Are We There Yet?

I have come to the realization that adults are nothing more than over-sized children, and just like children, should never be dealt with in large groups. Get a group of creative people together, add a bit of food and drink and just see how much you accomplish. You will be left with a room of toddlers, all talking at the same time, and waving their forks in the air to make their point. When they realize they are not being heard they will talk louder, some might even stand on their chairs, and a few will resort to throwing things in order to get the group’s attention. Given enough time, many of these people will forget why they got together in the first place and will begin entertaining themselves by making faces at each other, and laughing without restraint. If you took away the beer and added a sandbox, you’d have a scene from the local daycare - same amount of hair and teeth, hopefully less tears and in the end everyone will need to stop at the bathroom before going down for a nice nap.

Breathe

As evening rolled down over the mountains today I was struck by the oncoming close of yet another summer day and the way time rushes past us in a swirling, breathtaking, arbitrary blast. It never gives us the chance to say, “Wait, something big is happening, and I am afraid I’m missing it”. It is a locomotive screaming towards the station, puffing wildly, no holds barred, hang on for dear life, did you see that ride, and we are to adjust at breakneck speed or be crushed on the tracks. People around me are growing up, growing old, growing weary, getting lost, enduring disease, and dancing in the rain for reasons about which I am unaware, because I have simply been too busy to ask. Desperate to know, but crashing through every day with barely time to stop the hiccups, thinking that if I let one plate stop spinning, life as I know it will go tumbling into a ravine of disorganized underachievement, and if that happens I will be wasting one of the most precious gifts we are given. Time. So the question becomes - are we wasting time when we are doing nothing but relishing the fact of life, or are we wasting time when we are accomplishing what we have deemed important?

Collateral Damage Control

I have been told that I could live in complete happiness with only a few rudimentary supplies – a nail clipper with file, tweezers, a jar of Vaseline, Q-tips and dental floss. Life is really a series of grooming efforts, a constant battle to keep from grossing yourself out, and to remain acceptable to the viewing public. There is something about knowing that there is no remnant of a previous meal crammed amongst your molars that gives a person a sense of well being, and nail filing is really nothing more than pure economics. Jagged fingernails snag delicate clothing, and letting toenails go without benefit of a pedicure will lead to grotesque witch toes that can’t help but poke through the end of your socks and in extreme cases, your shoes. Vaseline is an absolute must in surviving a Colorado winter, where the air is not only cold but dry enough to turn shoe leather to stone. Without Vaseline, our lips would be replaced by frayed, battered flesh that would bleed every time the wind blew. And cotton swabs … well if you don’t know the joy of a gentle but thorough ear swabbing it’s time you expanded your horizons. Tweezers are probably the most crucial tool in this packet of essentials. You never know when you’re going to walk past a woman in a restaurant say, who has missed the inch long whisker projecting from her chin. I try not to over react, but I have been known to drop my tweezers, which I always carry, near her plate with a look that says, “choose to do the right thing”. For heaven’s sake, people are trying to eat! Tweezing is a commitment we all must make for the good of our fellow man. Tweeze with vigor and without fear, for there is only one place for a whiskered woman, and the circus has left town.

Where's the Cobbler

Shoes are the most difficult article of clothing to purchase. The problem is that the ones that are beautiful are very often meant to be worn only by the manikins modeling them, mainly because their weight is supported by a metal rod rather than their feet. If you’re planning to actually walk in shoes like that you can count on major foot surgery in your future. It’s something about the design, especially in women’s shoes, that seems to be a product of poor planning. When the toe of the shoe has a sharper point than the ice pick in the Psycho movie it is time to rethink our priorities. Whose idea was it to make women’s high heels with room for only one toe in the front, and not even your big toe? You have to be one of those people born with an inordinately long middle toe to benefit from the average high heeled shoe. I think shoes should be sold on a trial basis only. You could make a deposit on them and take a walk around the mall. If you come back free of tears and sporting only minimal bleeding then they’re a keeper. My favorites are the athletic shoes with that special gizmo in the heel to propel you into space when you stand up too quickly. They cost as much as a second mortgage, which works because they are the size of a small condo, which could come in handy after you’ve dragged them around on your feet all day. If you push two of them together they can sleep six quite comfortably.

Lone Traveler

The thing we forget when we are planning our schedule is that we probably won’t have buy in from the world at large. If you have exactly ten minutes to get to your next appointment you will invariably end up on a two lane road behind the woman who has taken it on as her mission to keep speeds under control on her section of blacktop. She is usually driving a Subaru Outback, two tone wagon, with a bumper sticker that says something about how saving whales will bring world peace to Tibetan monks, and if you were wondering, when she is driving on the road you happen to be on, she does own it and thus has control over all drivers lucky enough to be in her lane. She considers it a gift to be able to drive 30mph in a 45 mph zone, and she won’t even notice the endless line of cars behind her that she is holding up. She has a calling to encourage those around her to move at her perfect pace. When the road finally goes to four lanes and you pull up next to her at a stop light, she will look straight ahead and keep both hands on her steering wheel, and then you’ll realize the truth. She isn’t trying to slow you down or be in your way. In fact, she doesn’t even know you’re there.

Follow the Storm

There is something about a lightning storm that helps to bring things into perspective. No matter what we do, how smart we become, how much we think we know, we will never be able to harness the lightning. As it was flashing between the mountains this afternoon, filling the darkened sky with brilliance for fleeting moments at a time, I was struck (no pun intended) by its random nature yet impressed with its organized presentation. The electrical streaks go where they choose, and it is as though they are choosing, leaving us completely at the mercy of their startling, self-contained power, and when the storm has subsided the show pulls up stakes and fades to black abandoning a shuttering section of earth in its wake. The sheer force of all that energy, gathered into one vast, though limited area, is inspiring and terrifying at the same time. It demonstrates without consideration and asks only that we watch with the proper respect and a certain amount of awe, knowing that when the curtain rises all eyes will turn heavenward and be amazed.

Fashionably Geriatric

It is hard to know what is best when faced with our own inevitable journey into old age. I don’t know who is smarter – those who embrace the lengthening of years by wearing the sweatshirt with the bird appliqué on the front, or those who deny the aging process by wearing the tube top that was meant for a twelve year old. Either way it all comes down to fashion. There are women who have given up on trying to hold it all in by changing out their jeans for elastic waste pants and their strappy sandals for something with a protective steel toe. They seem to be shouting that they have lived past a certain age and they want the world to know they are proud of it. On the other end of the spectrum is the woman who has exchanged breathing for the jeans that force her rear end up into her shoulder blades. She doesn’t notice the discomfort for the distraction her numb toes are causing inside her four inch, weapon like heels. While some women are plucking, bleaching, tucking and sucking it all in, others are enjoying the fact that they have slipped into that “comfortable” age when they can relax and let their mustache grow. There has to be some place in the middle where we can age gracefully and with a modicum of dignity. I’m just not sure it is in this hemisphere.

Tapestry

Forgiveness is something that people love to talk about today, about how it is the only way a person will heal and how not forgiving can even make a person physically sick. It can be a hard thing to do when we have been truly wronged, and I have often wondered why. Are human beings just bent on carrying around anger about things that happened long ago? I have decided that forgiveness is key to living with any sense of well-being and certainly peace, and that the hard part is not in forgiving the person who has hurt us, but in forgiving ourselves. There is something about allowing ourselves to get into a situation where we can be hurt that is humiliating and that humiliation makes the hurt hang on like a bur in a wool sock. It’s that question of “why didn’t I see it coming” or “why did I give them the upper hand” that presses in on us and quenches our ability to shrug it off. So forgiving ourselves for being vulnerable and letting our defenses down becomes the nemesis, and when dealing with a nemesis, there is only one way to go. God is a master at melting the impossible steel cage we put ourselves in when our hearts are hurting. I stop and listen for that voice that urges me to laugh a little at my foibles and believe that my vulnerability is one of the threads woven into me by a God who treasures me.

Turn Your Head and Cough

Have you ever wondered what they were thinking when they decided that pharmaceuticals could advertise on television? Next to political ads, that are nothing more than well organized bickering, the drug ads are the Mount Vesuvius of grotesque information overload. Why do I, someone who has no intention of taking medication for “ants in your pants syndrome”, have to hear about the fact that it may cause depression, constipation, acne and excessive belching? Are these weird ailments actually affecting the population in the epidemic proportions implied? Whatever happened to the days when people dealt with their sleeplessness by getting up and cleaning the kitchen floor and taking a few gulps of Benadryl? We have become a society of complex anxieties and it is a conundrum of our own doing. And do we think its just coincidence that overactive bladder became rampant right about the same time that Starbucks took over the universe? Think about it.

Beckon the Moon

The moon was hiding last night, just barely peeking through the dark silhouette of trees and the wall of clouds that crept across the blackened expanse. From time to time it would wave at the earth below, obviously glad it was suspended well above the chaos, content in its knowledge that it had one huge advantage over earth – it was not inhabited by people. Some days, and today would be one of them, actually yesterday was also one, I have to stop and shake my head at people and our constant need for attention. We are like puppies in high heels and business suits, in a never ending clamor for affection. “Notice me, think I’m cute, give me a treat, pet my ears,” we are all begging, as we wag our way through life. It makes the daily grind a tiring, often aggravating endeavor, as we struggle for approval from people who probably haven’t even noticed us, let alone approved of us. And if they do give us the “better housekeeping seal” will it make a difference, or will we continue to roll over and play dead on command, in hopes that one more bone will be thrown our way?

All In a Name

Names of books are so hard to do. When I titled my first novel String the Dark Pearl, I contemplated shortening it to “Dark Pearl”, but I was afraid that people would be looking for a Johnny Depp fan club anthology. Some authors like to spill the whole plot in their title, so mine could have been, “Always Check behind You When You’re Getting into Your Car on a Snowy Day”. Confused? Read the book. Another option is to give it a one word title, like “Kidnapped” (taken), or “Pearl” (also taken). Some authors go with themes like naming every book after a laundry soap. “The Tide Cometh,” is a good one, followed by “No Gain, All Stains”, and finally “Gasping for Oxyclean.” Some of the best titles have little to do with the book at all, but they create a poetic intrigue that makes you want to buy the book to display on your shelves whether or not you ever read it. If you do read it, you spend the entire book trying to figure out what the author meant by the title, when the answer may be simply that it “sounded neat”. For instance a book called “Beans in my Pants” may have nothing to do with beans or pants, but it sort-of makes you want to find out. It has also become popular to title a book “The Someone’s Wife”. Fill in whatever profession you want – The Teacher’s, The King’s, The Mechanic’s. These books are often about women searching for who they are apart from their spouse, so really the books should be called “If I weren’t The Someone’s Wife”, or “My Heavens, Why did I Marry the Someone?”. The working title for my new book is “Say it Twice Softly”. Don’t ask.