Finding Our Way
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Finding Our Way

Waking Up With the Knee-pain Fairy

I have been visited by the Knee-pain Fairy.

People I have known who have complained of knee pain seem to me to have had it for years, a kind of annoyance, nagging them and getting progressively worse over time. Even though I have been overweight for years, I knew I was fortunate to not be plagued by knee pain. Until this year.

I think it started with Wii Fit.(rft*##!gr@)  I had been using it for yoga and step ...
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Minneapolis Vacation Diary

Our flight to Minnesota was via Southwest airlines. It had been years since we sang our way into the number one priority boarding position in Southwest’s interesting model of non-assigned seating. It had changed a bit. They now had rows of pillars with numbers like 1-6, 7-10, etc., where you were supposed to line up in number order according to your boarding group A, B, C. We did our best to ... << MORE >>

The Keys to Enjoying Mulberries


The keys to ENJOYING mulberries from your back yard tree are as follows.

DON'T get hung up on -
  1. Inspecting every berry before you put it in your mouth.  
    This is counter-productive. It slows down the thrill of gobbling. And you are bound to find some * teeny weeny tiny * bugs on one at some point and that will make you think twice, and ruin the whole thing. The ...
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Good Enough

“…now that he had entered into the final active stages of his life, he was beginning to understand that, barring accidents, life did not change.

... << MORE >>

Where I Am From

I am from parents who thought they were finished having babies.
I am from one of the great wonders of the world.
...
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The Elusive Joy of Clean

Two weekends ago, my live Christmas tree and wreaths were gone, burnt in a lovely Epiphany bonfire.

But the rest of the Christmas kitsch remained – garlands of evergreen and poinsettia on the mantles and stairways, antique and new figurines, crèches, more wreaths, mistletoe, candles, bows and ornaments that adorned doorways, shelves and walls. During the Christmas season the kitsch is festive and warm; afterward, it’s just clutter. I wilted at the level of lugging and packing and organizing it would take to find the ...
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Today's the Day

5:45 a.m. Today’s the Day, I think. We’ll have to summon the mercy and courage to say good-bye to Bou. << MORE >>

Gratitude

"To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.”  - Johannes A. Gaertner

 

Today, I am exceedingly grateful for –
...<< MORE >>

Happy Thanksgiving Day

Dear Family and Friends,
Here it is Monday of Thanksgiving week already, and I have not sent out any cards via the US Mail to you, which means that it is pretty much too late to send them now, so I will send you my words electronically.  Is it any wonder the ... << MORE >>

Cricketsong and the End of a Season

I drove up the driveway and shut off the car engine
That's when I heard it.


My ears snapped to attention.  Oh my God, I thought....

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Book Reviews

I was a little aghast when I looked at my blog and it said "70 days since last post." 

NOT TRUE!  I thought. 

Here's why it's not true - I post to my Books I Read in 2009 more frequently than to the regular pages.  The "book reviews" are not just "I liked / disliked this book."  Usually, I write about what the book meant to me and what I valued, so I am hoping that these "reviews" are an interesting read too.

Recent ones over the summer pretty much reflect the discernment process I've been going through - all good stuff:

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

Womenomics by Claire Shipman and Katy Kay

Do What You Are

and
 
Difficult Conversations

 Digg 

Sleeping in Today


When a very hot, muggy August day gives way to a very cool night, moisture from the steamy earth rises into that cool air and makes ground fog.  It’s a pretty effect of “clouds on the ground” that I enjoy.  I observed this effect one morning this month as I drove past fields and mountains on the way to work in the early morning, and this is what I thought:

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To Portland and Back Diary

2009, Sunday August 2nd,



Once through, I wanted one of Annie’s pretzels so I bought one and a strawberry lemonade.  We found the Red Carpet Club and went in.  The lady behind the desk said, “Oh, no, you can’t bring food from outside in here. Please go out and finish it before you come in.”  WHAT?? I said (I had brought food in before many times.) “That’s the number 1 rule ...<< MORE >>

Let's Continue

My blog stats tell me I haven't posted a new entry in 74 days. I have thought about it almost all of those 74 days. When I write here, it is because there is something significant, or beautiful, or inspiring or interesting that I want to share. The reason I haven't written in so long is that I didn't feel I could continue until I addressed the most significant thing that has happened in my life. And I just wasn't ready. I didn't know what to say. I did have lots to say, but it was too personal. Today I continue. That "most significant thing in my life" was on May 27 losing my mother.<< MORE >>

Homage to the Leaves

Driving the mountain-scenic roads 
    to the Shenandoah hollow of Orkney Springs,
         the gentle greens of new leaves evoke in me
               tenderness.

I feel drawn into the greens, << MORE >>

Cake Tribulations

It all started innocently enough. My pretty cake stand was empty. It is a holiday and the girls are behaving fairly aimlessly. "You want to bake a cake?" I asked.

We only had one can of whipped cream cheese frosting. The girls chose a red velvet cake from among several mixes we had on hand.  Good combination.  They started to work while I messed around on my computer in another room.

When I emerged to see how they were doing, I saw they had out one heart-shaped 8-inch pan and a cake pan for a dozen mini-muffins.  They were spooning insanely red batter into ...<< MORE >>

Books I Read in 2009

This is the list of books I read in 2009. This year I am going to try to at least pull out a favorite quote and maybe write a little about the book. I'll add to this page all year, then. << MORE >>

Virginia Winter

Winter in Virginia is so beautiful I had to stop before writing this to take some photos of the stark branches — lean and tall, or gnarled and sprawled — with bright light striping their West sides and deep sienna shadows on their East sides. They cast long shadows across pale wintergreen grass and the Short Hills mountains rise beyond them, solid and silent. << MORE >>

Books I Read in 2008

This is the list of books I read in 2008, from most recent.  So, I finished The Wide Open Door in late December, and I read Infidel in January 2008.

I'm going to track the 2009 books too, but I didn't want to lose "the list" from 2008 so I'm putting it here on a blog page.

This was fun.  I often wished, as I was reading, that I would stop and do a little book review at the end of each.  Or, at least pull out one quote I loved from each one.  I didn't do that (mostly because the ...<< MORE >>

What have we become?

I almost don't know how to say what I'm feeling. There was a wretched horror and vicarious shame I felt upon reading how a 34 year old temporary employee at a Wal-Mart in Long Island, NY, was trampled and killed at 5:00 in the morning as Black Friday shoppers swarmed into the store, ripping the doors off their hinges.
view link

What the hell???

Who are these people? Where is our respect for our fellow human beings? Where is our respect for ourselves? What consumer product could possibly be worth waiting in line for hours in the dark and the cold ...<< MORE >>

Yes We Can

I had thought our country was lost to greed, to cynicism and to characterization as a nation made up of people and leaders who fit the mold of "the Ugly American."  I didn't want to believe it, but I saw little evidence to the contrary.

I had thought that the lush, idealistic season in which I grew up - a season wherein it was not cool and not acceptable to hate, to categorize and despise, to disrespect people who were different from me - I thought that was a season past, and relegated to at best a footnote in some history book, if ...<< MORE >>

Good-bye Dear Friend

We found Noah while stranded in New York in 2003.

We had just moved into our new Purcellville, Virginia home, the one with the 5+ acres of yard that was finally big enough to accommodate a dog. That’s what we had told the girls all along anyway, when they begged us for a dog when we lived in a townhouse with no yard of which to speak. We had traveled to New York State and were staying with my sister when a blizzard dropped 2 feet of snow on the Washington, DC area. New York was fine, but we ...<< MORE >>

Girls Just Wanna Have Fu-un

...So, when I drive up to my house, or pull out of the driveway, I greet my flowers. "Hi girls! How you doing?" << MORE >>

Sardine Commute

I went to work early and I stayed late.  Too late.  Last one in line for the last-bus-of-the-day late.  That means that on a bus designed to hold 56 commuters, I was number 58, and I would have to stand.


Okay. “It’s a’right.  It’s all good.”  After all, I felt okay.  I had a happy song stuck in my head (These are a few of my fa-vo-rite things…) courtesy of the salt-n-pepper dred-locked geezer saxophone player on the street corner.  I thanked God that I caught a bus.  I was grateful I had my bad-ass, orthopedic-insert, open mesh weave super sneakers on.  ...

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Of Mulch and "Weeds"

Sunday was mulch day. Well, Saturday was mulch day too. At the end of mulch day, it’s the butt muscles that hurt! Yowza — all that bending and stretching.
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Obsess Much?

Guilty as charged. My kids have said I obsess about my garden. Well, I’ve been worse. But here is the latest example.  This past week it finally occurred to me that the pain I was feeling all last week was not, in fact, back strain from digging in the garden. It was, uh… kidney problems. Yeah, the throbbing pain was in an internal organ, not a back muscle. Well, dang. That means the inconvenience of doctors and tests and meds….


What’s kidney pain when you can be out in the garden getting it ready for Spring? “I’m saving lives here!” ...

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Oh, the Sweet Pain!

God, I love my garden. People who know me know this. They would derive this from a simple visit to our home and enjoying the loose, lively and lovely spread of color, the heady scents, the overabundance of beauty.

But, it's not just the beauty that tells me I love my garden. It's the devotion, the excitement, the thrill I get when I work in it. ... << MORE >>

Orlando Vacation Diary

Orlando Vacation Diary Saturday March 15, 2008 The Adventure Begins...<< MORE >>

Some People Change

"Here's to the strong; thanks to the brave.
Don't give up hope: some people change.
Against all odds, against the grain,
Love finds a way: some people change. "

Those are lyrics to a Montgomery Gentry song.  Isn't "Montgomery Gentry" a great cowboy name?
...<< MORE >>

Winter's Ragged Edges

On Christmas Eve, just about a month ago now, my lovely daughter brought me a gift of "tulips to be." It was a wide glass vase, with a dozen or so bare tulip bulbs in the bottom. There was a little "grate" in the bottom of the vase too. You simply put water in the bottom, and the bulbs sprout roots, which anchor themselves through the grate, then come leaves, then, in about 3 weeks, voila! Spring!<< MORE >>

GI Jane

An earnest, fresh-faced middle-aged woman stands alone on a desolate rock.  She gazes skyward, yearning. Cut the camera to another mountaintop rock.  A man, of indeterminate national origin stands alone, hair and clothes blowing in the wind.  Then another shot of a man or woman standing alone, another nationality.  All good looking people in their Lands End preppy clothes.  Each standing tall and gazing expectantly.  The camera pans wide and the desolate rocks start to shift in the bright blue skies.  They are moving miraculously toward each other, the rocks joining to form a majestic mountain.  Transcendent, rapturous music swells.  One person reaches ...<< MORE >>

One Day You Finally Knew

The epiphany of finally "knowing what you have to do" - I think it comes to each of us, if we are lucky, and if we pay attention.  ...

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Poor in Spirit, and Just Plain Poor

Gil and I had breakfast at our small-town family restaurant this morning.  It's only been open for about five years, but the building is in an early 1900's, square, nondescript building in the heart of old-town Purcellville, Virginia.  The inside is kinda faded and worn around the edges; my favorite customers there are the craggy-faced farmers with their baseball caps and plaid flannel shirts. The trucks in the parking lot are likely to sport NRA stickers, or, today we smiled at one that said, "1-20-2008: Bush's Last Day in Office." 

We go there most Saturday or Sunday mornings and get a home-cooked breakfast for about $6.00 ...
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On the Bus Ride Home

Sometimes things I see in DC "leap off the canvas" and I have to write them down. 

This is what I saw on my bus ride out of DC yesterday:

The Potomac River in a cloudy dusk looking like silver cellophane stretched over black water.  The river was lined with orange and yellow trees.  The Gothic spires of Georgetown in the distance.

I look up and there's a fat passenger plane muscling its way through a downward path over the bridge to the airport. 

At the end of the bridge I look down — two dark raggedy forms have spread out blankets on the ...
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Buttermilk Almond Chess Pie

I just made buttermilk almond chess pie, and life is good.
Have you ever had chess pie?  Have you ever had buttermilk almond chess pie warm?  It tastes like Christmas feels. Life is good.

On a Saturday morning of a long weekend (Monday is a holiday), it doesn't matter where I look; I come to the same conclusion, that "life is good."  Sometimes this experience comes out as "I am the luckiest woman in the world."  I thought that a couple days ago when I was walking with Mary down our country road and I was just so grateful to:  have a road, and one that is beautiful, solid, ...
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Georgia Vacation Diary

The family encouraged me to record the events of our Georgia Vacation 2007, so we collaborated on this diary.  I typed it on a laptop over two days’ drive from Helen, Georgia to Purcellville, Virginia.

Thursday, Aug 9


Weather:  HOT, 98 degrees – “sweat your jeans off hot”

Mary drove 7 hours from Purcellville, VA to Statesville, NC.

On ...

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You had me at hello

Last night when it was my turn playing the Ungame, I got the question, "What is prayer to you?"

I thought for a moment and said, "Breathing out and breathing in the presence and the mind of God."

 

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Lucky for Me

Just in from researchers at the University of Arkansas:  "Women age 50 and over who gardened at least once a week had higher bone densities than did those who jogged, swam, walked or did aerobics."  Oh, thank God.

It's all the pushing, pulling, bending, digging, hauling and stretching, I'm sure, plus the vitamin D factor from the sun.  I am a Lithuanian peasant after all, so this kind of exercise appeals to me.  I am fat, but surprisingly healthy (if you look at all those blood chemistry measurements like cholesterol and glucose, or at things like blood pressure and heart rate).

I ...<< MORE >>

But Wait. There's More!

But Wait. There's more! ... << MORE >>

The Surprise

Wow.  Just one week ago, I walked into the house on a Friday night tired from the week's work and so glad to be home.  Mary and Ian greeted me at the back door with the biggest smiles.  "Happy Birthday Mom!" says Mary.  "Your first birthday surprise is in the green room."  "You're gonna love it," says Ian.  I'm thinking, well, whatever the surprise is, the look of joy on my kids' faces here is enough of a gift already!

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Good-bye to Winter, Hello to Spring

I had to share this video.  Last month, with the last big snow and ice storm, Seattle was off of school of course.  I encouraged her to go out back and play on our long, slope of a backyard, because the ice would make it the best sledding she's ever had.  She did, and, she used her phone to videotape the experience.  So, if you can open this little file, go through the rigamarole to download or update RealPlayer or whatever hoops you have to jump through, you will see a fun video that captures a bright sunny cold day, ...<< MORE >>

This is What S L O W Looks Like

I often feel like The Watcher in my life - the Observer, who watches with amusement, interest, fascination, as my daily life unfolds; I'm right now watching this get-healthy / avoid diabetes / live stronger / lose the spare tire track I'm on.

Let me tell you what SLOW looks like.

I bought my $300 treadmill back in October or November. Great decision, because I can take my good intentions to move my body more and follow through on them even when the weather or my schedule doesn't cooperate.

But, oh my goodness, when one is out of shape, you can't just get on ...<< MORE >>

Humanity Inside-out

Thursday this week as I rode home on the bus, it was 4:45 p.m. and the sun was still shining. This is very different from the dark days of winter when the sun would be low in the sky at this hour, and by the time I got home it would be dark, dark, dark. I thrilled to the light all around me, and looked up from my Sudoku to gaze out my window into the woods rushing by. I saw a stream that disappeared into a stone culvert in the midst of barren woods ...<< MORE >>

Love and Lent

A couple weeks ago, I was cleaning my office here at home. I went through a box of sundries that I had never completely unpacked in January 2003 when we moved in. I found this memento from "our youth." A 1970's hippie rock. No, literally a rock. We used to find nice rocks and write on them, then shellac 'em so the ink would stay put, and so the rock would have a lovely sheen. I believe this particular rock had been given to my husband by a priest friend from ...<< MORE >>

Too Cold

I am NOT writing a blog entry this week, because it is too FRICK'N COLD. I am so tired of being cold. My fingers are cold. My nose runs. My sinuses work overtime and make a post nasal drip that makes me cough. In the middle of the night. Which wakes me up, and gets me up, where, it is COLD. The wind has been blowing for two weeks straight. It blows the cold right into our house. Some mornings it was 51 degrees in the house when we woke up. ...<< MORE >>

Size Matters - NOT

"Super-size Me" meals; Hummers and Monster SUVs; Porno-spam ads for "Huge Hammers" - Americans seem to have a romance with BIGGER. And that includes our egos, which seem to put our convictions at the center of Righteousness and our selves at the center of the Universe. This is descriptive more than judgmental. It's just how we are.

However. Bigger does not equal more powerful.

Consider the deer tick or the mosquito, and their power to fell a human many times their size. Or cancer cells. Or the last snowflake that falls, or melts, to cause ...<< MORE >>

I'm a Lover, Not a Fighter


"I'm a lover, not a fighter." So said Danny Zuko. Me too.

But, I'm beginning to think that may be part of the problem.

There's this phenomenon I'm going to call "trance eating." This is when I eat stuff I'm not supposed to eat (because it is either ridiculously non-nutritious or it is adding to an already very full stomach). I can even hear every good piece of advice in my head and ignore it, like Ray Barone, when he pretends to be asleep when his mom walks in the room, so he doesn't ...<< MORE >>

Countdown to Fifty


86 Days.

'Used to be, age was "just a number." I didn't get too excited or worried about it. Not at 30, or 40 or even 49. Now I approach the big five-oh, and I'm... uh... thinking about it. Damn.

I know what it is. It's all the annoying little things (well, some are not so little) that have come along with aging that now, I notice. For instance ...
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Nests

I spied a little bird's nest in the branches of a dogwood tree. Just like the ones I have found on the ground from time to time. I've picked them up and brought them inside to display as a thing of beauty, and as a testament to the nature around me. The nests are so very light-weight, it is surprising they can stay in the crook of a branch through wind and rain storms.

I can learn from birds' nest-making. They gather the lightest wisps of grasses and twigs and pull the strands around them, weaving and engineering a ...<< MORE >>

Jesus, Mary and Marion

For someone like me who tends to "live in her head," the spiritual life can present a challenge:  while experiencing the transcendent, and answering the call to "let go" of the illusions of this life so that I can "realize my oneness" with God, I reach this blessed "equilibrium" that is neither hot nor cold, that does not judge, and leads to a sanguine, compassionate approach to every day living.  Cool. 

Except that, my limited human reasoning will often end up thinking, Well, if the goal is to transcend, what do I need this body for, and why am I ...
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