How the heart approaches what it yearns....

I am tired of driving to work. I am tired of sitting in traffic, or wondering in winter if I can get home because of the snow and ice. So I am moving. I signed a short term lease on a city apartment. I am not selling my house. I am probably crazy. I just don't want to drive to work anymore. So for the next several months I will live in the city. I will walk to work. In the rain. I will take the bus or I will walk. Maybe I will write a book about being a crazy old lady who is tired of driving. In the rain. Who moves to the city. To walk to work. In the rain. And in the sunshine. Just walking in the rain. Getting soaking wet. I am not retiring. My car is.

Seniorita With a Necklace of Tears

She is a nattering nabob of negativism. A safire in the rough, rough world of my work. She complains no matter what. I can count on a regular phone call or an email (cc'd to everyone she can think of) with her opinion of why something we did or said or didn't do or didn't say is wrong. Usually I say "I am deeply sorry you are feeling that way." I have kept a file of her emails over the past five years. My fantasy: to flood her mailbox with all of her own complaints - backatcha baby.

Moonlight Sleeping on a Midnight Lake

He came to our family when he was three.. skinny arms and hopeful brown eyes. A mind of his own. We told him he was perfect and showed him his new room. In the middle of the night he got up and made a pot of coffee..a three year old with a mind of his own. Who had been on his skinny own. Too long. Long twenty seven year story short. I'm pretty sure I saw him today, I think it was him. Brown homeless eyes and a mind of his own. Lonely lonely rivers.

One man's ceiling is another man's floor

My neighbor's blackberries have climbed the fence, slithered into my trees and are lunging toward the hydrangeas. Feisty and mean these aggressive critters grow taller, bending,winding and grabbing. Kudzu with teeth. Cutting them back is dicey. I am left nursing jagged scratches. Fighting blackberries anywhere in the Northwest is a never ending battle, but one I have tried to fight over the years, hacking here and there and being a good neighbor at the same time. Clipping, hacking, not really admitting that my gentle soul is bent on killing. Minimal and fleeting success, a day or two, before the monster roars bigger and bolder. My yard erupts in blackberry laughter at my feeble violence. I read an article "brutalizing a blackberry only serves to invigorate it's determination." My property would soon be swallowed. I headed to the neighbor's house with forced resolve. I would smile. I would be friendly. I would carefully suggest that we consider just a tiny drop of blackberry getridder from a bottle with a skull and crossbones. Just a tiny drop. Not something I would ever want to do,but...... At the door wiping her hands on her apron, she smiled, she even hugged me. "Why hello neighbor! Come on in and join us," she gushed, "we're making blackberry crepes!" War postponed. Indefinitely.

I Want to be POP-ular

Blessed I am. I get to see good theater regularly. Sunday I sat with hundreds of others enthralled with the sights and sounds of Wicked. The music has been in my life for a few years now, I had read the book, so Sunday was like the magic moment when butter and sugar stop being butter and sugar in the mixing bowl...the minute you know that everything has come together perfectly for a delicious treat. A treat made more lovely by the charming eight year old in blue tulle and tierra who sang every lyric as she clutched her mom's shoulder througout the production. Thrilled she was. Blessed I am.

One Day She Left Without A Word

She took away the sun. Blogging is a wintersport. I guess I'm back and the lemon flower is sweet.