Edna

The day before Lizz went off to college, I decided to take the day off work to spend with her. I thought we'd do last-minute errands together, finish packing, have lunch at Fralia's ... stretch out our good-byes. The kid had other plans. She wanted to work at the zoo one last day.

It was an absolutely beautiful, blue-sky day. I walked Lizz to work (along the way argu- discussing the discriminatory zoo practice of offering a grandparent pass but not a super-cool great aunt pass) and then walked back across the bridge, plotting my next move. I decided to start by getting my hair cut at a salon not far from our house.

I figured it was a good day to get new hair.

It feels like I've told this story on Shiny Things before. But maybe just part of it?

The sign read Edna's and there were grand opening flags running across the front of the salon. The previous owners had moved on, apparently. I peeked in the window and saw several clients chatting and laughing and an elderly man in a chair near the door reading a newspaper. When I stepped inside, all heads turned toward me. Edna stepped away from the woman whose hair she was styling and wrapped me in a big hug. It was just what I needed that day.

"Welcome to Edna's!" she said. "I'm Edna Brazil, and this is my place. What can I do for you?"

"I'd like a hair cut," I said, rather meekly. "My daughter is leaving for college tomorrow."

I don't remember much else, other than being whisked into a chair near the sinks and having my head lovingly washed and massaged. Edna must have asked how I wanted my hair cut. I must have provided some sort of direction. I couldn't figure out how she could just leave her other clients in various states of cut and style and devote what seemed like all of her attention to me. But she did. We talked about kids and community and Jesus and I'm not sure what else. Right after she finished putting every hair in the places she thought they should be, Edna stood back, tilted her head and said, "Honey, what is UP with those brows? Can I fix 'em?"

"Uh, sure ...?"

So she did. My eyebrows are really light, yet tend toward unruly-ness. And honestly, I'd just never paid much attention to them.

She fixed 'em.

When I left that day, I got - and gave - more hugs and promised to come back. I had been to salons (and "poodle parlors," as Aunt Linda calls them) where I felt pampered. But before that day, I had never been to a place where I felt like I'd been loved beautiful.

So I've been going to Edna for fixes ever since that day just over two years ago. About two or three months back, she sat me in her chair, spun me around to face the mirror, and said, "Nancy, I've been thinking about your hair all day. What are we gonna do with it?"

"Uh, gee, I don't ever think about my hair. I guess that's why I come to you. What do you think we should do?"

You would have thought I'd given her a new pony. She was so excited.

"Oh! I have an idea! Will you let me try something new?"

to be continued

My new career?

Painting Onesies ... whaddaya think?

I went to a baby shower yesterday. We got to paint Onesies. And the mommy-to-be chose MINE!

My prize was a bag of Pier 1 bath goodies.

Sitting there painting my creation made me think of my cousin Jesse's daughter's first birthday party, where we all got to paint blocks. I think I painted the most, so happy was I to sit there at the picnic table with the bright primary colors, lettering and numbering and creating simple designs.

And then I remembered when my dad was in rehab, and Lizz and I were trying to interest him in painting a birdhouse. He was appalled at the rough wood pieces, so sat in his chair with a scowl on his face sanding a tiny slab of balsa wood to astonishing smoothness while I decorated a miniature purple and turquoise birdhouse with polka dots and curlicues.

I'm sure I'd be great at art therapy. I'd ignore the people I was supposed to be helping, of course, as I sat in a corner with all my pretty colors ... a line of drool oozing out of the corner of my mouth ...

Don't you just want to hire me right now?

Knot funny

Nope. I'm not planning to play tennis. I stopped at the drugstore tonight to get me some prescription tennis balls. Yep-per.

Somehow I have developed another knot in my left shoulder. I have gone my entire life without developing weird muscle, nerve and joint pains and NOW I am getting them and I simply will (k)not have it.

The lady at the drugstore tried to get me interested in lavender-scented Epsom salts. Hah, I scoffed. When I've got tennis balls?

As if.

The knot made its ugly presence known on Monday night. The last time I got one of these I could not find any tennis balls. I have no idea where I put them when we moved here (so you can tell it's been a long time since I've swung a racket). Thusly, I used a baseball I found at my sister's house. Well, THAT wasn't a good idea. After almost two weeks of painful days and painful/sleepless nights, I broke down and got a massage and my masseuse worked out most of the durn thing. I know what brought that one on: strenuous use of the belt sander on the side of the house. This time? No idea.

Good gravy. This getting old thing is for the birds.

Well then. Enough about the stupid aches and pains. I want to apologize to those who stopped last night for not posting about the bike-riding. I was too dang tired when I got home. From a long day of work, yoga-ing and BIKE RIDING.

Here's what my bike looked like the other day. I took the front wheel off all by myself. Aren't I cool?

This is before my friend pumped up my tires, gave it a tuneup and, um, helped me put the wheel back on. I'm good at taking things apart. Not so great at reassembly. He also picked up some normal pedals for me and swapped them out with my clipless ones.

This is my new friend Georgina. She was very helpful with the bike repair efforts. I think Georgina would like to come live at my house. But Claudette might eat her.

So ... the bike ride!

I did go for a short ride on a stretch of the Rail Trail last night. My knotted shoulder went too but I told it to just shut up. We had to hurry to get in our short ride and it got too dark for pictures, so I'll have to take some this weekend. How exciting! I can go for bike rides again! This is really sad, but I think the last time I did that I was still pulling Lizz in her little Burley trailer. I went on some long rides in those days and she'd sit back there all snug and comfy with her books and Barbie dolls and snacks. THAT was obviously a long time ago.

How in the world is all of this ridiculous post translating into Portuguese and Indonesian, do you think? Oi Artistaplastico! Oi Pensamentos! Hai Pak! I don't know how often the people up there in the follower boxes stop by, but I thought I'd should shout out a friendly "howdy" to the international folks. I feel so global.

Well, friends, it's been another long day. And I'd like to end my post with a note of gratitude. My friend Deb does that and it really is an excellent practice. I'm so very glad and grateful that tomorrow is Friday. I am thankful for the energy God gives me to face each new day, to imagine amazing possibilities, and for the blessings of good health and good friends. Sweet dreams!

Does this hat make me look fat?

This is another photo from Parc Güell in Barcelona. The place where I was so happy I did handstands.

See, I really thought yesterday's bridge photo was interesting and would invite lots of comment. Or a little more comment. Won't you please go back and look at that one again and share your thoughts?

Makes me wonder ... was it not that interesting (or only intriguing to me) or did I just post that on an off day? Is it the time? Do I need to post at the same-ish time each day?

I did something monumental today. I finally hauled my Cannondale hybrid out of the basement, spiders and all, and loaded it in my car to take to a friend's house. I washed and dried it, we pumped up the tires and we tried to get the adapters on the clipless pedals. After about 40 minutes of fruitless labor, we determined I must have bought the wrong adapters ... many years ago. Dang. No wonder I couldn't get them to fit. I don't know if I want to do the little clip-in/clip-out thing with my still-on-the-mend ankle. So my friend is going to try to find the correct adapters for me tomorrow while I'm at work. I pulled out my helmet tonight and discovered the cushions had thinned out and practically disintegrated. So I'll go look for new ones at lunch tomorrow.

And tomorrow evening maybe I'll have a story to tell about bike-riding for the first time in ... a lotta years.

Like a bridge ...

After spending 3-1/2 hours at a coffee shop talking about my pie-in-the-sky ideas for my future with a friend yesterday ... I stopped to wait for the bridge to lower before heading home.

It wasn't until after I snapped the shot that I saw the arrow.

For goodness sake. What in the world am I to make of this?

The Wayback Machine

Someone has flipped the switch and attempted to activate the Wayback Machine.

It's rather freaky.

And it's not just in one area of my life.

The thing is, it is impossible to jump in the machine and go back to where we were before. It's really hard for me to understand why anyone would even want to anyway. Even though I sometimes look wistfully at some parts of my life and might want to spend a moment there again or re-live an experience ... I have moved on from there. The world has moved on from there. And because of that, nothing will never ever be the same again. And that's OK! I have learned - repeatedly - that when you try to go back, you can't help but view that time, those people and those events through the filter of all that has happened since.

It does not work.

When you're focused on going backward, to another time and place, you are not fully in the present. And you're certainly not looking ahead. Pining for the days of yore, the way it used to be, the old days ... takes away from now, the way it could be and the days to come.

A lot of lessons come from "back there," for certain. I do not discount that. We should study history so we might learn from it. Pass on the stories to the next generation. Enrich the experience of the current context. Absolutely.

Did you know there really and truly IS a Wayback Machine? I first learned of this years ago, when my work on Web projects jumped to another level. Go ahead and check out that link. You can find most any Web site as far back as it's archived. More than 150 billion pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. Kind of incredible, really. And sometimes it's nice to know you can go there, visit and say, "I remember when."

However, I think the whole idea that you really can never go back is well illustrated with this Internet Archive/Wayback Machine: The intervening years and events will always impact those old archived pages and how you view them.

There were some good times back there. Some not-so-great times, too. I'm not going back. I much prefer to be in the present and to ponder the possible.

How about you?

Rambutan and other firsts

There is a quote in the movie Eat Pray Love about rambutan. I wish I'd written it down. Not sure if it's in the book. If it is, I skimmed over it. So I've been Googling, trying to find that dang quote because as soon as I heard it, I remembered being drawn to the hairy little lychee-like fruit at Mercat de La Boqueria our last day in Barcelona. I took this picture and then purchased (and consumed) the rambutan, along with a few other exotic treats.

2005 was a big year of firsts. I went to Europe. I also went to California. I turned 39 (for the first time). Lizz went to Japan. We bought a house.

The way I look at it, I sort of bookended the year with responsibility. I had my will done before going abroad. So that meant making some serious, grown-up decisions. Even though I left my 15-year-old daughter in the very capable hands of my sister while I traveled, the whole time I was gone I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Would this go on the list? I remember sometimes when I called she sounded very very small. I remember that voice. But then my fifteen-year-old went off to Japan that summer and came back all wise and grown up. Mostly.

I am so pleased we both experienced memorable international travels that year. And I know we both intend to have many more. There were a lot of reasons I felt I needed to go on that trip. But I very much wanted to share as much of it as possible with Lizz, so I had this great idea that I'd write to her every day in my journal. That worked for the first day. The part where I was on the plane for six hours. But I took lots of pictures and when I got back home I gathered the notes I'd collected on napkins and scraps of paper and spent an afternoon at a coffee shop writing journal entries for each and every day. I came across the journal this past weekend and it got me thinking.

Am I allowed to go back that far to write about a travel experience? Because I'm sort of hatching an idea. Thanks for listening.

1. Try my hand at travel writing.

That's the first item on my list of 100 (link to it over there on the right if you haven't read it or want a refresher).

It seems the universe is telling me I need to do something about this.

A few days ago I noticed I had a new member - Dave. Linking to his profile has introduced me to a whole community of people who travel far and wide and write about it. And he found me!

Seriously, Universe, I'm listening. I really am.

And then yesterday, I discovered I had two more followers. I'm not entirely sure, but I think their blogs are in Portuguese and that they are in Brazil. I can only imagine how the things I say here come across in translation. It's exciting, scary, a little freaky ... it makes me wonder what I said that caused people I don't know to stop by Shiny Things. And not just stop by, but also register as followers.

I know there are several people I do know well who read my ramblings but most don't see a reason to sign up as followers. My neighbor asked me why someone would do this anyway. Well, gosh. I'm not quite sure actually. Some blogs don't have the member/follower thing. Like June Gardens on Bye Bye Pie. Other bloggers, like Dooce, require that you join their "community" to comment. And I wanted to participate in a conversation once, so I did. I'm sure the reasons to become a member/follower are many and varied.  It's like a friendly, reciprocal thing bloggers do with one another: You follow me, so I follow you. In some cases, it allows you to access restricted content. Or get member-only benefits.

I think following is another one of the practically infinite options available to us today to connect and build community. The blogs I follow come up on my Google reader, so I can skim recent posts for several all at once. It's one of the ways messages go "viral" ... and that the boundaries on our communities become wider and wider. And even though after more than 18 months I just have a few followers, really, seeing those little blocks up there in the right corner makes me feel like a real blogger. About a third of my followers are people I don't even know at all! And yet, maybe some day I will.

Exciting. Scary. A little freaky.

So I should go somewhere, right? And then write about it?

I'm quite fine with this. I have been so incredibly restless lately. I need a change in scenery.

All right, universe. I'm ready for my assignment.

Full of beans

Coffee beans, that is.

Nearly one whole week since I've posted. I don't know why in the world you put up with me.

When I do not blog for two days in a row, my sister gets concerned. She e-mails or calls to make sure I'm not moping around in my monkey pants. "Is everything ALL RIGHT????? Why aren't you WRITING????? What's WRONG?????" I love that.

Everything is mostly OK. Sometimes the days just get away from me. None of the events of the long weekend seemed blog-worthy. And my distraction for the past week has largely been painting the youth room at church. Because I just don't have enough other half-done projects going on. Sunday School starts up again this week and I really wanted to greet everyone with a fun, freshly painted room. We've talked about painting the sad, pale room for years so a few of us began tearing things apart in earnest last week and then we started all the prep work and some painting on Labor Day and continued Tuesday and Wednesday. The project has been chaotic and messy but a heck of a lot of fun. I'm hopeful we'll git 'er done tomorrow evening.

Tonight the youth and I are taking a break from painting because I'd had plans to meet my friend Deb for coffee. We ended up going to Crumbs after first attempting to meet at Magic Bean (because it's right across from Menards and I needed to pick up more paint for the youth room) but Magic Bean now closes at 7 p.m. Monday-Thursday. 

It's been ages since either of us had gone to Crumbs, which is under new ownership and now carries ice cream from Great Lakes Ice Cream Company in Midland and locally roasted Cardinal Valley Coffee! What a lovely surprise all around. Deb and I each enjoyed scoops of Wake-Up Call - coffee ice cream with brownie pieces and chocolate flakes - along with two cups of um, I think a Sumatra roast. I love supporting local businesses. And of course now I'm just a wee bit jazzed. Wheeeeee!!!

I should do this every night! After coffee, I went to Menards to get my paint, went home, took out the garbage, cleaned the litterbox, washed some paint brushes and am now thinking about re-grouting the tub. Or maybe writing a novel.

Odd day today. Not only was I off-the-scale distracted, but nobody was available to have lunch with me and I wasn't hungry enough to eat by myself and so waited until I was completely ravenous and ready to chew off my arm around 3 p.m. The fact that I'd only eaten two gluten-free peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies with my coffee in the morning caught up with me.

I wasn't just hungry, I had a major cheeseburger craving, which really only happens once every couple of months or so. So I ran out for a deluxe cheeseburger, fries and a COKE. I was hating myself by about 4 p.m. and was not at all distracted for the 3,600 seconds until I could clock out and drag myself home for a nap. I'm sure I'd thrown my body into glycemic shock.

Upon arriving home, I stumbled into the house, flung myself on the bed with my fuzzy blankie and immediately fell into a deep sleep. For 18 minutes.

Hmmm. Maybe writing that novel will have to wait until tomorrow. I think the beans are starting to wear off.

All righty then

The last guy I dated used to say that sort of Gregorian-chant-like: aw aw aw aw aw aw aw uhl righ ty thennn (imagine it all blending together, not choppy like I've written). I thought that was sort of cool. Fitting, too, since I haven't had a date in about 1,200 years.

So, three-day weekend! Yee-haw! Today felt like it was a thousand years long. I did not think the shadow from the Gnomon on my sundial was ever going to point to the V.

I was just searching through old posts looking for ones where I was happy and hopeful and full of energy. Because all through this thousand-year-long day all I could think of was going home and taking a nap. Then, I thought I'd check out my list and see if there was anything monumental I could work on achieving this weekend. Or maybe something small, but do-able.

This is not the year I will do the Mackinac Bridge Labor Day Walk - #66. Maybe next year. Apparently, you have to get up really early Monday morning. The walk starts at 7 a.m. And you have to make hotel reservations 37 years in advance if you plan to spend the night. Of course, I COULD drive up and spend the night in my car. But, um, no.
I'm working on #8. But it won't be done this weekend.

There are some possibilities, though.

Right now, I need to go see a dog about a walk. And maybe take myself to a movie. I frittered about too long last night and never made it.  But tonight? The night is mine.

Tonight's photo, taken Feb. 27, 2005, is of one of the doors on Sagrada Familia. We will discuss this door another time. Oh yes we will.

I have lived

What? Overly dramatic? I'm still living, of course. And don't plan on stopping anytime soon. It was just something that occurred to me as I was reading Traveling with Pomegranates. (See ... I know I took the pictures of the wrinkly pomegranates for a reason last fall. It seemed random, but noooo ... I was totally thinking about Demeter and Persephone.)

I started reading TWP right after Lizz got here for our mini mom-daughter vacation, but then picked up The Help, which I didn't put down again until I finished it, less than two days later. I'd been meaning to read it since it came out early last year. I finally snitched it from my sister, who had borrowed it from a mutual friend.

But back to living. Earlier this evening as I was reading, I noted that I was applying a type of filter of life experience that I tend to apply as I consider what I'm reading. Not always, but often enough that I found it notable. And I thought back to when I was a freshman in college and was in some class or another and needed to have deep philosophical discussions and I remember thinking to myself: I don't know what I think about that! I haven't lived yet! I have nothing to compare it to! I wish I could remember what the topic was, because I generally wasn't short on opinions. But in this case, my context and my worldview seemed so limited, and I thought it was unfair to be expected to have a position on whatever in the world that was. I remember feeling very small and kind of stupid. And before that, I had never felt that way.

I felt a little like that a few other times in early college years but I haven't in a long, long time.

So, speaking about the world, I think I'm going to go see Eat, Pray, Love ... maybe with my sister. I'm waiting for her to call. I enjoyed the book, and I just watched the trailer online and now have a hankerin' to go get lost in Italy, India and Bali.

Hmmm. It's Thursday. I have this recipe that I've had scribbled down next to the computer for a few months that I keep meaning to try. It's for a vegetarian antipasto. Here it is - and if you make it, will you promise to tell me about it or invite me over? I'll bring the wine!

Vegetarian Antipasto
Baby eggplant, halved and scored

Brush with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and freshly ground pepper, then grill 'em. I don't know how long. I did not write this down. Six minutes per side? Does that sound good?

Put grilled eggplant on serving platter and rub with a garlic clove, then top with fresh parsley, oregano and hot pepper flakes - all to taste.

Serve with grilled tomatoes, smoked mozzarella (balls or slices) and marinated artichokes. I imagine roasted peppers would be yummy too. And olives. And other marinated/grilled/roasted things. Do it up. Live a little.