Blossoming

This is something I wrote after I retired eight years ago but never thought to use. I guess it's worth posting.

                                            ...oOo...

I was once talking with the director of my department at work, a woman whom I greatly admired.  She used the word blossom to describe the pleasure of seeing people grow in their jobs.  This made me stop and think about the word, “blossom” and how beautifully it describes the process of reaching our full potential.

Life takes us all on different journeys and at different speeds.  As a result, we all blossom at various times.  Some of us shine in high school.  Some may be the Belle of the Ball in college, or Super-mom for a time or even excel in their careers.  Yet, there are those of us who are conventional our entire lives until we reach our later years.  That’s when we blossom!  We begin to become creative.  We branch out and form new bonds with others.  We broaden our horizons and embrace our place in the universe.  We contribute our time, energy and intelligence to causes that mean something to us.  This is a joyous time of life, when we know and accept ourselves just as we are.  Moreover, we love and accept others just as they are.

This is a stage of life worth waiting for. This is the stage when we no longer mourn the things we are not and finally celebrate the wonderful things that we are...when we finally open up and blossom.   

Four years a blogger and still not quite doing it right!

It was four years ago today that I posted my first blog. I was quite enthusiastic and titled it, "Hallalujah I'm a Blogger!" I didn't have any followers at the time so there were no welcoming comments, but I was undeterred. I wasn't savvy enough to realize that the way to acquire followers was to find other blogs you like and become their followers. It took me a while to "get on board" with other blogs.

Over the years, four or five of my favorite bloggers have died and more than a dozen have stopped blogging or just faded away. Every once in a while, I see I have a new follower but discover there's no link to get back to their blog. I've also signed on as a blog's follower on impulse and discovered that it's not what I hoped it would be. It's hit or miss, like paging through a magazine looking for an interesting article to read. It seems that the best place to find good blogs to follow is on your favorite blogger's list of followers.

I noticed that the groundhog/woodchuck above has a Dragon voice recognition system. I tried working with a Dragon when I was going through a particularly bad spell of arthritic hands. I found it incredibly frustrating, and correcting the errors it made was more trouble than it was worth. It truth, the bigger problem is my arthritic brain!

So anyway, here's to year number five. May it be more productive and interesting than the previous four!

Still bothered after all these years

I first published this back in February of 2009. It still haunts me.

"I was reading a friend's blog today and she writes about being troubled by a worrisome incident in her past that she was powerless to do anything about.

This reminded me of an incident in a grocery store some years ago. I think about it every once in a while and it continues to bother me.

I had pushed my cart half-way down an aisle when a family of four was coming toward me. The father, a 40-ish beer-bellied type was pushing the cart. When our carts came side-by-side, the man was barking orders to a boy of around 10 on what grocery items to grab and put in the cart. The boy darted back and forth frantically while the man kept harassing him and calling him names.

The scariest part was that close behind the guy were huddled a thin, pale woman and teenage girl. They cowered close together with expressionless faces. The disturbing scene screamed ABUSE. I was angered and appalled that this was going on right in front of me. I desperately wanted to do something. I stood there watching for a moment while I debated whether to ask the woman if she needed help but she avoided making eye contact with me. I was terribly conflicted but afraid of making the bad situation worse. I looked around and other carts were now coming down the aisle and those shoppers were trying to ignore the whole situation. Reluctantly, I moved on and I have felt guilty ever since.

I always wonder what happened to that poor woman and her kids. I stew about what I should have done--alert the store manager? Intervene no matter what? Call the police?

I try to comfort myself that maybe the management saw the incident on security cameras and stepped in to help. But to this day, I wonder what would have happened if I had been more courageous."

An offbeat salute to Mother's Day

I clipped this cartoon from the newspaper many years ago because it made me laugh. Dick Guindon's cartoons appeared regularly in the Minneapolis Star Tribune until he retired in 2005. I still miss them.

Quotes from A Robert Brault Reader

The Hope In A Two-Party System...

"The hope in a two-party system is that the party of 2 + 2 = 3 and the party of 2 + 2 = 5 can carve out a compromise."


First Rule of Political Debate:  "If there's no proof, deny it.  And if proof turns up, deny you denied it."


Heard in a Washington DC confessional:  "Bless me Father,  for sins have been committed."

And one of my favorites:

"Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true."

How Come #4

There are two anonymous comments that showed up after my most recent post. They are pointless junk and have no reason to be there.

This raises the question of why!

It is incomprehensible to me why anyone would spend time writing a bunch of gobbledygook and sending it to total strangers for absolutely no reason! What's the payoff? What is the fun in that?

I suppose I'm making the mistake of trying to approach this in a rational manner. I am making the false assumption that those jerks are rational human beings.

More likely, they're simply acting out their anti-social tendencies in a milder manner than those who shoot down strangers in public places.

All things considered, I guess anonymous spamming isn't that awful after all!

Some dog pictures that make me laugh

            

            And one that makes me cry.

              Pepper-John died in 1982 and is still missed.

Sunny has a good day

I am really touched by all the kind wishes from everyone! We took Sunny back in for a follow-up visit and the vet says he should continue to improve, but he may never completely recover from the head tilt. We'll keep on with the ear drops for now, but that's all we can do. We just have to wait an see. On the plus side, he's mostly back to being his old self, he's just not as agile.

Big thanks to Joanne at Cup on the Bus for telling me about her cat's experience with this condition. It was really helpful to know that it was going to be OK. There is so much to be said for the camaraderie of the bloggie network! I feel so lucky to be part of it!

                              (Borrowed image of cute kitty)

Friday evening

This afternoon, my teenage grandson, Allen and my great-granddaughters (his sister, Lindy's three girls) arrived for a one week stay. It's always such a delight to see them bursting with energy and affection.

We decided to go to Snuffy's Malt Shop for supper. Snuffy's is a tradition and I've been taking grandkids there almost as long as I've been a grandma. We went early and got seated right away. The interior is decorated in festive  red and white striped  wallpaper and just inside the door is a soda fountain. We sat in a large booth where we had a ringside seat of the place.

The kids ordered malts and sandwiches and chatted happily about their recent vacation to the Black Hills. I began looking around and slowly realized that there were no other kids in the restaurant--it was people my age.

It dawned on me that these are the folks who grew up in the malt shop generation of the 50's and 60's. So, of course they love the place as much as the kids do! I don't think they were having as much fun as the kids with me were having, however.

Another page from my cookbook

When I'm sick of seeing my last post and can't summon up the creative energy to write a real post, I fall back on posting something from my Family Cookbook and Memories. Here is a reminiscence (does anybody still say table grace?)

Another unnecessary movie remake

I got an email from a gal I used to work with at the insurance company--the same one who sends me emails that threaten bad luck if I don't forward it to X number of people within X minutes.

Anyway, the current email extols the wonderfulness of all the hundreds of thousands of hunters populating Minnesota and our neighboring state of Wisconsin. The point being that with all of these guns scattered around the country, if we are ever invaded, those evil foreigners will have our rifles and shotguns to contend with, by golly!

This was basically the plot of the 1984 film "Red Dawn" in which the Russians invade Colorado (of all places!) and a group of teenagers fight them off with their hunting rifles and cowboy savvy. An updated version of "Red Dawn" is set to be released this summer with the North Koreans (?!) as the invaders. It remains to be seen how the teenagers manage to conquer the Red Menace this time, but it will surely be in the Hollywood tradition of the former version.

What is sadly out of whack here is that a real invasion would not be turned back by small arms fire from the hunters. It's a romantic notion that might resonate with the prime movie-going demographic, but the nature of war has become bigger and uglier with each passing decade.

Since I am not in the prime movie-going demographic, I probably will never know how it goes.

May Day used to be fun

When I was a kid back in the 40's, May Day was a celebration on the order of Valentine's Day for us kids in elementary school. It was the next-to-last hurrah of the school year.

We'd get to spend time in class making May Baskets out of colored construction paper. The usual type was the cone with a handle attached across the top, although I remember making other styles. The idea was that the basket would be filled with goodies and after school you could deliver it to someone--like a friend or sweetheart. You would hang the basket on the doorknob, ring the door bell and then run away. That was it--not really much of a payoff. That was only if someone gave you a May Basket.

The last hurrah of the school year was Mother's Day. The teacher told us that we should ask our mom for a clean ketchup bottle or pop bottle--but it was a big secret, so don't tell her what it was for. The idea of a conspiracy was great fun.

When everyone had brought in their bottles, the day came for the activity. The teacher spread newspapers on a table and filled trays with a mixture of colored paints. It was serious business taking your bottle and carefully rolling it in the paint to get a variegated, patterned bottle.

The next day, after the paint dried, the teacher passed out sprinkler heads to be inserted into the bottle. (I always hated the sound of the cork squeaking as it was pushed in.) I wrapped the bottle in white tissue paper and tied a red ribbon around it.

After I took it home on Friday, it was so hard to wait until after church on Sunday! It was a very long time for me to keep it secret. The presentation of my homemade gift was delightful, and all the more so because that sprinkling bottle was in use for many, many years.

I went on Google Images and tried to find a photo of a painted sprinkler bottle and couldn't find any. If you should come across one, you might want to post it or even try to sell it on ebay!

                              Borrowed images

Meet the Iceman

This is the reconstructed face of the 5,000 year-old Iceman found in the Alps ten years ago. He was only 45 or so when he was murdered, but that was pretty old for his time. He lived a hard life and they tried to depict that in his face. They learned from his DNA that he had brown eyes and brown hair and his general geographic origins.

I don't know why I find this story so fascinating but I have saved every article and documentary on the subject.
Since my ancestors came from Northern Europe, I suppose it's possible that I might be related to him but I doubt it.

Maybe, it's just the pleasure of having a delicious mystery solved. I love how Science always comes up with the answers eventually.

One true thing

Linda Starr at Blue Starr Gallery gave me a challenge to come up with seven things about myself. She did this in her own blog where she did a great job of relating interesting facts from her past.

I'm hard pressed to think of seven things so I'll just do one for now.

After I got divorced in 1982, I moved to St Paul and enrolled in Concordia College. My major was English and minor was Communications. In my senior year (at the age of 45), I signed on to do an internship in the newsroom at a local TV station. I worked there for three months and spent a lot of time as a "gofer". I covered a few news stories that happened on weekend evenings when nobody else was around.

One occasion was when a huge earthquake hit Mexico City (1986) and they wanted to get reactions from the first planeload of people to arrive back at the airport. I went out with a camera man and waited around until the plane arrived. I held the microphone off-camera and asked questions of the passengers. It was a pretty straight forward story.

On another occasion, late on Saturday night, there was an incident involving police and gunfire in a troubled neighborhood. At the same time, an electrical outage happened in the same area and it was thought they might be connected. When we got there, the camera man walked around taking video of the police cars and spectators behind the condoned off area. It was hard to make any sense out of the chaotic scene. I spotted an officer sitting in the back seat of a squad car interviewing a woman. In desperation, I went over and rapped on the window. They stared at me as I shouted through the closed window asking what had happened. They turned away and ignored me. We returned to the newsroom with nothing.

I felt like I had failed, especially when an rival TV station broadcast a news story about the supposed gang-related incident. More than that, however, was my embarrassment at having been rude and aggressive in approaching the police car. That was totally unlike me. It brought home to me that I was unsuited for being in that line of work. (It later turned out that the other station had blown the story out of proportion and elevated a relatively minor incident into a "gang war". I found that personally satisfying.)

Another discouraging factor was that, in hiking the long concourses of the airport, I realized that I was physically unable to handle the legwork. I was unaware that I had a hip deformity that was aggravated by the exercise. (I had to tough it out for another ten years before I had the hip replaced.)

So, I had to give up my dream of being a reporter. I had waited too long, but at least I got to give it a try. That's a lot more than I had ever hoped for. 

I am soooo last century!

I do not have a cell phone. Moreover, I don't even want one.

I know, this puts me in a distinctly fuddy-duddy underclass, but I don't care. When I see people at the grocery store with phone-to-ear deep in conversation about trivialities I feel like asking them, "Why can't you just BE where you ARE?"

Maybe it's the result of my working years when I had to spend a lot of time on the phone, but I don't want the intrusion of phone calls when I'm out and about. There is a certain serenity about being removed from others and free to dwell on the things at hand. I never have to worry about receiving a phone call when I'm driving. I will never have to face the embarrassment of forgetting to turn it off when I'm at a meeting or the fear of forgetting to turn it on and causing concern to family or friends.

Of course, I'm lucky enough that I'm not likely to be needed in any kind of emergency. Sometimes I feel sorry for those who nervously check their cell phone over and over for fear they will miss a call. I'm content to wait until I get home and check my answering machine. This is working for me!

 

Doing it right

I really liked this pretty yellow boxed comment so I added it to my page. However, it also bugs me because there is a punctuation error in it. There should be an apostrophe in the possessive "woman's".

A friend reposted this one on Facebook. It has a great message, but the spelling error and two punctuation errors (s/b you're) really detract from the message. And really, who is too busy or "cool" to spell out "you"?

And then there's this one by somebody with a problem with contractions: it should be "didn't" and "don't"


It's sad that there are so many people with the skills to design a graphic who have poor grammar skills.
I suppose you could say that the persons who posted these graphics were angry and not thinking past the message.

There's ME... and then, there's everybody else!

Lately, it seems like everybody now says, "Me and my friend" instead of, "My friend and I".  I mean you never hear it said correctly anymore!

I cringe when I hear public figures making this error. It's become so ingrained in mainstream communication, I believe it's past the point of no return. To always put yourself before the other person has become the rule.

Some might call that assertiveness, but I call it a sorry sign of the times.

Last chance to send your extra money...

I read once that a wily huckster placed an ad in the back of a magazine with the simple message, "Last chance to send $1 to ....". People actually mailed money to him!

I'm thinking that's the same psychology that's spurred all of the online solicitations I'm getting from various non-profits. Their reasoning seems to be that I have an excess of money to get rid of before the end of the year and they will help me by taking my money and thus provide a tax deduction. While I appreciate their kind consideration for my pending tax return, having excess cash is not a problem for me.

According to the TV news, there are two lottery winners in the country who have not claimed their huge prizes this year. The deadline is this week. The unclaimed prize money will go back into the lottery funds. If I won the lottery, I would probably have this turn of luck.

Of laughing and loving

I lost my mojo several months ago and have been slogging along trying to get it back. Thanks for all your inquiries and good wishes. It means a lot to me.

In this morning's Sunday paper, I read a quote from Ricky Martin (boy singer). He said that his mother thinks LOL means "Lots of Love". She tweeted him recently that his grandmother had died--lol.

It made me laugh.

And now for something completely different...

There are so many happy, lovely and funny things going on around us. It's great to get out and see all the little creatures who populate the real world. I sometimes wonder how the birds and animals are able to grow up so fast and survive without help. I always want to feed them, or provide nesting materials or watering places.

And yet, these animals are amazingly adapted to survival. When I see squirrels leaping from branch to branch in rapid succession, I'm realize that their tiny little brains can plot a trajectory in split seconds.

A young neighbor boy got a small remote-controlled helicopter for his birthday. We all watched as he flew it around the backyard. A large dragonfly suddenly came flying toward it and circled around inspecting it in midair. It flew away but came back a little while later. Who knew that dragonflies were territorial?

Another neighbor has a big garden next door. She planted squash so there are lots of big yellow blossoms brightening  the area. A gal at my Curves was talking about how she had so many squash blossoms that she picked and fried them! This was another revelation.

The old saying, "You learn something new every day" is so true!