If I eat a chocolate chip muffin
while wearing
a Hershey’s KISS costume,
does that make me a cannibal?

What is it about a takeaway coffee cup?
Expensive and environmentally unfriendly.
The baby bottle of adults.
Holding one evokes thoughts of yoga pants, entrepreneurs and baristas who become friends.
Community.
So much better than your favorite mug at home.
Rainy days.
“You’ve Got Mail”.
Seattle.
Paparazzi. As if anyone’s looking for me.
If ordering you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Find your latte in life. Whatever it is, it will be so much more than what it appears to be.

 

 

 

As you read this, where are your shoulders? I’m guessing up around your ears where most of us find them. I’ve noticed lately while sitting with Piper, our parrot, or watching TV that my shoulders are in the locked and upright position, or should I say uptight, position. I catch myself in these peaceful moments, wonder why and make myself untense.

I have commented during massages to the therapist, “Oh, that’s where my shoulders belong”, as they put them in the right place and strongly encouraged them to stay there. They don’t, of course.

Is it a habit? Why am I carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders ever, let alone in the least stressful times of my life? I’m Type A and driven, yes, but all the more reason to be successful at relaxing.

I hope that at 54 I can teach my shoulders a new trick. I encourage you to join me. Shrug all you want at the idea, at least then they’ll go down!

 

Step 1: Find miracle workers   √

Step 2: Believe   half-√

 

 

* Quote author unknown

 

I started this blog in 2010 when I was searching for a job during the country’s financial crisis. Back then, it was drilled into us that “It’s who you know” that will land you your next position. Recently I have realized that this doesn’t only apply to finding employment, it pertains to just about everything in life. Sure, you can find anything you want with a few clicks, from doctors to handymen, but no matter how many Yelp reviews you read, there is no comparison between a Google search and a referral from someone you trust. I met my husband in 1990 through a friend and if you are a frequent visitor to this site you know how well that has gone, said in my usual cynical, sarcastic old-married-lady way with nothing but love on its underbelly.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Google, and, yes, I have even Googled myself. But when it comes to finding a job or someone to do a job, it’s still who you know, the original, often imitated, never equaled “network”.

 

Going out into our backyard to our trash cans around 9 p.m. one evening, it occurred to me that if I did not know the time I might have thought it was early morning before the sun came up. Any car noise was muted behind our house so that was not a clock clue. The air was fall-crisp, and from what I was able to make out with my vision such as it is, the sky was not fully dark. We were in that in between period, when the light would either increase or decrease depending on the earth’s rotation.

This kind of uncertainty can throw you off, leaving you feel panicked and scared. But there can also be a sense of comfort, knowing you’re just disoriented, nothing has changed but your perception of the situation. Once you can release the confusion, you can use your logic and experience to right yourself. Whether it was night or day, I was still in my backyard, a few feet away from the warmth and safety of my home. The only difference: Time for coffee or time for a Tylenol PM?

 

 

“I can lose that chapstick four times in one day, Tom.”

 

My mom was a t-shirt and shorts or jeans kind of woman until her death at 79 and I have followed in her fashion footsteps. When she left this earth she left behind many tees proclaiming her love of her favorite sports teams, Ocean City, New Jersey and this country. When I cleaned out her things, I kept most of them and later decided to have a quilt made out of them. I am a firm believer that when you save items that belong to someone who has died, you honor the person by putting to use or displaying those keepsakes. I wanted to be able to wrap myself in mom’s shirts. After all, they are her.

A wonderful, talented woman made the quilt and with the technology available, pictures of mom or of mom and I make up the border around the squares of her shirts. The quilt ended up being much larger than I had anticipated and was, quite frankly, a work of art too beautiful to fold up and take out when the need for warmth or comfort arose. It had to be showcased for all to see.

Working with a local craftsman, I had a quilt ladder made and the fabric of my mom’s life hangs in my dining room. Needing to hide a fade mark on our wallpaper from a picture taken down to make room for the ladder, I searched and found a quote to be placed above it. My poor husband spent hours applying the decal to the wall, painstaking letter by letter, and the result was beyond my expectations. My short, thin mom would be dwarfed by the quilt but it resides in the same room where we always hugged before I took her home.

I encourage you to go to your closet or attic, find the box marked “MOM” or “GRANDMOM” and pull out the shoes your mom always wore to the beach and the cookie tin your nana always had filled with your favorite “melt-away” cookies. Place the canvas espadrilles on your shoe rack even if they don’t fit you. Fill the tin and keep it on your counter or table and enjoy it. Frame the last lottery tickets your dad bought before he died. Of course our loved ones live in us but having their things reside around us says: they were here.

At least once a day I touch the quilt as I pass by. And on occasion, I give it a hug. And it’s heaven.

 

“None of us go to bed thinking that
we won’t wake up in the morning.
No matter what is on our calendar for tomorrow,
those seconds before sleep are the most hopeful of our lives.”

— Sister Rain

 

 

One out of five people ask me if I can drive when they first learn that I’m legally blind and every time they ask, it’s like they slapped me. I don’t let them see my reaction, but my visceral response takes all my power not to flinch. Is this the deciding factor for them, if I could drive would they equate my visual impairment with their own need for reading glasses?

It happened this morning and I wanted to know why this question comes up so much. And why does it take my breath away?

The latter is easy. Driving is the thing I miss most. As I write this I’m craving McDonald’s French fries in the worst way for some unknown reason and I can’t go get them. I Uber, my husband and friends are EXTREMELY generous, taking me shopping and to appointments. But driving is freedom and independence. It’s alone time with your music blaring and your thoughts unfiltered. It’s as natural as walking and talking. It is, to me, everything . . . and the one thing I cannot do since I lost my sight.

The former is not for me to explain, so I asked the woman I just met why she wanted to know if I can drive. She replied, “Became when you said you were legally blind, the first thing I thought of was what if I lost my ability to drive? Oh my god. How would I get groceries or pick up a latte or get some quiet time away from my family? It wasn’t until you walked away that I considered all the million little things I do every day.”

I thanked her for her candidness and sat back down at a nearby table. It made perfect sense. If I love driving that much why wouldn’t other people too? My sensitivity to the subject is what causes my Pavlovian pain. A self-inflicted gunshot wound that someone else innocently fired.

Seven years after waking up blind I’m still learning to see things in a different way. Unfortunately, I can’t see other cars, traffic lights, signs. pedestrians or the road from any angle. I’m sure, however, that somehow I’d be able to spot the Golden Arches.