Sofas, So Far - Part I

Golden to Silver Val is currently participating in an A-to-Z challenge, choosing daily post topics in alphabetical order. In the last paragraph of yesterday's post, "C...is for Couch," she wrote: "Take a little trip down memory lane sometime when you've got nothing better to do and think about all the events that took place during ownership of different couches. You know a couch is a pretty intimate member of the family.....just look at all the photographs it managed to get into."

So I did. As soon as I finished reading her post, I opened my photo-organizer software and began browsing for pictures of sofas. I used to call them couches, too. When, I wondered, did my word for them change? Or where did it change? We moved so often, and I picked up bits of regional dialect every place we lived for any length of time. Regardless of what it's called, Val is right: each couch has a history.

The first sofa of my adult life came along with the first husband. It was a shrimp-colored, textured-vinyl one from his bachelor pad--not my taste at all. I don't have any photos to show you, but there's a vivid image of it in my mind.

Midway through the fourth year of that marriage, my father made a rare cross-country visit. Seeing the sparseness of our living room, he took me furniture shopping, and part of that excursion included picking out the style and fabric of what would become a custom-made sofa. I chose a Danish Modern sectional arrangement, two long straight pieces with a wedge-shaped center piece to connect them. The fabric, a mixture of slubby brown and orange threads, would bring the texture and earth tones I loved into our home. For the next couple of years that sofa sat with one long arm stretched out under our big picture window, where it witnessed babies grow into little girls and a marriage shred to pieces.

When the marriage ended, the girls and I moved into a tiny rent house with a living room too small for that huge sectional sofa. I moved only one long piece of it with us, along with two chairs that had also been gifts from my father. This photo shows that sofa-section in the little rent house, where it watched me struggle to make ends meet and saw that fabulously modern turquoise chair catch fire when it was accidentally pushed too close to a space heater:

Kelli (left) and Kim with Julie (our four-pound poodle). 

The next photo shows the same sofa and the other amazing chair a little over a year later in another new home, a lovely, roomy one purchased with a new husband who would complete our family by being a loving dad to my girls.

Kim (who currently hates almost all of her childhood pictures).

Shortly after that last photo was taken, we locked up the house and all its furnishings and moved from Texas to Ohio, where we rented a furnished house for the duration of what we knew would be a temporary stay. I don't remember the sofa in that house, but it must have been a bad one, because the next photo shows we kept it covered with a blanket:

Sweet sisters: Kim (left) and Kelli, with butchered haircuts.

That rented sofa saw a family on an adventure, seeing new places, meeting new people, and, in the case of my daughters, experiencing the wonders of snow for the first time. I remember huddling with the girls on winter afternoons after school as we watched Dark Shadows on the tiny TV set that came with the house. We lived there for six months, then moved back to our home in Texas.

A year later we were moving again, to Florida this time, and we didn't know how long we'd be there. We sold the house and either sold or gave away most of the furnishings, including the orange-and-brown couch. The tall orange chair went with us. In Florida, needing to get settled quickly to get the girls in school, we rented another furnished house.

Christmas in Miami: Kim (left) and Kelli.

The ugly sofa in the Florida house watched us open gifts on two Christmases. It saw us eating mangoes picked in the backyard and fresh fish we'd caught while standing knee-deep in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean.

From Florida we moved to Georgia, where we bought a charming little house but never got around to buying a sofa. We put new carpet in the living room (more orange and brown, shag this time) and lounged in there on an assortment of oversized pillows. If somebody needed to sit upright, there was always the orange chair.

(L-R) Kim, Jennifer (my little niece) and Kelli with 

my beautiful mother, who turned 50 that same summer.

We lived in Georgia for two and a half years, then moved to New York. We bought a traditional split-level house there, for which I chose a very non-traditional (but very '70s- influenced) orange, crushed-velvet, freeform sofa. What was I thinking? It consisted of two pieces, an extra-long sofa section with a chaise longue at one end. You can see the chaise end of it here:

Here I am dressed for a formal event in a knit-and-feathered

evening ensemble. Yes, I said "knit." This was the early '70s,

when everything that could be made out of knitted fabrics was and 

men wore double-knit leisure suits with shiny, paisley-printed shirts. 

That sofa saw our family in a state of flux. I returned to the workforce while we lived in New York. My two girls made friends in the neighborhood, but their school experiences were vastly different. One made the transition as easily as usual; the other was bullied because of her deep southern accent. Our family grew when the troubled teen who was my stepson moved in with us.

We lived in New York for three years, then moved back to the same Georgia town where we'd lived before. We rented an unfurnished house there while we were having another home built, but the new home was abandoned in the middle of construction after our marriage took a big hit. My husband had an affair. I suspected it, but it was my stepson who discovered it and told me what was going on. That was the most difficult period of our entire marriage. We worked through it because we had to. My husband didn't want to lose his family, and I had no place to go with the girls. We lived nearly 800 miles away from my only support system, my family in Texas.

I stayed mostly in the kitchen and den of that rented home in Georgia. That's where all the sunlight was during the daytime, and that's where we spent our evenings watching television, including Alex Haley's Roots, on floral-print-covered daybeds that had been in my older daughter's bedroom in New York. The orange sofa stayed in the near darkness of the living room, its only company being my husband, who frequently brooded in there alone, drinking scotch, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" and a handful of other songs that still bring back painful memories.

We patched things up and made them work for awhile, long enough to move our family one more time. This time the fancy orange sofa moved with us to Louisiana, where it resided in the den of our beautiful new home and was wallowed on by enough grown and almost grown people to wear it nearly threadbare after a few years.

My two daughters and our dog, Radar, none of whom was willing

to let my mother photograph their casual early-morning faces.

We furnished the living room in that house with a beautiful combination that consisted of two sofas, an armless love seat, and an oversized ottoman that could be pushed together into a big, square "conversation pit" or separated and arranged in a variety of ways. We bought all those pieces, plus a coffee table, two end tables, and two lamps at a warehouse close-out price of $295, a grand bargain even in 1978. Here's the only photo I have of the bargain sofa in that particular living room:

Radar liked to sit on these comfy cushions and watch 

out the window for joggers and the mailman.

As frequent readers here already know, my second marriage eventually ended, too, which happened while we lived in our first home in Louisiana. My daughters and I stayed in the house for nearly two years afterwards, until one got married and one moved to New York City. Then I sold the well-worn orange sofa for $50 in a garage sale and gave one of the beige-and-white, conversation-pit sofas to my younger daughter and her new husband. The matching sofa, along with the love  seat and hassock, moved with me to an apartment in Baton Rouge.

At this point in the story, with all of us going our separate ways, it seems like a good place to break what's turning into a much longer post than I had imagined it would be. I don't know why anyone outside my family would find this sofa history interesting, but I'll finish it tomorrow anyway.

Do Not Disturb!

Okay, Who's Hiding the Body?

Black vultures have been swarming near my house the past two days. I've driven the road in both directions without seeing any signs of roadkill, so I don't know what's holding their attention. This photo shows only a few of the ugly birds that were flying nearby yesterday morning:

They were a noisy bunch, too. If your curiosity extends to morbid bird noises, you can click this link, then scroll down the page and click the play arrow on the "preflight call and wing noise" bar to listen to a sample of the ruckus they were raising.

As I watched them, the vultures began settling in the treetops two doors north of my house. These birds are big!

I thought they were gone when I left the house a while later, but I was wrong. I came home to find this one:

This creature was standing beside my neighbor's driveway, which is separated from mine by a narrow patch of grass on the south side of my house. I felt surrounded. This bold bird looked for all the world like it was directing traffic: "This way, guys . . . slow and easy . . . keep it moving . . . plenty of room for everybody."

I took that last photo from the car window when I stopped near the end of the driveway to collect the mail. The bird held its wings in that outspread position until I stepped out of the car, keeping my steps lively and all my limbs in motion to make it obvious that I was alive. The vulture kept its eyes on me while I walked the short distance to the mailbox, and I watched it just as intently.

When I turned around and headed back toward the car, I got the distinct impression that the vulture viewed my presence as nothing more than an annoyance. It watched me from its driveway spot for another couple of seconds, then leisurely flew a few feet across the street into the low branches of a tree, where it continued to keep me under surveillance.

Today they're back again. I saw them earlier when I left to go buy groceries, and I can hear them out there now. One landed briefly on the roof a little while ago. They're beginning to creep me out. I wish they'd hurry up and strip whatever carcass is keeping them here, then move along.

Let It Rain

The sky was overcast all day yesterday, and we knew our late-afternoon Easter celebration might turn into a wet one. We gathered at my daughter Kelli's house anyway. As the women talked and laughed on the covered patio at the back of the house and the men tended to the barbecue under the shop roof at the other end of the pool, the storm clouds grew increasingly ominous:

(Don't forget: you can click on the photos to enlarge them.)

In a matter of minutes the rain began falling, the wind blowing it hard enough to make us all move inside:

Easter egg hunts, one for the kids and one for the young adults, were supposed to be the main events of the day. We waited and waited and waited for the rain to end. It didn't. The little kids didn't care. One of them napped through the storm, the other one played happily with toys that the bunny had brought him. 

The grown kids, on the other hand, could hardly stand the delay. "We could start now," one of them said. "It's only sprinkling."

"Yeah," said another one. "Sprinkling sideways."

They waited at least until the wind died down, then decided to begin their hunt in spite of the rain. Most of the girls had umbrellas.

The boys didn't.

These kids are competitive, and there was cash hidden in those eggs. 

They hunted and gathered until they were pretty sure all the eggs had been found. 

By the time winners and losers had been determined, the food was ready and so were we. Everything was delicious. There were enough choices that I could easily have stuck to my regular low-carb diet, but the side dishes and desserts--not to mention Easter candy--made it a carb-lover's heaven. I feel guilty today about all the things I ate that I should have skipped, but I enjoyed every last bite. And I'm good at dealing with guilt.

I suppose it's fairly common these days that even in the most festive social situations the techies in the family will find a comfortable corner and entertain themselves with an iPad. Our two did just that:

"Put your finger right here," the three-year-old "big kid" instructed. She touched the screen where he'd indicated, and he looked up at the adults nearby, his face beaming. "She's doing it!" he squealed with pride. "She's doing it!"

Another Easter comes and goes. The children grow up but stay young at heart. Life goes on. And it's good, so good.

All Nature Sings

I know that the season of spring officially started ten days ago, but spring and Easter are so closely entwined in my mind that the arrival of spring represents a huge part of my Easter celebration. Before you write that off as one more reason to suspect me of heathenness, let me remind you that for most of my life I was guided by the principle that Easter Sunday was the earliest day in the year when it was acceptable to wear white shoes. White shoes on Good Friday? "Good grief, it's too early!" But white shoes on Easter? "Yay! Look at those brand-new, shiny, white shoes and that pastel-blue, dotted-swiss dress with it's short puffed sleeves. It's Easter, and spring is here!"

There's also the fact that the whole concept of resurrection is symbolized by spring in its budding trees, blooming flowers, fresh green grass, and nests full of baby birds. It isn't a coincidence that rabbits and eggs, fertility symbols if ever any there were, are forever linked to Easter.

These days I think of the earth as my church, and the presence of God feels stronger to me in nature than it ever did on Easter Sundays spent squirming on hard pews. The only things I miss about church in its traditional sense are choir voices singing in harmony and pipe-organ music that reverberated all the way to my bones.

There's one traditional Easter hymn that means more to me than all the rest I remember. I can't even count how many versions of it I watched and listened to on YouTube before finding just the right one to share with you here. This version, with its soft-voiced singer and moving images, expresses my feelings beautifully:

Happy Easter, everybody!

___________________________________________________________

The song is "This is My Father's World," written by Maltbie D. Babcock, performed by Geoff Moore. Thanks to Michael Sturgulewski for creating this lovely video and posting it on YouTube. Click here to read the lyrics.

Simple, Bright and Bold

In this week's Acrylic Exploration class, while I was working in tiny, stingy strokes to try to replicate the detail in a famous painting of three peaches that are past their prime, my mind wandered back to an earlier experience with drawing and painting. I was a more confident artist in those days.

The day I remembered was a March day in 1967. Kim attended a church-sponsored kindergarten that year, and her class was getting ready to put on an Easter presentation for all the parents. Sunlight streamed through the windows of the church where the kids practiced their songs on the first floor of the sanctuary and I listened from the balcony. My younger daughter, Kelli, was up there with me, watching as I painted bunnies, chicks, colored eggs, and flowers on wide, white paper pulled from a roll. My finished work would serve as a backdrop for the children's Easter program. I was happy that day, painting in bright colors and big, bold strokes, not the least bit worried that it wouldn't turn out right.

I'm happy now when I paint, too, but the paint doesn't flow as freely. I wonder if I'll ever feel that easy comfort with painting again. Maybe, if I'd stick to chicks and flowers instead of overripe peaches.

Dr. Fido and Mr. Wolf

Dogs will be dogs. It doesn't matter how pampered a pooch is, given the right incentive and the right opportunity, that ancient wolf-instinct bursts to the surface and reminds us that Fido has a side he doesn't show too often.

This morning's news featured a video recorded by someone who watched as a dog owned by the daughter of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, broke away from the young woman during a walk and killed a baby sea lion. It was very upsetting for everybody at the scene -- except, possibly, for the dog, who probably thought it was doing a bang-up job of exactly what it was supposed to be doing.

Levi and Gimpy get so excited when they see a squirrel that there's no doubt in my mind they'd kill one if they could catch it. There's a dried-up headless lizard on my patio right now that one of them must have left there. Toads are slow and easy to catch, too, but both dogs have learned not to mess with them. Toads secrete some kind of toxin through their skin that makes a dog's mouth foam up as if it's lathered and ready for a shave. (Don't worry; these are little garden toads, not the highly poisonous kind that live in some parts of the country.)

Actually, Levi has killed larger prey, and witnessing that was so upsetting that I felt almost as much sympathy for the people in today's video as I did for the baby seal. Not quite as much, but almost. Levi killed a coot.

It happened this past January, when I was posting every day for the One-a-Day Photo Challenge. Since the list of challenge themes didn't include any topics along the lines of "Oh, Dear God!" or "My Dog Is a Vicious Monster," I didn't write about it at the time it happened, and it isn't the kind of story one wants to just spring on unsuspecting readers out of the blue.

The weather then was terrible. It was a bitter-cold day in the middle of a long string of cold, rainy days. To keep the dogs from chasing one another through the mud, I was taking them outside one at a time, and that morning it was Levi's turn to go first. I opened the back door and saw a coot huddled against the privacy fence at the corner of the patio. Coots don't hang out in people's yards around here, so I don't know if this one fell out of the sky or what, but Levi saw it a split-second before I did, and before I could grab him, he gave chase. I think the coot must have been injured; it could only fly about a foot off the ground. Nevertheless, it took off on a low flight path with Levi right behind it. The coot hit the back fence, made a sharp right turn and flew behind the garden shed, where I couldn't see what was happening. By the time I caught up with them, the coot was already dead. I didn't see even a drop of blood, so I think Levi must have broken its neck.

It was raining softly at that point; I guess you'd call it a heavy mist. I was wearing my heavy, ankle-length winter coat, the one that's several sizes too large for me now, over my bathrobe and pajamas. My feet were sinking into the mud, which was oozing through the holes on top of the old pair of Crocs I had on and rapidly soaking my socks. (Yeah, I was wearing Crocs, with socks no less. Next time I try to rescue a chicken-sized bird, I'll try to be a little more fashion-conscious.) It was difficult to maintain my footing while I tried to pull Levi away from the coot. I'd been yelling at Levi the whole time: "Leave it! Leave it, leave it, leave it!" What a waste of breath. He was not about to leave a perfectly good dead bird.

I finally managed to get a good hold on Levi's collar, twist it to tighten it enough that he couldn't pull out of it, which he was trying with all his might to do, and drag all 75 pounds of him toward the house. He kept giving me a look that I interpreted to mean, "Woman! What are you thinking? Did you not see what I had back there?"

Back on the patio, I could see Gimpy through the glass storm door. He was doing a little four-legged tap dance because he hadn't been outside yet and needed to go, but I couldn't let him out until I'd disposed of the coot's body. Levi and I were both covered with mud. Still gripping Levi's collar, I peeled off my own shoes and socks outside, then marched his muddy hide straight through the den and out the other back door into the driveway, where I stood barefoot on the freezing cold concrete and hosed the mud off of both of us. 

Inside again, I dried my own feet and legs, dried off Levi, and mopped up the trail of muddy footprints. There was Gimpy, still waiting at the back door. I went to my bedroom, got dressed, put on the knee-high rain boots I'd bought but never worn, went back to the kitchen and got a big green trash bag, put the heavy coat on again, apologized to Gimpy and told him to stay, and went outside to get the coot. 

I didn't want to touch the body in case some kind of contagious illness had caused the bird to be there on my patio all by itself, unable to fly, so I turned the bag inside out, placed it on top of the body, then turned the bag right-side out again as I picked it up. The whole experience had been terrible, but when I felt the weight of that poor, lifeless, little body in my hands, I started to cry. At that very moment the sky opened up and the rain began to fall in sheets. "I know, God," I said out loud. "I feel the same way."

I put the deceased coot, wrapped in it's Hefty-bag shroud, in the garbage can. That didn't seem respectful enough, but I didn't know what else to do with it. Hoping like the dickens that Levi hadn't been in the house bragging to Gimpy in whatever kind of secret dog-language they use to communicate, I finally opened the door and let Gimpy out. He was beyond focused on taking care of his personal needs by that time, so he ran through the pouring rain into the opposite corner of the yard, never venturing even close to the crime scene, then hightailed it back to the house. Thank goodness!

Seeing my usually sweet dog kill a big bird was horrible. The memory of it still bothers me. I can't even imagine how upset I'd be if I had to watch him kill a baby sea lion. 

Who Ya Gonna Call?

It's a beautiful, sunny day here today but way colder than it should be in a Deep-South spring. The temperature dropped to the freezing point early this morning, prompting the following exchange when I checked in with my daughters by text:

My message:  Brrrrrrrr! Who do you call for service when your weather's out of whack?

Kelli's immediate response:  Frost Busters.

I love my witty family.

Writing for Fun and for Chicken Feed

The following is what I wrote for the final homework assignment in our Life Writing class. This week we were free to write about anything at all, and I wrote about writing. Like most of my self-indulgent posts, this piece is full of "I, I, I," but you're in there, too, Dear Readers. I don't think you have any idea how much you influence me.

**********

I don't think I'll ever write a book. I might compile some of my short writings into a book one day, but that isn't the same thing at all. To me, the concept of writing a book implies that the author has a beginning, middle, and end in mind from the very first page. That describes the kind of book I like to read, but the self-discipline required to undertake writing enough about one subject to fill a book is almost beyond my comprehension.

Nope. I'm a short-piece kind of a person. I like to write about whatever is on my mind at the moment, any doggone thing that pops into my head. Come to think of it, that's the kind of conversation I enjoy, too. The only thing I really miss about working is the random nature of water-cooler chats in which each topic is a surprise and one subject leads to another, then another, and suddenly your mind is full of all sorts of little tidbits to mull over back at your desk. That's fun.

Writing a book sounds like work. Writing fiction might be fun if you have the kind of mind that conjures up plots, which, unfortunately, I don't. Writing about life could be fun, too, if your life has been an exciting one. Mine has been mostly uninteresting, except for a couple of exciting parts that I have the good sense not to put down for posterity. Writing a short piece is fun, like eating the heart of a watermelon and leaving behind the biggest part of the fruit so you don't have to pick out all those seeds. I think a book would have to have the seeds in it. Of course, seeds have their story, too.

I wonder if it's a characteristic of aging that I only want to do fun things these days. I  used to be a workaholic, but that was way back in the days when I had a job I really enjoyed. At least I enjoyed most of it; there were some things I didn't like. I used to tell people that the reason it's called work and we get paid to do it is that there are certain aspects of every job that aren't pleasant. If every single part of a job were fun, then someone would have to pay the employer for the privilege of doing it. Writing is like any other job, right? Some of it's work, some of it's fun.

I like to work with words, but I like to play with them more. It's fun to give them a rhythm that flows on the page and entices a reader to follow along. It's fun to practice the art of alliteration by stringing together some sibilant sounds. It's fun to write long, complex sentences, the kind of sentences that have numerous clauses and require the writer to use commas like orange-and-white-striped highway construction cones, warning the reader to pay attention and stay in her lane or she'll get lost. I like short sentences, too. And fragments of sentences. I like to get all up in the words and get messy, because sometimes the most interesting sentence begins with a conjunction, ends with a preposition, or contains a split infinitive. I'm happy that some of the rigid rules of grammar have been relaxed in modern writing, but I think a writer needs to know those rules in order to enjoy the experience of breaking them occasionally. Unintentional bad grammar, that which was obviously used neither as a tool for dialogue nor to express the writer's voice, yanks me right out of a good story. A creatively constructed sentence, on the other hand, piques my interest as a reader and as a writer.

I enjoy the process of writing immensely when there's something specific on my mind,  when my thoughts on the subject are clear, and when the right words flow forth to communicate those thoughts effectively. In fact, more than anything else, it's that deep need to communicate, to be understood, that drives me to write. When a single reader tells me, "I get what you're saying," or "I understand how you feel," I practically skip back to the keyboard to write something else that might elicit a similar response, the same kind of human connection.

Maybe it's the positive reinforcement of comments that has conditioned me to write short pieces. Do you remember the experiment in which a chicken was taught to ring a bell? If the chicken pulled the string that rang an attached bell, a few pieces of feed dropped into a dish. The chicken rang the bell again and again. What do you suppose would have happened if the chicken had had to ring the bell a hundred times to get a few tasty morsels? Even if the chicken were optimistic or masochistic enough to do all that work, it would probably feel disappointed about the results. "Man," the chicken might think, "look how hard I worked, and all they're paying me is chicken feed."

I think that's how writing works for me. I'm that chicken. Writing a short blog post is my version of ringing the bell, then I hover over the comment box and hope somebody drops a little reward in there. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I go hungry, but the point is that every time I ring the bell, there's at least an opportunity for a reward.

Now, let's say I somehow overpower my short attention span and write and write and write until one day there's enough material for a book. And let's say I self-publish that book, because I'm too instant-gratification oriented and too afraid of rejection to spend all my time and all my hopefulness on seeking out a publisher. Now let's pretend that the day has arrived: my e-book is available for purchase online. I have no great expectations, so the book is cheap, and a few people take a chance and buy it. Maybe one of them writes a review, and maybe (we're imagining, remember?) the review is a good one. There's my reward. Finally. And I feel really, really happy about it, but not really any happier than I feel when someone leaves a comment on a short blog post.

I like the comments, the feedback, the human connection. That's the rush. The reward. The fun of it. That's why I like writing short pieces. That's why I don't think I'll ever write a book.

Separated by Centuries

Each week I look forward to having my Sunday breakfast with Peter Tibbles. Peter writes the weekly "Elder Music" column on Ronni Bennett's blog, Time Goes By.

This morning's music column featured the clarinet, which, with all due respect to my two daughters, who both attempted to master the clarinet in elementary school, is not my favorite instrument. I'm more of a piano and guitar kind of person. Still, I listened to a few bars of each piece, and some of it was really nice. But that's not why I'm writing about it here.

What grabbed me about this morning's column was the portrait of Johann Christian Bach. I had to do a double-take. You guys, there was a composer running around in the mid-1700s who had Chris Noth's eyes! Look at this:

I'd know those eyes anywhere, and the resemblance doesn't even stop there. Granted, Johann Christian was fleshier in the jowls, but their chins are quite similar, and both of them have that scruffy-upper-lip thing going on. Their foreheads look alike, too, although Chris Noth's widow's peak is more pronounced.

Imagine a musician of the Classical Era flashing a Chris-Noth-like smile during a performance. Don't you just know those straitlaced ladies in their ornate dresses and fancy hats perched on top of elaborate wigs would have been working their lace-edged fans?

When the Honesty's Too Much

Last Saturday I wrote about the difficulty I was experiencing in completing a Life Writing class assignment about love. Since then I finished the assignment--though I wasn't very happy with my final results--and read it aloud in the next class. Here's the first paragraph of what I wrote:

"I learned of love through fairy tales. Like so many other girls of my generation, I believed that one day a handsome prince would ride into my life and rescue me from peril or monotony and that our love would be both immediate and everlasting."

After nearly three full pages of single-spaced typing, this was the last paragraph:

"I don't think I'm cynical about love. I still find pleasure in reading or listening to someone else's love story, especially if it has a happily-ever-after ending. I just don't believe in fairy tales anymore. Life has taught me to forget about princes. And the horses they rode in on."

Now, those of you who visit here regularly know how much I enjoy delving into past experiences and writing about them here, but you may have also noticed that only a handful of entries written over a seven-year period have anything at all to do with romantic relationships. That isn't by accident. There are issues of privacy, of course, but the main reason I don't write about those memories is that I don't like to think about them. In fact, I hardly ever do think about them. I haven't been particularly fortunate in the romance department and sometimes, though I almost never admit it, that makes me sad. Sometimes it just pisses me off.

Anyway, having submerged my head in those dark waters for the sake of the assignment, I'll tell you that this week's Saturday Song Selection became popular at a time when my second (and last and best) marriage was beginning to fray significantly around its edges. It's an accurate reflection of how I felt in those days, and it's a great song despite its unpleasant associations. I'll post it here, then I'll take a deep, cleansing breath, tuck the disappointments back into the deep pocket where they live, and count my many, many blessings.

The song is "Sometimes When We Touch" by Dan Hill.

Thanks to georgeallen35m for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Maybe

This is one of those days when everything just feels right. As it should be. Copacetic. The bills have been paid, tax forms submitted, groceries purchased, blogs scoured for spam, spam comments deleted. No homework is due until Monday. There's housework to do, but no pressure to do it. Nobody's coming over. Heck, I dragged out the vacuum cleaner long enough ago that there's a fine coating of dust on it now. To increase my motivation to use it, I parked it right in front of the kitchen stove, where it would be in my way. I've since cooked a pot of chili around it. I might vacuum today and I might not.

The only piece of business I had hoped to conduct today is to register for a follow-up class to the art course I've been taking. It's an add-on course, not in the catalog, so the only way to register is by telephone. I made that call earlier this morning, but the girl who answered the phone identified herself as a student worker and said she couldn't take my information because she didn't want to "mess anything up." Bless her heart. I applaud her honesty. Maybe she'll follow through on her promise to have someone call me back, and I can check that off my list.

Gimpy and Levi are sleeping soundly nearby. Outside the air is full of birdsong, and there are squirrels--so many more squirrels than usual--running all over the place. I wonder why they're making themselves so conspicuous today. Maybe they know something I don't know. Maybe the redtail hawks that live in the trees behind my back fence are away today, perhaps at a swooping-and-diving seminar.

It's gray outside again, but that's perfect for a day like today. It's almost like a thank-you note from God or Mother Nature: "We know you've been busy, so today is a special gift for you. Stay indoors. Kick back. Read a book. You deserve it." Maybe that's exactly what I'll do. I'm just self-indulgent (and living in denial) enough to believe I do deserve it. So maybe I'll read for the rest of the day. And maybe I'll take a nap.

Wonky Saucer, Crooked Spoon

Here's the number-one thing I've learned about painting a still life: I should stick to landscapes.

In the last Acrylics Exploration class we learned how to apply light and shadow to a painted object to make it appear three-dimensional instead of flat. The instructor gave each of us a still-life picture that demonstrated that concept and asked us to copy it. She explained how the shading should change softly and subtly as it grew darker or lighter. I understood her instructions clearly, but executing them was another matter entirely.

The bottom of these two pictures (as if you couldn't tell) is mine:

Now that it's dry and I can see what's wrong with the shading, I might be able to touch it up and get a better result, but I have neither the skill nor the energy to try to fix that wobbly-looking, pointy-edged saucer. And the spoon? It would be okay for stirring, I suppose, but anyone who tried to use it to transport a sip of hot liquid from cup to mouth would end up with a little spill in the lap region. I've learned that it's a lot easier to paint the imperfect edges of a perfect tree than the precise lines of a man-made dish.

You know what else I've learned about painting? A less-than-stellar end result doesn't diminish the joy of the work itself. It's fun and it's therapeutic. What's even better is that the dogs seem to think it's important. They don't beg for stuff while I'm painting. I like that.

Ah, Spring!

Spring has officially arrived, but the brilliant pinks and blues and greens we associate with it are missing today. It's rainy and drab outside. I don't mind. I saw enough signs of spring yesterday to tide me over until the gray is gone.

When I go to the post office, which I did yesterday, I know the trip will be a slow one with frequent stops at traffic lights and long waits for construction where a third lane is being added to the highway. That means there'll be plenty of opportunity to snap a picture or two, so I always take my camera along. If you don't mind looking through my dirty car windows, you might enjoy some of the color I saw yesterday:

No flowers in this shot, but aren't the trees gorgeous?

Azaleas bursting into bloom at the post office.

More azaleas and another amazing oak tree.

Still another beautiful oak, this one by the Catholic church.

These townhouses were already architecturally
charming; the pretty red flowers add to the effect.

There's even a tiny patch of pale pink azaleas next to the
car wash (where I should have gone but didn't).

So, come on, Spring. You've given us a hint, now show your stuff.

Taking the (Not So) Scenic Route

My great-grandson, Owen, turned three on Saturday. I left home in plenty of time to get to his birthday party by the appointed hour but arrived almost 20 minutes late. Point A on the map below is my house. Point B is my granddaughter's house, where the party was being held.

As you can see by following the blue line near the top of the map, the route from my house to hers is fairly uncomplicated. That's the way I always go there. It's the way I intended to go on Saturday. But you see that lone green dot about a half inch east of my house? That's where things went wrong.

There's a busy intersection under that green dot. All I needed to do there was make a left-turn, go a short distance under the interstate, then turn right. The traffic light was red (of course, it was). The heaviest traffic there runs north and south, so the east-west red light is an extra-long one. That was okay; I'd allowed plenty of time and didn't mind waiting. Also, in the half mile I'd traveled from home, I'd become interested in an NPR interview with journalist Jason Leopold, so I was being entertained. In fact, I became so totally engrossed in the interview that my mind wasn't on my driving when the light changed. I made the left turn, but instead of crossing under the interstate, I turned right onto the entrance ramp. I was halfway up there--next exit five miles--before I snapped out of the interview and comprehended what I'd done. Thank goodness I came to my senses before I had to merge.

So. The red line on the map marks the route I actually traveled to the birthday party. Where the red line crosses over the blue one on the right-hand side of the map, I was looking for a street name. There was no street name. There was an unfamiliar Louisiana highway number instead. There was only a highway number where the red line turns eastward again, too, but that one I knew, and seeing it meant I'd gone too far north. I followed that road until I could turn right again. Headed south, I overshot the road I wanted for a second time, turned around in someone's driveway, and finally--finally!--figured out how to get where I wanted to go.

Don't you hate when that happens?

Happy St. Patrick's Day Anyway

All week long I've planned that today, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I'd post a photo of my stepfather's Irish mother, Agnes Blair Hofmann. This morning it occurred to me that Agnes wasn't Irish; she was a Scotswoman. What had I been thinking?

Never mind. Agnes is all I've got for today. She was lovely, and my daughters and my sister have never seen her picture, so Agnes it is.

"My Love Is Like a Melody . . ."

The most recent homework assignment for our Life Writing class is to write about love. The week has almost gone by, and I haven't started on it yet. There's a lot I could write about romantic love, but I want my story to have a positive, upbeat ending. That hasn't been my experience with romance.

Familial love is the kind that's always been truest for me. There, too, I'm stumped. We're supposed to make our stories detailed: names, dates, places, physical descriptions. If I write that much information about all the people I love, there won't be time to read it aloud. So how do I choose? Who do I choose? Who do I leave out? I'll figure it out somehow.

In the meantime, thinking about my loved ones made it easy to decide on this week's Saturday Song Selection. It's a love song, it's an oldie--a real oldie, written in 1794 by the Scottish poet Robert Burns--and it always reminds me of the deep love I feel for the two bonnie lasses who are my daughters. I hope it makes you think of someone special, too.

The song is "My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose," performed by the late Eva Cassidy.
Thanks to vanu49again for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Final Touches

Ten minutes ago I called myself finished with my first painting for the Acrylic Exploration class. It's far from perfect, but one thing I learned in this class is that nature paintings are very forgiving. And so am I. I'm happy to report that any perfectionistic tendencies I once had have long since fled the premises of my brain, leaving me free to experiment and live peacefully with my mistakes. Can I get a big hurrah for personal growth?

Errors aside, I'm happy enough with these first results that I plan to take a follow-up class when this one ends after two more sessions. It's hard to imagine I'll ever have the confidence to paint what I see in real life, but I'm sure having fun copying someone else's work.

It's Friday. It's warm and sunny. My painting is finished, and I'm headed outside to eat lunch and play fetch with Levi and Gimpy. Life is good.

Green Things

Louisiana's semitropical climate means the scenery around here never looks totally dead in the winter. Drab, yes, but not dead. Spring weather usually comes early for us, but this year it's been lagging. A lot of trees that would normally be budding by now are still bare, like this one in my neighbor's yard:

The good news is that bare trees are exceptions. Our world is turning green again. I can't think of anything I find more invigorating than the varied green hues of nature. Those vivid colors make me feel as if, having been long deprived of oxygen, I've suddenly regained the ability to inhale full, rich breaths. I'd be inclined to write that off as imagination, except that leaves really do give off oxygen, so maybe there's more to it than that.

I love the way the morning light shines on this tree behind my back fence, making its leaves glisten like shards of stained glass:

In the late afternoon the sun shines from the opposite direction, lighting up the front lawn and the low-hanging branches of our live-oak tree:

Across the road and a little farther north, where the little patch of woods thins out,
the afternoon sun backlights the trees and casts long shadows across newly green grass:

Of course, the trees and the grass aren't the only green things showing a sudden burst of life:

The lizards are flourishing. As I write this, a big one like the one in the picture is in my house. I opened the backdoor, Levi stepped out, saw the lizard, and made a grab for it. The lizard made a fake-out move, then ran between Levi's legs and through the open door, where it promptly darted behind a row of heavy bookcases.

I don't mind these creatures at all when they're outside where they belong, but they make me nervous when they come inside. I'm hoping this one will stay where it is and watch for an opportunity to make its way outside again. I have goosebumps from just thinking about what could happen if it decides to explore my house. If you never see another post here, you'll know it jumped on me.

Pontificating about the Papal Election

Two days? Can you believe it took only two days to pick a pope? I'm impressed. My message to the College of Cardinals would be, "Congratulations, Your Eminences, way to go! And would you please come en masse to the United States and teach our congress how you did it."

Now, I know this story has been all over the news since Pope Benedict XVI resigned, but most of the news I've been unable to avoid seen has been about speculation: Why did the outgoing pope resign? Who would be chosen to replace him? I didn't see a single television ad in which one papal candidate dished dirt about another one. I haven't heard a single cardinal complain about his mailbox being flooded with colorful, oversized mail-outs, bearing bullet-pointed lists of reasons to vote--or not vote--for a certain candidate. Imagine that. An election without ads, negative or otherwise.

Of course, you know they talked amongst themselves. I'll bet they did some lobbying, wagging their tongues about an assortment of scandals, gossiping as aggressively as little old la -- heh-heh -- I started to type "little old ladies," but picturing female cardinals is such a stretch I don't even want to go there.

Anyway, the election is over, and the we-have-a-winner message of white smoke poured out over the Vatican to let the whole world know. Good luck, Pope Francis, you've taken on a huge job.

Two days. Only two days. I'm not Catholic, never have been, but I think I'll send up a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys just to show how much I appreciate political efficiency.