Jalopy

I am operating on overload. Still pushing through and accomplishing the tasks, but without heart. I'm just doing what I have to do. 

If I were a car I'd be a jalopy. 

My tires are losing their grip, my gears are grinding, my shocks are sagging and my engine is overheating. I'm limping along, nursed by temporary fixes.

I understand that my Cadillac days are behind and that my wish to be a Bentley...hmm, or Ferrari is just highly unlikely imagination, they are not how I roll. But, I would like to be a well oiled machine, a collectable, a restored classic collectable. 

I need my paint polished, and my headlights shined. I need to get the cobwebs out of my carburetor, inflate my tires, flush my radiator and recharge my battery. 

I'm going for a drive.

Going to put a few hundred miles distance between me and here. I'm going where the air is clean and cool and smells like burning leaves and campfire s'mores. I'm going where the food is flavored by an authentic Autumn seasoning and the apple cider is hot and spiced on my taste-buds. I'm going where the sheets are smooth white and pillows surround like soft hugs. I'm going where orange, yellow and red leafed foliage don't grow close to the ground like tropical Florida's Fall wanna-be's, where instead those vivid colors dress the tall forests. A vision of loveliness for sore eyes.

It won't be long before each breath of Autumn has cleansed and every cell is birthed in new oxygen. It's good that it won't take long because I haven't long, just a handful of days and then it's back to the familiar. I will again shed my sweaters and shoes, and the tastes and smells and sights will recede, almost like it never even happened. But I'll notice my gears grind less, my ride has smoothed out and my check engine light is off.

When I pull into a parking space back on the job, I'll see my reflection in the car next to me, and be pleased to see I'm not a jalopy after all. I am a classic restoration.

Emerald of the Sea

Fifteen minutes, that's all I had left of my one hour lunch break. Before the hour even began I had already decided to set aside a portion of it enjoying the edge of the ocean. Today it is calm, clear, blue and green, quietly lapping sand and the boulders placed there as a wave-break and sand retainer. 

I wish I could sit and stay awhile, but knowing I can't, I walk up the shore hoping to find a treasure. I imagine what a thrill it would be to find a long lost misshapen hand forged gold coin, washed up at my feet from a sunken ship. None today. I pick up an almost heart shaped rock but stand it up on its bottom too rounded to be an accurate heart, pushing it into the moist sand so what sticks up still looks like a heart, and walk on. 

With ten minutes left, I see up ahead a small patch of shells on the otherwise sparsely shelled beach, and head to that spot. I should be able to get there, look around and get back to my shoes in ten minutes. 

Fairly ordinary shells, no gold coins, no fabulous rocks, but then, there it is, a lovely half dollar sized triangular shaped sea emerald. Most would probably say it's a piece of glass, but I beg to differ. I see it already set and hanging around my neck, an emerald, a treasure. 

Success has been met so I step back toward my shoes and shuttle awaiting its driver. My co-worker Bob says, I'm surprised you're not at the beach". I grin and open my hand to reveal my find, replying "I just was". He thinks I should sell the things I make, so we discuss briefly how I should do that. I think I should sell these little treasure too, but what he doesn't know is that there is always a story to go along with my creations, a memory of sorts. I get personally attached which makes it difficult sometimes to part with the stuff I make. I hate to see it go. 

This particular find is a bottle bottom. It has a 95 on it. Maybe I should sell the necklace for $95. Maybe the 95 indicates a grade value, right between a 90 and a 100, a solid "A". Maybe it's significance is a year, 1995 is the year my last baby started school. Maybe it's of no significance at all, just a couple of numbers on a sand-ed hunk of green glass.

That could be all it is, but I don't think so. I think I had a fifteen minute gift of life that I used to go on a treasure hunt. And I found a sea emerald.

Yep, that's what I think.

P.J.

"What a Sham"!

Beautiful sheets and towels are the cornerstone of my bedroom and bathroom. Against crisp white walls these textiles offer a mini-redecorating every time fresh ones are placed, even as far as coordinating with the mood I am in when the changing occurs. Turquoise for a vacation-y kind of mood, pink for a flowery feel, floral for feminine, and when I’m in need of a little pick-me-up, yellow.  I can easily make the change I desire with minimal effort and expense.

The clearance isle of my favorite store Homegoods, is rarely overlooked when in that part of town in my search for new inexpensive choices. I always find lovely prints in pillow shams and duvet covers and until recently have always passed them over since I use neither, preferring instead and hoping against all hope, to find fabulously printed sheets and pillow cases. Alas it is always shams, shams, shams. Why oh why won’t linen manufacturers print pretty sheets, pillow cases and shams? I want great prints on sheets and pillow cases! Well, I have outsmarted them and found my way around that. Now, I buy those beautiful shams and use them for pillow cases. Who says shams have to be just for show? I don’t even like show or need show, it’s just for me. I like beautiful function. I have 2 regular size pillows, one bolster, and one small pillow, all are used every night. One pillow under head, one under leg, the bolster gets hugged and the small one goes over my ear, they function. When I make the bed in the morning the pillows are propped nicely to function as pretty by day in the way I make my bed. I don’t want a bunch of pillows piled up off to the side while I sleep only to be replaced each day. That just makes an additional unnecessary and unwanted task. My functional pillows must carry the dual burden of function and pretty, so why not use a pair of lovely shams for both day and night?

It’s not the first time I’ve bucked the system. Sometimes beach towels lend a fun pop of color to my bed. My absolute favorite is one from Holland, literally. My Dutch friend brought it over from a company there, saving me shipping costs that amounted to more than the textile itself. It’s so pretty, red with flowers and birds and double the size of a normal beach towel so that it fits just right on my double bed. It’s perfect for the Christmas season when a little heavier cover is needed on chilled Florida nights, while not overly heavy.

Beyond sheets and towels I have rebelled and refused to conform in other areas as well. Several years ago a friend whispered in my ear “women your age should not have long hair”. Really?! Says who?! A woman older than my age is the reason I have been compelled to have this long gray hair. It is longer now than when that was said to me and if I had my druthers it would be longer still. When I told my daughter’s friends mother that I was considering an expensive private school for my daughters high school years, she said “you can’t afford that”. She greatly underestimated my determination.  As an employee of the school I enjoyed half priced tuition and an income to pay the other half, she attended all four of her high school years and topped them off with a senior trip to Europe. When my car was worn out and I had no savings, I planned a trip out west with six of my seven kids, ages five to seventeen years old, the seventh and oldest being already out on his own chose not to come along.  We traveled well over 3000 miles over six weeks, to Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, and the Petrified Forest. We saw prairie dogs, geysers, soddies, ghost towns,  rode horses, went to an amusement park, got helped by strangers when our car broke down, which by the way turned into the best four days of the trip, camped in corn fields and on mountain tops. I even repaired my own trailer wiring, a trailer that I did not own until after I planned the trip. From the concept to departure only three and half months had passed for it to all come together. How? Nothing short of miraculous! Why? Because I was determined to make it happen and did not box myself into a predetermined way that it should, being willing to accept the surprises that came with the plans. I did what could not be done, by finding and creating alternative ways that it could be done. In the end it was more satisfying and fulfilling than it might have been had it been planned and worked out any other way, or the way I would have initially chosen, or the way everybody else would have done it, kind of like pillow shams.

There is no logical reason whatsoever for my life to have worked out as it has. All those times someone said “you can’t”, I did. My aunt told me “you can’t marry him, he’s not a Christian”, I married him. It proved to be a bad idea, she was right in theory, but she said I couldn’t, I don’t respond well to those words. I say this simply to point out my utter rebelliousness, I am an absolute rebel. Conforming goes against my grain. Suggestions can be made but that does not mean I will take you up on them. Homegoods and Ralph Lauren can sell me a sham, designed with a specific intention but if I choose to use it differently, tough toenails, nobody’s business but mine. Some things are cut and dry, black and white, not to be questioned, for our own good and that of others, but most of life is full of gray areas. Weighing things and living with the results of choices is part of the deal.

My unreasonable stubbornness should have ruined me, but there were always bigger things happening behind the scenes. I learned, the hard way that so much of life is a sham, a big fat lie! I sought out for myself and learned where I could find the truth, leaning not on my own understanding, nor the perceived understanding of even the best intended people. Truth is. Truth is not, variable. I will offer truth every chance I get because it is ultimately the difference between life and death.  Jesus said” I am the Way the Truth and the Life”. Jesus said His Father in heaven is God, and “I and my Father are one”. Jesus said the words in the Bible are written that we might believe and have life abundant and everlasting. From firsthand experience I am able to know what I can and cannot do, based on truth. Not my own, not that of a careless whisperer, or an outside observer, not that of a well meaning aunt, or Ralph Lauren, but Jesus alone. To all else I say, “what a sham”!

Don’t be sold a bill of goods, don’t be manipulated, brain washed or taken advantage of. You may be doing life the way everybody else is, or the way it’s always been done, or the way some well respected guru or philosopher or scientist theorizes or advises, but you alone must search out where the preponderance of evidence lies in the case for truth. In the end, only you are responsible for only you. Don’t wait to discover you should have done it all differently. Think outside the box that everyone and everything keeps you in. Rebel, go against the grain, do what “they” tell you “you can’t”, seek out the truth for yourself. Figure out what the right thing is and stand for it so that you can boldly and confidently say to all the rest, “what a sham”!