Tag: middle age

Noise Cancellation

Before I left for my getaway, I was having trouble sleeping at night. This is not because I am worried about anything or because I am in any pain. It all had to do with a horrible, loud, annoying noise that kept me tossing and turning and seriously thinking about purchasing ear plugs or a white noise machine or a straight jacket. This loud noise wasn’t anything man made. It was coming from a creature of Mother Nature.

Our backyard butts up to a small lake and behind the lake is a relatively untouched nature preserve. Normally I love living like Snow White. The diverse nature we observe here is truly stunning and fascinating. We get rafters of turkeys (that is the correct term for a group of turkeys, btw) walking through our backyard all of the time. We get all sorts of birds – herons, eagles, hawks, ducks and woodpeckers. We see deer, rabbits, armadillos, possums, raccoons and alligators, on a frequent basis. Normally, these lovely critters act just as fun eye candy and we have a mutual respect for our respective places as creatures on this beautiful Earth. We all keep a healthy distance from each other and we live in happy symbiosis.

Mating season can get quite loud here, though. I thought mating season would be over by now, but for a few days before I left on my getaway, there was a very insistent, loud, demanding, horny as hell creature who just wouldn’t shut up. Whoever, whatever it was, sounded like he was right outside of our bedroom window. My frustrated, exhausted husband got up once, in the middle of the night, looking to see if it were squirrels or alligators or a new species of bird whose call we hadn’t heard before, sitting right outside of our window, insistently calling out for a mate. I got up to help him, but we just couldn’t find the sneaky source. We rustled in the bushes, our fears of finding something dangerous, with sharp, gnash-y teeth, being abated by our desperate need for sleep. We turned on all of our spotlights, so bright, you would have thought we were a prison, looking desperately for a fugitive prisoner. The noisemaker continued through all of this fuss, mocking us, as he carried on with his insistent screeches and howls.

I had forgotten about this annoyance when I was on my trip. I kept remarking about how well I had slept on my trip, attributing it to the mattress pads or the hotel pillows, not realizing that it was really the serene silence that I had been missing, that was helping me get such sound sleep. As I eagerly turned in last night, excited to be in my own surroundings, in my own familiar bed, as I shut my eyes, ready for sweet, dreamy slumber, my noisy, aggravating nemesis starting his siren song AGAIN. UGH! I had completely forgotten about this pest, on my sweet escape. Last night I got spotty sleep at best.

This morning, as I was grumpily making up our bed, the noise started up again. This was unusual. It had been mostly a night thing . . . a nightmare, for sure. Once again, it sounded like it was coming from our window sliders. In desperation, I got my phone’s flashlight and I looked all over the window, trying to follow the sound. I finally found my nemesis. He wasn’t large. He wasn’t scary. He wasn’t feathered and he didn’t have sharp teeth. He was actually kind of cute and innocent. He reminded me of Kermit . . . Kermit the frog. I set him free. I set us both free, I hope. Tonight will tell if he decides to come back. . . . I guess it isn’t easy being green.

Light Write

This is travel day, friends. So I am going to call it a “light write” day, so that I don’t miss my flight. I feel very lulled, refreshed, revitalized, yet relaxed. I like how I feel right now. I like my energy. I hope that I can carry my good vibe into my home life and keep it there for a while. If I like me and how I feel right now, I suppose that my family and friends will appreciate a more chill me, as well. I am filled with peace and gratitude.

Whatever you wanna be, just, at the end of the day, if you’re being a good person, which is not hard to be, and you’re putting positive energy into the world, and you’re appreciative and loving to the people around you that care about you and everybody in general, then it’ll work out. Gnash

Boo

So, yesterday I stayed in one of those huge, old, rambly, Victorian historic register-type places. The minute I walked into the lobby I felt like I had entered the epitome of a haunted house. I kept waiting to step on to one of the cars of the Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride. My imagination started running rampant and my now free-roaming imagination was ravenous. So I fed it. I talked to hotel employees about “the house ghosts” which of course, there were many. I talked to one employee, the ancient elevator operator, who had worked at the hotel for 39 years, and while he was talking ghost stories, I kept questioning to myself whether perhaps, he was actually one of them.

As I sat by the pool, I lapped up all of the internet stories about the ghosts that inhabit this particular abode. There were pictures of ghost chasers sitting in the dark in trepidation, their eyes glowing green, as they waited for lights to flicker, or for glasses to mysteriously fall to the floor and break. There were tragic love stories that make ghost stories all of the more intriguing and beguiling. Several rooms in the hotel are booked way in advance of Halloween – the rooms that are known to have a particularly large amount of ghostly sightings. I giggled and glee-d over all of these fun stories as I watched families splash each other and everyone bustling all around, enjoying summer fun.

This was all fun and games during the light of day. But hadn’t I forgotten something? I am the world’s worst scared-y cat. I am as jumpy as a cricket. What the hell was I thinking feeding my mind with all of that gobbly-goop when I needed to get a good night’s sleep? In the middle of the night, I woke up, my heart pounding because I thought I heard the sounds of strange wind chimes. I started going through my memory files to see if any of the ghosts announced their presence with wind chimes. The idea that the sound was just exactly what it was, wind chimes, seemed sinister-ly impossible, in my fear-frozen mind. I started the count-down, praying for time to move quickly and to get me to the light of morning.

Today, I am headed to a more modern abode. Unless it was built on an ancient burial ground, I don’t figure it to be a ghost hunter’s paradise. One thing is for certain, I won’t be doing any research of that possibility, on the internet. I have learned my lesson and a major point of this trip is to get good rest.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. - Stephen King

Getaway

I’m headed out early this morning. I am going on a short “getaway.” I was chatting with girlfriends about it, a couple of days ago. I like my destination. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, and I always like to explore new places. However, mostly, I am excited to get out of my element. I’m excited to step out of my own life and to get out of my own routine for a few days. I want to escape for a little bit. “That’s why they are called ‘getaways’,” my wise friend said.

Sometimes I feel guilty about admitting that I want to “get away” from my daily life to other people, and sometimes, I feel guilty admitting that fact, even to myself. It makes it sound like my life is bad and full of drudgery and that just isn’t the truth. All in all, I have a very fine, blessed life. In fact, many times when I am on a getaway, I find myself appreciating my life at home, all of the more. Often times, towards the end of a getaway, I start pining away for home. I see a family laughing together or someone walking their frisky dog and I want to be home with my kids and my pets.

Still, right now, I can’t wait to only have to think about what I am going to eat, at whatever time I want to eat. I like the idea of sleeping in (or not) to whatever time floats my boat, on any particular day. I like the idea of exploring shops, and museums and parks that are unfamiliar and intriguing to me, and not having to try to compromise with a large group of people with diverse interests and moods, as to where to go to next or what to do next. I like the idea of not having to stop whatever I am doing to let the dogs out, once again.

Truth be told, I need this refresher. It is good for me and it is good for my family. Sometimes a getaway is really just about getting-a-way-back-to-yourself. In that way, you have more of yourself to give, when you get back home.

Rainy Lullaby

It’s a rainy summer morning. I feel so grateful. We have needed some rain. It has been blazing hot and I have been moving around like a slug that is seared on to the ground. Rain is like everything else, not truly appreciated, until it has been absent for a while. This morning I am appreciating the rain. I am noticing its lovely steady sound, it’s pleasant, clean scent and the lovely droplets it is leaving on my thankful plants. I live in an area of the country where people come to vacation and they dread the idea of it raining when they are here. I have known that feeling, so I always feel a little bad when we get a stretch of rainy days, but this morning I don’t feel bad at all. I feel quenched. I feel saturated. I feel dewy. I feel refreshed. I feel cozy.

My husband just walked into the room, aggravated that he won’t be able to do his regular morning bike ride. My daughter is grumbling about her cancelled tennis lesson. I feel a little bad for them, but not too bad. I feel quenched. I feel saturated. I feel dewy. I feel refreshed. I feel cozy.

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. - Langston Hughes

Oopsie-Boopsie

Today is my hair appointment day. My hair has become the coat (or hat, I guess) of many colors . . . and many textures. I’ve decided that my stylist is a genius. Every two months or so, I go to her, wanting the exact same look, yet every time I go to her, I feel like I am bringing her a different head of hair to work with. My grays are popping out like weeds these days. When I pull one out, six more arrive, the next day, in revenge. Lately I feel like my real hair is like a clearance, bargain wig. It looks like it is a mish-mash of whatever hair they had left to work with, all sewn together, trying to create a semblance of order, but failing miserably. I’m not brave enough to stop coloring, so I honestly have no idea what my natural hair looks like anymore. I haven’t seen it in years . . . . decades, actually. I’ve always loved my stylist, but the older I get, the more dependent on her, I’ve become. She is one of my lifelines. She is one of my “emergency numbers.” All of you middle-aged women understand this, I know. Tell your stylist your love him or her today. They truly are the wizards of our lifetime. They transform us into “us” at least five times a year, no matter what materials we bring them to work with and at the same time, pretend like is a piece of cake.

Where is the Button?

Today is a much better day. Actually, my migraine had completely passed by yesterday afternoon and I had what I like to call a “power surge”. Yesterday afternoon, I became a whirling dervish, an energizer bunny and I checked off a bunch of tasks that I had been putting off doing forever. It is such a great feeling when you get yourself into that kind of “high energy”, focused-on-completion mode. I wish that I could find the “power surge” button on myself, so that I could use it whenever I wanted to get things done, but the source of it, remains entirely elusive. This source of determined, high level stamina seems to come out of nowhere, at times when I least expect to feel up to the challenge of a not very desirable, yet necessary chore. Perhaps it is just not good for our physical bodies, to get into that fast and furious process of getting things accomplished and accomplished well, all that often. But the satisfactory completion of daunting tasks, is the most wonderful thing for my mental health, for sure. Button, button, who’s got the button???


The flourishing of bursts of energy dies beyond us. – Isidore Isou

(I think that this is the appropriate quote for my post, but I couldn’t say for sure. This is from the French poet, Isidore Isou’s Manifesto of Letterist Poetry. I take it to mean, that bursts of energy are indeed an illusive, mysterious phenomenon that will far outlast any of us in the evolution of Life. Please share your interpretations in the Comments section. I’m very comfortable being corrected when I am wrong. Usually. Okay, only sometimes am I comfortable with being corrected when I am wrong. – my husband faithfully reads my blog every day, so I did some edit corrections before he called me out on the need for it.)


Migraine Madness

Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to post much today. I am at the tail end of a miserable migraine that took me two doses of my meds to get rid of and I usually only have to take one. I decided to write about this here, not for sympathy, but hopefully to help someone else. You see, I now realize that I have been prone to migraines for most of my life, but I always chalked them up to sinus problems. I have a cabinet full of collectible neti pots and various bags of salt. Seriously. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, that a woman I worked with suggested that I might be having migraines instead. The symptoms of bad sinuses and migraines are very similar. My doctor got me a prescription for migraines and it turns out, that was the ticket. No one should have to suffer unnecessarily. Thanks for understanding. See you tomorrow.

Look Out Below

So a couple of days ago, I walked out to our driveway and I started panicking. It appeared that our driveway had been covered with white paint splotches all over it. We have just had a bunch of painting and renovations done here, at the house, and I figured, “Great, the kids or the painters or someone else dragged a garbage bag out to the street that had paint in it, and it got all over our driveway! Just great.”

I immediately started looking for paint thinner until it dawned on me that the massive splotches were actually not paint at all, but a present left from one of the pterodactyl-sized birds we have living around us, here in tropical Florida. So you would think, that this dawning moment, would have prompted me to get the garden hose out, but instead I got out my phone and looked to see how soon we could be expecting a torrential downpour. (no time soon, unfortunately)

The upside here is that when I started looking up funny memes about bird droppings, it turns out that in many cultures (and definitely Turkish cultures), having a bird poop on you or your belongings, is actually considered a mark of very good luck. Some websites even suggested that I stop whatever I was doing (looking at your website, duh) and run right out and buy a lottery ticket. I didn’t yet, but I will . . . .

Moral of the story: There IS an upside to everything.

Healthy Pause

I am in a phew, exhale, big sigh, totally deflate like a balloon, and rest like a puddle on the ground, mindset today. So many “biggies” that we had been anticipating: our eldest son’s big move to a new state, the completion of our renovations, our youngest son’s high school graduation and the celebrations that followed, the safe extraction of his monster-sized wisdom teeth, etc. etc. are mainly finished and completed quite satisfactorily. It’s like my extra-big, neon signed and shined, mambo to-do list has been checked off and completed. Phew. Sigh. Deflate. Rest. . . . . and reflect. It all went well. It’s all over. I am going to rest a little bit before starting a new big load list. Big load lists always happen, especially in big load families. I try my best to stay in the present moment when I am in the midst of the planning, experiencing and executing the big load lists, but there is always that little part of me that repeats, “This will feel so good when it’s over. I can’t wait until the end of all of this.” I know that we are not supposed to anticipate the future. I know that we are not supposed to wish our lives away, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. And guess what? It does feel good to be at a completion point, right now. It does feel good to press “Pause” before loading up the play list and hitting “Play” again. I’m not ready to press “Stop” any time soon and I honestly wouldn’t want to hit “Reverse”, as good as a lot of my life has been, but healthy pauses, well, healthy pauses feel really good sometimes. Phew. Sigh. Deflate. Rest. Reflect.

“Sometimes you need to press pause to let everything sink in.” – Sebastian Vettel

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” – Albert Einstein