Monthly Archives: October 2012

A Different Kind of Air Freshener

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Kami

The atmosphere is heavy with moisture this morning.  To say it’s humid would probably be stretching things a bit.  There is certainly a difference from the usual overly long lingering summer heat we’ve had until now.  The sky is almost completely overcast, the sun trying to break through the clouds, but not having much success.  It’s glorious!

The bedroom communities of Phoenix are hotbeds of sameness, consistency and boredom.  Every third house in a subdivision matches; every landscape holds the same selection of trees, bushes, and rocks.  There’s some small variety, a few “county islands” where the yards are bigger, the houses unique, the sidewalks missing.

This suburban sameness mirrors the weather here.  Every third day, every second day, heck, every day is identical to the others, sunny, hot, blue skies, sunny, hot, blue skies. Oh sure, we have our monsoon season, of towering dust clouds roiling like something out of a scorpion laced movie, but those are rare and out of the norm.

Any change in weather from the trifecta of sun, heat and blue is a welcome change.  So the clouds moving in are all but getting a party thrown in their favor.  “Welcome Back Rain!” our signs taped to the garage door would say.  “We’ve missed you!!  Heart, heart, heart, heart, heart. “

Washing my car was a kind of rain dance a few years ago.  Spend the time to do a nice thorough water and soap in a bucket hand washing in the driveway, buff out the spots, shine the side view mirrors and sure enough there’d be what we call around here, “spit rain.”  Just enough water would drop out of a nearly cloudless sky, mixing with the dust in the air, to create little muddy spots on the car windshield and mess up that shine.

Clouds battling it out with the sun.

Today, however, looks promising.  There’s a wet smell to the air and the clouds seem to be winning out in the battle over the sky.

So in homage to the tentative onset of autumn in the desert, my doors and windows open wide today, exchanging stale indoor air for fresh, moisture-laden air.  Did I suggest it might be fall like weather today?  Oops!  I didn’t mean to let that slip out.   I’m hesitant to say such things for fear of jinxing it.

Just now, while writing, I heard this weird sound.  A wagon on the sidewalk?  Someone going by with a walker to help them shuffle along? The parakeets tearing up the newspaper in their cage?  A cat clawing at the screen door?  Something seriously wrong with the refrigerator motor? Crackle, crunch, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.  Thought I better investigate.  Lo and behold, it’s raindrops hitting the sidewalk, the patio furniture, the rooftop, the leaves on the trees!  Five minutes of a smattering tease of rain.

I’ll take it.  Any rain, even amounts not measurable in a rain gauge are welcome.  (Insert a sigh saved up since April.) What that infinitesimal bit of moisture in the air adds to my day also can’t be measured.  Wet sidewalk scent should be a choice on the air freshener aisle.  Why isn’t it?

Categories: Outdoors | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Few Notes about Infinity

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Kami

Analyzing a piano keyboard when I was very young, six or seven years, maybe younger, I remember thinking that all the possible songs that could be written would have been written by time I was old enough to try to write one myself.  With only eighty-eight keys, I was certain that there were a great many possible ways to arrange them into songs, but that it would be a limited number.  Surely, eventually, all the notes would be arranged in all their possible arrangements.  My young brain tried to figure out eighty-eight times eighty-eight times eighty-eight without much success.  Not that math of any kind would have helped my flawed thinking.

I told you I was very young.

Tickling the ivories

I’m sure there’s some developmental thing in a child’s brain that keeps them from recognizing the idea of unlimited or of the infinite.

It’s been more than a few decades since my naïve theory on the limitations of musical possibility and I still can’t fathom the infinite.  Unending numbers? Gaaa!!  The Universe?  Too big!!  My brain does this twisty, jerky stuttering thing, like our old Toyota truck does at intersections, the idle not quite keeping the engine running smoothly.  And my stomach joins in with this weird rumbling, sputtering thing when I attempt to grasp the idea of forever.

Maybe there’s something in the human brain that only recognizes limits, boundaries, the corporeal and the tangible. Maybe it’s just me.

It’s not that I don’t believe in those kinds of things, it’s just that I can’t get my head around the ideas.  There’s no experience to measure it against and no comparison to give me perspective.

Call me childish.  Call me naïve.   Rather than putting too much energy into the unfathomable, I’ve chosen to simply enjoy the music.

You can revel in the music today, too!

The links below will take you to some fun and varied piano selections.  It’s just a tiny taste of what’s out there.   Enjoy!

Flight of the Bumblebee

Bruce Hornsby (The Way It Is)

Nightnoise

Horowitz in Moscow 

Piano Guys (five of em) 

Victor Borge (on the muppet show)

Boogie Woogie

Jarrod Radnich

Categories: Music | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

It’s Gratituesday!

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Kami

It’s Gratituesday!  Today I am thankful for the surprising mix of people who have brought me here, to who I am and to how I’m living my life.  We’ve moved around the country some during my married lifetime, and have lived in four different homes in the same town over the past fifteen years.  Every one of those moves placed people in my path who have shaped my view of the world,  sculpted an aspect of personality, tweaked how I tune in to events in my life.

I’ve found connections with an eclectic assortment of perspectives and temperaments, shared inside jokes and laughter with assorted comedic sensitivities, talked to, cried with and worked for people I never would have planned to be involved with.  But always, one person’s chemistry and complexities worked its magic on another. I’m so glad we were thrown together for however long, for whatever purpose.

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon (Photo credit: YoTuT)

Sometimes it was a bumpy start.  Sometimes a rough ride in the middle made it seem we’d never learn from or help each other.  Sometimes reason was missing completely from the equation and yet the relationship still worked its purpose, like a river slowly carving away at a cliff wall, one grain of sand at a time.

There have been misunderstandings.  There have been mistakes.  There have been hours of missing those I left behind or friends who moved on ahead.  There have been countless joys, hugs, handshakes, winks, dusty trails, songs sung, tears shed, silences.  Relationships of every hue, tone, timbre, color, and pitch have lent themselves to the ongoing work of me becoming me.

Today I am me because of you.  For that I am grateful beyond imagining.

Categories: Gratituesday, Relationships | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

There’s Something in the Air

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Kami

Cow female black white

On opening the microwave door today I caught whiff yesterday mornings bacon smell and was mentally propelled into my paternal grandparents home.  It was quite nearly like being teleported. Certain brands of coffee brewing will take me there, as will Grandpa’s brand of cigarettes, a smell I find oddly endearing, precisely because it is so closely associated with memories of my Grandfather.  Grandma wouldn’t let him smoke inside the house, so he went out to the garage, or the garden when he needed to light up.  If we couldn’t find Grandpa in the house, we knew we could find him outdoors simply by following our noses.  And the bacon?  When our family visited they cooked up a storm for us.  Mounded heaps of pancakes, sausage and bacon sat center stage at their table.  Grandpa was the cook.  Grandma sat at the table sipping her morning coffee overseeing our amazingly decadent feast.  We didn’t get bacon at our house. That was a luxury item.

Smell is surely the most evocative of all the memories.

Lilacs used to grow along our backyard fence when I was very young.  That heady fragrance carries with it a sense of calm and a feeling that all is right with the world.

My favorite restaurant experience ever was less about the five-star service and phenomenal food and more due to the fact that they used wood fired stoves.  I have many, many cherished memories of cooking over a camp fire, so the wood smoke atmosphere lent an ambiance to the meal that could be had not other way.

Old Spice cologne brings out memories of my dad.  Falling asleep in church with my head leaning against his shoulder stands out particularly.  He also carried in his pocket a small container of mint lifesavers, broken into fourths.  That waft of mint in the air will place my thoughts squarely in a church pew, a sermon droning, sleepiness weighing my eyes down.

Fresh cut grass transports me to the park I grew up nearby.  When that scent hits the air in my head I’m rolling down hills, catching fly balls and throwing Frisbees.

Books have a certain smell, especially library books.  It’s a sort of musty, dusty, inky papery scent that sets me down on the couch next to mom hearing her reading.  The melody of her voice drifts across the years and settles in at the very center of me.  The world all-akimbo rights itself from that one singular sensation.  Who knew the power that could be found in the smell a book carries.

I worked in a print shop for a year once.  Never thought I’d get over being blown away by the strong ink smell that permeated every atom in the building.  No surprise in that connection of  ink and words.  For me, the print shop placed me one tiny step closer to my childhood dream of someday being published, having my words set down in ink.  And so the smell of printer’s ink is the call and promise of a distant dream, a hope in the air.

A dairy farm is distinctly aromatic.  For most people it isn’t a pleasant distinction.  I spent a week once, and a few days over the years, in the company of a happy family who owned dairy cows, and with them  the required hay fields,  farm machinery, and relaxed country drawl.  I adored helping out at milking time.  It was a mechanized operation that fascinated me.  My job was to pull the lever that sent a shower of grain into a feeding trough for the beautiful black and white beasts to munch on as the suction cups emptied their udders.  It was an important job!  The smell of manure, grain, milk and dust was a heady thing, full of responsibility, pride and usefulness.  Those smells to this day conjure such wonder-filled emotions.

I can tell that today will be a day of breathing deeply and searching for memories in those breaths.

Is there a scent or fragrance richly tied to memory for you?  Have you ever been surprised by a smell, having been, until that moment, unaware of the power of it’s chemistry?

 

 

 

Categories: Memory Lane | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

“The Unrest of Those Who Follow”

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Kami

I recently revisited a novel I read over thirty years ago. I didn’t remember a thing about it, to the point that I wondered if I ever really read it before.  I must have been a bit distracted or clueless when I read it the first time.  I was a teenager then.  There have been at least a thousand books I’ve read since, so I should cut myself some slack, I guess.

This was a Thomas Hardy novel.  You can’t go wrong with a classic, I figured.   What I wasn’t expecting was to be so caught up in the story that I was outraged at the characters.

Aggravation set in right away at Tess’s father for being so ridiculously full of pride and so shallow.  Then I wanted to yell at her mother for being even more shallow and empty-headed than her silly husband.  Where do these people learn their poor communication skills?  And poor Tess, thrown to the wolves trying to make up for a mistake that never would have happened if her dumb dad hadn’t gotten drunk and been a lazy fool.

books

books (Photo credit: brody4)

Enter Gabriel Angel and you falsely hope that he’s going to save Tess from herself and her sad little life.  (“I’ll take poor assumptions for 800, Alex.”– see Finding Forrester.)  I consider him one of the most dangerous kinds of characters ever to have been created on paper.  Self-righteous, relentless in getting what he wants, unforgiving.  He’s painted as a sweet guy, on the surface, to the point that all the girls on the farm are senselessly in love with him.  “Run!” I wanted to yell at Tess.  “Stay away from this guy! Listen to your gut and run far, far away!”

But no, Tess was generous to a fault.  She gave and gave and gave. She gave everything she was to everyone else and had no thought for herself.  She gave herself to death, literally.

Why am I discussing my aggravation with this tragic story?  I didn’t expect to find myself caring so much about a character.  I mean, she’s just a made up paper person! Most of the fiction I read lets me keep my distance.  Oh sure, I’m interested in the plot, the story line, the what happens next.  But I’m not usually invested in the characters to the point of being incensed for them, being afraid for them.  To hear myself chat with my friends about this book made me sound like a raving lunatic.

Maybe, what it really is goes like this.  I’ve known some people like Tess.  You know the type.  They can’t seem to catch a break from life.  Every thing they try turns out strangely out of whack.  If life gives them oranges they end up with grapefruit juice.  If life gives them lemons they end up in jail due to their involvement in a pyramid scheme. The people in a position to really help someone like this end up doing the most damage.   It hurts to watch.  You want to turn your head, close the book and not pick it up again.  It’s a real-life tragedy that keeps being written and nothing you try to do changes how that person’s life is unraveling, tangling and disintegrating.

Once in a while I go back and open up one of those books, check on those real, living characters, hoping to find the plot line has changed.  Oh, how I wish the author of those stories could rewrite things a bit.  Sometimes the scenery has changed, various minor characters come and go, but the heartache and loss and hopelessness are unrelenting.

I guess that explains why I like to try to lose myself in a work of fiction.  The very nature of the made up story makes it safe and distances me from the difficulties in real life.  Or better, the author manages to paint insight into the human situation, giving me a new perspective I hadn’t yet considered.

The very best books will leave you breathless, or deep in thought, or changed somehow.  I guess Tess of d’Urberville is one of those books.  Hardy managed to break down one of my little walls of defense I’d constructed as a shield against caring for and hurting about the heartache in others lives.

How many other books have changed something inside me?  More than I care to acknowledge.  Have you read a book that rocked your world?  Has an author sent a seismic tremor rumbling beneath your feet? Or is it just me?

(Apologies or kudos to Mike Rich, the author of “Finding Forrester” for the title of this blog, borrowed from a quote from William Forrester’s book.)

Categories: Books, Relationships | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Safety Pins and String

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Kami

“Stay away from the river!” Grandma would holler at us, not skipping a beat in whatever project she was in up to her elbows.

My cousins and I would let the screen door slam behind us as we headed outside. That wasn’t usually where we were planning on going, but it was where we always ended up.  First we’d circle around the enormous backyard, and do some exploring.  We might, or we might not, play in the old leaning barn, it’s smell of fresh hay and filtered sunlight and dust so tempting.  We might take off down the lane to see whatever there was to see that day.  Or we’d spy on the younger cousins, keeping well out of their vision lest we get wrangled by our parents into watching out for them.  There were some old foundations of buildings overgrown with grass and vines in another part of the tangled growth that was our cousins’ territory. Those were interesting places for the imagination to work with.

Inevitable

Safety pin, photo taken in Japan

But no matter what we might find to keep us entertained while the adults did their endless visiting, we would wind up at the river.  It was inevitable.  The river wasn’t even fifty yards away from Grandma’s front porch.  There wasn’t a fence or a barrier of any kind to keep us away from it’s beautiful gurgling, rush of water.  Besides that, it called to us, I’m sure of it.  “Come and play, come and play” it’s eddies and swirls would whisper.  Who could resist the call of a river?

The spot we favored was a small arching curve out where the river took a decidedly left-hand turn.  This served to slow the water down a bit.  Our favorite spot to play was a little rocky shallow area with willows and reeds just beside the slough.  “Stay away from that slough!” was another of Grandma’s favorite warnings.   The slough was a boggy grown in mess of mucky water that we wouldn’t dream of exploring. Our private area on the river’s shore, where we cautiously waded in and chucked rocks had clear splashy water with plenty of rocks on the shore to choose from.   It was quiet and hidden and felt like no other place on earth.

Fishing Heaven

If we had planned ahead we’d have a couple of safety pins, and some string.  And then we would have found some nice long sturdy sticks to attach them to.  We’d fling our short, makeshift lines out into the current only to have them immediately float right back to us.  I don’t think the string was ever quite long enough.  And even though our unmarried uncle sold bait to the real fishermen that frequented the river in that area, it never really dawned on us to bring some bait ourselves.  Impaling a wriggly worm on a safety-pin was the last thing I would dream of doing. Had we caught a fish, we wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with it. We were only pretending at everything we did anyway.

My cousins, who lived next door to Grandma, probably got to do real fishing all the time and were just humoring me.  Although, it seems they were every bit as invested in the process as I was.  Our bi-monthly visits to Grandma’s were a treat for us as well as for them.  We surely lived a charmed life when we got together.

With the vast amount cousins that spent time at Grandma’s it’s a miracle that no one ever drowned. I think there must have been some busy guardian angels at that spot in the river.  A few of the younger cousins seemed drawn to mayhem and mischief like flies to honey.  Or was it that mischief and mayhem was drawn to them?  That’s the more likely of the two.  I’m sure there were angels, or maybe even Saint Andrew himself, the patron saint of fishermen, who oversaw the protection and safety of our clan.  Surely it wasn’t that far for angels or saints to be on the job.  That spot, by Grandma’s house, was a little piece of heaven.

Categories: Memory Lane, Outdoors, Relationships | Tags: , , | 8 Comments

Are you a Morning Person, a Night Owl, or a Troll?

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Kami
young Long-eared owl (Asio otus), surroundings...

young Long-eared owl (Asio otus), surroundings of Warsaw, Poland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Years ago, I believed the only way to get some quiet time in my house was to wait until everyone finally, blessedly, went to bed at night.  That’s a nice theory, but  it never really worked.  Oh, I spent a handful of all-nighters where I deep cleaned and organized the kitchen, or read entire chapters of books, blissfully uninterrupted, but that was when the kids were younger than twelve and had something that resembled a schedule.  Most nights, by the time everyone, including  my sweet husband, dropped off into Neverland, I was too zoned out to remember why I was so anxious to have them all go away to bed.  If I could remember the reason I so desperately wanted complete quiet then I was too sleepy to use the time effectively or enjoy my solitude.

Epiphany!

Then I had an epiphany!  (I love that word, don’t you?  It just rolls off your tongue.  It would make a great title for a novel and has probably been the title of a few million poems.)  Anyway, I did.  I had an epiphany.  Here it is:

I am a morning person.

That’s it!  Yes.  That’s all.  A.M.  That’s me.

Another Epiphany

P.M. That’s the rest of my family.

I’m married to a night owl and my children are all practically allergic to mornings.  Their ideal breakfast time is somewhere around noon.  Once the sun drops out of view in the western sky they kick into high gear.  Weird.

I don’t understand that.  I don’t particularly want to understand it.  But I have had to learn to live with it.

Some Adjustments Required

I’ve had to make some adjustments occasionally.  There have been those post-date, late into the wee hours of night discussions with my teens.  You MUST NOT doze off when THEY are in the mood to discuss their lives, even it’s two a.m.  Those were some of the best discussions ever.

My ideal bedtime is somewhere near sunset or shortly afterwards, but in order to foster family relationships I have let my bedtime inch toward the nether reaches of the night.  I’ve watched more MASH reruns with my sweet husband than either of us would ever publicly admit, but he has wanted my company on the couch beside him, sharing the laughter and I decided I would oblige him.  His favorite time for heartfelt discussions?  You guessed it, after ten p.m.  We finally decided to find a neutral time for potentially volatile communications, as I am not exactly emotionally stable as bedtime draws near, passes me and leaves me nodding my head in exhaustion.

Cons and Pros

Being a night person has its drawbacks if you are employed in a nine to five kind of situation, if you have children, if you have a dog, or parakeets, or if you live near a school, a park, a freeway, or other people.   Being a night person works very well if you are a college coed, a drug dealer or criminal, a law student, a med student, or you  work the swing shift.  Morning people have it a lot easier. Mostly.  Unless they live with all night people.  And I do mean ALL NIGHT.  Sigh.

The Enforcer

As you might imagine, I was always the enforcer when it came to prying the children out of bed in time to deliver them to the bus stop, the carpool, or most recently, the attendance office.  Our local high school decided to punish the parents for their children being late to school, requiring us to come into the office to sign in the child upon their late arrival.  Luckily I am a morning person and was always fully dressed for such occasions, unlike many other, obviously night people parents, who were still in some clothing resembling pajamas.  (I believe this is where the stylish idea for the messy hair look came from; night people who just couldn’t muster facing themselves in the mirror in the morning. But that is another topic altogether.)

My sweet husband has had to learn to battle his own morning demons.  As if there were such a thing as a MORNING demon!  Everyone knows demons can’t tolerate sunlight, just like trolls.

Hey, now there’s an epiphany!!

Categories: Relationships | Tags: , , , , | 8 Comments

Books! Glorious Books!

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Kami
Gathered for the IHR Headphone Roundup

Gathered for the IHR Headphone Roundup (Photo credit: Derek K. Miller)

Audio-books are my new drug of choice.  A year or two ago I would have told someone they were crazy if they suggested I would become a fan of this particular medium.  I am hopelessly and forever in love with the heft and smell and feel of physical books.  The act of turning a page, the mere anticipation of the turning of a page, is a seductive thing for me.  But it’s also more than the physical experience of reading a book with my own eyes that I’m enamored by.  What really holds me is the story, the characters, the descriptions, and most importantly, the sense that an author has read my own personal library of experience and put words to emotions I’ve had.

Staying Connected

In order to keep that connection with the written word, in the face of a schedule that laughs at the idea of reading time, I have become one of those people walking around with white wires hanging from both ears for about eight hours a day.  Dweeby, I know.  But it keeps me sane in the face of mindless repetition, numbing background noise and the sense that my life is full of silliness.

And really, it’s no different than that time in second grade when my teacher had us sitting in the alcove, cross-legged and captivated as she read aloud from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House in the Big Wood.”  I was enraptured.

Decadence is a good thing, sometimes

Being read to is luxuriant, decadent, lyrical.  It’s better than listening to music. Some readers are performers extraordinaire!  Some readers are less so, but all make the words accessible to those of us whose hands and bodies are otherwise occupied.

The classics are particularly well suited to being read aloud.  The longer sentences, the flowing recitation of scenery and costume and events are like a cinematographers tools.  I feel like a witness to a masterpiece being created one paint stroke at a time.

A Short List

Here’s a short list (not comprehensive) of some audio-books I’ve recently enjoyed that I would recommend wholeheartedly.  Explore a little, try one on for size, listen while you make dinner, do the dishes or clean the bathroom.  Listen as you fall asleep.  Listen in the car. Enjoy!

I’m always on the lookout for the next great listen/read, so feel free to share any you’ve heard that could be added to this list.

Places to access audio-books: (some of these are free!)

Overdrive.com

Audible.com

Openculture.com

Booksshouldbefree.com

Librivox.com

Audiobooks.org

Your local library

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Categories: Books | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments

Magic in the Morning Air

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Kami

It’s still dark, still practically night, at 4:50 when I leave my house to go walking. “She must be out of her mind,” you’re thinking. Don’t lie. I can hear you. “Who wakes up that early to go walking?” that’s what you’re thinking. “Crazy people, that’s who.”

“People from Central Arizona,” would be my reply. Yes, I am a bit crazy, that’s completely true. But, more important in this conversation is that I live in the greater Phoenix area. The DESERT. That is why I’m awake so ridiculously early and why I am walking in the dark. No offense to my fellow desert rats, I mean Valley of the Sun dwellers, but we all must be crazy to live here.

If you’d ever lived here, or do live here, an explanation for nearly night/early morning walks would not be necessary. But then most people are fortunate not to live in the desert so let me be more concise.

It’s flipping hot here in the desert, even at night, especially during our eternal summer. It cools down about 15 degrees at night if we’re lucky. So it’s 85 or 90 degrees when I leave in the dark to walk. Imagine what happens when that rolling ball of hydrogen surges over the protective horizon and starts blasting down laser rays of heat across the already baked, seared, sandblasted landscape of the desert floor.

We celebrate sunsets here in Arizona. Look at our flag, for crying out loud, it’s a sunset. We cheer when the sun goes away for the day. It’s a sign that we survived another blast furnace day.

Sunrises are nice during our six months of (cough) winter. But that’s another story. I digress.

I’m walking. Meeting my walking partner. Had I mentioned that? There’s an important detail. I don’t walk alone in the dark. No way.

I meet my walking partner where our two neighborhoods intersect.

The plants hover overhead. It’s so dark it could be midnight.

So we walk. We get sweaty even in the dark.

We talk.

We vent.

We laugh.

We cry.

We explain.

We justify.

We make sense of our lives, at least temporarily, as our feet move. Once we get home, reality sets in, but that, too, is another story.

We weave this beautiful, sad, heart wrenching tapestry in the air above us. I can almost see our words above us, intertwining, circling. Our conversation is an amazing work of art and heart. There are shades of blue mostly. That’s to be expected. But there are some brilliant greens looping through, like little vines. And some yellows burst in the air above that, like little fireworks. For some reason there hasn’t been much red. Lavender blossoms emerge in the conversational picture above us, their fragrance almost discernible.

It’s a priceless work of art we weave with our talk as we move along the path.

Reluctantly ending our walk, more reluctantly ending our conversation, we air hug. We’re both too sweaty for a real one.

The talking tapestry we created does this swirling dance, divides into two parts. One half follows her and the other half chases after me.

By then the sun is undeniably up for the day. A combination of heat, sore muscles and the solitude conspires to turn the dancing conversational colors in the air to a dust that settles in my hair and on my shoulders. The walk has worked its magic. I feel a bit more whole, a little bit more able to cope with reality. I am a little more what I need to be for the day ahead.

It’s worth the loss of sleep.

Categories: Outdoors, Relationships | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Cool Glass of Water

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Kami

You know that feeling you have when you've been thirsty for a while, quite a while, and you finally, blessedly get that drink of water?  You guzzle that drink like your life depends on it.  (It does.)  You might even let some water dribble out the sides and run down your chin and neck because you're so thirsty you just forget about manners and appearances.  And when you're done pouring that liquid into your parched body you let out that loud, contented sigh.  Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh...

At Last

That feeling right there is how the cool air feels to me when it finally arrives here in the desert.

To honor that delicious, long drink of cool air that is in the atmosphere this Tuesday morning, I’m providing a list of other wonderfully satisfying experiences in my life.

– unrestrained, unstoppable laughter after a really good joke

– the golden color and sound of fall quaking aspen leaves

– my granddaughter snuggling up to my shoulder and settling in as if she’s found home.

– crumbling dirt clods with my bare hands just before planting seeds

– photographs of my children when they were young and still in awe of the world

– being lost in a book so thoroughly that time disappears and doesn’t matter

– dancing when no one else is around

– catching the perfect edge of a wave on a boogie board

– long, winding conversations

– having and taking the time to go the scenic route

This is by no means a complete list.  Just a smattering of joys to share with you this fine Tuesday morning.  I hope if this prompts you to think of some of your own soul quenching joys you’d feel willing to share with me.  I’d love to hear about them.

Categories: Gratituesday, Outdoors | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

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