Happy New Year! Twenty -Five Years of Blogging and Friendship

 I am thankful to be alive and relatively healthy, still here, wanting to do many many more things in my life! Being single at this stage of life is the best! And the worst.....Sometimes I think I'd enjoy the company of a man on a regular basis, then I remember cooking obligatory dinners (when I'd much rather cook together), checking with someone else before I make a decision (like I would), coordinating family plans and events with extended families...nd a million other small add-on stressors that you gloss over when you  live with someone else.
 But if I fall in loveI shall reconsider(wink)
After being happily alone for more than twenty years, I've realized how blessed I am in the Late Fall of my life. I retired from teaching six years ago. I love a life without alarm clocks, bells and cafeteria food.I enjoy my own company, but I do get lonely from time to time. 

From 2008 "The Christmas Meme" 

I love spending time with my kids and grandchildren, ages 20, 13 and 5 - college, middle school and kindergarten. Never a dull moment at the dinner table. 

Baby Boy is majoring in Computer Science, Beans is majoring in girls and BabyBree is majoring in Barbie. Perfect! They teach me about video games and I sneak in a peace globe conversation from time to time. I want them on that rain ya see......
Which season are you in?Which season have you enjoyed the most?
I've noticed, also, that people from my past keeping showing up.  I'm stumbling over them in the grocery store and thrift store. Long lost relatives with news to tell, high school friends, friends of friends and acquaintances that should have been more than that; maybe we'll get a do-over. Who knows?  Is it truly a coincidence? Or does the Universe have a rhyme and reason?That's to be determined. I'll keep you posted.Has this phenomenon ever happened to you?

                                                         Out on the river in 2018 with my Beans

As for you and I....I'm glad you're still here in Blogworld.I'm happy we met in the BlogoVerse in 2005when learning to decorate a blog with colored fonts and photos from PhotoBucket and ImageChef was as high-tech as we could go. But we helped each other through it and some of us even learned to code from scratch. Technorati was everything and memes rocked our world. ReMEMEber?
I wish you the best of health and true happiness in our twentieth year of friendship. I think I know most of you well. I've met several of you in the real world. A pleasure! Let's keep in touch. 
Tell me about your season.How's your life going?

2006 Blogging Meltdown at the computer
                   
Follow Me

Join us for Blog4Peace Nov 4

Like Our Facebook Page

Peace Store

Monday Mimisms ~ Powerful Whispers

Where have I been? It's been a minute. The entire month of June got away from me. Complications showed up. I took a fall on the porch and spent a few painful days sleeping away the bruises. Friends said, "Rest and heal!" That's sooo hard to do. I'm a terrible patient. I keep pushing through sans common sense. 
Lost my writing mojo for one red hot minute while the anti-inflammatory meds became the most important task of the day - but sorely needed (pun intended).

Finding courage in an antique store
2013 - Revisited this post and reclaimed my writing chops

Then I got off my prissy behind (literally) and started venturing out again.
More thrifting. Lunches with beautiful friends to catch up. Soaking in Epsom. Burning lavender candles in the middle of the day. 

Looking for furniture as I redecorate my house. More gentle house decluttering. All gingerly. Slowly. Mindfully. Thankfully. I came so close to breaking my hip. Ummm....perhaps I should sloooooowwww down instead of thinking I'm a modern version of Laura Ingalls Wilder on the Bloggingham Prairie trying to do things I shouldn't be doing. Getting tangled up in a heavy water hose was NO fun. 

I couldn't sit for long periods of time, which turned out to be a good thing: it made me get outside and wander around. Sunshine and grass under my feet. Good for the soul....and the soles.
Naps happened.

 The Lion spoke ten years ago this spring. 
I remember the sound of the muse. Powerful whispers.
And his roar. I'd like to catch a glimpse of him again. It took falling down to get my attention.  I'm ready for a new set of words.
I'm ready for inspiration from the Lion. 
I wonder if he remembers....

Dusting off my pen and paper...

Follow Me  

Join us for Blog4Peace Nov 4

Like Our Facebook Page

Peace Store

Monday Mimisms ~ The Cherokee Girl

*Reprised from 2010* 


I am slightly north of fifty.

Most days I like my place on the chronological globe. Some days I want to string it up from the highest rafter and kick the bucket of wrinkle remover off the highest cliff and call it a day.
Today was a bucket kicker of a day.

I took my 6-year-old grandson shopping through the neighborhood yard sale boutiques. He had a pocket full of money (mine) a skip jump and a heartbeat of joy (mine) and most everything else in his wiry little body that you can count on in this world that means a blessed thing. And he’s mine.
Wrapped around my sinew and bone like a web-spun intricate cobweb of blissful peace.
He is.
Blissful.
Peace.

My hands have a few wrinkles.
I know they weren’t there yesterday.
And my eyes look tired. Must be the heat, I tell myself.
No.
It’s because I’m past-midlife-never-mind.

And then I went home and got properly stuck on the age thing.
And why some days I look like hell
and some days I look like twelve
and how today I feel just like the Cherokee girl my grandmother was

I tried to wash my freckles away in the morning dew when I was 8 years old because she said they would disappear. Lo and behold, at 53, I am still trying to cover those blasted freckles and make my smile stop being crooked like hers and my nose wrinkling up oh.so.adolescent.like when I really really smile.

For years I fought it. I wanted it to shift into Hollywood styled sophisticated perfection. I wanted to pout like Garbo, sizzle like Marilyn, slink like Ginger. I did not want to effude giggles like a pigtailed Mary Ann. (Oh, I do alright in the catwalk department on a good ole’ day you see…..but it’s days like today …..when the sun is long and my freckles come callin’ that I see…I see…..(“I brought my grandson today, ma’am. His name is Baby Boy”) a wisp of her staring cold in the mirror and laughing cause she still sees the marks behind whatever makeup I put on (“Grandson? He’s not your son?”)……knowing full well I can‘t wash them off with the dew (“No, no,” I laugh, “my own baby is 30.”…) even though that’s what my greatly superstitioned grandmother told me (“That’s about what I thought you were.”) while she watched me wash my face with dewdrops one morning at 5am in the backyard trying to scrub them away….(“Oh DO go on, ma’am…I will buy everything you have in your garage today…“)

Whoever heard of a movie star with freckles?

I can't have both.
Can I?

So I came home flailing all my will into a long dramatic selfish pout, casting winks and coy glances hither and yon for the birds and the squirrels and trees, splashing on makeup and dropping pearls round the long strands of auburn that also belonged to the glorified goddess of an Indian-laced grandmother and took this shot and that and that shot and this trying to see what the yard sale lady said she saw in the shadow of my grandson‘s smile this morning…...oh I was bound and determined to have a dandy of a roll in the whine fields if I couldn't coax that number down and have a long satisfying look in the yard sale lady's mirror...... I desperately needed those years to wash away you see and since it was not morning, but a sun-washed afternoon in my fifty-third year I felt time turning pages in the solstice of a day that I knew I was meant all along to land in with my grandmother laughing all wrinkled and joyful behind that willow tree looking at me flirt shamelessly with wildlife and memories......wondering how did I get here so fast in a spot where spots are signs of age and not of youth with no stopwatch to slow them down... down.... down....
Until finally I saw something in the lens I’d never seen before.
Something steadfast.
Something strong.
Something …..
Cherokee

a streak of stubborn
A chiseled chin
A bold lined woman
Who never takes no for an answer
and knows exactly where she's been

One random streak of grey
And freckles
Not in the dew
But in the new

And then
I had an epiphany

About perfection
And the lack of it
In me
And imperfections
And strength
in the middle of
imperfect things
that I no longer want to wash away

My grandmother's gift of stubbornness and grit might have been borne on the backs of those unsophisticated marks, but she knew what she was doing when she passed them on to me.
She knew I would need them
there's some kind of magic in dew

*NOTE 2023: Baby Boy is now in college studying Computer Science. I am north of sixty. Still wearing dangling feathers and feeling ever so much more like a Cherokee girl inside and out. Grandmother had wisdom that has served me well. This morning I found a white feather on my walk at precisely 11:11. Thank you, Grandmother...I miss you too.


photos: Mimi LenoxFollow Me

Join us for Blog4Peace Nov 4

Like Our Facebook Page

Peace Store

Monday Mimisms ~ Who Would Ghost a Queen?

So THAT's where you're
hiding the candy..

Why am I explaining? Questioning?
Again. My newest non-resolution. Stop explaining. Just be.
My days are nuttier than usual. Busier than usual. Mostly I'm spinning this one around in a chair 'til she's "Bizzy!" as only a three-year-old can hilariously proclaim, gently fighting with Beans (age 11) about the battles he's "not" fighting in video games when I walk around the corner and hear him declare "victory" over his enemies. Can't he just learn to meditate?

Learning to "watch" 
in the doctor's office. Fun times.

Or relentlessly checking the "watched" spot on my back. Watch it? I can't SEE it! So, I've decided not to "watch" it. I told Dr.Derm that SHE should be the one watching, not me. I will drive myself and the whole Blogosphere crazy if I watch.

You see it, right?

Maybe I should take a picture of it backwards in the mirror and let YOU watch it. Oh, I crack myself up.All I know is that when I go back in March to see if all this "watching" has produced any crazy results, I shall declare ('cause I'm a Queen) that I'm done with  the eye and body contortion routine. Just take it off. Please. Now. "These take yeeeeaaarrrsss to develop into a problem," she said, "Don't worry."Then. Why. Are. We. Watching???

Bree "watching" flower roots

She knows how to get to the bottom of things.

Which brings me to my latest sad and silly malady.

I've been ghosted. Ghosted! Me??!

Who would ghost a Queen?

It started out so lovely. Five-hour phone conversations. Morning texts. Goodnight emails. Mutual commonalities and laughter. Then New Year's happened...er....or didn't happen. And I realized that the more I talked to him about my own personal goals and aspirations the less interested he seemed to be in understanding that independent streak in moi. He could have just said what I suspected...that he wanted to be joined at the hip. I can't even FIND my hips.

 Instead. Ghosted.  

I'm going to talk to Baby Boy. Since he's eighteen now soon-to-be majoring in Computer Science, he should know the ways and whys of intraweb romance. Or not.All I know is that he never had any trouble with dating in Kindergarten. Wait...there was that Tiffany girl.....and Amy...oh, and Susie (!) who popped him in the head with a paper airplane. Maybe I'd better not ask Baby Boy.


Follow Me

Join us for Blog4Peace Nov 4

Like Our Facebook Page

Peace Store

Monday Mimisms ~ Snippets of Life

There are so many people in my house right now that sometimes I feel the need to go sit in my car for privacy.  Has this ever happened to you?  I pray to the God of Real Estate every day! Help my relatives find affordable housing.. Puuuhhlllleeeaasssse.These people are making me itch. 

Now that that's out of my system....I have a gentleman caller and we are making our way through the beginnings of friendship and such. Six foot two eyes of blue. Male FRIENDSHIP. Perfect.  It's push and pull with me. He must think I'm a yo-yo. One minute I say I'm too overwhelmed with my current Situationship to focus on a new one; the next minute he convinces me that I need him in the kindest of ways. 

I'm drowning in dishes. 

Remember all those dishes I bought in September at the Sale of the Century?Most of them are still here. Sales are UP but not fast enough for me. 

I think I'm allergic to bubblewrap. I'm sure it's not the people...

MUST. FIND. SOMETHING. SMALLER. TO. SELL.

Seriously, I do NOT have time for all this packing and shipping. 

Bree is keeping me entertained day and night. She wants to play "makepop" all the time. So we smear on "wipstick" in a myriad of colors. Then she kisses me on the cheek with a loud POP to leave a BIG mark. It's insanely funny to her.  This is why all my mirrors look like this.

Meanwhile...Beans has started Tae Kwon Do! He can kick higher than a kangaroo.

I'm afraid of him.

I sent out Christmas cards. I had a falling out with a friend that made me sad. I had RSV for a month. I had more nausea from the falling out than the virus. Plumbing and electrical issues here. ACK! Who neeeeds that? My first grandson started college majoring in Computer Science. Remember Baby Boy?

Baby Boy 2010

Making Snowman and Santa cookies with the little ones. Trying not to eat them myself. We're driving around looking at lights like when I was a kid. It was the thing to do! Getting used to having a cat in the house - something I thought I'd NEVER EVER do. And I'm at the age that most times when I search someone on Google, I find an obituary instead. Seriously???! The pandemic has not been kind to mankind. Or maybe I'm just....vintage.
And.oh.the.purging.
I'm throwing out boxes of STUFF. I can't believe I thought I needed all this STUFF. Instead of "stuff" in 2023, how about I try something really important...like a relationship, like taking peace globes to the next level, like taking a ballroom dance class, like finishing that book, like starting all over in the castle once again with a new metamorphosis and a single life vibe that suits me just right. I've climbed over a lot of dross in 2022. I'm long overdue for new pencil skirts. 

Cookies anyone?

Follow Me

Join us for Blog4Peace Nov 4

Like Our Facebook Page

Peace Store

Out on the River In Batman's Shoes

It seems like yesterday when I wrote the story of your birth. Six years later we're here at the river of peace. My river. My place. The soft sounds of birds and water mingling, crisp air and sunshine, the threat of rain and the quack of Mallards.  I sit and contemplate. Feeding ducks and watching sunsets. The rocks and water you love so much. And today, I am watching you climb. You are climbing  farther and farther away .....

"Don't go too far! Baby Beans!" I shout. "And don't run. Don't run on the rocks. Just walk slowly and watch your step. Careful. Slow and steady."

It's not so much the river I fear. It's those blasted beautiful chunks of granite beneath your little Batman shoes. I'm not out there with you. Just watching from my own safe rocky seat, perched with a camera, a banana, a water bottle that keeps rolling away, and the eagle eye of a grandmother who knows all too well the lightning speed of time, how it steals the years before you know it, slips from your grasp...and suddenly, you're sitting in a nice safe river space watching your own baby beans jump from rock to rock, adventure to adventure. "I wanna go THIS way, Mimi, Look at MEeeeee!" and each time I say, "Careful my boy. Slow and steady. Watch your step. Slow down."
We'll come back tomorrow, I think to myself....we'll have another day. More time. Except. Maybe we won't. 
Strangely, I feel that time for me is slowing down to a nice slow anticipated finale, which will unexpectedly crescendo into new adventures. Perhaps my mood is based on the smell of algae at my feet.  Life pushed me here ya know. In a hurry. Work to do. Bills to pay. One hundred things to do each day for the last twenty years in the name of surviving... just so I can get to this riverbank day, and a few short months from the promising world of retirement, also known as Phase 3 in the Life of Mimi. I used to bring your older brother to this same river.  We had marvelous days of exploring and side-quacked moments. I miss him here with us today, but feel him alongside us nonetheless. Baby Beans jumps and I hear a splash. One shoe drops in the water. It's time for a water rescue. Oh!! Never mind, he's got this. "Slow down, my boy. Be careful...." The words unheeded by the boy reverberate back in waves down the river, flowing in reverse to me like an echo, lapping in wisdom at my tennis-shoes now wet with worry and visions of a swiftly changing world just down the road of my crazy life swirl in my head like the rings of ripples caused by the skipping of rocks thrown gingerly in the water by the hand of the boy you see standing firmly in a red shirt and fearless face. Words. Words you see, always flow back to the one who sent them.  I know that I must heed my own words.
"Slow down.  Be careful. Don't run. Choose carefully. Don't run. Watch what you're doing, Mimi. Slow and steady."
I'm reminded that each day is important, not just the finish line.  I'm skipping from rock to rock too. Carefully choosing which way to go. Will I fall? Will I lose my shoe in the river like you did? Who will be there to fetch it out for me? Will I be strong enough to dive in and gather it myself? We come in from the bank and start to climb up the small cliff towards home. You see me tentatively sizing up a large rock in front of me, considering how to get down to the other side without falling. Without a word you hold out your little hand.  "I need to help my Mimi," you say to yourself, but loud enough for my heart to skip a beat at the goodness in you. "Here. Hold my hand." I take your ball-throwing fingertips in the age-spotted curl of my hand and you squeeze my hand so tightly.  "Now jump!" you tell me, "Jump!" With all that could go wrong with this plan of yours - the dirty rocks below, sharp edges and visions of  a skinned-up me,  I do not hesitate. You get me over the crevasse in one piece and we walk on. I can see, in the flash of two lifetimes - mine and yours - how some things are just a matter of holding on, trusting the hand in front of you, and taking a leap of miniscule faith.    I think today I shall stop calling you Baby Beans. Your hands and your heart are strong.  You're going to be just fine. And so am I.

Follow Me

Join us for Blog4Peace Nov 4

Like Our Facebook Page

Peace Store