Teasing

“It's spring fever.... You don't quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” Mark Twain

Yesterday felt like the beginnings of spring. I took a very long walk, grateful for the chance to air my brain out a bit. Come spring, I always love throwing open the house windows, the stagnant air from a winter of flu and dry heat is gone. I don't feel just this way about my house, there are times when I feel this very way about myself - the interior cacophony of thoughts, emotions, will. I take a similar line with this as well. A very long walk serves the purpose or, as a good second, a drive with all the windows down. Either way, I imagine my head having hinges somewhere near the back, the head flips open, exposing all the cogs and bolts of an imperfect mind to a good freshening out. I find this thought a tad macabre, but it works well for me.

So yesterday, I took a long walk - late afternoon and the sky was bright blue. I actually love the exposed silhouettes of the trees during winter; there's a grace to their lines. As I walked, I noticed a fat Blue Jay was following me from tree to tree, always just one tree ahead. I don't think I've ever seen a bird such a lavender blue or so well fed. He was also a curious little bugger. I walked home feeling exceptionally satiated myself, as if I could not want a bit more from life.

This morning I awoke to white snow flakes in Atlanta, my budding spring vanished once again. Instead, I am hefting my favorite quilt around the house, keeping her wrapped around my shoulders while my feet have been wearing mammoth slippers, fit for schlepping it across Siberia. This does not inspire warm thoughts.

I do however wonder where my Blue Jay went for this latest snow and where all that clear, fresh thinking that was mine just yesterday went to.

Here's to the harbingers of spring and their teasing ways!

Love and Cinema

"The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend."
the very opinionated, Katherine Hepburn

In love with the idea of love? Praise or blame cinema. I remember Sunday afternoons upstairs in my mom's bed, watching old movies with her. I thought the young and rakish Cary Grant was the end-all-be-all. I love a good old movie, especially an upbeat romance. So here is my "Must See Movies" that are sure to inspire a bit of amore (in no particular order):

1. How to Steal A Million (Hepburn, O'Toole)
2. Love in the Afternoon (Hepburn, Cooper)
3. It Happened One Night (Gable, Colbert)
4. Sense and Sensibility (the Emma Thompson version, of course! The end, where she breaks down into hysterical laughter/crying gets me every time. Such relief!)
5. The Philadelphia Story (a great line-up: Grant, Hepburn, Stewart).
6. Roman Holiday (Peck, Hepburn and the VESPA!)


7. The Awful Truth (Grant, Dunne)
8. What's Up Doc? (How did cute Ryan O'Neil get so messed up?)
9. Room with a View (for all you anglophiles)
10. Far from the Madding Crowd (Julie Christie)

Okay, this is my list for today. Ask me tomorrow and it would surely be different, but, hey, such is love - fickle.

Please tell me a movie you enjoy but, whatever you do, don't tell me "The Way We Were." That movie makes me cry a river, not a pretty sight. Lots of snot, tissues, red face.

I am Woman, Hear Me Roar.

Once, a long time ago, I had to research Joan of Arc and, with a friend, create a video depicting important moments in her life. As I remember it, we were quickly approaching summer vacation and I and my friend were already a little giddy. Anyhow, I loved researching this gutsy, probably slightly off-kilter woman. I remember we decided to enact her final moments in the throes of death with Morrison's "Come On Baby, Light My Fire," playing in the background. Yes, the ham in me was in rare form. We had a blast. Anyhoo, this is leading to my love of learning about gutsy, vivid women (you many not have seen that coming).

I just read 2 biographical books that left me ready to confront dictators, convert millions to a cause or traipse across Africa. Seriously, you read about these women and you wonder how you will ever be satisfied with laundry and internet shopping again. Inspired and disillusioned all at once - who knew a book could do such a thing?

So, first book up: Dancing to the Precipice, by Caroline Moorehead. This biography follows the life of Lucie De La Tour Du Pin. Born in 1770 to an elite family within the French aristocracy, she lived through the tumult of the French Revolution and its repercussions. She was first a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette and then in the intimate circle of Napoleon. Just so you don't think this girl is fluff, she also managed, during the French Revolution, to escape with her family to New York where she ran her own successful dairy farm, only to return several years later. Crazy.

Fair Warning: Lots of french names go whizzing by and that can get a bit old.
Next up: Wildflower, Mark Seal. For all of you who love Out of Africa or West with the Night, this book will surely be more than comfortable in their company. Joan Root grew up in Kenya in the 1930s and was the silent partner to her husband/adventurer/filmmaker, Alan Root (hiss). Their nature films were huge in the 1960s and Joan was devoted to the success of her husband and to the preservation of her beloved Africa. I will not spoil the ending, suffice to say, how this woman did not machete chop dear Alan, I'll never know. Joan was both tenacious and tender at the same time - a rare achievement.

So both books are very well written and inspiring. They also leave you with a foreboding feeling that a life well lived - adventure, integrity, people to love - does NOT entitle one to a happy ending, as so aptly exemplified by dear Joan of Arc.

Please share your latest books that you've loved.

Bits

My thoughts are in a million and one places right now, but listing sounds wonderful. So here is a nice general list - the things I'm loving right now. Please share something you are thoroughly enjoying right now, mundane or exotic, doesn't matter. How I love hearing from you!

Miscellaneous Things/People/Places I'm Loving (in no particular order):

1. Celestial Seasonings Tangerine Orange Herbal Tea

2. Aveda's Tangerine Oil (sensing a theme?)


3. The series "White Collar." So many things I could say, but probably should not. Anyhow, delightful.

4. The idea of travel - I crave the Orient Express, Istanbul, Prague, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Seville and ALL of Italy.

5. Tiny, little cherry tomatoes.

6. Letters in the mail - nothing better.

7. Commenting on soccer players' (or futbol, whichever you prefer) hair styles. This drives my husband slightly nanners.

8. The word "screed." Great word. I'm sure we've all endured a screed or two in our lifetimes.

9. Velvet couches. Lux galore.

10. C.O. Bigelow's lemon lip gloss. Yum.

11. The color Peacock Blue. Don't know if I have the courage to a paint a room in it, but maybe a chair.

12. Walking, walking, walking.

13. Polite people. A dinosaur nearing extinction.

14. And this picture:


Thank heavens for the little things that brighten our days!

The Art and Science of Female

I am a woman searching for her high heels, her cream blush, her bra, her favorite bag. A robber? Temporary amnesia? No, daughters. I am smooshed between a toddler and a twelve year old. The difference? Surprisingly, very little. I find my high heels on my toddler girl. She walks beautifully in them and with far more nonchalant hip sway then I could ever muster. My blush discretely disappears yet my twelve year old has the enviable color of youth and roses on her cheeks. My bra? Well, it's on my toddler's head as a hat - a true re-configuration.

They are each pushing - pushing to know what is female and to put it on like a coat, a pink coat at that. But it is so much more then the trappings of Sephora. But this is what I get a kick of - their quest for independence. This I relate to. My toddler will no longer wait for me to place her in her highchair. It is a tower she must climb. I stand just behind, my hands ready to catch her, and even this annoys her ego. My 12 year old girl wants to roam a mall with her friends and have her very own cell phone (ah, the bane of our relationship).

When my oldest girl was diagnosed in the hospital with Type I, diabetes, we all felt thrown into deep water. A wonderful nurse came in to teach my 8 year old girl how to take her shots (at least 5-7 shots a day). The nurse called us over and said, "Okay, mom and dad, I'm going to teach you how to give this girl her shots." Well, my daughter wasn't having it. She told the nurse, "No, you teach me. I'm going to give myself my own shots." The nurse looked at us. My husband and I looked at each other and then we took the plunge, "Yeah, okay. Teach her how to do it." And since then, that's how it has always been. Independence personified.

Toddlers, girls, women crave to prove, mostly to themselves. I can hack this. I will master this - the high heel, geometry, the art of flirting, rollerskating, taxes. I'm watching it before my very eyes - two girls determined to figure it out. It's fun to watch.

2010: Slaying the Dragon

So we have stumbled, nay tripped, into 2010. Lovely blank calender with so much possibility. Possibility is so alluring, sort of grabs your imagination and runs with it. Being a list fanatic, of course I have developed a list for 2010, but I will not bore you with the entire list. Over the years, and the course of much reading on the subject of goals, I have learned to try to keep goals specific and in the realm of realism. Hate that word - realism. How ugly. But that said, realism in part is so ugly because it means dealing with the hard, inescapable nuts and bolts of what is. My ugly dose of realism: I can't sleep. So the ugly, corresponding goal: To learn how to sleep like a normal person. Go to bed at a normal time, wake up. No fits of tossing and turning, no hot baths at 3 in the morning, no raiding the fridge at 4.

Kudos to me - I was sent to a sleep neurologist. Brainy woman and her side-kick told me that there is no medicine to cure this inability to sleep, especially one associated with chronic illness. Sigh. No quick fix? No. She told me that my brain had completely forgotten how to sleep, when to sleep, etc. Side note: I understand forgetting how to use your Cusinart - totally get that. Forgetting how to sleep? NOT a good sign of things to come.

So I went home with a stinking list - yes, I am giving the word "list" a negative connotation here. This is not pretty. I am to take no nap, beyond a 1/2 hour nap in the afternoon. Doesn't matter how yucky sick I am or brain dead. Too bad. I am not to go to bed before 1 o'clock (AM!) and I must be up by 6 0'clock - no matter what. No pity, if I am unable to sleep at all. Up, up you sad bag of bones. The idea is that by sheer torture, my body will submit and eventually return to a regular sleeping pattern. Key word: torture.

These are the hard knocks of an insomniac. But I am determined to kick this baby to the curb. This sleep thing has me by the throat and 2010 will be the year that this woman takes back the night. Yeehaw.

(dear friends, are you busy sharpening a sword? Preparing to slay any dragons? What is your quest?)

Glory Cloak

"A little kingdom I possess, where thoughts and feelings dwell; And very hard the task I find of governing it well. " Louisa May Alcott

Has anyone ever come into your life in the nick of time? A bright spot, completely unforeseen. This happens to me regularly. I find inspiration and guidance from the experiences and words of all sorts of people. They give me courage and help me in the inevitable course corrections. Tonight I found kinship in Lousia May Alcott. Unexpected, certainly. I watched a wonderful adaptation of her life taken directly from her letters and journals. There was so much going on in her head, so many thoughts and passions and wit. She struggled hard on many fronts, but always rallied. But she was blessed with a circle of people who inspired and encouraged her. Her mother once made her a cloak, named "the glory cloak" to aid her in her struggle with the manuscript Moods. Louisa was told to wrap it tight around her and the words and stories would most certainly come. She wore that cloak and her book was published, as well as many thereafter.

Her mother was inspired and knew what to give her daughter in her moment of hesitation and fear. Not all glory cloaks are tangible, but I have been wrapped tight in the intangible kind many times over. Even tonight, I felt the encouraging hand of a woman long gone. I think I need to read Ms. Alcott's letters and journals; I may have found yet another friend.