Nothing But Disappointment

It might appear from another perspective that someone’s life had been nothing but disappointment.

Especially if that someone had kept so much to themselves other than the visible appearance of struggle.

Having not had the remnants of large success, it might seem to have been a triviality of existence.

Another perspective altogether – someone she’d never known – if they’d known, might have thought that, indeed, she had lived large and had remnants of success. But the people she knew, she was sure wouldn’t see it that way. She was sure they saw her as a refugee – not in the same world that they were.

She didn’t like their world so much.

There had been love and romance and beautiful things.

Just no children to speak about it to others after that life had left them alone in the world.

She woke in the middle of the night after just barely having nodded off. It was Christmas Eve. She couldn’t sleep. She’d eaten half a box of Whitman’s chocolates to soothe herself – a present to herself. She felt lonely or some sort of existential ambiguity that was making her feel a need to wrap her arms around something other than thoughts – so she went to her closet and there he was.

Bar – looking her right in the face – waiting.

How had it been decided that Bar was a boy?

She was one when he came into existence – at least to her existence – but one isn’t having existed long enough to know that something else exists – is it?

Perhaps.

She seems to remember him always with her – in a little doll stroller or in her bed being tucked in with another littler bear riding on his tummy.

She tried not to show partiality, but Bar was her first love. The littler brown bear was a love too, but somewhere along the line, he went missing. He was a boy too. Where had he gone? She missed him.

“You’ve lived such and interesting life.”

“Yes…I have,” she replied to the one that said that.

Someone saw.

Some things just need to be saved. Bar. Bar had been with her all her life – less one. What a faithful little bear he’d been. She would never abandon Bar.

Bar spent the night riding on her tummy – a string of colored Christmas lights working as a nightlight.

Bar made her cry, for the realness that he had tucked in with his stuffings.

Christmas came and went – again.

Image by Iván Tamás from Pixabay 

Slippery When Wet

All day the wind was raking and the deep chill was suggesting snow was likely coming. A certain telltale nuance of crispness that feels wet as the wind rakes is a good enough description to explain how one can know that it will be snow, even if snow is so unlikely in a desert that is low.

There has been snow that stuck and stayed for days — long enough to get slippery when wet on the north side of things that were hidden from the sun by shade. One needs to be careful and step out gingerly if they are wearing traction-less shoes — those without spaces for the slow-melting, watery snow to go — if it’s not preferred to slip and slide and take a chance on broken bones.

Late rising sun and early darkness, and the bitter cold, makes for wanting to make blankets by knitting or quilting and for sitting still and huddled. There isn’t much time to be outside, between the darkness and the light, and it’s far too chilled to want to stay for long — maybe just enough to take some kitchen scraps to trenches or for setting kibble out for strays. These kinds of days don’t last for long and are a nice reminder of how much better it is to be too hot than too cold — though not everyone agrees.

Few people are out meandering. It is better in where there might be heat or at least enough shelter to cut the chill. Outside, somewhere around 8 this morning, it was just above freezing and a sheet of ice was the top layer in any trough of standing water. Inside the thermometer read 54 °F. Blankets were enough to keep from feeling the freeze while sleeping and cats were good as leg warmers, but once up and out of bed, a better plan was needed. Still better than being outside.

The poor, poor homeless ones in need of shelter. It’s so good to know that there are people building little buildings just enough for one or two to sleep in and cities that will let them help get the homeless out of cold, cold rainy and snowy places and into little-tiny homes that, very often, don’t meet code.

Writing is being practiced while Christmas bells are ringing in the movies that are playing for the one huddled, cuddling with cats napping in a home that long ago somehow made an antiquated code.

February is just around the bend and it will then be time to think about seeds and planting and getting ready to be too hot instead of too cold. Nothing lasts for long and it’s a good idea to stay inside your cave where it is easier to adjust the degrees of whatever weather might be setting any kind of bother.

Either that or be brave or strong enough to take it on the outside.

Next Christmas 2020

Fast or slow
Slow it goes
“No hurry no worry”
is my mantra standing in a line that moves too slow
“Three’s a crowd” is hollered on the intercom
for those who hate to wait or visit with a stranger
Strangers are my favorite
new potential friends
and waiting makes that room to grow
It’ll be next Christmas 2020 ‘for we know it
and the kids will be in college
that are two now
in time that seems like only days
have passed us by
And everybody dies in the blink of eyes
So it is best to
try to go slow
and forfeit junk that wastes any of it
That time that can’t be gotten back
if we go too fast.

Putting It Off

Every night, to help inspire sleep, I put on a movie that comforts me. It can be the same thing over and over and over again.
I’m like that with eating too. Once I find something I like, I will eat that meal plan to death before changing. Right now, I can’t seem to move myself from peanut butter sandwiches. There’s a stew I make that I love, love, love but with a lot of changes going on and activities around perfecting my home for lifestyle needs and minimizing items that are now being termed to be “object entanglement”, the kitchen has not been advanced enough to work freely toward making a stew. It needs to be soon, as I definitely need more veggies, (real ones, not ones powdered into a chocolate-flavored supplemental drink).
Anyway, the movie of choice is currently Mixed Nuts with Steve Martin, Juliette Lewis, Liev Schreiber, the late, wonderful Madeline Kahn and many other of my favorites.
It’s an older movie, 1994. I never seem to tire of it. Before I found this recent copy in DVD format, I had taped it, DVD style, from TV, (a very long time ago when I had TV), and poorly edited commercials as well as missed the beginning altogether — not to mention, the airing omitted lots of scenes to fit in those commercials. I can’t tell you how delighted I was to find a copy at our local Dollar General store. Now it’s commercial-free and complete and in much better definition.
That find was like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for me. Can you imagine something so little, meaning so much?
Before finding Mixed Nuts, I was on a binge of Grumpy Old Men, the first one, not so much the second — although it is good too.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve identified why these two movies, in particular, comfort me. It is the tolerance the people have for each other, their efforts toward making their entanglements so cooperative and just the general sense of an extended family that each seems to create within its story line.
I will have to confess too, a great deal of what holds my interest in any movie, is the sets. Having come from a design background and loving interior spaces the way that I do, I scour movies for all the detail toward the ambiance that has been created. I also get a great deal of joy out of trying to find missteps. I think that process of observation helps my mind stay alert and create new synapses. Who knows.
Anyway, there is one early scene where Juliette’s character goes back to her store/apartment and I revel, albeit internally and without much noise, in the color and the eclectic mix of things that seem unrelated yet cohesive and a million little details like, how odd pieces of wallpaper were assembled to create a complete background in the little area where she and her boyfriend Felix have a couch as well as their kitchen.
I also, have had a store and so it is another of my dreams to create something similar — a store that one lives in — so that aspect of the movie always charms my senses.
And — the movie is filmed in Venice Beach, CA — so right up my artistic, eclectic love interests.
Draperies were a specialty of mine as I loved sewing and fabrics. It was a natural fit to extend my passion of all the things I loved, sewing, fabric and art,  to combine in a way that could earn a living. So, I sold window coverings primarily but also worked with clients on their whole-home projects — floors, walls, windows, furniture and accessories. Juliette’s character, Gracie, has installed swags and draperies in one of the passageways from one room to the next, (I do that too in my own home), and I couldn’t help noticing that she had different fabrics on the top treatments on either side but they were made to mirror each other with their proportions. Tonight, I will try to remember to pick out if there is one set of drapery panels or two. The patterns seem different, but it may just be that it is the wrong side showing through from one side that makes it look different. Those are the things that keep me going back to it for comfort.
For quite awhile, I had kept putting it off — the thing I started out this long blurb with — ordering my life for the better. Finally, I got the right wind. It might have been as simple as my nieces stating that they wanted to come for a visit. I couldn’t imagine them seeing my abode in the state of neglect that the putting off had created. Did that effectively take the blame off of me — putting off did it, not me?
So maybe this story I love to watch each night to put me to sleep is so that I can dream of my own abode finally being put into an order that equals what I love to look at in that movie — and — I wake up singing Christmas songs. Bonus.
It’s getting there — my own home.
The thing about putting off is that it just gets worse as time goes by. Doing something every day amazingly, almost like magic, puts it all back into shape again.
Everyday something.
It’s looking at it as a whole and feeling like it is insurmountable that is the killer of incentive. When I finally just grabbed something off the counter and found its rightful home and then did it with the next and the next and the next — there it went — back into shape again.
It does seem to help to have family around to keep one inspired — even if it is a movie family or the threat of nieces visiting.
Maybe some day I’ll have a Pinterest-ready home. Can you imagine living such that you are always Pinterest ready? Bah humbug. I’m not a fan of Pinterest anyway — it’s too hard to get to all the sources. So, maybe I’ll have it ready enough to feature in a magazine — like Where Women Create — with all the sources listed. Maybe I’ll create my own magazine. Life is for living, not for putting it off.