I’m just now getting to the point where I feel positive so now I’m writing again.  Life is good.

I’m a nomad by heart so as much as I think I want to settle in one place, God/Universe listens to my meandering thoughts and it/she/he answers and we go.  I’ve done this since I’ve been 18 years old so I know that all is as it should be.

I’ve noticed something about myself….that when I get too comfortable, Life will step in and make sure I’m not too comfortable.  I love traveling and exploring.  I’ve moved around for over 30 years now, so I get that it’s part of the process.

Life is good.

I’ve been through some of those big life stressors over the past year.  I know this:  Whatever Life hands you, it’s solely up to you how you deal with it. You lick your wounds and you get on with things.  As long as you’re living and breathing and you’re in a country where you can do what you want, be who you want, celebrate whatever religion you are or are not, life is good.

Sometimes it seems as if life is chaotic.  Other times we think to ourselves how mundane or humdrum or boring it is.  It’s just life — with all it’s ups and downs.

But for the most part, life is good, isn’t it?  Whether I live here or there — through the good and bad, there I am.  I think someone said that once — Wherever you go, there you are.  Simple really, but so often we get caught up in what we think is the enormity of it and it seems overwhelming.

Wherever I live or go, I will find those like-minded people who believe in the goodness of humanity and things will work out exactly as they’re meant to.  It always does.

It’s not some overly-positive, Mary-sunshine kind of thing, it’s a state of mind and it just makes the most sense.  To me, anyway.

Life is good.

Thank you Margarita, Carly, Honie and Audra who helped inspire this post and thank you for writing me.

I plan to blog more in the future, maybe not as often as in the past few months, but I’m still here and when I can, I’ll visit you.  Life is good here.

And how are you??

Have a great weekend and enjoy some really good, fine tunes.

I like to be around this kind of energy. Whee!

As always what goes down must come back up.  It always does, sometimes it takes longer than others.  Sometimes it’s because of external things, situations, life changes.  That’s normal through tough times, if you didn’t feel low on energy, well that’d be strange.

Other times it’s the company you keep.  Have you ever noticed how you can be around someone and you feel energized, happy, hopeful?  Then you can be around someone and feel the complete opposite — drained, sad, angry.  As one gets older and wiser, one learns to become very attuned to that and honor it.  You learn that you must guard your precious energy because when it’s depleted, all kinds of malaise ensues — mentally, emotionally and physically.   It’s all connected, yo.  (I’ve been watching Breaking Bad episodes lately — hence the “yo.”)

You get away from those people or places that rob your life energy.  That’s all we are, really — energy.  Souls of energy.  And as far as I’m concerned, I might as well be around those that feed the good stuff.  Life’s way too short to be around the other kind.

Sometimes you have to leave home to get some — good energy.

Waiting for a Train….

Yo-ho and a bottle of rum. And a mop. This was lying on the platform of the train station. I think it looks quite artsy, don’t you? I’m calling it Rum on a Mop.

Before getting on the train. You need a hazmat suit to go into the train station bathrooms but they will remind you, with concern, to WATCH THE GAP.

Who Knew the Good Stuff Would be in Queens?

Yesterday, I had a good energy day.  My writerly friend and I met in Queens.  We met at Cafe Marlene in Sunnyside for the Queens Writes Weekend.  This tiny little cafe had a wonderful ambiance, a sliver of a building with tiny, round decoupaged tables inside and an elaborate bar with a lots of good, friendly energy running the place.

A nice guy with green shorts and hair to match and a dark-haired lady with a lovely accent served us cappuccino (me) and chamomile tea (Carly).  By the way, Carly just started a blog.  Go visit her — she’s funny, cool and just a great person (and writer).

We go downstairs for the writing thing and it was in this dark room that looked as if Bob Dylan or some poet would be there singing or reciting poetry.  More tiny round tables, vinyl, leopard print chairs and square ottomans scattered here and there.  The crowd was wonderful, friendly open.  Very good energy.  We were given prompts and had some silent time to write.  That’s what we did.  Some got up and read their writing.  I didn’t but the whole time I was wishing I had.

Maybe next time.

Good writerly energy at Cafe Marlene

More writers and good energy. Check out that wallpaper.

Pass It Around

The whole point of my post today complete with pictures is to entertain you on this beautiful Monday morning and send you some good energy.  When you get your energy back, you realize just how precious it is and how much you missed it.

Manhattan, thatta way. Waiting at the train station in Queens…

Waiting for a train. Home…this way.

How good it feels, well to just feel kind of good again.  I did yesterday and as I rode the train home, I was thinking about the past year — the trying times, the days I had no energy and the days that I didn’t think I ever would again.

On the train, almost home.

Then you get around some good, groovy inspiring energy with a friend and a sunny day in a new place and that friend says to you before you leave her, “It’s good to see you smile again.”

Happy Monday everyone and I hope your week is starting out with some good, constructive energy.  Here’s to feeling good and enjoy some fine tunage. 

This hangs on my office door. I don’t always do it, but it reminds me to try.

I’ve been feeling low this week.  One moment I’m sad, the next mad and then, at times downright pissed off for no particular reason.  I understand all this is part of loss, of grieving and that these waves of feeling this and that come and go.  My logical brain understands this process but my heart just wants it to go away, stop already.

And before you leave, no worries, I’m not going to go into a long-drawn out deep thing about grief, just suffice it to say, it’s no fun, as some of you I’m sure have experienced and encountered.  Those of you who’ve been kind enough to follow know what I’m referring to.  No pity party here but I did promise that I was going to take an adventure every week and this week, this is as good as it got.

This week that didn’t mean driving to a cute little village and though I did go to my second week of Italian class, most of the week was pretty ordinary.  Breathing in and out, going through the motions.

Then, I got to thinking even those mundane, ordinary days can be an adventure or at the very least a “venture,” a comforting, calm one.

I got up yesterday and felt better and thought, I’m okay with ordinary right now.  Better than those phone calls early in the morning normally signaling some dire news or battening down the hatches for some storm (both literally and metaphorically) that can just stop you in your tracks.

Ordinary is a pretty fine adventure indeed.

Really snow, again?

Yesterday was gloomy, cold, rain and some snow spitting around for hours.

Okay, so it didn’t stick. But seriously, enough already with the snow spitting.

I make it a point to go somewhere when this happens, to get out.  Work is slow to the point of none and though I know eventually this will change (it always does) and there’s a reason for this right now, I go to different places to keep my sanity.

This ordinary adventure began at the gym.  Ugh.  This gym is a mixture of gym types (yeah, the kind that flings the F-word, willy nilly, even around pre-teens, that for whatever reason get to work out there) and others who don’t groan and curse and wear jewelry while they work out.   Don’t get me wrong, I fling the same word if I stub my toe or with hubby or friends, just not all the time.  In the gym.  A lot.  That’s another post for another day.

The gym with various machines of torture. That one on the left there injured my knee.

My view of the treadmill. Note the slow pace due to the injured knee thing. This did increase somewhat.

Mass Consumerism Diversion

Afterwards, I drove carefully through the wet streets and stopped by that mother of all home goods store.  You know the one.  I’ve found that if I just walk around enough I’ll usually leave empty-handed.  Alleviating the need to get rid of some crap to make room for new crap that I don’t need.  Enjoy the tour below.

A ball of wood sticks crafted to look beachy. This would obviously go somewhere where one wouldn’t knock it over and bump it. Talk about bad feng shui.

A Dr. Seuss chair that would show up on an episode of Selling New York if it costs a go-zillion dollars for a child’s room.

A sled. In case of more snow.

I made my way back home.  Home where I could start a fire, love on my pups (children), knowing that pretty soon, hubby would be home.  Such a sweet ordinary day.  I called my loved one who wishes for those days again and comforted her as best as I could.  I think when we suffer a loss, the space that person used to occupy, depletes us for awhile.  Their life force energy is gone and since so much of our energy went into loving them, we are tired, weary, angry and confused.

For awhile until all that lessens.  But enough, I said I wasn’t going to get all deep on you.  I’m just saying, your ordinary day — that’s an adventure, a good, sweet adventure.

And because, I’ve been hearing this song on Target commercials and it’s about celebrating the “ordinary” sweet things in life, listen.  Have a beautiful weekend, everyone.  

Have you had any adventures this week?  Ordinary or otherwise?  Do you think there is an extraordinary in the ordinary?  Share please.

Ooh! Time to get out my Spring bonnet.

Well, it’s here again — this week — Spring.  The time of year most of us look to with a sense of relief, welcome, gratitude.

Although the temps aren’t very spring-like where I am yet, I can sense a change, a difference — in the air.  The approaching Spring equinox when “days and nights are approximately equal everywhere and the Sun rises and sets due east and west”  (Old Farmer’s Almanac) — it’s special.  Kind of magical really and I love the sound of that, especially the light part.

It signals new beginnings, rebirth and all those soothing, groovy feelings we have when we shrug off Winter to embrace Spring.  I asked hubby, “Do you feel it?”  What, he asked me.

“Spring,” I said, “You can feel the shift in the air.”  This was about a week ago.  Maybe it was that spring forward thing that did it for me.  No, it’s that intangible something that we all love so much.  Do you feel it yet?

Butterflies Celebrate It

They cluster in all these trees and fly around, socializing and celebrating Spring. In Mexico. Kind of like Spring break.

I normally watch CBS Sunday Morning every weekend because most of the program is positive.  It’s about art, literature, world events or nature.  Yesterday, it showcased the thing about the butterflies in central Mexico.

That spectacular thing that happens to signal Spring happened this week as thousands of Monarch butterflies migrated there.  There’s so many that scientists have had to measure them by acreage.  And it’s dropped significantly — in the 1990s they measured the beauties taking up twenty-two acres.  It’s now only around seven-and-a-half acres.

They don’t know exactly why this is happening.  Could be illegal logging, drought or pesticides that kill milkweed which is the monarch’s main food source.  They talked to an expert guy (how’s that for a dream job, studying butterflies?) who knows more about this phenomenon than anyone.  He was asked how our world would be different if the numbers kept dwindling.

You’d miss me if I wasn’t around.

Paraphrasing the expert, he said, “That’s like asking, what good is the Mona Lisa or Mozart’s music?  We could live without it, but we would be diminished as a culture.  There’s nothing like it.  It’s unique.”

Like Spring — there’s nothing like it and the magnificence of it, the way we feel as we feel it coming.

People, Animals and the Restlessness

Have you noticed that when Spring is getting closer you get a little restless?  Animals do too.  I’ve watched my pups get more playful.  I hear birds chirping more.  Little creatures are getting more active.  It’s the natural order of things.  It’s as if we’re all waking up.  We’re ready to play.

I read an article, Spring Fever:  Restlessness, Renewal and Rebirth by Sandra Tunajek.  Scientists believe that there are reasons why we and other species get friskier, more energetic, want to move more.  It’s psychological and physiological they think.

Hey, wanna play? It’s Spring!

Some believe it’s the warmer weather while others think it’s got to do with the light.  Maybe it’s the way a warm breeze blows across our face and we smell Spring.  Without even realizing it, we’re taken back to a time and a place that felt so good.

Spring fever gets us up and out.  We begin to reevaluate our lives, at least I’ve been doing that.  We think about trying something new.  Whether that’s taking a class, painting a room, de-cluttering, cleaning, exploring a new place, moving — it all symbolizes a newness, change.  A rebirth of sorts.

After a long cold winter, it feels so good to poke out heads out and welcome all that glorious warmth.

Boy, it feels good to bust out of here.

Do you feel it?  Happy Monday everyone, Happy Spring as of Wednesday and here’s a song for you that I think represents all the meandering thoughts of this post.

* * *

Do you have Spring fever yet?  Do you have any plans — any new beginnings?  What are the first signs of Spring for you — internally and externally?

Every spring is the only spring – a perpetual astonishment.  ~Ellis Peters

My friend Honie at honiebriggs.com sent me this postcard from Italy. This is her and her husband in Italy.
I’m in a classroom learning about Italy. Yeah.

As a continuing quest for me to do something new for myself every week — an adventure — from tiny to big and bold, this week I took my first Italian class.  I’ll be doing this once a week for the next five weeks.  I’m sure I’ll be fluent by the end of it.

Not.

It’s not easy, learning a new language.  I am in awe of those who come to our great, beautiful country (USA) and learn our language.  Our language, full of slang, words that sound the same and are spelled differently, the way some of us drop r’s, insert another syllable into a one-syllable word. The way we get lazy with our language, slur our words together or just butcher it.  We’re all guilty of it.

Benone!

I am in awe of those who speak more than one language.  Words, gestures, accents all mean something when we are communicating, speaking to each other.  Italian is such a gorgeous and romantic language.  It just sounds sexy, don’t you think?  When you speak it, you can’t help but feel it.

This guy made Italy a country in 1871. Guiseppe Garibaldi.

I watched the instructor as she spoke Italian and once we kind of learned how to introduce ourselves in Italian, she would answer back.  Her eyes would widen, her smile big and bright.  Her face would light up, she’d extend a hand or slightly bow as she addressed us.  She’d move around the room and gesture with her hands.  Her whole body was in it.  Bella!

She obviously loves sharing her love of this language.  She lived in Italy for over twenty years and raised two sons there.  She has a slight Long Island accent but her Italian, perfecto — from rolling her r’s to stressing a syllable or word, as she says Hard!  It’s not only fun learning but a treat watching her watch us absorb it.

From what I understand the way in which you accent/stress a syllable of a word can make the difference in someone understanding what you saying or not.  It’s week one and I’m still trying to get the phonetics down.  We pronounced the Italian alphabet (there’s 21 letters in it and it uses five additional letters in words of foreign origin).

da Vinci and his ideal human proportions. Hmmm.

Their a is an ah, e is an a, i is an e, o an o and u, an ooh.  And they are spoken sharply and clearly.  Sound it out to see what I mean.  That’s why they seem so passionate about everything — Italians speak with all their facial muscles and with much gusto — spelled exactly the same in Italian but said like GOO-STO! with your hand raising up and your mouth pursed out.

Fato — Fatto

I know this isn’t much of a post and those of you who are bilingual, especially those who speak Italian can probably point out many mistakes here.  But I’m learning and it’s fun and who knows?  Maybe by the time I visit a few of the twenty regions that make up Italy (each of them having a capital — are you impressed with my knowledge?), I can at least order some food or ask where the bathroom is.

Chianti to drink and a great candle holder after it’s empty.

Or where the Chianti is which is pronounced/spelled exactly the same as it is here in the United States.  Only they say it with a smile and much aplomb before they even drink any.

Oh yeah, and I can roll the hell out of my R’s.

This guy can sing.

Try some Pavarotti.  

(I’d recommend during a summer thunderstorm cooking something Italian whilst sipping an Italian wine.  Not to be too specific or anything.)

***

Do you know/speak another language?  Can you translate the subtitles above?  Do like spaghetti?  What’s your favorite romantic language and why?

Not a great ah-h-h.

I did Google it (seriously is there anything you can’t Google) and I found a few definitions. The Dictionary of interjections, defines it as understanding (Ah-h, yes I understand).  Urban Dictionary defines it as “the sound made after receiving sex/food.”  Another example is the sound you make when the doctor tells you to — “Open up and say ah-h-h,” whilst shining a tiny flashlight in there.

My meaning is the feel-good one (surprise, surprise) the sound you make, the feeling you have when all is right with the world.  At that time, in that moment, it’s so right and so wonderful, you emit a soul-satisfying Ah-h-h.

Things That Make You Go Ah-h-h

Ah-h-h, it’s involuntary most of the time.

A cottage in Nantucket. With an ocean nearby and an outdoor shower. Ah-h-h.

Sometimes it is great food or sex as Urban Dictionary defines.  Or a fine wine.  Being published for the first time.  Sitting on a beach and looking at a clear blue ocean while listening to some tropical-sounding music that made me feel as if time was standing still.  Our trip to Nantucket.  Marrying hubby.

A butterfly in Woodstock, New York. Groovy ah-h-h.

Then again sometimes, it’s the simplest things.  When I was on my own for a few years, I was intent on having my own stuff.  Things that were just me.  School, traveling and buying my own place were at the top of my list.  Each accomplishment brought me closer to discovering who I was, what I wanted out of this life.

Beach posts, Isle of Palms, South Carolina. Unexpected, warm and humid/balmy ah-h-h.

When I bought my home, I was thrilled.  That was during a time when I was so busy going to school and working, I barely had time to stay home but it was a big a-h-h moment for me when I signed those papers — when I had something that was solely me, mine.

I’d scour flea markets buying second-hand furniture and refurbish or repaint it and just delight in making my house a home.  Two sawhorses and a door became a desk.  A rickety bench, tightened, then scraped and painted a bright blue would become a sitting place near the front door.  I’d unscrewed the seat and recovered the worn material in a funky fabric.

I’d continue to pick up things here and there when I could.  One day I spotted a cast-iron  tub — the real deal — the heavy, hundred-pound kind with lion’s claw feet.  I haggled with the seller and got a great deal and with the help of the friend who’d come with me, loaded it into a truck and brought it home.  Where it sat in my garage.  I vowed one day I was going to redo my bathroom and put it in there.  I never did.  It sat in my garage and each time I’d go out to my garage to pull my car out, there it would be.  I’d sigh imagining how wonderful it would look and feel inside my home.

It looked kind of like this only it was in my garage. Anticipating ah-h-h.

After finding out just how much it would cost to redo a bathroom, I knew I wouldn’t be able to swing it anytime soon.  My garage had four windows, across the top of it.  I made curtains for the garage door, secured a rod over the top of them and hung them up so that when the garage door was closed, there was no way any one could peer in.  A backdoor led out to the backyard — I curtained it too.  I bought a rubber bathtub stopper.

I heated water on my stovetop and pot by pot, splashed water into that tub until it was full, putting bubble bath in so that I could do it up right.  I plugged in a portable stereo (this was the 90s before iPods), brought a glass of wine out to the garage.  I had a little table, within arm’s reach, next to the tub.   The wine, books and candles lined the surface of the table.

The first time I did this, it was truly an ah-h-h experience.  I know what you’re thinking, but seriously — don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.  It felt old-fashioned, glamourous, kind of artsy.  Ah-h-h.  And yeah, okay, I took a few more baths in my garage.  Don’t judge me.

I eventually sold my home and the tub.  But to this day, that memory makes me smile and I loved that me then, that woman who took risks and if she couldn’t do something one way, she’d figure out another way.  It was fun.  Bold.  Adventurous.  All kinds of ah-h-h.

That’s what I’m working on now.  Determined to experience as many ah-h-h moments as I can because seriously that’s what makes life worth living, don’t you think?

* * *

When’s the last time you had a nice ah-h-h?  (Be nice ) Was it a place?  A person?  An event?  An accomplishment?  Becoming a mother/father?  A job?  A puppy?  A thing?  A sunset?  Think about it and please share.