You Bet Your Boots, #SoCS

It’s another
Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SoCS
and I am thinking about yesterday.

I am thinking about eyes and, yes, about a lot of other random words that do and don’t include the letters “y…e…s”.

Not necessarily “yesterday” as in the actual yesterday, which is about to change, as I waited to write this until the very end of my Saturday.

I spent my actual Saturday having fun with family. That is exactly what I needed to remember what is most important and to forget the yesterdays lately, ever since November 8th, 2016.

I thought of the Beatles documentary I saw recently and their song:
Yesterday.

The “yesterday” of the times during the Beatles popular years looked a lot different from my yesterday. The world is made up of the big and the small things that make up both. Times really change a lot and yet, yes/no, they don’t, as it would appear.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but “yes” I could. The world is not actually any worse than it was yesterday. My eyes didn’t deceive me, though I wouldn’t have a problem wording it that way.

My eyes help me less and less, though most days I don’t notice either way.

The times spent with my niece and nephews involves me and also my brother explaining more and more that we can’t see, that our eyes don’t work. Sometimes one of them tries to make sense of this by stating that “their” eyes work, as if they are trying to make sense of the fact that they can still see and to work it out in their mind.

My niece is oldest and seems to understand. My nephews are a few years younger than her and are still working it all out, but they are getting there. They need to be reminded to let us feel a toy they want to show us, for example, like on this most recent visit when my nephew wanted to show us his lip balm. I should have smelled it anyway. I soon did and it smelled like strawberries.

Yesterday I could play a game with my soon-to-be-six-years-old niece and not have to think too hard about all the things that are hard. She accepts me for me, her aunt, and she puts her small hand into mine and guides me to where she wants me to go in our games.

My eyes made it impossible to watch my nephew’s swimming lesson the other day, but I still wanted to be there.

My eyes made it impossible to read the menu at dinner with my family, but luckily they could read and we knew, pretty much, what we wanted at a restaurant we’ve been to eat at hundreds and hundreds of times before.

My yesterday of sorts had my eyes working better than my today. I can’t change that. I eat pizza with my family and it tastes just as delicious, with or without fully functioning eyes.

Yes, okay, so the world makes little sense to me, more than ever, but it’s not all bad. I can still write stream of consciousness thought and not have to be perfect or say what any one person expects me to say.

Yes, I do like living in Canada and having it become dark so early, as I feel the night has just as much to teach as the daytime.

Yes, I can focus on the good and use a positive word, instead of no no no no no all the time. I can agree that the world is out of sorts and this is a “yes” statement, instead of just being something negative, where “no” is like a shake of the head.

Yes, I have all the Cherry Coke I could possibly need right now and to last me for a long long time. Can you say sugar rush/sugar coma anyone?

Yes, if I’m not careful I will hold down the shift key for not just the first letter, “y” and onto the second letter, “e”. My computer’s voice program sounds it out like “yeeeees”. That’s how I know, but soon I will have actual braille to read from when I write, so my own editing can go more smoothly. I won’t have to rely entirely on those little subtle clues that I made a small blunder.

YEs.

🙂

I realize that this is a small thing, in the grand scheme of things. All the things, all that my eyes cannot see, so my ears pick up on instead.

Yes, I have been somewhat of a “yes girl” in my life, not wanting to say “no” if I can help it. Hearing that word, “no” isn’t always easy, but sometimes we have no choice. Yes doesn’t always give us what we want.

My yesterdays have been a mixed bag of yes’s and no’s and maybe’s because I can’t always make up my mind. I am somewhat famous for that indecision actually.

Yesterday is in the past and my broken eyes can’t look back to see what I may or may not have gotten wrong. Tomorrow is all I can do anything about now.

Yesterday is over and done with now and tomorrow is all we’ve got to work with.

Yes, I will do my best. My yesterdays’ weren’t all that bad really. It’s just easy, with working eyes or without, to see things that are in the past as being worse than what they maybe really were.

Yes, I have a lot to look forward to coming up. Yes, I am looking ahead to these things. Yes, I loved all the yesterday days I have had.

And YEEEES, I absolutely did eat some of my niece and nephew’s old Halloween candy while visiting, but it was mostly the stuff they don’t like, so it’s okay.

RURAL PRIDE, COUNTY WIDE, #SoCS

As summer winds down and autumn approaches, town after town will begin hosting their annual county, agricultural, and local fairs.

Where was I today?

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SATURDAY

Hmmm. Let’s see.

This week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: “Four-Letter Word”

http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2915/

I went to the fair today.

My initial thought, when I heard four-letter word…well, I am sure you could guess and I am also sure I wasn’t the first to think of it.

Then, I went to my county’s fair with a friend, her mother and daughter, and we spent the afternoon with cows, horses, sheep, goats, donkeys.

I was born and live in a rather rural area of south western Ontario, in Canada. My town’s mascot is a cow after all. Agriculture is a very important part of community and sense of pride here.

My mother always thought going to a fair was a rather large waste of money, as kids, and so we went, but sparingly.

I remember, once, when I was about ten years old, I had just made a new friend in my new school. She was visiting and I really wanted to go to the fair with her. So, sneaky and vindictive little girl that I sometimes could be, I told her that we would take her to the fair. I hadn’t run this passed my mom, assuming that once I had made the promise to my friend, my mom wouldn’t be able to say no.

Well, let’s just say my master plan worked.

General admission and the rides and games and food on top of that. It all adds up. They stamp your hand upon entering.

There is something strange and rather unsettling about walking down a path between booths, stalls on all sides, with loud and over-stimulating music and sound, clanking and clanging carnival rides, and people yelling at you, obnoxiously I might add:

“Come! Try this game! Everyone’s got a chance to win!”

Yeah, what a rip off. What do I look like, a sucker?

Well, this time we did not go for the rides. My friend wanted to introduce her baby girl to the barn full of farm animals, to see her face upon spotting a black and white, a brown cow, for the first time.

We had a friend, growing up, who was at the local fair, every August, to show cattle with her family. Now, what did this mean exactly? I realize I didn’t understand that world, but the family loved it.

It took up their time, kept them busy, all with things I didn’t pretend to understand. Walking cows around in a ring, practicing, being awarded first, second, and third place medals.

My mother grew up as a farm girl. My uncles owned farms, dairy herds mostly, all my life. I spent many summer vacations on the farms. I was afraid to walk down the stalls of cows in the barn.

I’m drawing a blank now. What are those openings in the floor for the cows called again? Hmmm.

The smell of the barn was never something I could get used to. I did not have enough vision to allow me to run and play games up in the hay mound, with holes that would suddenly appear at your feet, sometimes disguised by straw, until it was too late. Down to the cement floor below you would drop. One of my cousins did just that.

I preferred to stay and play in the house, rather than get dirty and smelly. I drank milk, ate cheese, and eggs. I saw what it was like to survive of the land and raise animals for these things, but I was not at home, ever, fully there.

Now the fair is all about a certain lifestyle. I look in on it. I smell the fair food. I love cotton candy. I hate candy and caramel apples. I loved rides as a kid.

My friend’s baby girl loved the animals. A cow scared the hell out of me, but the baby’s eyes bulged from the noise the creature made, but did not cry.

At any moment I expected a stinky sniffling nose or tongue to make me jump from behind the fence. I wouldn’t be able to help making a commotion if a cow suddenly decided to say “Hello”.

Pies. Quilts. Crafts. Stalls selling all manner of hand-made items.

Piggy banks shaped like turtles, giraffes, cows, and rocking horses. Obvious hard work put in to each one by dedicated and delicate wood working skill.

My friend and I found the farm family there, showing their cows off with pride. Little changes in twenty years. But our friendships have.

We met her sister and her father, but no sign of the friend we once knew so well, the one we’d hurry to the fair grounds to see, to speak to, even for a little while in between her duties with the cows.

We waited around to speak to her, unsure how awkward it might feel to talk again, after years of no contact. Distance grows between, an ever widening expanse of time and silence.

No sign of her. Do we keep on waiting? Do we move on? The baby is tired and hungry. Our feet are sore.

I can’t stand much more of the music and the noise. Sound coming at me from all sides. I am nervous how well I’ll even be able to hear any conversation with this old friend, if she does indeed turn up to say hi.

We listen, part of a gathering and contented group of interested attendants of this lecture on reptiles. The girl speaking talks with an authoritative tone and sounds like she is highly knowledgeable when it comes to the python she holds and the red-footed tortoise named Flash.

Children ask such smart questions about the animals:

What does it drink?

Can I give it a kiss? (The girl doesn’t seem like she is going to allow that one.)

“No kissing them. Reptiles are dirty,” she advises, but she encourages anyone and everyone to reach out a hand and touch these guys.

“Nope. Not her face. Just touch her shell. She doesn’t like being poked in the eye, just like any of us.”

People actually make bowls, plates, and even guitar picks from the shell. What waste. Simply not necessary. I go online later, only to find that “an imitation tortoise-shell pick” is one of the top hits, for sale.

😦

“Can you let her swim in the water over there?” I hear the little child, a few feet away, ask and point.

“She’s a tortoise, not a turtle. They don’t swim,” the girl explains.

The baby would put the snake to her mouth, as she has approached that age of her infancy. Not advisable.

A nice man directly behind me, waiting to get his turn to see the animals up close, asks me, “Did you want to touch the animals too Love?”

Very nice of him to ask. “No. I’m good,” I say. “I’ve touched a snake before.”

(My brother has one as a pet. I have touched it several times. That should do me for a while.

The girl talks about a snake back at the zoo and animal park she works at, where these animals come from. That snake, which is not here, is called Julius Squeezer.

Hahahaha. Well, I thought that was a good one anyway.

🙂

All the country music and hay aside, I feel strange, with all this baby talk. People stop my friend and me in our tracks, every so often as we make our way through the fair, to comment on what a beautiful baby my friend has. And, of course, they couldn’t be more right, but the sitting target for people’s advice and attention is clearly my friend. People naturally want to know, are curious: What’s her name? How old is she? And my friend simply smiles and answers them politely.

We don’t meet up with our old friend. Must not be meant to be I guess, I tell myself. I am bad with awkward greetings. I stand there, awkward as anything, grasping for things to say.

I feel left out. If we do all speak, the two of them will discuss their children. It’s no fair that I can’t be a part of that shared experience of motherhood that the two of them will most certainly connect to.

I will stand there, ever more awkward, but then we’ve just missed her. She hasn’t left the cows to run into us at the reptile exhibit. She is somewhere, in this crowd, and we never do find her. Missed opportunity, but for what?

Some friendships aren’t meant to be reforged. I can’t answer why that is. I wish I could.

Maybe we have nothing more in common. Perhaps we never did.

But what…I don’t know…is that what friendship comes down to in the end? It obviously meant something to us at the time, will forever be a part of our shared past. What, then, is to stop my friend and me from losing touch too, one of these days? I can’t understand it, how it all works, what friendships are and how to discover if they are meant to withstand anything.

Earlier in the day, I urged my friend to come along with me, to say goodbye to another girl from school. She is moving to the US with her husband. We arrive at her father’s house, in an area of town I am not in often. This friendly girl we’ve come to see answers the door, immediately taking the baby from my friend’s arms. Baby makes a helpful distraction and an ice breaker, to lighten the mood. Makes more of these awkward meetings a little less so.

The day has been mentally and physically exhausting for me, for us, but we agree we’re glad we made the effort, even if it didn’t all work out.

Ever the lousy social butterfly that I am and I have one more day of practice under my belt, but I still can’t shake the feelings of being totally out-of-place and out-of-my-element. Will they ever leave me completely?

I answer questions about my writing and my book and my friend answers more about her baby. We sip from little glasses of juice and listen to all the talk going on around us, mostly from family of the married friend who is on her way to start a new life with her husband.

Others, myself included, well the path looks a lot different than that one. It looks quite pleasant and put together, when compared to whatever the hell I’m doing, but who knows where we will all end up, really. We all have our six month plans, our two year plans to refer to, for just how we think our lives should go.

An old and faded baby book and the earliest of kindergarten friendships made. No matter how long it’s been, where we’ve come from, or how far away life may take any of us. Sometimes, before we know it, we’re right back here in the local county we knew as children, friendships tested and reformed again.

How is life fair? I can answer that: it isn’t “fair” at all. Let’s forget about how unfair life can be by visiting the fair.

To be fair, on such a fair day as this: better quit while I am ahead. I don’t normally mean to make my SoCS posts quite this long.

So that’s my four-letter word for today and I’m sticking with it.

TToT: Just a Storm Before the Calm – “Fa La La La La”

No, it’s not from a Christmas carol that I’m singing: Fa La La La La – it’s only August.        
But come on – just try to make that sound and not smile.

🙂

“We didn’t set out to become super heros but life doesn’t always go as planned.”
–Big Hero 6

No, life certainly does not.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

This week is full of quotes, music, and one photograph. This week:

I heard of the passing away of someone an old friend of mine will dearly miss. It’s tragic that a thing like cancer exists and that it took the life of someone who was only starting out in her life really. No twenty-five-year-old should die.

On the other end is former president Jimmy Carter, who announced his recent cancer diagnosis,

with a press conference,

this week and things look pretty grim for him as well.

He seems at peace with it, at his age, and still continues to do his beloved charity work, but who knows how much time he’s got left. Who knows how much time any of us have though.

Which leads me to my theme for the week:

Ten Things of Thankful

For The Diary of a Young Girl. Yeah, for the actual diary, which I finally have as a part of my collection of books on the shelf now.

It took me a while, simply because I feel so silly buying books I won’t be able to read, even books I love so much and that mean so much to me.

But I went to listen to the woman who is playing Anne Frank at the Stratford Festival this season. I saw the play a few months back and wanted to take this opportunity to hear her speak about the role.

It’s extremely interesting to hear her thoughts and feelings on playing such an iconic girl, big shoes to fill, but she does a fabulous job.

Stratford’s Diary of Anne Frank is hard-hitting and deeply enriching – THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Check it out, if you can.

Afterwards I decided to go for it and buy the diary. Seemed fitting.

“He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery.”
–Anne Frank

For birthday parties, with candy bars, delicious cupcakes, and children playing.

My nephew had the big party, compared to the small family one we had on his actual birthday.

This time my sister did a great job at throwing him a Big Hero 6 themed bash. All the various candy she had for the candy bar (the best in latest fads and I’m not complaining) represented something from the Big Hero 6 universe.

I don’t recall what the Sweet Tarts were supposed to represent, but they were damn good.

Who wouldn’t want to live in a place called San Fransokyo?

🙂

My nephew knows every word from this super hero animated film, even as he is learning what each word means – “fa la la la la” is a line, if you can call it that, from the movie.

For time spent at the beach.

I spent the entire time in waist-high water. It was warm and calm. All the waves were in the shallows, but truthfully, the water stayed shallow for a long, long way out.

I have a continual fear of undertows, but I was able to relax and enjoy the sunshine and the peaceful floating I did.

I brought my friend along. I hoped the beach might help, somehow, because it always helps me.

For seagulls, a flock of them..

This one is for my brother, who visited Prince Edward Island this week.

I love the sound they make, the cry, the squawk. To me, that sound is pure bliss of the ocean/lake, even if I hear one in a parking lot, far from the water.

Even for the 80s band. Okay, sure – let’s include them in there also.

For the Great Lakes. I am lucky, although I do not live near the ocean, I do live relatively close to the next best thing to it.

A Great Summer Adventure

I wrote this story, last year, about my visit to all five of the lakes in one summer.

I thought the play on words was pretty clever obviously.

🙂

For World Photography Day.

Well, actually, for my brother’s love, passion, and gift for the art of photography.

In reality, these days never stop coming and this is the first year I’ve heard of this one in particular.

Honestly, they do just make some handy suggestions for the TToT I’ve enjoyed participating in here. I texted my brother a Happy Photography Day and he, too, had never heard of it.

But the spirit of it is his ability to take beautiful photographs of the people he loves and the things he finds interesting. It is a part of what makes him who he is.

Should be a picture of me, but I can never be sure. Okay, so I probably sound a little bit like I am bragging, saying what I just said, then using a photo of myself. The truth is that this was the only picture I had on hand of his, but I thought I needed some visual representation to go with this Thankful.

For the creation of Winnie The Pooh, which would only be possible with the birth of the boy who inspired the loveable cartoon bear that my nephew loves so much – hell, that I love too. He’s just so darn cute.

“Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.”
–A.A. Milne

For Pinterest because it brings happiness to one who totally deserves it.

It was nice to hear the laughter. Life and storms can be rough sometimes.

For a friend who sent me some new music.

Ioana Grandrabur

I guess he thought I’d like this guitar player because she is a blind guitarist from Canada. Well, she does play some beautiful music, I must admit, she lives in Canada and I do too.

If you are a fan of classical guitar I suggest you give her a listen.

For my father and his continuous concern for me and the things I need, the way he takes care of me, and for his thoughtful gesture of stopping by to check on me.

Of course, one could argue that that’s what fathers do, but they don’t, not all of them anyway.

I am just thankful and grateful and wanted him to know that.

Did you know that when you see lightning, it’s traveling at about 227 million miles (365 million km) an hour?

Thanks National Geographic, for that cool little fact to go with my TToT post this week.

Storm Before the Calm

“I am now almost ninety and my strength is slowly failing. Still, the task I received from Anne continues to restore my energy: to struggle for reconciliation and human rights throughout the world.”
–Otto Frank, 1979

Otto Frank died on August 19th, one year after he said these words. Thought I’d end this week’s post with this, as I just wanted to include him, being that I started my week off with talking about the daughter he refers to here.

Life sure can be rough and sometimes the storms are deadly.

Other times, something good can come from the bad and the water will grow calm and still and peaceful once more.

I’m just happy to be here, this week, and to realize how precious life is, even when it takes a few crummy cancer stories to be the reminder of that fact.

You Are My Sunshine

You know those cinnamon hearts so common for Valentine’s Day?

He carried a clear plastic heart, but instead of filling it with candy, he placed inside the heart a picture of her – his dear wife of fifty-five years.

He had the words of the song written out on a piece of paper inside with her picture.

You Are My Sunshine

She was taken from him, suddenly, as is often the case.

He lost his sunshine and I lost my grandmother.

How can I make it possible, even through my precious words, for someone to understand just how special she was?

I had dealt with death, more than once, but I felt entirely unprepared for it when it came around again.

She has been gone for ten years and I wish I could tell her about my life since that day she had to go.

The Ties That Bind

I didn’t get to say goodbye. I just figured I would visit her the next day, either in hospital or out. It never really occurred to me that she would never come home again.

I heard my mom on the phone and I heard the news. I would not be visiting her in the hospital the next day.

My cousin stopped in on his lunch hour, as he worked nearby, and was speaking to her. My uncle and grandpa stood beside the bed. My cousin looked away for one second and when he looked back at her, she was silent and would not speak another word. He said her name, but she was gone.

I knew it wasn’t good news. I laid down on my bed and let the tears fall onto my pillow, unconcerned with the business of wiping them away. What was I going to do without her?

Her last diary entry

***

Thur. 21 32 degrees low 19
Telephone repair man here at 5 o’clock. Phone out since Sat morning, July 16th.
Caned 1 jar pickles..

Wed. 20 31 degrees low 20
I got pictures developed. Janet took of our 55th Ann. (tried out new canon camera)

Tues. 19 33 degrees low 21
I washed 2 loads. My right big tow sore. We rested in afternoon. I using Myoflex on arms & legs. It relieves pain.

Mon. 18 32 degrees low 22
Dad picked first pickles. All big. I cut some up 5 jars caned.
I phoned Connie at Dr.’s . She has to make an app for 2-D-Echo Cardiogram for me.
Craig came at nit to say Good-bye. He leaving to go to camp tomorrow till school starts, at Lions Head.

***

She kept a diary, as she called it, on her own terms. She did it her own way. I admired that about her.

I sat in their bedroom, with a cousin and we discussed our memories, and I wondered if my uncles or cousins might have any objections with me keeping her diaries. I certainly could not read the entries, but I wanted this one part of her, her memories and her words, even as I was being forced to let go of the rest.

I wanted to write the tribute to her. I wanted to be the one to read it at her funeral. I worked hard at what I wanted to say about her, writing it out and printing it out in braille, so I could take the words up there with me. I wasn’t going to draw a blank.

The three of us went up to the microphone. It was me, my sister, and my cousin. If I got choked up, my sister could take over. Our cousin was a back-up, just in case she too could not speak. I broke down a few times throughout, but after taking a few seconds to recover myself, I got through it. My usual issue with being unable to speak when I cried did not seem to be happening now.

As we stood at her grave, her sisters gave me flowers. I wanted to put my copy of the tribute, in braille, with her in the casket. I hoped my words were enough to show what she had brought to my life.

She was truly the only one who understood. She fussed over me when I was in pain because she knew my pain better than most. She had lived with her own pain since her children were young.

Many people didn’t understand it and she felt alone. I felt alone too. Together, we weren’t alone anymore. I feel alone sometimes because she is now gone.

I’ve lost something, an innocence not from childhood, but from her presence in my life. I miss it and I miss her.

I miss her singing.

She had a sweet naive quality about her, instilled from her upbringing in the tiny corner of the world she’d always lived in, but her many travels (Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, Australia) were just as important to the two of them. I love travel because of all the times I hoped she would sneak me along in one of their suitcases.

She loved Niagara Falls and she taught me to love it too.

Finally, we would go to Cuba together. She loved Varadero. She loved to watch the people in the hotel’s open-air lobby. She loved to stroll the town, not remaining in the resort the whole time. She loved to meet the people and to speak with them. Her open, friendly nature made other people feel at ease. She wasn’t afraid to try new things, no matter how old she got.

All the times we would stay awake long into the early morning. We would talk and before we knew it, it would be late. My grandpa could be heard snoring from the couch in the family room or in the spare bedroom across the hall. He could sleep for hours. She didn’t sleep well, for years, from pain and other things. I think she enjoyed having someone to talk to.

She said it so sincerely. She said she knew, somewhere out there, one day there would be the right man for me, someone who would take care of and love me for me. I believed her then.

Sometimes – I don’t know if I believe her anymore. I feel like I let her down, as her words and the reassurance in her voice once felt like the greatest comfort, but of which I can no longer hear.

I have only a far off impression of her telling me that, back at the back of my brain and it feels like the confidence in her statement, which she sounded so certain of that night, well I hold onto her and her words of love and comfort and I cling to that purity of hope she had, the sort of positive and optimistic nature she passed on to my mother.

I have my mother still and for that I am blessed because she continues to offer hope.

All I learned about love from my grandma is still in there somewhere.

It feels like more of a rarity now, with all the modern conveniences and technologies, whether that’s actually the truth I don’t know. I hope it isn’t.

But love, like the sort she and my grandpa had in each other, that must be proceeded by hope.

Love. Marriage. I stopped pretending those weren’t things I wanted, like having a bucket of cold water dumped, suddenly, over my head.

It’s something to hope for…something, worth risking failure for.

No matter how painful those failures may be.

I don’t know if what they had, the kind of love and connection, if that really even exists anymore. It’s rare, I know that much. It existed in a time long gone now, as fast-paced as things move these days. It’s a vanishing world of which they lived.

I often feel stuck between the beliefs she had, the religious woman of faith she was, and all she used to tell me and the modern world I live in. I sometimes don’t know what to believe, what I believe, but having her inside me somewhere, I know I follow my heart.

His heart was all wrapped up in her. When she went first, he would carry her photo in that Valentine’s Day heart, and for five more years he lived. She was his heart and he was hers, and now I think I will go visit their graves because writing this isn’t getting me to where I’d hoped.

Ruby Red

Without her here to read what I write, I can’t quite get over these last ten years she’s been gone.

After the funeral and all the family gatherings stopped, a stillness and a silence fell over my mother and me in the kitchen, as we wondered where to go from there. What to do now, without her?

Ten years, flying by like nothing now. I wish I could feel like she’s not really gone, as long as I remember her and write about her.

I need to hear her in myself when I clear my throat. I need to recognize my own naivete, of which I got from her. I need to run my hands over her diary and feel the indentation of her hand writing on the pages within.

Since I began my blog and knew this anniversary was coming, I started wanting the day to get here for me to write, assuming I would write a ten year tribute, building on the one I wrote the day we said goodbye, but I guess it’s something different. It’s everything I’ve thought about her and the things I’ve learned since losing her.

It always comes back to the two of them, for me, and the life they shared for more than fifty years. I wanted to find someone I could love like they loved each other. That was all fifteen-year-old me really wanted.

She was a warm woman and a bright light to all who loved her.
Ruby Witzel, 1929-2005

TToT: Black, White, and Gray

Another week has gone by and it’s been just as crazy as ever. Trump is back in the media spotlight, another mass shooting has taken place, and there’s a new E L James book selling millions of copies.

It’s a crazy, mad world and yet I’ve managed to find ten things to be thankful for, in and amongst the insanity.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

Monday: outdoor entertainment.

For the chance to sit and relax outside, all while having a loud speaker down the street provide the music to relax with.

It’s nice when there’s a crew working on a roof a few houses down. They set up loud speakers and some music to work to.

All I had to do was sit outside, in my chair, and enjoy the atmosphere.

For a chance for reflection.

It was five years to the day that my oma passed away.

I wrote a tribute blog post to her to mark the occasion.

Gardens Of Sunset

It was a chance for me to remember all the things I’ve missed about her since she’s been gone.

Tuesday: The Diary of Anne Frank..

For the chance to see this wonderful live performance.

I saw this play, at Stratford Theatre (Avon) in Stratford, Ontario.

I have read the diary, seen the film, but this was a totally new and unique experience.

I learned a few things I did not know, smiled at the humour infused into parts, and felt emotions from a group of people who were well chosen to play these roles.

I had a deep appreciation for the work that must go into putting on a show like that and I felt something. I think that’s what great theatre is supposed to do.

For the chance to celebrate!

My parents have been married thirty-six years and that blows my mind sometimes.

I am lucky to have them and the lessons they’ve taught me, just through the people that they are.

They are a team, they are lucky to have each other, and they know it.

Wednesday: Canada’s health care system.

For the ability to go to the doctor and not have to worry about the cost.

I know nothing’s perfect, including my country’s medical care, but I have needed enough of it to appreciate the fact that I can access it and receive just the same level as anyone else.

I know not all places are that way. I am receiving excellent care. If I were living somewhere else, I might not feel like I can go to see a doctor or a nurse, even for a check-up.

For sarcasm.

I love me some good sarcasm and John Stewart and The Daily Show will be missed.

“Pile of butler skeletons.”

Oh John. I will miss your wonderful brand of truth, spoken through a filter of the best sarcasm, that only you know how to deliver.

Thursday: it has happened again.

😦

For the fact that again I live where I do.

It’s not yet Canada Day and I mean nothing toward the United States or anywhere else.

There is violence in all places in society. I just know I am glad I don’t feel the need to carry a gun. I don’t want to live in a culture where being armed is seen as a necessity.

I hope for less of this, in all places, as time goes on.

For truly unique dining experiences, still to be had in my own home town.

I ate at a new spot, recently to open up in my city.

Sometimes I get bored of the same old thing when it comes to restaurants and food.

“Oh no! Not you again!” This is written on a “welcome mat”, on the way in.

🙂

Infusions just opened up and it offers a trickling fountain on the way in, a play area to distract children from even wanting to eat at all, and a candy bar as a dessert option.

Who doesn’t love a candy bar, I ask you?

Friday: there are perfect moments in life sometimes.

For beautiful June weather.

I realized I have a lovely place to sit and listen to music, reed, or spend time with people.

I need to make use of my deck more often. I can get so much out of a few chilled hours on my back deck, in my yard, listening to the birds chirping.

I don’t do that enough and I am missing out when I don’t.

For a sweet and simple connection.

There was no other hand I would rather hold on a Friday night than that of the best guy in my life.

I am lucky to have nephews and I love the car ride I spent with one of them, as he held onto my hand, as he fell asleep in his car seat, on the drive home.

Wow! I think I could have kept going, but I will just leave it there, for now.

John Stewart didn’t only speak about the hilarious events to make the news this week. If you get a moment you should check out what he said about the Charleston shooting. He spoke about how some things aren’t grey areas, but black and white all the way.

I do not mean to end on a sad note this week, but it is something to think about.

Is the world black and white or many different shades of grey?