Transport where?

WRITING CHALLENGE

I have been doing a fun exercise and thought I would share today’s with you.

Today choose a place to which you would like to be transported if you could – and tell us the back-story. How does this specific location affect you?  Is it somewhere you’ve been, luring you with the power of nostalgia, or a place you are aching to explore for the first time?

There is a place I have been to once that claimed my spirit at first sight. Often in my thoughts and always in my heart, it is my first choice, and perhaps the second and third.   The land of my mother, more ancient than the continent on which I currently reside, has a rich history.

 The town, at the heart of the matter, was established about 1160.  In contrast the city in which I dwell was established in 1807.  Apparently back about 1100 we had an assortment of Vikings and Indigenous folk tromping around this country.

Even the age of Canada is considered ‘young’ at 200 million years whereas my land of dreams boasts a hearty age of about 500 million years.  Around the time when it drifted northwest from about 30 degrees south of the equator to its present latitude of about 54 degrees north.

Rocks, stones, green, and of course the sea welcomed this weary traveler.  The city is more that 800 miles further north than Kitchener Ontario, closer to the Arctic than we, but it is warmed by the Gulf Stream from the Atlantic so more protected from the extremes of Canada.  

Being so far north it has glorious longer days in summer, which I got to experience.  Of course the reverse holds true for the winter so my desire to be transported will be in summer please.  Far past midnight there is a light.

Did I embrace a city so rich in history, romance, intrigue, and mystery or did it embrace me? Could it recognize the DNA of far traveled offspring?  Was it the sea air, touring a city under the present one, drinking water so pure it is rated one of the best in the world, and buildings and castles built long ago, or was it something more?

My mini-me resides there, the daughter of my mother’s identical twin and four days younger than I – an important distinction to make believe me.  We speak in face-to-face everyday, sometimes just for a few minutes, sometimes a bit longer, but it ties me even closer to this family and my city of choice – Edinburgh.

I heard today…

I heard today of a passing,

Expected but painful in it’s loss.

I heard today of a birth,

And joy in celebration.

I heard today of a fine dinner

Cooked by a young couple for a grandmother.

And the thought occurred:

In this one day is the perfect depiction of Life.

And I gave Thanks.

Dating by the light…

Brad Pitt’s character, John Smith, in the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith, says – ‘I guess that’s what happens at the end, you start thinking about the beginning.’

This soft of thinking occurs at times of contemplation, endings, and of course becomes more frequent as one ages.

Today I took a look back at my very first blog post in December 2010. Oh my. This is a post about my newly started beginning in on line dating. Nine years ago. In that time many things have come and gone, including on line anything (except for the odd shopping *for things not people!).

But it was a fun and interesting time and worth the look back.

Ladies and Gentlemen and the politically correct, everyone else I present an amusing peek at….Dating by the light….

*Interestingly one of the people who ‘liked’ this was someone who has become a dear friend with whom I now FaceTime weekly at least and is now a Sister of Choice.

via Dating by the light…

Under the Tuscan Sun

JB’s philosophy of ‘I choose how I will spend the rest of my life’ is always a warming hug whenever I visit. Choosing. It may be the best part of life. The choices may not sometimes be all that palatable, and sometimes consists solely of chosen attitude. How lucky we are to ‘choose’. Mandela chose a positive attitude in his years of prison, Hawking chose to move beyond physical restraints. Choosing is not wishing. I wish I were free. I wish I were rich. It is choosing a course of action, an attitude. A dear friend believes you don’t spend your time wishing but you play the hand you are dealt. That is not giving in to the hand or being happy with what you have. It is choosing. And choosing leads to action. That trip JB chose to take even when her plans fell apart and she would suddenly be doing it alone. She sold her house and made the move of a lifetime. A Septuagenarian Adventure. That’s my friend. An adventurer. Stroll around her blog and bask in the Tuscan sun, the New Zealand countryside, and the dance in the sea of her most treasured thing – words. Books, stories, poems. My friend. My treasure.

I choose how I will spend the rest of my life

On turning the calendar card I was confronted with this –

The wording on the card reads –

“The Italian enthusiasm for cycling come to the fore every spring during the Giro d’Italia, a three-week-long road race across some of the peninsula’s most challenging terrain. Thrills, hills, and spills aside, two-wheeled vehicles are an integral part of Italian culture and an uplifting fixture of daily life”

I was immediately transported back to my brief sojourn in Florence in 2013. Can it really be six years ago?

On October 23, 2013, I recorded Day 16 in Florence and noted that the World Road Cycling Championship had just been raced in and around Florence. Cycling memorabilia was on display and for sale everywhere one looked. I succumbed and purchased two little battery operated bicycles with pedalling cyclists whizzing around the footpaths. If you are interested, click here for that post.

Oh, how…

View original post 94 more words

The Ooopside of Senior Communication

There is much merriment in the world of geriatric graceful aging.  First and foremost, before you even get close post sixty you would do well to establish a grainy gritty sense of humor.

This is not the humor of your youth, or even middle age.  Like a fine wine that takes time to develop this is The Cadillac of humor, or I guess in this age, given the times, The Tesla of Humor.  Did I get that right?  That very question is becoming The Question of each and every day in some small way.  Did I get that right?  Does that sound right?  Good grief.

The object of your humor is nothing more than yourself.  Yup, better learn to laugh at yourself.  Start young.  It makes it easier in the dim lit of the top ten ( 70, 80, 90, 100).

A sound chuckle after an Oops achieves a lot of things; it saves those around you from gazing too long trying to make sense of what you have just done or said,  it gives same said audience a chance to chuckle (something they may not be doing much of these days. They can be a serious lot, these young’uns, can’t they?), it increases your ever slowing circulation (always a plus), and it gives you a moment to get your head on straight and try to figure out just what the hell  you were doing in the first place.

The downside is laughing, depending on your circumstance and effectiveness of medications, may cause some urinary incontinence. (I never thought I would see the day when adult pull-ups were not only necessary but the subject of cocktail party conversation.  Now is that right?  If people still socialize in such groups are the groups even called cocktail parties anymore?)

I swear, I over heard a conversation last evening, note ‘over heard’ cause no way I would be a part of such a group, and it went like this. “Oh, I tried that brand of Pull-up and did not like it.  I get mine in bulk at….”  Honest.  I kid you not.

Anyway one of the joys of senior communication is making plans to speak to someone half a world away.  See?  Again, I kid you not.  She is literally half a world away.

She, of course if Judith Baxter whom you are, or if you are not, might want to be familiar with through her blog I choose how I will spend the rest of my life and Books&MoreBooks2017.

So we know she is a day ahead and seventeen hours or something.  But for me the easy way is that she is always, well most of the time, eight hours behind me (and one day ahead).  We did well over the last couple of years with our skyping EXCEPT when those damn clocks change.  She is the opposite of seasons so when I have summer, she had winter.  Except in winter the clocks go back an hour (you know, Fall back and Spring forward.)

Yes there are times we just plain get befuddled with what the other side of the world is doing.  And then there is Senior Logic where what is eight hours in our minds  becomes six hours.

Every tried to contact someone when you are two hours away from reality?  Uhuh. Not successful.  It has nothing to do with time zones or planet placement.  Now that is what I call the Oopside of Senior Communication.

I Love a Rainy Day

Unlike the Carpenters‘ Rainy Days and Mondays song always getting them down, I like rainy days.  The kind of day that begs for hibernation, curling up with books, and reflective thoughts of life.

When I awoke this morning to that delicious half light that accompanies immane cloud cover (BTW immane is a new word I learned – means monstrous, huge), my consciousness cuddled with my soul and prepared for one nice snuggy day.

I love skies filled with clouds (note I say that while staying in and looking out.  Not unlike my admiration for snow filled days also).  The best clouds in the sky photos are taken by my friend Celi so pop over here at thekitchensgarden to have a boo at this header.  

*and catch up on her farmy adventures!  Below is one of Celi’s skies.

I must admit that retirement has rendered me one of the lowest maintenance gals around.  My needs are simple.  Gone is the need to impress anyone, including to dress to impress, to speak to impress, or anything else of the ‘ess’.

Especially days like this.  Some tea, clouds, and of course reading material.  I figure I will never run out of material because push come to shove I can make up my own.  But I love well written books and my sources are many.

One of the most exciting things I did this year was to make an effort to get out of my comfort zone in the literary world.  I know what I like.  But this year at the encouragement of my dear dear New Zealand blogging and Skype buddy, Judith who chooses how she will spend each day and who started another blog near and dear to her heart, about of course, books and more book 2017. I ventured out to other sorts of books.  I am glad I did!  I just wish I kept track of every book just to impress the daylights out of you. OH! forget the ‘impress’ anything.

Another wonderful source that soothes is Joss Burnel, words to live by, breathe by, dream by and who has found Eden in Ecuador.

 

Quiet days like this means leisurely perusing the news.  So today I see that Vancouver has beaten Toronto as the most expensive in Canada to live.  Of little matter to one such as I but an interesting fact.

Also Canadian, is that in a bar in Dawson City, Yukon, you can buy what is known as a ‘sourtoe cocktail’ and that said toe is a truly mummified toe that must touch your lips as you drink your cocktail, AND that said toe was stolen, AND that the alleged thief sent a letter to the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) saying that he had returned the toe to the bar by mail. And you think we Canucks don’t have news?

Next I read an article that the approaching solar eclipse is expected to cause a terrestrial problem for us.  It seems it will cause a 70% reduction in energy output which will in turn put stress on regular old energy production.  If you rely on solar power, we are forewarned that at 2:30pm on Monday August 21st production will drop.

Well, other than a fine chap from the Ottawa area who won 22 million dollars in one of our lotteries, and who is NOT related to me, or is one of the people on this earth who adores me, but intends to benefit others with his win, I think I am finished with news.

I will make another cuppa, work a bit on my own creative endeavor, and then resume reading. AHHH lots to be grateful for.

 

How J.B. Fletcher survived multiple shocks but was taken down by a table, a rug, and her very own lunch.

 

Once upon a time in a land far away lived a lovely lady, who had three very lovely girls, all of them …oh wait! Wrong story line.

Once upon a time in a land far away lived a lovely lady. She and I started our blogs years ago about the same time. I remember messaging her about widgets, something she had conquered and something I have long ago forgotten about.

The land far away is New Zealand and her philosophy and classy ways attracted me right from the start. She has been more dedicated about her blog, ‘I choose how I will spend the rest of my life’ than I, and we have continued our friendship over the years and miles.  Through thick and thin, of which there has been a lot.

Some of what she has survived, with great style I might add:  the sale of her home, a fire in a storage unit, a trip alone to Europe, a broken leg, the loss of a dear love, a head injury (which took months) and now another fracture.

She is a life coach who lives what she preaches, except she is not preachy of course, but maintains a positive outlook. She sets an example of a life well lived.

A few years ago I had commented that to me she seemed a lot like the character JB Fletcher on Murder She Wrote.  Style, beauty, common sense.

Anyway, on her blog you will read about her latest adventure caused by lunch no less.  It seems there was a fall, in a chair, the leg of which had been attacked by a rug posing as No Threat.  This had followed a previous number of earthquake shocks which were unsettling but survivable for her.

I think in addition to Angela Lansbury she reminds me of Reba McIntyre who sang, ‘I’m a Survivor.”

So keep on keeping on my friend. Get well, and continue to inspire! And a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS  from Canada

World Access in Isolation

World Access in Isolation

I should start by saying this is not a complaint. Merely an observation.

It seems almost paradoxical. The way of things today I mean. Everywhere you look people are focused only on the device in their hands. Out on the streets heads are bent as fingers fly across small keyboards. Are they even called keyboards anymore? No one makes eye contact anymore. Okay there are some.

I used to comment it was only the young people ( meaning anyone younger than I), but I notice on the streets, in stores, in cars (a no no) eyes are cast down and some of them belong to pretty old people. If you speak or otherwise engage and the head comes up, the eyes seem out of focus if they meet yours at all.

What I find strange is that at the very same time we have personal access to people across the world. Which in my mind makes this little planet that much smaller. Each week I come face to face in real time with my cousin in Scotland, my BFF in Winnipeg or Mexico or the west coast or the east coast or points between, wherever this Gypsy Road Warrior chooses to be, and then halfway around the world to my friend freshly recovered from an accident and still brave and back as good as new Judith Baxter whom you know as growingyoungereachday.wordpress.com who lives in New Zealand.

I am pretty sure the outcome of this will be a world of folk unable to engage in proximal reality, physically close together. Even with skyping or messaging our reality becomes that face on the screen. Social skills lost.

How will next generations be able to interact? Will they be able to tolerate another human in close proximity? Will they be aware of trees, skies, breezes, natural beauty at all?

Will they lose their humanness? I read a prediction from a very science type on Quora that ultimately that is exactly what will happen. I am also sure that if someone from the nineteenth century were to glimpse our world as it has become they might also deduce we had lost our humanness already.

Times they are changing, as the saying goes.

Having said all that, I am most grateful that those I love around the world are as close as ‘this’ and we can look in each other’s eyes and raise a glass of red wine as we chat about any old mundane thing that crosses our minds.

Permanent Press in the Dryer of Life

Are you in control of your life? Really can any of us be in control ever or is it an illusion? That we have control of anything I mean.

Everyday things come up and we deal. Sometimes events occur that are so huge all we can do is hang on and sometimes we are not even aware of hanging on. We just are. I am not sure how we survive sometimes, but survive we do.

Faith helps but it doesn’t necessarily spare us the pain. It does give us strength. I guess sometimes the pain is the only thing that lets us know we still exist.

I have been tumbling about my own dryer of life and it seems to be settling for a bit at least, but the pain I speak about is of loss. I have a friend who lives on the other side of the world whose loss has been extreme and while my pain is not hers, it hurts to think of her hurting and struggling.

I feel like she and I are surviving the tumble but not yet able to see what the future will bring. Neither of us has control but we are blessed by love and people who care about us.

I have another friend half way across the country who came within a hair’s breadth of the most terrible loss, that of a son. Fortunately that situation worked out okay but there were hours that seemed like days or years when it seemed the worst would occur.

We have no control except over our selves. We are being buffeted by the winds of change – now how cliché is that – and some have no idea what the next step will be. We can only wait. Breathe. And wait some more.

It seems to me that love is the answer. To love and to be loved is permanent press in the fabric of life.  Okay that last bit was a little in the extreme but you get the idea.

FITFS Judith Baxter

Each Friday I devote a post to someone in my hero group from the Blogosphere.

Heroes are important to our lives, unlike the ‘experts’ I wrote about this week, they are individuals who inspire us and make our lives better and more fulfilling by their very existence and actions.  Real people who make us better by their example.

Judith Baxter lives in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand.  Originally from England, she and her Dashing Young Scotsman settled in New Zealand.  Her trusty companion is Lotte an adorable Tibetan Spaniel.

Since the passing of her mother and then the premature death of her husband Judith made a decision to ‘choose how I will spend the rest of my life’.

Judith lives with intention and is a certified life coach, mentor, author and facilitator.  What I most admire is that she has defined her values which are Gracious, Generous, Loving, and Radiant.

Family is very important to her, especially her four fine grandsons.  Judith shares her insights with every post and it would be impossible to choose one.

Judith’s very first post on March 1, 2011 was titled, ‘I choose how I will spend the rest of my life and in I she talked about her mother’s last years and her mission “about keeping the mind active….”. She says, “I know our thoughts determine the results we achieve…”

When I think of Judith I think of silk, satin, heart of gold, and soul of goodness.

Today’s post is a recommendation to read Dr. Wayne Dyer‘s book, ‘Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life and the wisdom of Lao-tzu.

So please do stop by and say hi and take a dip in her pool of wisdom.  Bathing suits not required.

Related articles

• What Are You Reading? (growingyoungereachday.wordpress.com)