Reflections on the drive to work

I take the back roads to work instead of taking the highway. There is a place where, in the spring, a dogwood blooms in front of a larger dark purple lilac and the different bloom times just barely overlap. The beauty makes me catch my breath. I know the three places where I need to slow down because people in those areas keep guinea fowl and the birds tend to congregate by the side of the road as though waiting for the school bus. Another spot goes nearly unnoticed unless there is snow to highlight the evergreens surrounding a very deep red barn. Winding curves and straight stretches with trees touching overhead to form long tunnels. I'm on nodding acquaintance with people walking their dogs and with the goats, sheep and miniature horses. I keep a wary watch for the deer. Just like a relative who's had a few too many at the family reunion, the deer are equally likely to stare glassy-eyed as you pass as they are to stumble into you.

I pass through several very small towns one of which has hand-drawn "Welcome, Hurst Family Market" signs in windows and on an easel at the corner near the library. The nearest grocery store had been nearly twenty miles away. The towns all have holiday banners that go up on the street lights the week before Thanksgiving and flowers in enormous pots along the sidewalks that stay tended all summer.

And then, yesterday, I turned a corner out in the country on my drive to work and a yellow and black bi-plane crossed before me barely clearing the power lines. Then the cowboy flying it banked the plane into a steep turn almost straight up and flew back across the road, then lower and lower until he skimmed the field and began dusting the crops. Wow.

I take the back roads to work instead of taking the highway.

Things I never got from Monk or Psych

I am, obviously, one of the lucky ones.

As did many people in the area, we lost our electrical power Thursday night. We were lucky and had power restored in the wee hours Friday morning. Lucky. I can count the blessings of restored power; we didn't lose all the frozen food in the big freezer, had air conditioning for relief from hot and humid, power for the hair dryer meant I didn't have wet hair and power for the coffee maker meant caffeine and on and on.

What we didn't have was cable.

No Monk, no Psych, no local news and weather, no military channels for my husband, no Saturday morning mystery on TCM and no Saturday night movie on one of the premium channels. And no computer hook up to anyone else. No mail. No blog. No checking anything out online. Nada.

We didn't have cable.

So, we pulled out the DVD's and watched old favorites, reliving and remembering why they are old favorites. We walked around the house with a book in one hand, a finger keeping our place while refilling coffee cups and carrying them back to the sofas. We're big readers anyway, but in the past two days we read even more than usual, sharing the best bits with one another, laughing, talking and 'what ifing'. I cleared off the work table downstairs by finishing up a few projects. Actually finishing them. So, now not only do I have a cleared work table and a completed hooked wool rug (a very small one) I can now use, but a sense of accomplishment. I never got that from Monk. And the cleared work table has spurred me to pull out all the new wool I've amassed over years and begin washing and drying it so it will be ready to use when I start the new hooked wool rug. A rug I've been planning for the last six months but never started because I hadn't yet washed the wool. I've never gotten this kind of motivation from Psych. I have enough space on the work table to spread out all the oh-so soft washed and dried wools and begin choosing a color palate. I've cleared off the chalk board over my work table and listed the new chocolate truffle flavors I'm going to begin making and testing this afternoon instead of next week because there is nothing to compare with that sense of accomplishment from the completion of a project. I can do it and I did do it and that is incredible motivation for me.

I've learned some things from two days without cable, things I knew but that had been buried beneath the distraction of absolutely everything being available. The old favorites, be they movies or a DVD collection of a television series, are old favorites because of they way they make us feel, uplifted or inspired or just plain happy. The old favorites are the ones to which we go back again and again. That reading inputs knowledge into a better part of the brain than pictures flashing on the screen. And that a cleared work table now has space for autumn colored wools begging to be touched and sorted and cut into strips and worked into a rug that could be handed down to another who may look at it and remember me long after Monk and Psych go off the air.

Now I'm going to leave my computer, slip a DVD into the player and head off toward my goals with the realization that I am, obviously, one of the lucky ones.

Ah, to be in England now that Harry Potter is there

England isn't a real place to me. England exists solely in my mind, the England of Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre (Aker) Wood, Narnia's lamp post, Dickens' crooked streets, Victorian shops and Ebenezer Scrooge (Old and New Testament both for what is Scrooge without Bah, Humbug?), the forest of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, King Arthur's Round Table, the Famous Five including their dog, Timmy, traipsing everywhere without adult supervision, Robin Hood in Sherwood forest poaching the King's deer, Lord Peter Wimsey jaunting from country house to town house, Nagio Marsh's Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn jaunting from town house to country house, Christie's characters everywhere, Elizabeth Daly's Henry Gamadge and his books, Patricia Wentworth's Miss Maude Silver and her perfectly preserved rooms, Harry Potter and Hogwarts.

It seems I was wrong. England is a real place to me.

Rainy days and Sundays (with no bird imitations)

For the first time this summer, there are spots in the lawn that look lush green. The rain is falling steadily and the day is still young enough that the quality of light makes the colors more intense. I have my big, thick, plush warm socs on my feet, a hot cup of coffee in my favorite mottled blue oversized mug, a sleeping cat curled up beside me, a couple candles flickering in their holders and an old black and white TCM movie playing on the small television here in my office. And I'm laughing. It seems Errol Flynn is doing his best to impress the girl, Kay Francis, telling her how he'll show her around the town while quoting paragraphs from the guide book all the while and adding his own bits of humor and observations about the locals. Kay looks him straight in the eye and says, "What, no bird imitations?"

Though I think life would be greatly improved with screenwriters and retakes, this rainy Sunday, even without bird imitations, is right on the first take.

Away from the fret of the world

From Lost Horizon by James Hilton: "These were his beloved things, all around him, the things of that inner mind in which he lived increasingly, away from the fret of the world."

This is what I desire for the world I build around myself. My beloved things, the things of my inner mind, that interior world where I live increasingly. In my own way I'm attempting to build, find or create my interior world as an exterior one. Nearly everyone says, "I'll know it when I see it." Of course we will, we've lived with it in our minds long before we see it in reality. It is familiar, comforting and makes us feel at home. We know it.

Quilts, soft muted colors, flowers, music in the background, old movies, wood burning fireplaces, candlelight, writing without interruption, a screened porch, brick paths, chocolates, a pantry, books and books and books, mysteries from the 30's and 40's, journals, cats curled up asleep on the bed, paintings of ships on stormy seas, a telescope, letter openers, magnifying glass, gorgeous frames and photographs, joyful secrets, needlepoint, chairs with ottomans, an old pine table for a desk, old radio programs, sweatshirts and warm socs, the Dick Van Dyke show, a sleigh bed, Blackwatch plaid, Brookhollow patterned china, Crane stationary, Waterman pens, hand-knit sweaters, dial phones, walking sticks, tins of cookies, scented lotions, fluffy towels, lanterns, BLTs, homemade hot chocolate with Bailey's, oiled pine kitchen cupboards, multiple paned windows, hand written letters, gardens with winding paths, kittens, Irish wolfhounds and Scottish deerhounds, sharing with family and friends while still having privacy and enough solitude, leather-covered boxes.................and on and on and on.

The twelve days of my birthday

Yesterday, I officially celebrated my fiftieth birthday, but I've been celebrating the event for nearly a week and still have a few days left to raise a toast with friends and family. Strange that there should be so much fuss over something I could neither halt nor hurry along, but it is good to have a point in life where one stops and contemplates the view. For me, the view looks good. I have a long to-do list and part of reaching a milestone age (not a millstone), is that you begin to say, "if not now, when?" Reaching fifty is, for me, extremely liberating. It means it is time to accomplish my goals by ignoring that nay-saying little voice inside that wants to keep me too safe and sometimes by ignoring those nay-saying little voices outside, too. I can't imagine anything less safe than reaching the next decade without making more of an effort toward my goals during this one. I have items to check off my list and I no longer have my 40s to waste thinking about doing them 'someday'. So, the writing group I've been invited to join will see my presence. Editors and agents, like it or not, are going to see the writing. The chocolate truffle company my daughter, Emily, and I want to begin is happening. The 47 side gigs Em wants to be involved with have my support. The new granddaughter has my total love. My husband's motorcycle riding, golfing, kayaking, paddleball desires have my support. The red barn studio will become a reality. My family and friends have my attention and love. Live! Enjoy!

With the wisdom of all my years, I give this advice to myself. Make your life happen because time flies whether you like it or not. Two days ago I was forty-nine. It seems like only yesterday.