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Soul Sunday

It struck me the other day that this is probably the first time in my life when I have actually felt more vulnerable due to my age. I’m approaching 50. This “dawning” was a middle age turning point for me. It was one of those awakening moments that reminded me that I really am headed into the autumn of my life. My heart goes out to you all who are in your 60s and beyond. It must be terrifying, at times, concerning the coronavirus. I feel for you.

Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Please publish your poems in my Comments section. This is a poetry workshop, where we should all feel safe to share, our free flow of thoughts. Here’s my poem for the day:

The Trick

Who knew that we were all part of a fantastic illusion?

We were the white rabbits and the silk scarves,

in a grand sleight of the hand.

We thought that we were in on the trick,

Winking, knowing how the “magic” works.

We, as lovely assistants, sometimes smirked at the Magician,

Sneered at the fools in the audience,

Only to be brought to our knees,

By a horrific force, too tiny to even be seen.

Now we are all in this together,

Humbled by the unknown,

No longer wishing to just be entertained,

No longer full of pride and disdain,

Just praying for the real magic to fix this all,

In order for us to be wholly healed,

Sewing together all of our parts that have been sawed apart,

And for the trick to be over, so that the real magic can begin . . .

Lipstick Fixes Everything

Thank you for checking in and letting me know that you all are okay, friends! That really made my day. I just found an old teddy bear and I carefully placed the little guy in one of our front windows. There is a fun trend going around the world, called “Bear Hunt.” Parents who are trying to get their little ones out for walks and bike rides, look at houses and count the number of bears they can find in the homes’ windows. Someone started up the Bear Hunt in our neighborhood. I hope that it brings the little ones joy and their parents some respite. The Bear Hunt game brought me some cheer, carefully positioning our little guy, smooshed up against the glass of our window. I wonder how many times that our bear will get counted today. I hope that he gets counted many, many times, and with the counts, I hope, comes a lot of smiles.

Another thing that I read about the other day, was that some schools are doing “Virtual Spirit Weeks.” So, I believe yesterday was “Pajama Day”, which is something probably more of us celebrated without even realizing that we were part of “Virtual Spirit Week.” People are so ingenious and creative and hard to keep down. I love it!

It’s interesting to observe yourself and the rest of the world, with how we are handling this forced shutdown. I’m honestly afraid that I’m too rattled right now, to really take full advantage of what this break could do and mean for me. My son said, “Mom, this is your time. Write a book.” I just can’t seem to get motivated to start on that project, or much of anything else, honestly. I find myself being highly distractible right now. I can’t even keep a focus on reading, which is one of my absolute favorite pastimes. I guess that once I come into more of an acceptance of everything that has happened, and an understanding that this is going to be our way of life for a while, I will be able to recreate a temporary, satisfying new routine. I just hope that this dawning of an “acceptance of the situation” doesn’t come too late for me, so that I can fully take advantage of the hidden gifts that this time has to offer.

In other news, I have actually put on make-up about 3-4 times since we have been holed up in our home, for about two weeks. I have found this to be a particularly uplifting experience, when I have mustered the energy to do it. It is like seeing an Extreme Makeover in my own mirror. There is a remarkable difference between “I don’t even give a damn. I haven’t seen my brush in days. Baseball hats are my friends,” to “Wow, mascara really is a difference maker and maybe our grandmothers were on to something, when they coined the term, ‘lipstick fixes everything’.”

Something that really made me chuckle during our “house stay” so far, was the night that my daughter forced my husband and our sons to play the old-fashioned board game Mystery Date with her. My daughter has a dark side and she was utilizing the passive-aggressive control that her birthday afforded her, to torture the men in our lives. Misery loves company, I suppose. Mystery Date was a board game first released by Milton Bradley in 1965. The object of the game is to collect “the right clothes” for “the right date” and to not get stuck with “The Pest”, a scraggly looking guy who doesn’t look like he could take a lady out for a McDonalds hamburger, on a good day. I quickly agreed to wash the dishes, so that I could just watch this scenario, like it was a hilarious sitcom. The last time Mystery Date was re-released by Milton Bradley was in 2005. I don’t think it will be re-released any time soon, in this era of #MeToo. It struck me that men would probably get tarred and feathered, if they had a male version of the Mystery Date game. What would the female version of “the pest” look like and how loud would the outcry be? Also, all of the pawns of the game, are pretty ladies, who look like Stepford Wives with just different colored dresses and shades of hair. In today’s world, shouldn’t the pawns be men and women and everything in-between????

Clearly, I have too much time on my hands, in order to spend too much time in my head, thinking about things like the Mystery Date board game, and its social implications. My family has probably reached a time in our seclusion where we are starting to drive each other crazy. I have enough self-introspection to understand that my habit and my obsession of overthinking just about everything, loses its charm quickly.

I love you all. I know that we will all get through this, better than we were before. Take good care. Stay well and please stay in touch.

Fortune for the Day – “One finds joy in living through love.”

Interlude

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at others with common curiosity and pleasure. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.”
― G. K. Chesterton

Today, we all find ourselves in an entirely different play/theater than we ever expected, don’t we? And no one is spared from the alarming plot twists, not even Prince Charles. As I mentioned yesterday, I have started into a quiet phase, in my own little lifetime’s drama. I guess that I’m in an interlude. I find myself soaking in all sorts of information, from all different sources and none of it is making any real sense to me yet. And that’s okay. Perhaps the biggest lesson to come out of all this will be patience.

Yesterday I took a long nap. This is the longest nap that I think that I have taken in probably, a decade. I don’t typically like to nap. I guess I hoped that by taking this long, daytime nap, I would either have a lucid dream that explained everything to me in a way that made perfect sense, and put me at ease with all of this, or better yet, I would wake up to find that this whole coronavirus thing was just a really bad nightmare that I could wake up from. Neither of those outcomes occurred for me, but I did feel well-rested, and yet still restless. I am very restless.

How are you all coping? I still see readers in my stats, but there haven’t been many comments, lately. Are you in introspective interludes, as well? Have any “truths” arisen to the surface from your wise internal “knowing”, your “Being”, since all of this began? As I said, I’m absorbing all of the information, perspectives, and reactions to this situation that I feel like I can soak in, on any one day, from all different sources. You, my trusted readers, friends and confidantes, are whose viewpoints, I would most like to take in. If you are feeling the inclination and the energy, at least let me know that you are okay.

Love. Peace. Hope. Stay well.

Fortune for the Day – “Be open to the wonderful; the bizarre; the possible; the unknown.”

The Wise Owl

I have seen and I have heard a lot of owls lately. I heard one early this morning when I was taking our dogs out. We live near a nature preserve, so we are fortunate to witness owls more than the average people come across them, I think. So, I have seen and I have heard more than a few gorgeous owls in the last couple of months and I have even noticed more of them in artwork and websites, as of late, it seems. I know that some old wives’ tales suggest that owls are a horrible omen of death, but I think that they are more a symbol of wisdom, clarity, change, and intuitiveness. I think that owls are majestically beautiful.

I need quiet today. I need to quiet my mind. I need to quiet my interactions with others and the outside world. I need to take some time for calm introspection. All of our infinite wisdom lies within, I think, and I need to tap into that vast, knowing, loving reservoir of being-ness and light. I hope that you can find an understanding of what you need today, and I hope that you find the courage and the ability to give that to yourself, whatever that need is for you. Stay well. Sending peace, love and clarity from my heart to yours.

No Horse Pucky Archives

Happy 16th birthday, to my beautiful daughter! This isn’t quite the plans at Disney which we had made, but at least we (your parents and your brothers and your doggies) are your captive audience, and your dutiful servants for the day. xoxo Disney is just delayed.

I think that in a time of uncertainty, fear, and boredom, another one of my “no horse pucky” stories is called for, to lighten the mood. The other day (I can’t remember which day; they are all melting into each other. Quarantine days look remarkably the same around here.) I went into my garage and started poking through the storage boxes. Back in the year 2000, I had belonged to an online pregnancy chat group. I was pregnant with our third son, during that time. Our other two boys were ages four and two, and our daughter was not even yet, a glimmer in our eyes. It turns out that I printed out every single post that I had made on the chat group, and I kept the printed sheets, as sort of a pregnancy journal. The other night, when I rediscovered the “journal”, I delighted myself and my captive audience family, with various anecdotes that I talked about in the journal, including the time my 4-year-old son said that my new haircut made me look like “a monster” and he meant it sincerely, as a major compliment. Anyway, Tuesday, November 7th, 2000’s entry is absolutely “no horse pucky” worthy and reading the entry, brings me back to the sheer horror of that day, like it was just yesterday. Keep in mind, my third son was born in early December of 2000, so I was very, very, very pregnant that infamous day, with a 4 year-old son and a 2-year-old son (who had the nickname “Road Rage” at that time period; his temper was legendary) in tow. Here is the journal entry (Tuesday, November 7th, 2000):

“I just got back from voting and running a few errands. The boys and I enter Eckerd Drug Store, and we are no sooner in the door, when my four-year-old announces that he has to “go potty real bad,” (number two, mind you) and starts groaning and grunting loudly. I ask the clerk where the bathroom is, only to be told that they had no public bathrooms. I announce that it is an emergency and the clerk, noticing my obviously huge pregnant belly ushers us through the store, through the warehouse into this skanky bathroom where my son “blows it out.” (sorry to be gross, but it was GROSS)

After that episode, I decide to buy some sodas that are on sale and I pick up a 12 pack, only to have the bottom give out on me and all twelve cans roll all over the floor. Both sons think that this is great fun and once again, we are the spectacle of the day, at the store. The sweet clerk comes over a with a calm smile on his face and cleans it all up. I then go over to another aisle and I pick up two plastic, one gallon jugs filled with grape juice. As I am walking to the cashier, one of these bottles hit one of those giant steel poles that support the ceiling of the store. The whole plastic top is ripped off and the juice sprays all over us, and the floor. At this point, I was seriously considering running out of the store, but I notice that the puddle of juice is gaining momentum towards the “too-nice-of-a-guy” clerk, busy cleaning up our other mess. He once again, just smiles and says, “Not your day, huh?” and proceeds to clean up the new mess.

Well, you would think that this story would be over, but no. Now, the entirely frazzled me, goes to pay for the juice, and the gallon jug that is now broken, is still filled a quarter of the way, so I decide to set it on the counter. In my utter frustration, I set the jug down too hard and a geyser of grape juice lands all over the completely shocked cashier.

I won’t be frequenting that store any time in the near future or maybe even, ever again. I bet the store personnel started thinking that they were all victims of Candid Camera!”

No horse pucky, true story. I found this true account, in the printed pages of my online pregnancy journal, found in a Mattel’s Hot Wheels paper folder; the folder having a copyright date of 1997.

I think that it is great when you can still laugh at yourself, twenty years later. I can’t wait for the time when we can all look at this coronavirus situation in the rear view mirror, and perhaps even get a couple of chuckles out of what is otherwise, a horrific ordeal.

Stay well, my friends.

Fortune for the day – “Just remain in the center, watching, and then forget that you are there.” – Lao Tzu

Soul Sunday

Hello dear friends! Watch this adorable video of tiny twin boys discussing germs and quarantine. It will warm your heart and I dare you not to laugh:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1241262775248269312

My regular readers know that Sundays are dedicated to poetry. I encourage you to use this forum as a poetry workshop. I usually share a poem that I have written and I ask my readers to share their poems in the Comments section. If you never thought that you had time before to try your hand at writing poetry, now you do. The world needs more beautiful, soul opening, heart touching poetry more than ever before. Please share your heart here, with us. It did strike me, the other day, that if ever there was a time for everyone to fully realize how much we actually LOVE each other, it is now. We have shut down our entire way of being and living, to protect the most vulnerable and the most aged among us. We have shut down, unitedly and globally, how we live, to protect the bravest and the most brilliant among us, who are working feverishly at finding us a cure and at healing as many people as they can, from this terrible scourge that is upon us. We have narrowed our living experience down to what is the fundamentally most important to us, letting all of the other less important pieces fall to the ground, as they may. I think that we have our priorities straight. See how the world is responding to this virus, and know just how much you are LOVED. I am LOVED. We are LOVED and WE ARE LOVE . In the end, it is LOVE that sustains us all. I didn’t write today’s poem. I saw it on Twitter, written by a person who calls themselves, Mr. Jones. Stay well, friends. Here is the beautiful poem:

History will remember when

the world stopped

And the flights stayed on

the ground.

And the cars parked in the

street.

And the trains didn’t run.

History will remember when

the schools closed

And the children stayed

indoors

And the medical staff walked

towards the fire

And they didn’t run.

History will remember when

the people sang

On their balconies, in

isolation

But so very much together

In courage and song

History will remember when

the people fought

for their old and their weak

Protected their vulnerable

By doing nothing at all.

History will remember when

the virus left

And the houses opened

And the people came out

And hugged and kissed

And started again

Kinder than before.

Capeless Heroes

I don’t have the right words today. I have so many large emotions swirling all around my mind and my body. I tend to lash out angrily when I don’t have my balance. I don’t want to do that on my blog. It isn’t helpful.

Here’s what I’m grateful for today: my faith in an all-powerful, all-wise God/Universe, my family and our health, my friends, being in my comfortable home, the beautiful sunshine, our dedicated health workers and first responders and scientists and business heads and all of the world’s leaders tasked with helping us to find the quickest and safest path out of this mess (I’m hating having to make the “bad guy” decisions like scrapping vacation plans and telling my middle son that he can’t see his girlfriend (of 3+ years), until she is home and quarantined for 14 days. I can’t imagine the stress and pain and uncertainty our leaders are feeling, as they make difficult, overwhelming decisions on a daily basis), music, nature, swinging around in my daughter’s hammock, being able to face-time our eldest son, our dogs, fish and guinea pigs, wild birds, grass, kindness (I read a story about a quarantined single mom and kids in Norway who reached out on social media, and asked strangers to make her kids’ birthdays special, while quarantined, by sending them birthday cards. They have been inundated with greeting cards from all over the world, some of them artistic master pieces!), soap (luckily I’ve always been a soap hoarder, because I love great smelling soap), on-line capabilities for work, school and shopping, delivery people, coffee, learning to appreciate home-cooked family meals again, candles, a less-packed calendar, people keeping their sense of humor during difficult times, watching the wind mildly shake the palms, water, the rough times which I have gone through, before in my life, that have helped me to keep perspective, to be more even-keeled and less anxious now . . . . .

What are you grateful for today? Please tell me in the Comments section. Love, peace, serenity. Good juju. I’m sending it all to you.

Mama’s Here For You

It’s a very interesting experience, blogging through this global health crisis. I am very attached to my blog. It’s one of my creations. I feel very maternal towards it, and thus, towards you, my readers. How are you doing? How are you coping? What can I do for you? How can I comfort you?

I noticed that I feel a major responsibility with this blog. I want to be a constant in your life. I want you to know that I am here for you, on a daily basis. I will not let this connection go, even as we get more and more isolated, in every other realm of our lives. I never thought that I would say this, but thank goodness for all of our technology, and our various ways which we can communicate (instead of just face-to-face). Thank goodness for all of the entertainment we get from our technical gadgets. Last night, I got into a major laugh-fest reading tweets about Generation X. Supposedly, since we Gen-Xers are used to being ignored and abandoned, we are the ones who are truly most suited for quarantine. Who knew? Laughter is really good medicine. I also got a good laugh out of myself. I wore garden gloves to shop in my grocery store yesterday. And I didn’t avert my eyes to anyone. Thankfully, I’ve never been one to embarrass easily.

I’m not going to pretend. I’m disappointed. I’m scared. I’m overwhelmed. I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m putting on a brave face for my family, which is sometimes a majorly pretend facade for what’s crumbling underneath. Sometimes, the facade doesn’t cover up much of anything and then I feel like a failure as the maternal head of household. Still, perfection is not what is called for, here. Showing up and doing the best that we can is all that we need to do, one day at a time. And that’s what we are all doing. We are doing our best, every day, and that is all that is needed. We will prevail. Stay well, friends and readers. I love you!

Bring in the Clowns

This was trending on Twitter this morning. I did read about a married couple who were stuck on the Princess cruise ship, who said that the experience of being quarantined, definitely brought the spice back into their relationship. If you need some good laughs, through this otherwise “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad” experience check out #WithEverythingSuspended on Twitter. It will give you some much needed giggles, such as this one:

Hang tight, friends. Stay well. I’ll be here for you. I’m not going anywhere. Literally.

Fortune for the Day – “Don’t search for the answers. Live the questions.” – Rilke

Not So Fun Friday

This is from a poster on Twitter under the heading #EverythingsGonnaBeOkay

What an adorable puppy!! A lot of people have been talking about how, despite the awful circumstances, it’s sort of nice to get back to the simpler pleasures in life. We are all appreciating the sanctity and security that we feel in our own homes, probably more than ever. New readers, on Fridays I typically list three favorite consumption things that I love, like products, or websites or music, etc. I call Fridays, “Favorite Things Friday”. I am not sure that I feel comfortable doing that tradition, today. It just doesn’t feel appropriate. So if you are wanting “favorites” suggestions, please see my previous Friday posts in the archives.

I have to admit, when this contagion first started happening, it felt like a giant over-reaction. I was angry, frustrated, bewildered and I was thinking of myself and my own immediate family and friends, and the plans which we had made, that were getting cancelled left and right. Not too long ago, I was thinking: “If getting infected with this new virus was only going to be like having a bad cold for most of us, why so much concern? ” Then I read this article written by an Italian doctor:

https://www.newsweek.com/young-unafraid-coronavirus-pandemic-good-you-now-stop-killing-people-opinion-1491797

This article really put it all in perspective for me. We all have a social responsibility to each other. We have a major social responsibility to not overload our already overly-taxed medical professionals and our hospitals. There are still plenty of ill people, dealing with other sicknesses and conditions. How will we be able to care for those people, if our hospitals are overflowing with people sick with COVID-19? What if all of our medical professionals and caretakers become ill and are not able to do their jobs? Probably the best thing to come out of this whole situation, it the in-your-face reminder that we are One. We are One global community. We must care about the whole of us, for any one of us, to have normal, healthy, comfortable lives. All for One, and One for All!

We are all sacrificing here (in no particular order of importance): wages, proms, jobs, projects, vacations, graduation ceremonies, reunions, sports events, theater events, feelings of security and safety and health for ourselves and our loved ones, conferences, church ceremonies . . . . the list could go on forever. Let’s be mindful of that, and look at our own daily actions, a little more carefully. We are all feeling disappointment. How are our actions affecting others? Are we behaving socially responsible? If you are elderly, fragile, and/or sickly, please stay in your homes. We don’t want to lose you and we all have made a lot of sacrifices, to try to change the tides. I am shocked at the amount of older, fragile people whom I have witnessed in restaurants, crowded stores and even coming out of nail salons. Seriously! This is the time, when we all come together, and hunker down and unite against this contagion.

Stay well, my dear friends and readers! The clouds always pass. Everything is going to be okay!!!