10/11/11 Flash in the Bucket

(click on the title to see the video)

Have you ever been a part of something totally random yet perfectly planned, something ridiculously fun and frivolous, yet within the realm of the experience, you find immense personal satisfaction?  Have you ever done something, and only after the fact realized the true extent of the event. 
Well, this past weekend, I had just such an experience.  I took part in a Flash Mob.  Yes, a Flash Mob and while I wiggled and kicked, swung and jived, I had no idea just how much this dance would impact my state of mind.  I've actually delved into the bucket, and kicked off my list, starting the journey of adventures I would like to experience before I kick my own bucket.  I always thought, when you start acting on your list, the end would be near and because of this, I've never actually started a list.  The thought of my own immortality was never terribly appealing.  I tried to avoid things that would take me toward that path, but the list is less about my impending end and more about envigorating my present.  It is oddly humorous that taking part in a mass dance would get me thinking along these lines, but I can not describe the pure joy I got out of being a participant in the frenzy.  It was totally madcap and fun, for the spectators and dancers alike.  For that brief moment,  I did something I've always craved but never dared to admit I desired. For that small space in time, I was a small participant in a larger plan.  I got to share and experience the fun with my daughter and my son.  If you look closely at the video you'll see tiny snippets of us.  Yes, I was there, I took part and I got to leave knowing, that for that one day, I didn't walk away saying, 'I wish I had".  I swung into action, and with "Moves Like Jagger", I was a performer who made people smile.

9/13/11 "Foggin Blog"

My life these days has been a jumble of unpleasant,uncontrollable factors that leave me mentally exhausted.  I am unable to gather my thoughts and write and this is unsettling.  I am a pensive person who hides behind a blog, sharing my every thought, insecurity, failure and insight with the assistance of my keyboard, yet, if you were to see me in person, I would not dare speak of anything but good fortune. 
I am the fallacy of optimism...I may look bright and sunny but I'm burning inside.
All of my creative, instinctive writing has vanished.  It is an excruciating effort to find words, form thoughts, and produce anything but a rolling fog,
and so...this is my Foggin Blog.

What was once an outlet is now an inlet,

bottlenecked, jammed, and still

But the current churns beneath

Will it be a rip tide

Or a tsunami

10/28/10 Equal Time for Kerrin

I do have two children that never stop bringing me joy and surprise and while I have been guilty of writing more about the oldest, it is only because he will soon be abscent from my day to day life and I feel compelled to write everything I think of, while he is still with me, but this particular blog is about my second child.  While Connor and Kerrin do share some character traits, they are for the most part, very different.  One of my previous blogs described Connor as the calm before the storm.  Well, Kerrin is the whirlwind that stirs things up...in a good way.  She is the snowday you always look forward to.  She adds a spice and sass that would make the grinch smile.

When I delivered her fourteen years ago I had a radio playing in the delivery room. (There was something Ken and I liked about having music playing, to calm and quell the moment and even though I did have music selected to play, when she was born, we got to a point where we stopped changing the casssettes (yes I am that old), and we simply listened to the radio.)  I remember the moment distinctly, just as she was emerging, a song came on that I have now come to realize was the forecast for the child that was entering the world.  My sweet, delicate baby girl was breaking out into the world just as "Born To Be Wild" was playing, yes, "Born To Be Wild" and she has lived up to her introduction.  Don't get me wrong, she is wild in a fun, spontaneous way. She is vibrant, lively and full of happiness, with an infectious enthusiasm for fun.  It's just not possible to have a dull interaction with Kerrin.  She loves to laugh,  has the confidence to see her own flaws and most times, can make fun of herself for her own shortcomings. She always tries to find humor in most everything she does.  I can recall a sentence she wrote in third grade for homework.  She needed to use her vocabulary word, dance, in a sentence. I'm sure most of the class wrote very simple sentences like, "I want to dance" or "I went to a dance", but her sentence was, " I like to slap my butt when I dance.", and truth be told, she did, and the teacher got quite a kick out of it.  I can still see Kerrin doing her butt slapping jig in the family room as she did her homework that night. She loves to share her vibrant personality with anyone. When she tells a joke, she can't contain herself and laughs well before she can even get to the punch line and you can't help but laugh with her, her laugh is contagious.
She can make anyone laugh and on the flip side, she is equally caring and compassionate.  She is sincere, loyal, generous and thoughtful.  This summer she made a bucket list and top on her list was...donating bone marow.  Unbelievable, #1 on her bucket list, to donate bone marrow to someone in need!!!  She doesn't currently know anyone who needs bone marrow, but she knew it was a need that she could supply.  That floored me when I read it. Just an exceptionaly caring gesture and she's only 14 years old.  More recently, as we drove by a blood drive, Kerrin asked, "how old do you have to be to donate blood?"  When I told her I thought it was sixteen, her comment was..."bucket list".  Again, amazing, at her age to have the insight to establish a bucket list that is truly selfless and fulfilling, it's just astounding to me.  She has her head on straight and has the confidence to be herself when peer pressure is abundantly in force.  She is not swayed by others, and is the exception to the rule.  She does not need to conform, she has made it cool to be herself. She is a whirlwind of wit, creativity, intelligence and resilience, born to be wild with a passion for enjoying life, spreading happiness and sharing, within her means but beyond imagination.

3/27/11 Total Loss

Total Loss...these two words can take on a multitude of meanings, none of which are good.  Being told something is a total loss can be catastrophic, debillitating and final.  It can be so hard to accept that we stop existing for a brief time and just halt entirely, we stop feeling, stop interacting, and stop caring for a period of time that matters to no one but the inflicted. At that moment a devistation so severe, so magnanimous we can not grasp anything but our tiny, little self imposed sorrow, cramps our existense.  We just flutter, wafting with the wind that tries to cool the burn, lieing still, absorbing all that has been cast our way until an aggitator invades the stillness and stirs up thought and provocation.  We will not take this lieing down, we will not let the wind pass over us.  We will set up a windmill and enlist a renewed and forceful energy that will deliver a new light on the darkness that encompassed our hollow existense.

3/3/11 - Black Coffee

Sometimes life can be like a cup of coffee-
Endless and black

But add some cream and lighten it up
It'll be so much sweeter

2/10/11 Wine Knot

Funny what a glass of wine can do.  It can give you the courage to tell a joke at a party, allowing you to be the center of attention,without self criticism, no stumbling over words or awkward posturing.  It can be the compliment to a specific menu.  It can be the dessert to top off a meal.  It can serve as an appetizer to conversation. It supplies the calming qualities needed after a stress filled day and it can be the introduction into an addiction that ruins a life, drowning memories and wilting friendships into a puddle of confusion, conflict and disappointment.

At what point does the wine stop being an admirable accoutrement and start being an invasive instrument that whittles away life's value?

1/27/11 Guilty Leisure

Imagine two women who grew up in the same neighborhood. They are both diagnosed with ovarian cancer in their mid forties.  One is destined  for a difficult battle, enduring the worst of what the disease delivers, succombing to it's horror and passing away within a few years.  The other, essentially skims past the perils of the disease.  After a surgery that removes the evil, she is free of the disease and needs no further treatment. Both were young women with families, a husband and children.  One was selfless and inspiring, the other, selfish and shallow.
Which one survives....
the one who still has volumes to learn about humanity, humility and sharing happiness.

1/13/11 Dirty Snow

Trudging through the snow
I see glistening silver crystals
Beautiful, intriguing
The sparkle mesmerizes and captivates
So alluring
and yet
when I reach out to touch
it disappears
gone from sight
but I know it was there
I dig and explore
hoping to reconnect with the beauty I saw

Only when I reach the dirt underneath the overlay
do I realize
what I was seeing
was an optical illusion
the sun's relfection off the serene snow
a trick of nature
and then I think of the trickery of human nature

We are not always as we appear
dig deep, there's always some dirt to uncover

1/6/11 Smile

A smile is something we all are capable of
a very simple exercise that can be infectious
A skill that requires very little of us and yet so many people are challenged in this arena

I can't imagine it being a struggle to share a smile
I am perhaps, the other extreme
Growing up, I was often referred to as, "the one who would laugh at anything"
Funny, but I felt compelled to laugh, or at the very least smile if someone tried to make me laugh with a joke
It seemed the courteous thing to do
Why would I want to make someone feel useless when they were merely trying to make me smile
It cost me nothing and it made them feel good, why wouldn't I just be polite and smile?
It wasn't an idiotic, insincere smile
nor was it a condescending, pathetic smile, as if to say, "you poor sap, that was sooooo lame"
It was a genuine appreciation for their attempt to make me and others happy

Actually, let's go one step further...
let's eliminate the jokes and laughing concept and just introduce an everyday occurence
The simplist human interaction
Eye contact and smile
So basic
and yet so sparsely disseminated

I find it astounding that this one, quite simple skill is not shared more generously

The ability to bring a smile to someone's disposition is
perhaps the most elemental endeavor one can share
and yet there are some who struggle with this daily
and for those that do, I am sad

Smile and the world smiles with you
Scowl and the world turns to stone

1/4/11 Circuit Breaker

Once free of decision your mind is free to explore...but
Let selection stall you and your mind is a mangled mess of circuitous treachery
Choose decisiveness and
you break the mesh that tangles your mind, disconnecting, from that which ensnares you
Freeing yourself to enjoy circuitous treachery, only when it is chosen

1/3/11 Fallen

I fell today... hard. 
I am told it was a graceful collapse, but I wonder.  How graceful can one be, when they have lost control, slipping on a round fuzzy ball, both feet in the air and then CRASH, on the left hip, in a skirt no less? Of course it was on a hard court, no give or cushion (other than that, which I had amassed over the holiday hooplah).  I can not remember the last time I fell, never mind on a tennis court, but it was a valient effort to retrieve that topspin lob that sent me to the back curtain where the retired balls congregate when their play time is over.  After the fall, I sat and pondered.  Is this yet another sign, that retire is what I should do as well?  Was this a smacking correlation that I belong with those retired balls, fallen and discarded at the back of the court.  Should I take this accident as no accident at all, but fate issuing it's desires on me?  Is it time to listen to the call of the dead ball and toss it in, or, I guess in this case, out?  I guess I'll see what fate brings me tomorrow.  Tonight I am on ice!!

1/2/11 Cloud Cover

The air was heavy today, thick and dismal, saturated with a dampness that was visible and blinding.  So heavy, lights were dulled to the point of mutation. It was as if the clouds were sinking and settling on the earths' surface, no longer suspended above. It seemed to me, a parallel of sorts.  Indicative of my own body, saturated from the extensive eating and drinking that has become synonymous with the holidays, I too, feel like a sinking cloud.  What was the joy and splendor of the holidays is now a numb memory, dulled by the lethargy that settles in my being, clouded with a covering of excess. All good things must come to an end and my body has had enough. Time to dry out and float the clouds once more!!
Happy New Year!