Musings
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Home Again
(photo found here) Monday morning, and the vacation was, as most vacations are, all too brief. Now there’s laundry to be done, groceries to shop for, library books to return, and prescriptions to pick up. Back to the old grind, as they say. But it was a great week. I would say that the high point of the week was Thursday. When we went kayaking on Tuesday, we mentioned to our guide that we really liked the snorkeling, and he suggested that we might enjoy the snorkeling at Shark’s Cove. So on Thursday, we rented a convertible and drove up to the North Shore of the Island, to Pupukea. Isn’t…
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Hawaii Update
(photo found here) Hi Everyone, It’s Tuesday afternoon now…we had an AWESOME day today. We got up early and went on a kayaking tour, which meant kayaking out about a mile in the ocean to a little bird sanctuary in Kailua Bay, getting a short lecture on the formation of the Hawaiian Islands (interesting!), lunch and a swim, then kayaking down to a wonderful beach, where we did some snorkeling, and saw lots of beautiful fish. I have the say, the area that we were at today was SO MUCH nicer than the super-crowded Waikiki beach, which is closer to where we’re staying in Honolulu. It wasn’t crowded, the sand…
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Two Weeks
It’s been two weeks now since my mom died. Two weeks. It’s hard for me to believe sometimes. Everyone wants to know how I’m doing, everyone wants to help me get through this. Which I appreciate. I want to get through this, too. Two weeks ago, I felt hollow, I sobbed rather than cried, and I wasn’t sure that having Maya had been a good idea, since someday, when I die, she would have to go through this horrible pain. To quote a quote within The Year of Magical Thinking, that immediate grief feels like “sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at…
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Reading in Grief
V-Grrrl mentioned in her comment that when her parents died (within 6 weeks of each other! God, Dad, be careful!), she had to put all photos of them away, couldn’t drive past their house, couldn’t bear to be reminded. Not that doing these things helped her to forget, I don’t think anything could do that…but she was too raw to cope otherwise. Which made me think of the different ways that people grieve. My uncle made me a lovely collage of photos of my mom, and I find comfort in looking at it. None of the pictures are of her when she was sick, they’re all of her in her…
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For Want of a Nail
The race was lost…and with it, the latest attempt at the first Triple Crown victory since 1978 (not 1979, as ESPN claims…how pathetic is it when I know more about a sports statistic than ESPN?). Sorry, Big Brown. And, I must add that the trainer’s petulant bitching about how the loss was all the jockey’s fault rubbed me the wrong way from day 1. Asshat.
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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
It’s so smokey and hazy around here lately. We sleep with our windows open, and I fall asleep and awaken to the smell of smoke. There are hundreds of fires in Northern California right now,  and they’re contributing to making the air quality pretty darned bad. So folks with asthma and so on need to stay inside. Thankfully, the fog has come in and cooled things off a bit, because otherwise, we’d be in even deeper shit than we are right now.
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In the afterlife…
Do you think there’s food? I mean, with no body, no hunger, no need for nutrition, there wouldn’t be a need for food, right? And yet good food is such a wonderful part of life as we know it. Hmmm. I was thinking about my mom, and how much it sucked that she had lost her appetite and her enjoyment of food after her surgery, because one of the things she was so looking forward to in coming to California is the wonderful produce. And when I brought it to her, she ate a little bit, but she didn’t enjoy it like she used to. She even gave some of…
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Mom’s obit
Joycelyn Ward April 23, 1942 – June 15, 2008 We mourn the loss of Lilith Joycelyn Ward. She leaves behind her daughter, Julie, her son, Richard, her brother, Forrest, her sister Lori, her mother, Virginia, her Aunt Florence, and her many nieces and nephews, and their children. And of course, she was Maya’s Granny. Joycelyn was born in Oakland, CA, and moved a great deal in her lifetime. She lived in California for much of her life, most recently in Sacramento and Citrus Heights, but also spent many years in Stockton and Berkeley. She lived in Juneau, Alaska from 1993 until February of this year. She devoted much of her…
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Happiness
Finding happiness in difficult times can be a challenge. I suspect that to be happy when the world is going to hell around you, you either have to be the type of person who is generally happy anyway, or insane. I hope I fall in the former category, and not the latter. Because yes, I am generally happy. Things are bad right now, with my mom not recovering as well as I wish she would, and all that that may imply; with Ted losing his job and the uncertainty of where that will leave us. With a winter and spring that pretty much kicked our asses. Despite it all, and…
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What Is Love?
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=v6nB71tqgB8[/youtube] Last night in yoga class, I was tied up in my own world and thoughts and pose, and then I looked over at Maya next to me, all twisty herself, and I thought, “child, no one will ever love you the way I do…”. And then, when my brain was supposed to be empty, or at least focusing on the pose, I drifted off into thinking about the different types of love. I mean, no one will ever love a child like their parents. No one. And perhaps mother’s love is different from a father’s love as well. And, no one will ever love a parent like their children. …
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Save the Trees!
Several years ago, a neighbor gave me a Christmas gift, which was a little glass vase, used to ‘force bulbs‘. It came with some rocks to hold the bulb, and a bulb for a pretty flower, whose name I know not. Anyway, I forced the bulb, enjoyed it, and put it in the ground after the flower had died off. But I still had the little vase and rocks. Perhaps a year after that, I was slicing an avocado for our salad, and it occurred to me that I could perhaps use the vase to grow a little avocado plant. So I popped it in there, added some water, and…
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Go Big Brown!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoFquax2F-k[/youtube] This video is of Secretariat, who won the Belmont Stakes, and the Triple Crown, in 1973. Even if you’re not into horse racing, this is an amazing horse race to watch. Watch him make all of the other horses look like they’re standing still, as he goes on to win one of the most difficult flat races for 3 year olds in record time (still unbeaten), and make it look EASY. The Triple Crown is within reach of Big Brown, but just because he’s won the first two races does not mean he’ll win today’s Belmont. 11 horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, and then failed to…
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I’m ready to complain now…
(unenviable job picture found here) I must say, I am not enjoying 2008 thus far. Can it end now, rather than waiting until December 31st? Please? (BlackBeltMama noted on her blog that Spring is over in just a few weeks…so let’s just start with Summer for the turnaround, k?) Why the complaining, you may ask? Am I really that crabby about my stupid stove and dishwasher? No. This has been a hard year thus far on our family, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better as of yet. Perhaps the Sickmas we spent in Portland was a portend of things to come. So. I’ll fill you in. First,…
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Friday Randomness…
Anybody else amazed by these photos, of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon? I was pretty surprised to read that there are about 100 tribes of people who have never had any contact with the outside, modern world, and that about half of those tribes are in the Amazon. Really pretty interesting. Still processing last night’s season finale of LOST. Clearly I need to watch it again today. Stupid work. I will say that I shed a few tears, actual tears, at the Sun/Jin thing. Sob. It’s OK, he’s probably still alive. He knew that the ship was going to blow, so he probably jumped and got off in time.…
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1,000 Things About Me
OK, just kidding. But WordPress tells me that this is, in fact, my 1,000th post! Really, truly, 1,000! OK, not really truly, because there are a few in a holding pattern that I’ve started and not published. There are a few that seemed like a good idea, and then I ended up deleting them (like one I wrote last night about how I prefer to watch The Price is Right over American Idol). But this post has the distinction of being the 1,000th post that I’ve written, for better or for worse. So, how to celebrate? How to commemorate this, er, occasion? I’m not sure. I could tell you a…