up from the snow plows....it was grand...it was splendid...it was glorious................and then I woke up Saturday morning.....was it a dream...was this a nightmare....what the heck!!!!  Nobody said it was going to snow.  OK WHO SHOOK THE SNOW GLOBE....STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! But it just continued to snow, big fluffy wet flakes for a few hours.  I played a childhood game with myself....and as my grandmother used to tell me (when I was 5 years old)...oh honey, the angles are just sprinkling powdered sugar on their cookies.  Well cookies snookies

....STOP IT!

It did eventually stop and the sun came out and the melting began again....and now today I can see the yard again and "little plant hands" are a tiny big higher and waving more proudly. Sunshine kisses my soul...it's a good thing and I love it. Come on sun....come on spring....come on joy!

My mother always says... "As the corners of your mouth goes, so goes your day"....I say "As the lack of snow grows, so goes my happiness.  Sorry Mother Nature....I'm a fair weathered (really a warm weathered) friend.

Act II....it's time...bring on the phlox!

It's eerily quite outside....like packing when you know that you must go and you don't want to...you're just not ready.  It's like things go in slow motion, the folding of garments, the laying into suitcases, the fighting back tears.  And so it seems today with winter.  She knows her days are numbered in this cycle of life--the winter of 2010-2011. 

She gave us quite a show this year.  She danced and swirled. She blew and came in fiercely at times. At times she threatened to turn on the big guns...and in some places south of us, she did.  It was as though someone laughed at the beginning of winter and said something snidely about how mamby pamby she was last year....how she allowed spring to slip in early and how the sun came shining through to the delight of everyone in New England.  She took offense, loaded her guns and in an Annie Oakley style, she hit us with some of her best shots this winter.  And she may not be done yet. 

But today, the sky is overcast with sadness.You can hear the melt-off trickle down the street into the sewer drains. The patches of grass have grown larger over the past few days.

Mother Nature knows it's time to pack up her winter clothes and start washing out her spring frocks.  Daylight will linger a little longer today and even in the quiet gloominess there is hope in the air. The taps are in and the trees once more have awakened. Mardi Gras is over, Lent has begun and it is true...Spring is just over the horizon and I can hardly wait to see it!

So Mother Nature, pack up winter and bring us a beautiful spring in New England....bring us the feeling of renewal.....let us shed our heavy coats, put away our snow blowers and shovels...bring on the colorful phlox and violets and forget-me-nots...the daffodils and bleeding hearts....bring us rain (if you must) but bag up the snow and put it in the freezer for next year.

In 2008 before the micro-burst and then the tornado took away all our lovely trees...I wrote a poem about the cycles Mother Nature takes us through....most of the trees are gone ...the one I wrote the poem  to no longer stands in our side yard....but I still think of her when I read it.....

 Mother Nature's Blessing

Pack up your things my lovely summer girl

For  sadly bright sundresses no longer flit and furl

You’ll now wear frocks of gold and red

Royal crimson ribbons tie round your drying head

The daffodils have all now gone to bed….

Your hair will flip and turn in the cold wind

And to the ground pieces of your crown you’ll send

And when full force is felt…sometimes you’ll bend

And yet you will not fall

For we are watching you to set our clock

As time is moving on….

Your arms will be covered with white heaviness

And yet you’ll feel no pain

We call you beautiful, magnificent,

And yet you are not vain

You will look thin and we will call you bare

Our hearts will break for what we think… no longer there

But in your depths much life does still remain

Soon some of you will give up sweetness that we drain

You are a queen and very tall you stand

You are our hope in winter’s wonderland

As time is moving on…

And then one day a tiny sign will show

And from that sign new life somehow you’ll grow

From a tight nub of newness-- of greenish gold

Fullness will swirl out and then unfold

……..to fill your head with a new rich crown

And you will lift our spirits once again

Sweet springtime rains will renew and refresh

You’ll spread your arms and show off your green dress

As time is moving on….

Blue skies will be your background

The sun will make you grow

Sweet gentle summer rains will moisten you

And set your crown aglow

You’ll shelter us from brightness

And cool us from the heat

Provide a place for us to write

And we sit at your feet

….as time is moving on

As time is moving on, you are …

The one that we look up to

The towering beauty queen

                a strength on a cold night

                a sign of renewal with but a hint of green

                a shelter to an apple, a home to a sweet pear

                a rainbow of warm colors no others can compare

                you’re roots run deep and when we look at you, we see

                that Mother Nature blessed us,

                with you…my precious tree.

I pale in comparison....but I don't want to

I've got to tell you, I've ready some pretty terrific books.....each one different, exciting, engaging and wonderfully written in its own way.  My favorites are the ones where you can tell the author must have spent years doing research so that every detail in a scene makes you believe the author has been there, done that, knows of what he/she is speaking......but even more importantly makes the reader feel like they've just stepped right into each scene and discussion....makes them feel like they are walking down the roads in the book, lets them actually feel the heat or cold, lets them taste the food, smell the smells...becomes one with the characters....become a part of the book.  I'm not sure I've ever read a book that meets all the  criteria more than the book I just finished,  Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. 

The man is brilliant, masterful, the kind of writer I love.  Reading his book has sparked in me the need to get back to the book I'm writing "Demitasse Magique" (The Magic Tea Cup). First off I need to get it written and published....and then hopefully someday when someone reads it, they will know how much time I spent doing research to make the people and places in my story come alive in the book and in to the reader...hopefully one of the readers of my book will post somewhere that I am the kind of writer they love....that I am brilliant and masterful.


I will let "Cutting for Stone" rest a while in my thoughts and in my bones before I get into the next book I will be reading....  a time-travel romance by Linda LaRoque called A Way Back

My book is a sort of time-travel romance too and so I'm seeking to see how others handle that genre.


For now it's back to my real work for the moment....and only time to dream about what my heart aches to do all the time....write. 

INTERVENTION NEEDED? OR JUST TIME.....

Well I think it is official....I AM A BOOKAHOLIC"!  I just cleaned my library, took everything off the shelves, dusted and sorted the books and put them back on the shelves.  I think I may have an addiction to books.  But then perhaps not so much.  Perhaps that is what writers do....buy books to read to see how others write.  There are so many styles, so many thoughts and stories, twists and turns, dialects, and renderings.  That makes me think of a passage in a wonderful book I am reading by Antonia Fraser  Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter.  It is written primarily from her diary and in one part she speaks of talking to a writer who "reveals that he writes fiction and non-fiction quite differently, typewriter v. hand-writing." She goes on to say "I love hearing details of writers crafts. As cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer".  I love that thought because that is a big part of why I read all kinds of books and books on writing.

But perhaps I do need an intervention.  I have counted them and I have 1 paperback book I am reading A Yellow Raft in Blue Water: A Novel,68 new books (some used, but new to me) that I have not yet read, 12 more books on writing, some started, some read, some not yet read, 4 borrowed books--not yet read, 4 borrowed books read and not yet returned, 15 new e-books....yes, not yet read and 3 e-books I'm reading.  And if that were not enough I have an envelope full of snippets of notes on probably 50+ books that sound interesting and that I hope to read some day.

I get up in the morning usually between 4:15 and 4:45 and go downstairs to walk on my treadmill for 45 minutes to an hour and I put my book on my treadmill book stand and read while I walk.  It is pure heaven....I do love to read.  But then I often wonder....if I wasn't reading so much (or during any spare minute I can squeeze in from time to time) perhaps I would (and should) spend more time writing on the book that I hope others will be reading and linking to on their blog.  Some day (heaven only knows when) when I am able to retire....it is my firm conviction that a part of every retirement day will be spent at my desk (or somewhere) writing.

For now I will try to find snippets of time and walks on my treadmill to read and try like hell to not buy anymore books until the ones I have right now are read.

There is a quote by Madonna on reading that I just love:  "Everyone probably thinks that I'm a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite, when the truth is I'd rather read a book".

And Lady Montagu has a quote that every husband will love:

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.  She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet." 

Read....it does the mind good!  We're expecting a possible (worse case scenario) of a foot and a half of snow on Wednesday.......pull out your books!