Monthly Archives: July 2009

2 skills, 1 talent

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I figure that a skill is something you learn and a talent is something you are born with.

Over my employed years, I developed all sorts of skills, but I still maintain that the two most practical and useful skills — ones that I learned more than a half-century ago — are sewing and typing.

At one time or another I have earned money because I was able to do each, and, as years went by, both skills became essential to fulfilling various creative urges.

My writing has always been dependent on my typing, since I think too fast to write things down by hand. I wind up not being able to read my writing. And editing?! Well, why use anything but a computer?

Tonight, I finished lining one of my crocheted bags so that I can use it as a purse. While crocheting is also one of my skills, it’s not nearly as useful as sewing. Mostly, these days, I fix clothes that I have to make them fit, taking them in, letting them out, shortening etc. depending on what I see as my style du jour.

I like to experiment combining fabric with yarn — hence my crocheted bag with a lining that includes two side pockets — one for my iphone and one for my hearing aids (odd pairing, no?)

Ultimately, improvised products like my new bag are the result of the one talent I have that I find most useful. In my closet is a denim jacket with knitting sleeves that began as a XXL woman’s denim short sleeved button-down-the-front dress that I bought for $3. I took off the sleeves, cut off the skirt part of the dress, sewed on knitted sleeves, a knitted pocket, and a ribbed jacket bottom — and now I have one-of-a-kind denim jacket.

I improvise when I cook, I improvise songs, and I’ve pretty much come to see that I improvise my life in general these days.

It will be interesting to find out how that works for me now that I have no schedule, no purpose/task, no expectations.

One indication is that I’ve joined a fitness club so that I can take water aerobics for my aching back and also use their 30 minute exercise circuit. There won’t be much chance for improvising there. I hope I don’t go and improvise a reason not go.

I am good at improvising. I don’t need patterns or anything but the most rudimentary of instructions. Give me a creative project with a useful goal and I’ll improvise a way to get there. Give me a goal, and I’ll improvise a project to get there.

Tomorrow I will have a new one-of-a-kind bag. Photo to follow.

when sleep won’t come

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I’ve tried just about everything herbal and homeopathic and over-the-counter. I’ve tried relaxation CDs and guided imagery. The only thing that works is a sleeping pill, and I will have to convince my doctor to prescribe some more. But I wish I didn’t have to.

I can’t fall asleep for one night, and my mom can’t fall asleep for good. And I think it’s all tied together.

I am helpless to help her, and her distress surrounds me even long distance, follows me into my own darkness.

I can’t bear to be with her and helpless to ease her distress.

Although yesterday, before I left to return home after five days trying, I sang to her, and she stopped her constant moaning long enough to try to sing with me.

“You are my sunshine,” I sang, and her straining voice joined me, mostly wordless, but struggling to carry the tune.

Down the street from where I live now, a teenage boy with some sort of autism sometimes sits outside and “sings” along with his audio player. The sound is haunting.

“Somewhere over the rainbow,” my mother sings with me, hauntingly, and for a few minutes, perhaps whatever mental and physical pain she’s feeling fades into the background of her distressed mind. We take the best cbd oil for anxiety to be able to feel better because we have tried many pill and none of them work as well when i go to sleep.

But not for long.

mom

I wish you could slip into that long sleep of peace, mom.

We both need some rest.

finally, a perfect beach day

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beach1

After days of rain when it felt more like early spring than summer, we just couldn’t not take advantage of the promise of a sunny Saturday in the 80s.

It was an almost 2-hour drive to the beach in Connecticut on the Long Island Sound where we headed to this morning. Only we hit more traffic than we expected, we had to get off the highway so my grandson could make a pit stop, and then we ran smack into a parade on our way through the town. But we persevered, and it was certainly worth it.

Warm sun, mild breezes, and cute lifeguards. Works for me.

beachday

there’s a dinosaur in our back yard!

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dinosaur

My daughter is getting ready for my grandson’s “Jurassic Park Birthday Party” scheduled for next week, when he will turn an enthusiastic 7. The dinosaur that she built behind the fence will remain there long after the party is over because my grandson loves it, and we all think it adds a certain sense of adventure to our back yard. — which already is a haven for all kinds of creatures anyway.

The little plywood play boat that my daughter built last year has deteriorated into the perfect home for a couple of friendly garden snakes. A shy newt makes an occasional appearance among the foliage near the fire pit, and our weird resident bunny keeps the clover crop in check. The ever-fatter ground hog periodically lumbers out from his home under the shed to nibble on what the bunny has left behind, and the chatty family of cardinals joins the flickers and finches each morning to make short work of the bird feeders’ seeds.

So why not a dinosaur!

“I can’t not buy those Ferragamos“

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I’m reading Origins of the Specious and remembering the grammar wars (well, skirmishes, really) that I used to have with (son) b!X back in the old days. I was as adamant about the rules as he was about accepting common usage.

When I taught 8th grade English in the late ’60s, our grammar text book was my bible, and I carried it with me all through graduate school and beyond so make sure that my writing and editing were grammatically “correct.” Now I find out that b!X’s points were the ones I should have been paying attention to.

Like ending a sentence with a preposition (see previous sentence). Or beginning a sentence with a conjunction (note current sentence). And then there’s the split infinitive, as in “to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

I rarely read non-fiction, but this book is as entertaining as any Stephanie Plum adventure, chock full of ear-opening anecdotes that explain where those old grammar rules came from and who were responsible.

Here’s a little sample of Patricia O’Connor’s clever chapter headings and her catchy writing style:

Isn’t it Pedantic?

Quick, what’s the plural of “octopus”? If you think “octopi” is classier than “octopuses,” go stand in the corner…..

We live in a postmodern world, but the Latinists are still among us, especially in academia. They insist on using plurals like “gymnasia,” “syllabi,” and symposia,” even though dictionaries now recognize a preference for Anglicized plurals (“gymnasiums,” “syllabuses,” “symposiums”). There’s pedantry off campus too, of course,. I’ve seen real-estate ads offering “condominia” for sale — to ignormani, no doubt.

As Garrison Keillor notes on the book’s back cover:

It’s right there on page 54: ‘It’s better to be understood than to be correct’ — pull that out the next time somene corrects your grandma. This tour de force of our beautifully corrupted language is both. And dull it ain’t….

And yes, as the title of this posts indicates, sometimes double negatives are what make the point. Never say never.

so I think I can dance

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“So you think you can dance” is what I’m watching on tv tonight. I miss the ballroom dancing I used to do so much that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch any of the dance shows. I just feel too envious. Until now.

There is no point in my feeling envious, since there is no way I would have been ever able to do that amazing choreography. So I can objectively enjoy the dancing.

And starting in a week or so, I will finally have a chance to do some dancing of my own. I going to begin taking a “Zumba” dance exercise class once a week. I’m sure, given my tight muscles and back pains, I will be one of the slowest movers, but it’s a start.

So, we’ll see if I can still dance.