Anybody Nostalgic This Season?

I should know better than write while I'm sick.   You'd think feeling sick would make me wistful and nostalgic, but not so.  Me, I have this content feeling, like I'm right where I ought to be.  How about you?  Seasons past tugging at you?

Last month has been full of the usual winter prep - cleaning gutters and gardens, getting my house trim painted, setting up birdfeeders, winterizing the RV, mouse proofing.  Mouse proofing the RV has gone splendidly so far.  Nary a tiny black pellet!  I've one supersonic device plus mothballs underneath the RV's sink, where they built two nests last winter (and amply peed and pooped).  And a container of mothballs in an exterior compartment where they stored acorns last year (peeing and pooping amply there, too).  Plus a cake pan of mothballs under the RV itself.   I also put a super sonic repeller in my garage, and nary a poop there, either, next to the five airtight bins of bird seed.  Gotcha!

Different story in the basement.  There, tiny teeth have gnawed through a long, fuzzy draft stopper - you know, the ones you wedge by a door.  Somewhere, there is a little nest with wee ones.  Maybe not yet.  My ears don't pick up any squeaks.  I hope there's time to dissuade the little guys.  I'm buying another super sonic rodent repeller, and they're not cheap.  Thought I'd show you which one. 

In the midst of the chores, I had a lovely Thanksgiving.  I thought of you, sending blessings to you all.  I hope you felt them!  My family kept the meal simple - dinner at my father's assisted living home. Everybody was healthy and happy.  Can't ask for more.

Now on to Christmas.  I'm really excited about my Christmas plans this year.  I've bowed out of the annual family celebration my sister generously hosts.   Too many years of extraordinary widow loneliness and orchestrated cheer.   This year, I'm moving forward, creating the spiritual oasis I need.  This year I need to feel closer to a Greater Love.  'Tis one reason for the season, right?  Besides, I had great fortune on Cyber Monday - a hotel room at reasonable cost in Back Bay Boston the week before Christmas.  On Christmas Eve and Christmas, I'm treating myself to harbor front luxury.

Since my spirit's calling out for clarity and company, I've been musing about what Greater Love means to me.

Greater Love. God. Infinite Light. Love Consciousness. Higher Power.  Whatever one calls ultimate reality.   I'm feeling lucky, warm, grateful.  These are my beliefs:

I believe Greater Love (GL) inhabits our bodies.  It really hit me yesterday.  BIG SOURCE GL cozies up inside each one of us, and considers it an honor to experience life through us.  No matter how hard it is, we're not alone.

There is no secret passage, no entry fee for GL to come inside.  Conception...Maybe first gulp of air...That's all that's required.   Look at a baby and tell me you don't see Greater Love.

My number one job is to love the person who GL slipped into when I was born.   I'm here for her.

Might you call this a certain sort of nostalgia?  I don't feel nostalgia for the full glass.  I've even stopped seeing the glass as half full or half empty.  Perhaps, as another wise blogger wrote, I'm coming round to saying "It's a beautiful glass."

What's going on for you this season?

Ouch!

The last thing I want to do is radiate my suffering out to others, so this post is how one lady's blisters and callouses are doing. 

It's been a particularly blistering campaign.  (No shit, Sherlock.)

No place for tender tootsies, right?

A waitress and I got into it before the election, when I heard her claim that HC believed that aborting fetuses right up to full term was alright.  Well...she used stronger words than these.  Sounded a lot like something her opponent would say.  I'd sat quietly in my booth eating my breakfast, while she ranted.  Her customers agreed; Hilary was reprehensible. You've probably encountered this stuff on Facebook, but here it was, in the middle of my breakfast.   The owner chimed right in.

Finally, I blurted out "This is a lie!".   And more.  But she claimed it was true.   "Right there, in the third debate!" she said.  Well, I'd watched every minute of the third debate and didn't recall HC making this claim.

We agreed to disagree, hugged, and I paid for the breakfast and the blisters.  I resolved to look up the debate transcript and did, to be sure.

I found HC's response when DT put such horrible words in her mouth.

Legalese.

>>sigh<< 

She had voted against late term abortion, but didn't say so.  She made this longwinded rebuttal, staying in her head.  Doesn't she know the head is the least tender organ of the body and abortion requires a tender touch?

>>sigh<<

I returned to the Diner and talked to the owner, telling her I'd looked up what was said in the third debate.  That HC had voted against the very thing she was being accused of.  But the legalese dance she did sounded somewhat calloused.

>>sigh<<

Anyway, I resolved that my tootsies needed a more tender breakfast environment to settle into, so my blisters could heal.  Going one better, I resolved to boycott this Diner.  Grow callouses! For days I took my tootsies to a different breakfast place.  But yesterday my hands played seesaw with the steering wheel, and lurched my car over one lane.  Into the offending Diner.

"You want home fries with that?" the owner asked. 

"It doesn't come with home fries."

"That's O.K.  You want home fries, you'll get home fries." 

I knew she wouldn't charge me.

Tears started to come.

I hurt.  I'm scared.

But the villain isn't people's blistering banter.  The villain is preferring to grow callouses rather than bleed every once in a while.

The Bully Rules

Golden Sprinkles from Golden Boy

Bully season is here.  Here's how it works.  First, pee on the folks you don't like.  If they don't like it, sue them.  If they get up and move, carpet bomb 'em.

You need a bully to stand up for you when you've had your dignity, power and voice stripped by another bully named 'Circumstances'.   Right?

Is it true? There was never a time for me, up until age 18, when some mean, thin skinned bully didn't rule my life.  I mean, that's how the people around me offloaded their pain.  Life was simple.  Old-fashioned might makes right.    Black and white.  Villains and victims.  Me and the people out to get me.   Winners and losers.  'Fair' was something pictured on Saturday Evening Post covers but really rendered on shoot 'm up TV.   When my brother was upset, he'd chase me and wrestle me to the ground.  He'd twist my arm behind my back and grind his elbow into my ribs.  Or he'd wave a knife in front of me.  I should stop egging him on, our mother said.  My big sister looked so far down her nose at me that she confused me for either being nobody or Flossie the cow. My nervous wreck of a mother oozed either stale cigarette and alcohol breath, or contempt for the kids and husband who'd failed her.  

No doubt I would have bullied a younger sibling, but we ran out of siblings. So I survived by dreaming of a time when I'd be famous, and all the bullies would apologize to me.  I'll bet some of yesterday's voters feel Donald will deliver what the bullies have coming.  An apology from them may be the least of it.

I really didn't see it coming, that the bully to top all bullies would be elected president.  Only Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong-un remain, to prove that they are really the world's top bully.  Am I forgetting someone?

I volunteered yesterday, giving rides to democratic voters, so they could support the presidential candidate who was merely careless, cagey, and greedy, and not a bully.

Everyone at the Democratic headquarters was excited she would be our next president.   By 10:30 p.m. I had slunk to bed, afraid to wake up.   Hoping for a miracle.

Now thanks to 279 electoral votes, every parent will have to explain to their children why their president is vulgar, mean and thin skinned.  If only Donald was just a fencepost...

Hallowed Ground, Here and There

Have you ever been able to write a post without feeling like you're in your skivvies teetering on a rock ledge, rope in hand, about to fling yourself out over the water and let go?








Halloween almost escaped me this year.  How did it go at your house? A 20% off coupon texted to my cellphone that day got me moving. In five hours I cleaned the gutters, cleared the leaves off the driveway, and decked out the entryway with spiders, skeletons, spider webs, torches, and glowing orb.  Door bell rang maybe a dozen times, with groups of two to six.  Only once did I scream.  Trump does that to me.

I've linked this blog to my real name, finally, in one tiny Facebook 'closed' group.   Now that I know I am not the curse I thought I was, I hope someone may relate to my story of extreme childhood emotional neglect, and believe they're not cursed by it forever, either. 

Speaking of getting real, I actually confided in someone I know this week that I'm in counselling, recovering from developmental PTSD.  I stop at the Diner on my way and she owns the place.

"Terrific!  My God!" she said.  "Do you know how many of us have trauma in our lives?  I'm writing a book, so people can see behind the person they think they know when they see me." 

Not an easy life she's had, immigrating from Kosovo nearly thirty years ago.

We agreed, our public persona and private self can be a real disconnect. 

I don't want that disconnect any more. I am what I am.

The other big news is that yesterday my big sister defied every piece of advice our dead momma uttered.  She chalked her sentiments on a brick wall outside Wrigley Field.  Posted her graffitti on Facebook, too.   I am so proud of that woman.  For eight years now, she's worked that hallowed ground as a Cubs usher.  Every year - love with heartbreak. Wow. They really did the city of Chicago proud this year.  Congratulations!

If you have come to my blog for the first time, feel free to nose around.  Rest assured, I publish each post with a prayer...."Please God, let there be comments!"