The Mortality of Flowers

No one loves flowers more than I do. I love them so much that I get them for myself and frequently for others (I even had my 3-year-old grandson pick out a bouquet at Farmer's Market on Saturday...it was red of course). The entire time they are plucky and cheerful I feel good about them and they keep my spirits up but the minute the droops begin, I have to battle the down mood I begin to experience. If I were smart, I'd plant more cutting-type flowers in my garden but those are the types of plants I typically kill so that hasn't seemed to work out.

As it is, the minute I've had to toss one, I want to be able to replace it. However, I've also learned there are good places to shop for flowers and very bad places to shop for flowers. Safeway being my most recent disaster where the bouquet stunk to high heaven when I got it unwrapped and all the mums started to fall apart at a mere touch. Rotten! Fred Meyer isn't much better and Albertson's is a joke. However, Trader Joes has yielded mixed results. The best by far is New Seasons, actually that's only second best to a florist's shop and actually the Farmer's Market is very good as well. Just in case anyone wants to know.

When I see flowers start to droop like the Gerbera daisies in front of me as we "speak", it makes me feel sad similar to how I feel about the stuffed animals left on the aisle floors of department stores after Christmas. Clearly the rejects of the bunch.

I don't know why those abandoned stuffed animals make me sad but they do, I think maybe I'm subconsciously attributing actual personalities to them, like they care. Who knows, maybe flowers and stuffed animals are all valid signs of depression...nah! I just need to establish boundaries around what I should care about and what I shouldn't. These things definitely fall outside those boundaries but how do you change a lifetime of behavior? When the sensitivity gene was handed out, I was given seconds, possibly even a third helping. Pitiful.

Out of Gas

It's Friday night and just thinking about all the things I have left to do (and it's 8:45) is wearing me out. Of course, am I doing any of them? Well, not at the moment I'm obviously writing important stuff here. This is the time of celebrations, anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, baby accomplishments, replacement of ancient hampers, replacement of gross and ancient bathroom waste baskets, replacement of very tired front door mats, egging on the bouquets for just a few more days, wrapping, wrapping and more wrapping...See, even listing it all out is making me tired.

I need to get up, get the circulation going. Who knows, maybe I can actually still accomplish something tonight.

If Only...

If only everyone could be just like me. I wouldn't have to worry about people getting their work done, I wouldn't have to worry about people getting along with other people, I wouldn't have to worry about people handling their customers in just the right way, I wouldn't have to listen to arrogant b.....ds who love the sounds of their own voice, I wouldn't have to worry about dealing with control freaks who piss everyone off, I wouldn't have to worry about dealing with hypocrites, I wouldn't have to worry about people taking the feelings of appropriate other people into consideration for whatever the reason, I wouldn't have to remind people to do basic stuff that should have already occurred to them, I would never have to deal with stupidity, meaness, sloppiness, apathy, murderers, rapists, thieves, etc.


OK, now that I've climbed back out of my rat hole, I'll be the first to admit I'm not remotely perfect but I do hold some basic tenants to be true and try my best to live by them. The good old Golden Rule, how many people these days even know what that is? The answer is either not enough or they know it and ignore it. As Charlie Brown would say, "Argh!"

Yea, it was just that kind of day.

Addiction to Sugar vs. Salt

I have to wonder if salt causes the same addiction as sugar. I know the fact is once you are introoduced to sugar you crave it due to its addictive nature. Just try to stand in the See's candy store and say "no"! That smell of chocolate (and sugar) is heady.

However, in regards to salt, if I eat one potato chip I can't stop. The same thing is true for salted almonds or other nuts. I would even say my inclination to eat and eat he salty things is every bit as strong as it is to sugar. Yet I never hear the same cautionary tales about salt that I do about sugar. Perhaps it's due to the lack of direct caloric impact of salt vs. blood pressure or something similar less sexy. Who knows? All I know is that without sugar and without salt, life would constitute one drab existence. And that's the truth.

Weddings and Wheelchairs

These actually go well together, especially if you need to fly and stay in a hotel with someone who can't get here under their own steam. Can you say, "express lines", "delivery to the door", "special treatment"...it's all pretty wonderful. And, I didn't have to push it most of the time, at least not in the airport. I'm going to see if I can come up with another wheelchair-eligible trip next Spring. I could quickly get used to "moving to the front of the line".

Just saying...

if a bunch of backward, narrow-minded states had boycotted a white president's request to speak to school children across America, there would have been an uproar and heads would have rolled, I'm confident of that.

If a legislator of color had called a white president a liar in the middle of a prime time speech to the House, even more heads would have rolled. Truly, the nation would have been outraged.

All I want to know is who the hell do these people think they are. Let our kids make up their own minds. It's not like we were televising a speech by Larry Flynt (although they probably would have let that go) or Charles Manson. For God's sakes, he's the president of this country urging the kids to apply themselves and stay in school. Just how subversive is that on a scale of 1 - 10 you idiots? The Nazi's also restricted access to the truth and any other perspectives for their school children you know...just saying.

I'm already embarrassed at how this asinine country is acting in regards to anything and everything this president does, simply because he's black. Let us recall how we all got into this stinking mess, Obama didn't bring us here, he has spent his entire first months doing nothing but cleaning up the ca ca from the prior 8 years. Is he perfect, I don't know was Bush?

If every single constituent of that jerk Republican who shouted out in the House of Representatives doesn't demand he be recalled then I'm ashamed to call them fellow Americans. He deserves nothing but to be terminated in disgrace.

Period.

Seasonal Observations

How old are we when we truly learn what the seasons mean? Maybe early grade school I guess. Even then, you have a child's view and don't notice or don't remember the nuances of those parts of the year.

When I think of holly trees filled with holly berries, for instance, I think of December and Christmas. In reality, the birds will have completely emptied the tree of its berries by that time, especially if the ground is covered in snow again this winter. Here it is, early September and I'm looking out the window at a holly tree absolutely filled with red, plump berries. I'm certain I never noticed the timing of this event previously.

It used to be that winter was cold and wet, spring was warmer and wet, summer was sunny and hot and fall was warmish and mostly dry. Now, the weather that used to be "seasonal" spills across all boundaries and seems to go to extremes I simply don't remember from my youth. I don't know how many days we had over 100 degrees this summer but I know one day our backyard thermometer hit 108. I know we had over 2 feet of snow last December, at one time, which is practically unheard of in this part of the country.

There are so many squirrels on our property gathering whatever they are literally all over the place. There obviously aren't enough knotholes for them to hide their stashes so they dig up my plants to bury their treasures instead. They are such irritating rodents.

Spring is still my favorite because that's when life is reborn on the planet (at least in our neck of it). There is nothing more precious than seeing those first green shoots coming out of the limbs of the trees. Even though I love the vibrant colors of summer, it's that awakening from the dreary greyness of winter I most appreciate. Thankfully, this hasn't changed.

Imagine being in a submarine or in the International Space Station, you not only wouldn't have any seasons, you'd have no weather, no temperature fluctuations. Even in the Arctic or the Antarctic I think there are minimal seasonal changes, at least a couple anyway.

Has Everyone Become a Conservative?

It seems like when Obama was running and even after he won, there was tremendous support for him and for change. I also think he faced more of a mess than any president has seen in recent history (thank you Mr.'s Bush and Cheney). Even though I can't remember Bush actually accomplishing anything intelligent or helpful in his 8 years, I don't remember there being so many critics criticizing absolutely everything he did. The "honeymoon" is definitely over.

Has this country gotten to the point that you can't even come close to pleasing anyone? People I had considered to be liberal Democrats are complaining, people who were on the line are complaining, people who were on the near right and the far right are complaining. I don't know that I've seen any positive comments from anyone. While it seems like Bush was hated but tolerated for being a non-entity, a shallow idiot, a blustering fool; now, it seems like Obama is hated and not tolerated for trying to take some kind of action to address the thousands of issues that are being thrown at him.

I'm honestly not sure he could do anything right if he tried short of magically fixing the economy without spending any money, getting everyone jobs without spending any money, ending terrorism without using the military, providing health care to each citizen without changing anything (not that I totally agree with his ideas on this one), saving our industries regardless of the fact that it's too expensive to produce products here (how many companies have to move offshore for that to become clear). Some say he is trying to do too much but when he turns his back on any one of the country's urgent needs, that faction takes the stage to criticize.

I feel like we're riding in one of those carnival rides that swings all the way to the left then back all the way to the right. We have turned into one schizophrenic country.

Is he perfect and making all the right decisions? No and probably not. Is he moving us forward? Yes. Is he pissing people off in the process? Yes. Do I care? No. Do I want to pay more taxes? No. Do I want to continue to work until I'm 80 because the economy can't get itself out of the tank? Hell, no. Do I have a better idea for how he can turn things around? No. Does anyone? If not, how about showing some support for a change. So much for reaching across the aisle and working together to improve our lot. What a joke.

Always a Retiree's Friend or Relative/Never a Retiree

Lately I'm feeling very left behind. So many people I know have retired or will be in the next few months. This must be what it's like when you get to an advanced age and your friends all start to die, you look around and think, am I the only one over a certain age still around?

I know that retirement from a commercial sense has been overly glamorized, I know that Dennis Hopper isn't being totally honest when he invites me to visit or even live on the white, sandy beaches where he lives. I know I'll never have my picture on the front of AARP magazine. But I also know those who are retired frequently travel and seem to be doing just fine, to a person.

I think my problem is I started working by babysitting when I was 11 or 12 and beyond, then to picking berries then to working at a movie theater, then bookkeeping (not a fond memory except for Ellie), then B of A and then the rest is history, sort of. If my lousy math is remotely accurate, that means I've been working for the last 47 years and I'm just tired of it, pure and simple. It doesn't help anything that work, budgets, people and the environment in general keeps getting more challenging and just generally obnoxious. I feel like I'd be better able to cope if I were living backwards like Merlin or Benjamin Button so I'd have more energy now than I did when I was younger.

I guess that's why my time off is so very precious. Having a job that eats into my personal time has gone beyond old, especially since it's been that way for so many years. It didn't take much for my husband and friends to talk me out of looking at e-mail while we were on our recent cruise. I was interested in seeing what was going on with the kids but knew if I looked I might also see e-mails from work. I stretched my time off to the very last minute, I even got my first and second ever massages.

But for the time being, I have no options so I just need to keep plugging along. I'm definitely not one of those people who gets "joy" out of their work. But I need to dig deep again this weekend because guess what, I have work that has to get done. Ugh!