Shopping for a rug...

People often wonder (well, actually only one person has) what I will do with the blog name should I turn into the crazy cat lady and get a few dozen more felines. That is an excellent question;  one for which I have no answer at present. But you can be sure I will write about it when I do. 

Meanwhile, since the number of cats has not changed in our household as of my last post, I thought I'd take you out on the town with us as we shop for a rug.  Many of you may recall an earlier post  I wrote, about an exciting day in my life when Steve and I went shopping for a snail (Snail Shopping).  That is about to be surpassed as I share the captivating highlights of our latest adventure. 

First of all, our criteria for just about anything we buy is not like most people.  Take our recent excursion for getting a rug.  Do we want something that will match the sofa, or coordinate in general with the decor in the room?  No, of course not.  We want something that blends well with Hill Prescription Feline CD Diet dry food, after it has been eaten and then vomited.  I guess we're kind of limited to something in the mustard tones, which certainly has worked well for the past 25 years of cat ownership.  But I am tired of it and a change would be nice.  And carrying around a sample of cat vomit while we shop is just not the same as a fabric swatch from a pillow or the sofa.  Do you know how many purses I have had to throw out over the years because I forgot to put the vomit swatch back in its plastic baggie?  Honestly, is nothing ever simple?

I had a brilliant idea however, thinking if we could custom colour our cat food how that could make millions of people happy.  "I'd like to place an order for cat food, tinted to specifications for Sherwin Williams #1211, "Compelling Blue".  Can you imagine the global excitement if this were to come about? Colour-coordinated cat vomit!  Steve refers to that as a first world problem.  I say it's just plain sensible and knows no economic limitations.

Since that has not been invented yet, we were forced to shop in the traditional way, trudging from store to store, looking for something that had enough pattern to camouflage the vomit stains.  If it was busy enough, with only a hint of mustard tones, maybe we could venture down another path with the type of rug.  But then that would not go with anything else in the house, and next thing you know we'd have to buy new sofas (again!) and change out all the mats in our framed pictures.

Finally we got to one store where I spotted a beautiful large rug that made my heart race.  It had blues, a little cream, a bit of pattern and a hint of mustard.  I thought "this is it!"  But when I got up to the rug there was a man standing there, guarding it with his life.  I pretended to look interested in some other rugs nearby, keeping an eye on him all the while.  Finally I realized he was not going to budge so I asked him "Are you by chance guarding that rug so no one else will get it?" 

"Absolutely" he said.  "I have been threatened with divorce if I step away from this rug for even one second before my wife gets back with the store manager."

"Hmmm", I mumbled.  "Let me guess.  You have cats?"  He looked startled and then said, "yes, in fact we have several.  How did you know?"  I opened my purse and showed him our vomit swatch, holding it up next to the rug.  He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out an envelope with his vomit swatch in it.  We commiserated briefly, and then Steve and I left.  We were never going to win that battle.

So, just like before we set out shopping, we continue to remain sans rugs throughout the house.  Fortunately their digested, prescription cat food goes extremely well with our bamboo floors.  But it is hazardous as you can't see it, and both of us have had near death experiences slipping in the cold, slightly chunky slime in the middle of the night while on our way to the bathroom; falling on our knees, wrenching our backs and skidding to the ground as if we had slipped on a banana peel.

I tell you, what's not to love about my life?!  Who wants a nice house when you can have what I have!

Middle-aged Teal

I really envision myself as being a travel writer, but the current budget is not allowing me to do much else besides go to Publix and get gas for the car so I can continue to go to Publix.  There is only so much one can write about that kind of travel, and I guess at this point I have pretty much covered said topic.

So I am resigned momentarily to write about ‘teal’, a colour I’m not really fond of, representative of the chapter of life I have entered.

The concept of teal as a metaphor for my current situation came about several years ago while taking skiing lessons.  Our instructor told us by the end of the class we will have traversed some green slopes and a few blues and could probably consider ourselves ‘teal’ skiers by the end of the afternoon.  That made perfect sense to me, and I’ve been blending colours and assigning them to various phases of my life ever since.

Sadly, teal is where I’m at.  The good news?  Being in my teal phase means I don’t care anymore that I ended the previous sentence with a preposition.  The bad news?  I know better, and I should care.  That’s what teal does to you...it catches you in the crosshairs of caring and not caring which almost sounds like something Lao Tzu would say, but I digress.

Just because I’m not a fan of teal doesn’t mean I have to treat it dismissively.  It’s just being itself, a blend of green and blue, with no other aspirations, having reached its goal in life.

I, however, do have aspirations.  I have conquered the beginner slopes and easy runs of life.  Greens have been mastered too and they have been challenging physically and mentally, but exhilarating and beautiful.  Just now testing the blue slopes.  Scarier and more challenging, but I know that view will be captivating, exquisite, magnificent and full of many additional adjectives.  I will press on until those challenges are conquered and goals are met.

Skiing, a cat and teal-coloured print!  Meme success!

The black slopes sound like they will be full of wrinkles, health problems and bad knees so I’m just going to pencil in that one and let it evolve, or not.  There’s always the bar at the ski lodge as an alternative.

Meanwhile, caught in between green and blue, this middle-aged teal is everywhere, damn it!. It has taken over my brain.  When I think about myself these days I see a slightly hazy version of me in my late thirties and I honestly think that is how I still look.  Until I look in the mirror and see my mom staring back.  And then I clear my throat and my voice cracks and I realize she has moved in. 

Instead of having one bottle of Windex on hand I now have four, and yet I can forget to buy toilet paper for a week running.  Don’t even get me started on back seat driving.  I don’t verbalize as much as I used to, but flinching, small gasps and using the air brakes are getting their message across, and for some reason I perceive the recipient of my care and concern as being highly annoyed.  I’m pretty sure it was cute and endearing when we were dating.  Teal is chipping away at my cuteness.  Where’s my bottle of wine?

Merrily On My Way...

One way to travel!

I used to travel a lot, and I will travel again.

In the interim I am forced to entertain myself by making up stories in my head, pretending that I have an exciting life, and hoping that no one will notice why I am  speaking French to no one in particular at the gas station.  Unbeknownst to the casual observer, I could in fact be in France in that particular moment although it LOOKS like I am at the Mobil station in Naples, FL.


The adventure begins…, but not in France....

Backing out of my driveway every morning is not unlike being on safari in Africa.  Herds of wild cats scatter away from my slow moving tires as I set out on my daily adventures. Okay, okay, some of them are abandoned domestic house cats, but the others are, in fact, feral.    "I know Kenya will be just like this!"  I lie to myself. And yes, I know cats are not referred to as herds but that’s what I’m calling it and it’s my story.

The speed bumps in the neighborhood make my Jeep wrangler twist and rock, as if I am driving on the open savanna.  I’m not even out of my subdivision and already I have saved myself $12,000 by staying here and going on safari instead of off to Africa.  Birds of prey are perched on the dry, leafless branches of a few dead trees, and the heat shimmers from the road creating that illusion of an oasis of water in the distance, only to have it disappear from sight as I get closer.

I miss this kind of market!

Now, crossing six lanes of traffic to get to the Publix Super Market will be the next challenge on this journey.  Only a short distance is provided to allow me to traverse across the first three lanes in order to get into the left turn lane.  During rainy season (or off season as we call it here) it is not as treacherous, but when school is back in session and snow birds have migrated back it can be a harrowing adventure, fraught with risk.  And that is only the first three lanes.

Eventually I make it across lanes four through six and end up safely on the edge of the open Publix parking lot. It has only been 45 seconds since I left my house and my heart is racing with excitement.

I look for a space that has a palm tree shading it so I can have some protection from the sweltering sun.  From the back of the Jeep I grab my Winn-Dixie grocery totes (I do that on purpose) and quite frankly if I had a large woven basket handy I would at least momentarily consider putting it on top of my head and swaying on in to the grocery store.  I’m all about creating my own reality, and the basket on the head thing seems like it would be a perfect complement to the story going on in my head.

Having embarrassed myself too many times in the past, I quickly come to my senses and abandon that little fantasy.  It was fun for a moment though.  Maybe next time I’ll dig out my feather earrings and caftan from the early 70’s.  That basket will fit right in then!

Suddenly a song from long ago fills my head as I approach the entrance to the market.  “We’re merrily, merrily, merrily on our way to nowhere, in particular!”  This could be my theme song, I tell myself, and I recall fondly hearing my mom sing that song as we kids would pile in the station wagon and go with her to the grocery store.

Now I get it...apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree!  I am my mother's daughter.

The Earth Experiment

Here's another random thought - sometimes I think we are just one big experiment (this planet) and we are being observed and toyed with by unknown beings who are measuring our rise and fall since the beginning of time.

First the fish - must have been frustrating for these observers to just watch them swim day in, day out, millennium after millennium, thinking all along...."get out of the water and grow some feet you idiots! Do we have to do everything for you?"

And then eventually (just a few million years later) the planet ended up with dinosaurs.  Really cool and all that, but the experimenters were watching, thinking that's not really how we thought this would all turn out when we told the fish to start walking.  Let's test their skills and throw in a set-back or two; like an ice age, or maybe some kind of meteor strike with toxic fumes.  It would great to see something a little more progressive come from this experiment.  If they can survive that they can survive any presidential administration.

It won't be pretty, but neither were the dinosaurs.

It's like the earth was dropped into a terrarium eons ago for our observers to watch as this Petri dish grows and dies, grows and evolves some more, and then dies, and then grows all over again.  I'm beginning to wonder if the observers are saying to each other, "you know, I'd have to say I am a lot more pleased with the development of that dirt clod we put in the terrarium over on that shelf than the one in this jar we are calling Earth."

And then television was invented and the observers got caught up in "The Real Housewives of Babylon" and "All My Hominids" and completely forgot to pay attention to our evolution.   Which is what let the human race take off on its own without any intervention.

Suddenly (another several million years later) we've ended up with some marginally functioning humans on our hands!  The observers clapped in sheer joy when they saw (during a commercial break) that we had evolved into a society that could do so many honourable and intelligent things!  "Look at her upload that photo to Facebook" one shouted, "and she didn't even read any of the instructions."  "I bet she's got a blog" said another.  The head observer rested his (or her) hands on his stomach and noted out-loud... "Survival has finally become almost intuitive for them.  I am reminded of the time Jane Goodall was watching the chimps and they learned to stick a twig into the termite mound to fetch their dinner!"  Another round of applause came from the observers as they determined that life as they knew it would continue on for awhile longer, until the next election when half the population will move to Canada.  And then adaptation will start all over again due to climate differences, longer pronunciation of vowels and different speech patterns, stronger beer and ongoing territorial disputes between the French and English descendants.

Well, that's it for me.  What have you been thinking about today?

How to write a blog...

Many people wonder how to go about writing a blog.  How does one even start?

Like many things, it is a matter of sitting down and just doing it.

However, there are certain rituals that must be performed before the writing begins.  For those of you interested in the process, I thought I would share mine.

First of all, I like to start with a nap.  This allows me to think about a topic I want to write about while simultaneously not overthinking it, because most likely I will have fallen asleep within minutes.  Upon waking with a start, it is important to then get mad at oneself for wasting the afternoon on that nap when you know your imaginary fans are waiting to read your next episode.  I have always performed best under self-inflicted pressure, although I'm not sure if I've ever really done anything in a timely fashion.  So maybe the first half of that last statement is only accurate based on a lack of knowledge and experience.  I suspect I will never know.

I turn the computer on next, and while it is booting up there is always plenty of time to start a load of laundry and begin boiling a dozen eggs.  Since writing can also be very intense and fatiguing, I quickly prepare some sort of nourishment to keep my brain alert.  Usually protein.  This afternoon I had three spoonfuls of peanut butter and a bite of leftover grilled tuna.  The time is drawing close, where pen will finally meet paper.  I think I am ready.

Finally the computer is up and running, although now the first load of laundry is ready to go into the dryer.  I have no idea how that happened.  It seems like it's only been about three minutes since I turned the computer on.  Quite possibly I may have diverted to Facebook for awhile.  Who knows? 

Again, I am forced to stop absolutely everything that was just about to happen concerning my writing so I can put the clothes in the dryer and start another load.  And wouldn't you know it, the timer is going off on the boiled eggs.

Who has time to write?

I've fallen off the wagon...

It's fortunate that in declaring my intent to create a thirty day blog challenge for myself I conveniently left out the word "consecutive", right before the word "thirty". 

As it stands now, I am seven days into this program and already three days behind.  That is not good.

I have a list of excuses as to why I fell off the wagon so soon, but I will save those for another time when I may need them more.  Right now it may just appear that I am busy as opposed to unreliable, and I'd like to sign off from today's post before you find out that, in fact, it is both!

Happy Monday everyone!

 

The challenges of being a hot mess...

Hot mess.  I love that phrase and I only wish it had been around when I looked like what the real meaning is.

But today at the art show I am a hot mess according to my age 'fifty-something' definition.  Which is... totally damp, flat hair due to dripping high humidity and hot flashes.  Mascara stained cheeks because of trying to rub the pollen out of my eye for hours. Swollen ankles from sitting too much and alternatively standing on cement.  I can't take my sunglasses off because only one eye has any makeup on it and the other one is red and bloodshot. Over the course of a few hours I had rubbed my left eye so much I finally took my contact lens out for the fourth time and threw it in the bushes behind me.  The good news was at that point I couldn't really see how badly I looked.  I kept my sunglasses on all day though, as looking like a one-eyed freak is not good for business.

By 10:15 a.m. (the show opened at 10) I already needed to buy a new pair of shoes due to falling arches, plantar fasciitis and a broken bone still on the mend.

Is it too much to ask to have just one day of having everything look and feel good at the same time?  The only solution that seems to bridge that continuous gap for me is tequila.  It used to be a glass of wine, but these days being a 50 something hot mess is a job for tequila.  Don Julio and I have become quite good friends lately.  I anticipate a very long and loving relationship...