You Really Can't Go Home Again
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Family
Back from California, and boy was I ever surprised. All those reminders I was expecting to have prompt reams of memoirs just didn't happen. I saw old friends in new settings as new versions of these people, and enjoyed the people we all are now, but the past was pretty far back to even peek at.

I stayed at the hotel where DH#3 (Jay) and I spent our honeymoon, but I was put in a newer wing and it happened to be just up the hall from where DH#2 and I had stayed once which I had mercifully totally forgotten. There was a brief moment of breathless panic when I walked into the room, and a few more memories in the middle of the night when I discovered the poor sound insulation was really no better though the desk clerk swore it had been fixed. Nope, Bam Bam and Thumper were bouncing off the head board in great detail still after all these years. I remembered how Mike and I had laughed at the sound show years before. But it was just my hotel room in a place under construction, and no more or less.

Helping my step-mother, Sal, pack up her apartment where I had lived as a teen and she has lived for the past forty-some years was almost a disappointment. There was no nostalgia there at all. I didn't feel anything of all the great times I had as a teen there. I remembered some few bad times strangely enough, but nothing really important. I was unhappy with the physical changes made by subsequent owners of the place since I moved out...missing shrubs and trees and the like. But it wasn't my home, it was just where Sal's belongings had gathered years of dust and had to be packed up, and taken to the beautiful new house.

We went to town, now more Carmelle by the freeway than Claremont by the colleges. Dinner and lunch at a couple of the old places turned new yuppie cafes was disappointing. We drove by my college dorm and saw buildings that hadn't been thought of when I was in school. I thought of friends and kind of wished I had the stamina to walk there alone, but had to accept being driven by Sal as the closest to the past I was going to get, and there wasn't much there to get close to. I can draw out some connections, but didn't need to be there on the sidewalk where I lived to bring them back. Sal had a picture of me and DH#1 - we were so young and so cute. She didn't even know he moved out the day I graduated and she gave a party for one of my dad's graduating students instead of for me. Memories often don't matter it turns out.

So the best part was seeing the present. My sister now has the horses although I was the one who loved to ride. She's got a dozen or so racehorses and the babies are darling, and she's so fun to watch teaching them to eat carrots. She had 3foundling dogs racing around her million dollar home - nice to see her falues all in line in spite of the big bucks.

My nephew, Darnell, has been the one to see Sal through her remodeling and move to her new home. For that he deserves the honors of the universe and more credit than he’ll ever probably receive. He reminds me of son-Bill in many ways, and I always really enjoy seeing him. He’s made a lovely home for himself and his two dogs are a hoot! Brownie, the Mastiff has the biggest dog house I’ve ever seen.

And so it went seeing family members I’ve not seen for ages and seeing how they were carrying on nicely with their lives. My best friend's parents (from high school years) are still in their same home,and visiting them there was the closest to a time machine experience I found on the whole trip.

So I'm back with no new great ideas for writing, exhausted, but glad I made the trip and found I'm so well grounded in the present after all.

K7

I Do Believe I've Had Enough
Mood:  down
Topic: ABOUT TIME

Rain, Rain go away!

Re: Should I Apply For Job As A Writer?
Mood:  sharp
Now Playing: "Those Were the Days"
Topic: In Reply
Trading credentials, I am a retired Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor/Teacher. Since retiring I have also earned my MS in English as a technical writer. So it's probably fair to think you might take what I say with two grains of salt at least.

If you are asking whether or not you should apply for the job, you probably don't need to bother. And with your experience and wisdom I think you already know that. The jobs we get are the jobs we can picture ourselves doing; the jobs we already own where the application process is just paper work. When you picture yourself working with people like SYT you want to throw up. When you consider yourself putting your all into a field that has deteriorated into sound bites of thirty seconds or less and mind bites of single syllable simplicity you dissolve into hopeless wailing. If the job opening is anywhere within a hundred miles of the type of writing SYT represents run away, run away, and be afraid. Be very Afraid.

That said, what then do you do? I see two options immediately at hand. You can either change your self-image until you squeeze down into the present-day version of a writer, and then go for it. Or you can keep looking for that needle-in-a-haystack publication where real writers still write, and present yourself to them with pride and expectation. Ah, another option just fluttered by. You could do both, second option first. I read more books than periodicals, but what I read tells me that the New Yorker isn't the New Yorker any longer and that the art of writing has all but become road kill on the side of the Information Highway. I fear you are going to have to make some value adjustments down, way down, before you can snuggle into a place in the pages comfortably. But I could be wrong.

Analysis aside, apply for the job. Bob Dylan once said, "When you ain't got nothin' you've got nothin' to lose." Miracles still happen. It could be a match after all.

Humbug
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: "Is That All There Is?"
Topic: Such Waste!
What is it that makes us go so far over the top to live up to some artificial version of how things should be for a given day out of 365?

Here I sit alone in my humbug corner refusing to do what I'm told by Hallmark and Wallstreet to perform my part in the play. I am content With my year-round Christmas Bear windsock indoors until the storms pass, and my token Calico tree stuffed behind the pictures on the mantle so nobody feels sorry for me and kills a real one in my name to bring it to me, (A lesson I learned too late to spare one tree one year). I stand apart and watch friends and family literally making themselves sick this glorious season as they try to live up to whatever they are taught, told and sold is expected of them. From spending way more than they have to staying up all night because they must "put the bows on all the packages" I hear reports of behavior that most of these same good folks would call nuts any other time of the year.

I think what amazes me most though is the process we follow to set ourselves up for such disappointment at holiday time. What is this scripting we do in advance of events wherein we create the whole scene in our minds ahead of time in such detailed expectation it cannot possibly satisfy in reality? A good friend is taking his son to learn to snowboard this week-end. In telling me of their plans he was relating the schedule in such detail as to tell me what they'd be ordering for breakfast from McDonald's on their way to the slopes and how the kids would feel when they stood up after lunch to what would be said on the ride home. Now there's no way on earth that the reality of this week-end is going to match his plan. And I'm afraid he's going to miss the reality of it watching for what he's decided it's going to be in advance. I realize this is an extreme case, but we all do it to one degree or another. While watching for our expectations we miss our reality. Why?

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Such Waste!
I can't believe the waste in this world! I am too overwhelmed right now to talk about it, so will go to my favorite place and just withdraw from it all for awhile.

Aunt Donna Comes to Sequim
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Donna and Paul
Topic: Family

I never would have recognized Donna if she hadn't been with the boys. It's been over 30 years since I've seen her. What fun for the families to be able to get together for the afternoon!

Long Time No See
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Tom and John Lewicki
Topic: Family

Seems to me the last time I saw these guys was in 1973 when I was in Illinois on my way to New York City. Kind of fun to realize relative banter is genetic. We talked and teased and had a fine visit.

About Time


It's about time people realize life isn't fair. I don't know where that idea even came from. This morning New Orleans is under water. I woke up and phoned my son in Atlanta to wake him for work and drag him through his narcoleptic wakening to get on his way. My phone worked. His phone worked. He got up and got off to work and his car worked and his yard wasn't flooded or his stream overflowing its banks. Now by tonight when he comes home, these things could be different. But for now, he is well and his property safe, his dog dry and cozy in the dog run with the refuge of a nice dog house under a shelter should the rains coe, and all the trees still standing.

Here in Washington state and we didn't even make the weather report on the Weather Channel this morning because things are so calm here, all is peaceful and beautiful.If it rains here everyone will smile and be glad for the dormant lawns to green up again.

As I got up and going today I was aware of everything I was able to do. I flushed the toileet. I turned on the stove and boiled water forinstant coffee. I made phone calls, got my email via wireless connection on my Voicenote, fed the cat, and came to write email. It's a huge awakening to realize these simple morning tasks couldn't be done in New Orleans this morning. People were lucky to draw breath in the tops of their attics hoping to be rescued by others in little boats navigating a city under water. I rarely recognize the good deal it is to be able to flush the toilet in the morning. We have so much! We can lose so much! Not a bad thing to stop and appreciate the good and take into account the power of nature.

About Time
TT: Accessibility

I fine myself totally irritated and tired of waiting for accessibility to come about in some of the simplest of ways. It particularly makes me angry when retailers take backwards steps to make things more difficult rather than moving forward and making things better. Today's growls go to Safeway. In 2000 Safeway here in Port Angeles had perfectly accessible Credit/Debit card machines with buttons you could feel and push without assistance or difficulty. When they updated their computer system, they also downdated their equipment to mere touch screens which are totally unusable by those with low vision or who are totally blind. I have been working with our store for well over a year trying to get them to do something about this problem. Repeatedly they say something is in the works, but repeatedly nothing is done.

I must say they once came through with Braille templates which took real power of forethought to design with Braille being a touch language. Touching anything on this template triggers whatever is below it on the screen. Of course, the template comes nowhere near matching up to what is actually printed on the screen. I fear I found this more offensive than no effort at all.

Why is it that people must make things more difficult and create problems that they had the solution to once?

Mood:  irritated
Topic: ABOUT TIME
Well, it's about time!
About time I get around to doing something with this blog.
About time accessibility gets around to being important.
About time I figure out what I'm going to do about any of this.
And about time to see if this posting even works.