Sign Of Things To Come?

I've received the same troubling email twice now. The subject line is "A Place For Mom". Not being entirely internet ignorant, I have not, and will not, open up either email. After completing this posting, I will send the sender to the permanent File 13 in the internet sky.

As I indicated, I find this subject to be of a disquieting nature, wondering if my family is now plotting and planning on where to put 'dear-old-mom' in her twilight years. Furthermore, I wonder if my family thinks I might actually be either in or approaching my twilight years. Neither scenario is comforting and has made me examine my behavior, searching for clues for any declining mental acuity.

Not wanting to focus on what is slipping, I have instead decided to compile a list of ways I can prove to myself and others that I am as sharp as ever.

• I can still count to eight, as all good band directors are able.
• I can still spel.
• I can still recite all 23 letters of the alphabet.
• Fortunately, I still know the difference between bear and bare.
• I can still tell what the skirt and legs difference means on public bathroom doors.
• I still know the useless lyrics to 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's pop songs.
• I still know trombone positions and oboe fingerings.
• I still know that saluting with my middle finger is unacceptable.
• I still know that red chicken meat should not be served at the dinner table.
• Lastly, I still bake one mean cookie.
  

So, no place for good ole' mom, yet. When I begin roaming the streets in a sweater, but with no slacks, it will be time for different accommodations. Preferably something with grandchildren and puppies.

Ancora imparo

Reversal of Situation

Yesterday's blog was a whiny one about having nothing that (I could or should eat) I was interested in consuming. I freely admit I was whining when I wrote that blog. After finishing the blog I chose gluten-free crackers - made from mostly air - with some peanut butter and dried cranberries. The coffee was the deal-sealer. Doesn't most everything go better with coffee?

Today is a total turn-around. Capt. SO wanted to do what was supposed to be a quick wash job on the Aqua RV. It had been spotless but there were dozens of colonies of tiny bugs that descended on her over night and she wasn't spotless this morning. Thus, the quick wash job turned into an almost two-hour cleaning session. I schlepped over to the farmers' market and am happy to announce that, temporarily at least, my food disinterest is gone.

The tiny galley's counters are covered with farm-fresh cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, ears of sweet corn, baby beets and, the coup de grace - tomatoes. As soon as I returned to the Aqua RV, I quickly tore open the plastic bag containing the tomatoes, found the juiciest one possible, grabbed my salt shaker and went to the sink where I savored each and every morsel of that splendid tomato.

Can a tomato be described as splendid? Absolutely! I only purchased five because I knew that I was reaching my weight-carrying limit, but those five tomatoes will be lucky to last the day. After all, there are only four at this writing. So........there will be another walk to the market yet this a.m. to buy more tomatoes.

I am now in food nirvana. Can there be such a place?

Oh, I forgot to mention that, somehow, a fresh peach pie ended up with my purchases. I don't know how this happened.

Ancora imparo

What's To Eat?

Have you ever been stuck on what to eat? I mean, absolutely stuck, without a clue as to what you feel like eating?

Lately, I've been uninspired to cook....unfortunately not uninspired to eat, but completely without cooking inspiration. Print media and television segments are filled with summer cooking and grilling ideas. All you need are good cuts of meat, lots of fresh vegetables from a garden, and, quite possibly, cheese slices. If you have access to blenders and food processors, there are recipes a-plenty to whip up tasty and fat-laden sauces which can be basted or pasted on the meat or veggies. Of course, there are numerous recipes for turning fresh vegetables into salads and main dishes as well as recipes for all kinds desserts utilizing in-season fruits.

So why can't I figure out what to eat? There is no logical reason for this dilemma. My mind is stuck on a limited number of foods that appeal to me: Peanut butter, tuna fish, raspberries, blueberries and turkey brats. I wonder what delectable concoction can be prepared using those ingredients?

I'll go through my cupboards one more time, searching for culinary inspiration, hoping to find some. I suspect that peanut butter mixed with tuna would be considered 'yucky'.....I'm not even sure I would eat that and I eat most anything. Grilled turkey brats with raspberries, now that is sounding better.

Blueberries? For breakfast, lunch and dinner? That sounds gastronomically risky to me.

Bon appetite is but a pipe dream right now. There's always tomorrow.

Ancora imparo

Conflict Resolution

This morning, I went to my yoga class because......well, because I enjoy it and I know it is good for me. The instructor, Erika, is patient, knowledgeable, and willing to work with any body, at any stage. The names of the yoga poses are of particular fascination to me. Some, like the cobra, make perfect sense because I can imagine the head of the cobra coming up, just as my head comes up. Others, such as the half pigeon are senseless to me. The position is a comfortable one for my body and gives a great stretch for my gluts and hamstrings, but what the position has to do with a pigeon is beyond my ken. The rag doll is a position that gives a great stretch - perhaps all over when I think about it. It feels really good to hang from my waist. I called it perversely comfortable. And, I can mostly imagine why the position resembles a rag doll.

It was while we were in our extended rag doll positions that Erika announced to us that this position was good for resolving conflict. "Hmmm", I thought to myself, "And how is this?"

She proceeded to explain to us that if we were having a disagreement with our spouses or SOs, we should stand, back-to-back, and each go into a rag doll position. (This now puts you behind-to-behind.) Because your feet are a shoulder-width apart, you can see the other person's face - between your legs - only upside down. You then can continue the disagreeable conversation with the other person.

I can see why this would be useful in conflict resolution. Imagine trying to remain angry or upset with another human when you are looking at his or her face - upside down- and behind-to-behind. I'm quite certain I would end up laughing hysterically and completely forget why I was angry in the first place.

I'm just picturing a corporate board room.......or a Presidential Cabinet meeting.......or a church council meeting.

Could be very interesting. I think that Erika is on to something! Do you want to be the first to suggest it or should I?

Ancora imparo

Slivers

Slivers are highly annoying, aren't they? You can try to ignore them, but they catch on everything, and by catching on fabric, they seem to become more uncomfortable, perhaps for good reason, until you get fed up and decide to either pull them out with tweezers or dig - oops, lift - them out with a needle.

A sliver of wood became embedded in my finger this afternoon. OK, no big deal there. I've had lots of slivers before. I found my favorite sliver needle, sterilized it, and started the task of removing the sliver, except that I discovered the sliver was embedded a bit farther into my skin than I realized. I persisted in my effort to remove the sliver but I came to my threshold of personal-pain-infliction tolerance.

Have you ever been there? Sometimes it seems that I find it is easier for me to tolerate someone else inflicting pain on me than me; i.e. letting my SO digging out my slivers. While I did not request sliver-removal assistance from my trusty SO today, I certainly thought about it. I also thought of all of the old-fashioned ways that people have dealt with pain in past centuries. A big clump of rag clenched in the teeth, liquor, drugs, and plain old 'grit your teeth and withstand the pain'. My personal favorite would have been the liquor, which I thought was a bit of overkill for simply removing a sliver from my finger.

Yes, I 'dug deep' and removed the sliver, which turned out to be somewhat metaphoric for this day. Digging deep and removing uncomfortable foreign objects.......now there is a topic for another day's posting!

Remember the old saying: Blood is thicker but liquor is quicker.

Ancora imparo

Absence of Sound

My home is quiet. It is the quiet that two older adults live in. There is the occasional sound of the television and radio, conversation - when my SO and I are in the same room, footsteps going up and down the stairs as we put all of the toys away, plates/bowls/pans being removed from the dishwasher, the washing machine doing its job, the coffee grinder as it prepares the substance which will provide artificial energy as we deal with our they-came-and-took-them-away funk, the clunk and clatter of toys being put back into the storage bins. Too quiet.

Gone are the sounds that accompany a visit from our grandchildren. My SO and I look at each other, trying to remember what our regular voices sound like, instead of the higher-pitched and happy voices that we use to talk with our granddaughter - the sentences that all end with the voice pitch going up. (I can hear myself saying 'up' in a higher, squeaky-type voice.) Or the sound of our voices when we chat with the boyz, (intentional misspelling), ages three and four.

With the boyz, our voices are closer to 'regular', but the chatter is so vastly different. With the boyz, especially TLV, the four-year old, most of our conversation would go like this:

TLV: Why did that dog lay down on the ground?
Gramps: Because the owner told him to.
TLV: Why?
Gramps: Because having a dog lie down is way to get the dog to obey.
TLV: Why?
Gramps: Because then the dog doesn't bother other people eating their ice cream.
TLV: Why?
Gramps: Because some people are not comfortable around dogs.
TLV: Like David?
Gramps: Yes
TLV: Why?
Gramps: Why do YOU think?
TLV: I do not know.

Talking with three and four-year olds can be like walking into a conversational mine-field. You never know when the body-parts topic will come up, but when it does, it is not a topic that is easily nor quickly put to rest. The hardest part of being in a body-parts conversation is not laughing because then the whole world is a stage and three and four-year olds instinctively know when they have a captive audience. And who is a better captive audience than grandparents? Grandparents laugh (mostly) at the antics of their grandchildren, sometimes even becoming goofier than the grandchildren, which is always popular with the 'short' set.

That is what is missing here, at Quiet Central........Laughter. I haven't been silly for about sixteen hours. Silly is more fun. Quiet may be more adult but there is nothing like reading book after book, using your voice to illustrate the different book characters. I haven't heard Donald Duck's voice coming from Gramps since late yesterday afternoon.

I suppose it would be a little odd to read "Duck Soup" to my SO. Then again, maybe not.

Ancora imparo

Answers VS Questions

A few days ago, I caught part of an interview on Public Radio. Unfortunately, I did not hear the name of the person being interviewed, nor do I remember the show that I was listening to, so I cannot give credit, where credit is due, for the seed of my idea that grew from one, short comment made on the air.

The comment, that captured my attention, went something like this: Answers give us permission to stop wondering, to stop being inquisitive and to stop investigating.

In my car, at the time of the program, I heard the comment and immediately turned off the radio, in order to remember and to reflect upon what I had just listened to. The longer I pondered, the greater the impact of profundity became to me.

Aren't we always looking for 'answers'? Aren't we taught, from very early on, to question almost EVERYTHING and to search for 'the answer'? Many times, do we not DEMAND answers and then feel more reassured when we receive them? In circumstances of extreme danger, confusion, and tragedy do we humans not pursue answers with all the technology and manpower that can be summoned? Wouldn't our leaders be criticized for not seeking 'answers'?

Perhaps the concept is more along the lines of there is not one answer but many. Can a human really be content with the concept that there might be more than one right answer?

I do not have an answer to my own question, and it just might be better if I do not. This may be an opportunity to just keep thinking......and thinking......and thinking. Now if I can just prevent a headache from coming.......

Ancora imparo