Old Man Winter

     Looking out at the first measurable amount of snow fall for the season, a whopping four inches, I was transported back to a time long ago.

     It was a time when I was much younger.  A time I was on my own, living alone. Brave. Crazy. Daring.  A time when I donned a pair of coveralls and shoveled snow out of a driveway that was about 40 feet long.....with a corn scoop.  The good old days.

     Fast forwarding back to the present, I took stock of the situation, from the warmth of the kitchen window.  Living alone now, even though it is temporary, is not near the fun it was many moons ago. But, I knew if the deck and sidewalks were going to be cleaned off, it was up to me to do it.

     I gathered all the warm apparel I could find.  Coat, gloves, scarf, boots and earmuffs.  I never wear a hat, it musses up my hair, but I always am equipped with my signature earmuffs.  They are the kind that wrap around the back of the neck so as not to do above mentioned mussiness.  I put on all the winter garb and pulled the hood of my hooded sweatshirt out of the backside of my coat. Another signature piece of clothing, if the temperature is under 70 degrees, I have on a hooded sweatshirt.

     Since this snowfall was expected, I had brought the snow scoop in the house and placed it by the back door.  I stood at the door, scoop in hand, I could do this.  I opened the door and stepped out.

     Have I ever mentioned the awning that is over the back door?  It is a lovely half circle, metal contraption, that is covered in weatherproof material.  When we first put it up, our daughters decided it looked like the neighborhood bar and grill.  I always preferred to call it the bistro, but they would roll their eyes and go about their merry way.  The awning serves a useful purpose of providing shelter when standing with arms full of grocery sacks, in the rain, while trying to find the key to the door.  It also catches snow......lots of snow.  So, the trick is to open the door, step out, shut the door and wait for the snow to fall off the awning.

     I failed to remember this most important fact.  Within seconds of closing the door and taking that first step, I was engulfed in four cubic feet of snow.  Not wanting to go back into the house and fling snow all over the kitchen, I feverishly scooped my way to the garage.  Once inside, I removed most of the above mentioned winter apparel.  The hood on my hooded sweatshirt might as well had been a bucket strapped to my back with the amount of snow that was in it.  I started to do what surely looked like a rain dance, to get the snow out of my hood since most of it was wanting to go down my back.  Dang, that stuff was cold!

     After I was confident that the majority of the snow was off, I quickly redressed.  Since I was already in the garage, I figured I might as well get in the car and go get the mail.  As I reached for the door handle, I caught a glimpse of my reflection on the glass. There, on the top of my head, on my freshly fixed hair, was a mound of snow that looked like a dunce cap.

     Old Man Winter can take a hike.

Strange Times, Indeed

     The outside of the building was a gleaming, crisp white.  Its colorful logo sprawled across the front.  I parked my car, stepped out and took a deep breath.  "Here you go.", I thought to myself.  "You've become one of those people."

     As I entered through the front doors, I immediately noticed to my right, the department I was looking for.  I approached it cautiously.  I had been in one of these types of places before, I knew what to expect.

     There, before me lay a vast array of sweaters, parkas, shirts, shoes and even costumes.  All this outerwear for one species.....the canine companion of the human race, the dog.

     I walked down the isle and began my search.  Yes, I was there to buy a shirt.  A shirt for the dog.  A shirt for Runtly.  I had the perfect excuse for making such a purchase.  This was no ordinary shirt.  It was not a fur lined coat or a striped knitted sweater, this was a shirt for anxiety.  I thought about that for awhile, wondering if they made them in human sizes.  I thought about that again.  Oh yes, yes they do.  They're called straight jackets.  Perhaps I needed one.

     Runtly, the Jack Russel Terrier, has an anxiety issue.  He wants to ride in the car.  He can hardly wait to ride in the car, but once he is in the car and the car is moving, he is a nervous wreck.  He would prefer to sit right in my lap and help me drive, but that is where I draw the line.....I will NOT be one of those people. Besides, it is not safe for the driver, the dog, or all the other people out on the road.

     I picked the appropriate size and headed for the check out lane.  On the way, by some miraculous act, a long stuffingless mallard duck jumped into my hands. 

     The nice young lady, who was going to ring up my order, asked me if that was all I needed.  I assured her it was and as the total price of my two items flashed on the small screen, I had another thought.  There went the pair of shoes I was going to buy..........for myself.

     There are a couple of ways to look at this situation that our society has entered in to.  One being that we care more for and spend more on our pets than we do our fellow man.  Another is that, perhaps we have evolved enough to care about all creatures great and small.

     It is indeed strange times that we live in when it comes to animals.  There are endless videos of our furry domestic counterparts interacting with us on a whole new level.  Even the evidence of wild creatures taking a liking to man, and not just for lunch, is astounding.  The whales that seem to show thanks to the human who released it from a tangled net, the deer that walks up to the hunter in the woods, the moray eel that enjoys being petted by a scuba diver and the list goes on and on.  

     As I made my way back to the car, I sat and watched several other people enter the store in search of something for their pets.  I thought back to a time, when I was a little girl, and spent hours dressing my cats in doll clothes.........If I'd only known.

     Time will tell if the shirt is going to be a success, but trying to put it on him was like trying to stuff a wiggling toddler into a snow suit.  By the time I was done, I didn't want to go anywhere and neither did Runtly.

     

A World of Changes

     When sunlight passes through a prism, it changes the white light into a spectrum of color.  As we experience this sojourn on Earth, we refer to as life, we walk through many changes.

     It is part of a package deal, for without changes, life would become rather stagnant.  It could be likened to the fish that spends its entire existence in a glass bowl.  How boring and sad that would be.

    That does not mean that a change is always welcome. Sometimes we can be found digging in our heels, kicking and screaming or hanging onto some solid object, to avoid having to go through a change in our comfort zone.  We react much like the cat that does not want to go into the bucket of water or the child who is not ready to enter through the school door for the first time.

     With some of the changes we experience, we find out that they really were not so bad after all.  We wonder why we were afraid to try something new.  Other times, changes can be extremely difficult and heart wrenching, but as we wake up to each new day, we discover that we have survived and can continue to do so.

     Having decided to dive head first into a pool of information, that I long ago turned my back to, I know I will go through many changes.  If you have not seen me physically dive into a real pool, I can assure you, it is not a pretty sight.  But, in my mind's eye, I have executed a perfect 10 point landing with nary a ripple left behind.  There will be times of uncertainty and most likely many sacrifices, but in the long scheme of things, it will prove to be the right thing to do.

     Watching my better half pack his belongings into a truck and move a thousand miles away for work was one of the hardest changes either of us has ever experienced.  We flashed each other a peace sign as he drove off, even though there was no peace in our hearts at the time.  A very difficult change indeed.

     Another interesting thing about a prism is that if the spectrum of color is sent through another prism, it turns back to white light.  In a recent book I read, the author compared this to the soul's journey. We come from the white light of God, pass through the colors of life and return to where we came from in the first place.

     Accept the changes.  Walk through the colors of your life and be not afraid.

Good Vibrations

     The subject was a touchy one, but if it was brought out into the open, it might lend to some good blog fodder.

     I'm really not sure how it even evolved to the conversation, but the topic of plants being able to hear, and feel, came up while we were all in the kitchen.

     It is a proven fact that plants sense vibrations.

     Way back in the 1960's, an era of all things love, peace and cool, a specialist in the CIA, Cleve Backster, discovered something unique.  I have no idea if Cleve was just bored, or what was going on in his grey matter, but one day he decided to hook up a lie detector machine to one of his plants.  

     He put a flame under one of the leaves of the plant and the needle on the lie detector went off the scale.  From that point on there were many studies that coincided with the theory that plants could sense what was going on around them and thus reacted in kind to whatever was positive or negative......getting burnt was obviously not a good thing.

    Since this was a 1960's phenomenon, my oldest son-in-law broke into said dialect...."Wow man, I was talkin' to this plant and wow, it was really in to me and told me all about what had gone on in its plant life."

     Trying not to laugh, which really did not work very well, I explained that even creatures, great and small, pick up vibrations from their surroundings.....and that all have a purpose for being here in the first place.  This led to a conversation about insects.....namely spiders....and that a person had intentionally used another door out of the house, as to not disturb a spider that had made a web on the door that was the usual way out. 

     My youngest son-in-law jumped into the conversation to say that he had an episode with a spider.   He said he became aware of the spider and made a whooshing sound to describe his becoming "one" with the spider.  This sound turned out to be what a can of bug spray sounds like when the trigger is pulled.

     By this time, the kitchen was a swirling mass of hysteria. 

     Later, one of the co-conspirators to funniness, declared that he did not believe that plants could hear, except maybe.... for corn,,,,,,because corn has ears.

     The obituary of a man stated that he had been an avid hunter of many types of game.  As he grew older, he could not bring himself to kill another creature of the earth.  My father experienced the same thing.

     Everything has a vibration, even a rock.  The laws of physics has proven this.  The vibes may not be strong enough to hear or see, but they are still there.

     Knowing this, we should take care of what we say or do.....especially if we are standing in a corn field.