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It would appear that Summer vacation is over and I am back; back from North Carolina, back from Maine, back out of my hole and back at the keyboard. After a break for several months I find myself, once again, with the urge to write…
It remains to be seen where this blog will go.
Maybe we will all just have to stay tuned.
I think of my blog as a small cottage industry; hand-crafts, life-crafts and such…mixed in with the occasional burst pipe and time spent puttering in the garden. I don’t have big box volume of readership. I am not solely dedicated to one boutique topic. You will not find the lofty ideals of academia or the sleight of hand of some marketeers or the driving rhythm of Wall Street here.
I am not trying to fuel a revolution, though I hope to have maybe changed a few hearts and minds on the topics of cooking and eating, and aging and dying.
I am not building a blogging empire. I have little hope that O Magazine, or Bon Appetit or NBC will be courting syndication anytime soon.
Still, I do look at the numbers of folks who come here to read. I ponder both what posts get read the most and how people found my site.
This morning someone searched on the term “no life”.
The world-wide web sent them here.
“Send a signal up in smoke, tap it out in Morse code.
I prefer a bad excuse to no news.”
Lyrics by Mark Sanders, Phillip Wayne Barnhart and Samuel Harper Hogin
Or in this case, “no muse”…
Life is good. I have no complaints, which may be part of the problem. I just don’t have a lot to say; no life lessons, no major rants, no really poignant moments to report…or at least nothing that comes to mind.
No muse.
It’s rained here for 40 days and 40 nights, it seems. April rainfall broke the record set in the 1930′s. May has produced one sunny 5-day stretch, but has in large part been pretty damp, too. Local creeks are under flood watch. Parts of my backyard are under water.
Still, while sitting out in a local park manning an information booth on Sunday was a pretty chilling experience, overall the rain doesn’ t really bother me.
Yet, I am just not inspired.
I had several wonderful experiences over the weekend; several graduations, the chance to cook, a brilliant presentation by one of the doctors for whom I have been doing some work, time to chat, time to chill… It is almost as they say, nothing to write home about, or, in my case, nothing to write from home about.
Almost… I certainly could write plenty.
I am just not doing it.
No muse.
Having dragged the crate back in from the garage, I was, once again, reminded of how skittish the beast becomes around it. As I wrote before, I have no idea how it came to be, as she was crate trained and, at one point, happy to “kennel up” for a bit while I was out.
Then it all changed, and I don’t know why.
Although the crate was pulled out for the boxer boy arriving this evening, I still don’t like the idea of Beast Number One being so shy of it. That, and I am nervous that she will give the new addition reason to be shy also; that hating the crate will become contagious. There are days when I don’t really love leaving one beast free to roam the house while I am gone. I simply can’t leave two of them free and unsupervised.
A friend, whom I believe has no ulterior motive, and no hidden cameras in my house, asked yesterday if I had gotten into the crate. Shockingly, I confess I have spent very little time there before yesterday. Yesterday evening and part of this morning, in the attempt to show that the crate is a pretty cool spot, I have managed to manipulate myself into the crate, though. Yesterday I took treats in with me (human and canine), and, while I nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie, I handed dog treats out to the beast anytime she came close enough to reach.
Still the special treat I put into the crate yesterday is untouched; lying just out of reach for a beast who won’t put a single paw inside.
This morning I set my laptop on the kitchen floor, backed myself into the box and proceeded to check email and do the morning Sudoku puzzles online from my new home. The beast’s only response was to whine at me to get her that special treat that was now within my easy reach.
So… my attempts to ease the beast’s mind about the comfort of crate-living seem to have fallen on her deaf, floppy ears. My only hope now is that Dreyfus can convince her of what I could not…
A couple of my recent posts have been about keeping your eyes open. In Driving Lessons, one of my major points was the lifesaving property of watching the actual movement of vehicles around you rather than the rather uncertain implied intentions of a turn signal. In Look, I wrote of the welcome reminder to simply look around you at the good that is a happening right under our noses.
And then I forgot to look.
I have had my head down for days; plowing through a large share of work that is due, getting my taxes done and sorting and filing the mass of paperwork that remains in the aftermath of IRS and State calculations, reviewing documents, updating forms and returning calls. It has occurred to me on several late night occasions that I had not written a post, but in all the churn of administrative details I found no inspiration for writing; forgetting, of course, or at least temporarily ignoring, that part of my pledge is to write something everyday.
Once again I have missed an anniversary. I started writing two years ago yesterday with two posts; as an explanation of my chosen blog header I wrote Metastable, and in an admission, in The Morning After, confessed that the act of starting a blog may not have been entirely well-thought out.
At that point I had been home, retired, for about four years. My mother had been in a nursing home for more than a year as her dementia had advanced, yet her general health was remarkably, dishearteningly good.
At that point in my life, the beast was still a mush-faced bundle of random energy who peed on my floor, chewed on my hands and pulled like a sled dog on a leash. My circle of local “friends” consisted nearly entirely of caregivers and residents of long-term care facilities. I was working a job that ultimately would leave me feeling expendable. I had things to say but no forum for saying them. My experience as caregiver felt isolating.
My how things change…
So I missed the anniversary yesterday, but today I stopped to look back and see how far I have come. Thanks to all of you who have joined me on this journey.
Look…
That’s what a friend of mine posted on their social networking site.
Now, if that had ended up as one of my postings I would have claimed pre-caffeine fog or that the beast hit my hand before I finished typing. In this case though, I’m not entirely sure that this is not the entire thought; a simple, one-word goal for the day.
Just look.
In contemplating the wisdom of that advice, I am forced to acknowledge that there is much that I may be missing as I wander through this life.
I already know that to be true when it comes to housekeeping. I just don’t see it…until, of course, 20 minutes before company is coming and I am forced to look at my house through fresh eyes.
Not being able to keep up with the rate at which it was being dragged into the house, I had stopped seeing the mud. Since it was not recycling day, the stack of folded cardboard had come to cover most of my dining room table. And just exactly how long had the 12-roll package of toilet paper been sitting on the stairs? Had I passed it a couple of times? A dozen? A hundred?
Of course, once I actually “saw” the disorder, I was able to deal with it; stopping just shy of shampooing carpets 20 minutes before my guests arrived. Still, though, I am dismayed at all I had not seen before I looked.
Truth be told, though, I am more worried that I am missing the good stuff, too. Housekeeping being the one exception, I fear I am, in general, hardwired to be over-critical. I look in the mirror and I see the extra 15 pounds and the wrinkles without noticing that I am healthy, well-rested. I look at my work and I wish I were better at it, more efficient. I look at my writing, and I see the typos.
I spent a few minutes outside with the beast this morning. While I was out I noted the muddy path she has worn through where I have tried to re-seed the grass. I noted the clump of hosta that I forgot to transplant last Fall.
I saw the weeds.
Outside again with a cup of coffee and a new mandate, just now, I saw that the lilac bush I was certain I had killed has leaves budding on it. I noticed that the daisies that my fence builder and I dug a posthole through seem to be coming back too; as are my herb boxes.
I looked at the happy expression on the beast’s face as she raced through the yard and decided the grass-less strip was worth it.
There’s some good stuff out there.
You just have to, you know, look.
My week last week was near idyllic. Long days, oddly timed work-shifts and a general unfamiliarity with all that was before me might have conspired to stress me out, but, to be truthful, I loved every minute of it.
This week? Not so much…
While this week, too, has much to recommend it; a reunion with folks with whom I have enjoyed working in the past, interesting new challenges and lively discussions on topics about which I know little but am curious and a bit of a breakthrough on work I had yet to finish. All these things are good.
Still, though, my word for the day for yesterday was “Eeeuwwwww”. I quickly ran out of anything nicer to say…so I didn’t post a thing.
Alas, while today was a better day, it has also been quite busy.
More Iditarod news later…
I kept hearing the pitter-patter (ka-thunk, ka-thunk) of little paws today. The beast had a play-date with a fuzzy friend. The two were having a splendid time. In. Out. Treats. Wrestling. “I love my new friend”. “Ack!! My new friend has my tennis ball!!”…nevermind that said tennis ball has been under the desk in the living room for six months, “It’s mine and I want it now”.
They are adorable together.
They are also a little bit of work.
I thought, after hours of play, that we could have some quiet time. I hopped up on my bed. The beast took her usual spot. Her fuzzy friend took a different spot. Perfect…until the beast got yippy; not quite territorial. More like “We’re here. Let’s wrestle!!”
Let’s face it. I have a high maintenance, spoiled beast.
She plays well with others. In fact she plays great with others. It’s just that she can’t NOT play.
It’s a good thing to know.
I am not in the market for another beast right now. Although, I may very well be the foster parent for rescue animals on the way to veterans in need in the very near future, I think two beasts are an adjustment. It’s certainly do-able for the short-term and fantastic for an afternoon. In fact, I have been sitting here at the computer most of the evening and no one has bothered me. No one’s nose is nuzzling my wrist as I type. I don’t have 50 pounds of underbite and attitude muscling in on my blogging.
There are advantages to having two to tire each other out.
But I just clicked on the Facebook page of the beast’s breeder…
Schiffer’s lovely mama just had her second litter this week. The pictures of six gorgeous, mush-faced, squinty-eyed, floppy, mewling bundles of joy were splashed across the photo album.
And I want them all.
I’m just not ready.
Yet.
The basement of the Louvre that is…
I am always curious to know what brings people to my blog. The statistics that my host provides are interesting, but reveal very little about who is reading, unless a reader chooses to comment.
Either way is fine. I don’t always choose to identify myself on other blogs.
Some readers, arrive here by accident, I suppose. Still others search and find this place sort of on purpose, although perhaps not finding exactly what they were looking for.
My most read post in the last year, interestingly, is one I wrote a year and a half ago. Every few days someone stumbles upon it while searching for info on what can be found in the basement of the Louvre.
I re-read that post today and realized that I referred to a picture I took on a previous visit, but never included the photo in the original post. Since folks are still reading it I thought I might as well post it here.
This is some of the stuff you will find in the basement of the Louvre…
I had forgotten that I had set my blog settings to snow during the holidays last year. And so it has started to snow again this year.
I love the glass bottles from the Clingancourt flea markets that usually grace my header, but they simply don’t really go with snow. Instead, you will have to look at the merry-go-round on the harbor front at Honfleur… a nod to my holiday plans; Christmas with family, the Northern lights in Iceland and New Years in Paris.
I can’t quite seem to decorate my house, but at least my online home is beginning to look a little like Christmas.
Let it snow…
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