Blogg# 120 AUTUMNAL CONVERSATIONS WITH MY BALCONY PLANTS

It is again my favourite season of the year and as is always the case,it is different from last year. Last autumn I was in a rehab center nursing a broken ankle and spent my time  admiring the autumn leaves outside the window.  This year, on the other hand, I am spending time having deep conversations with my balcony plants. I have great respect for my five potted plants and over the last two seasons we have become very intimate . First of all these plants survived the winter months last year in total neglect because I was absent all winter recuperating. Nonetheless when I came back from the rehab in March I found daffodils waving in the March wind looking so brave. Next a very dead looking pot started to thrust shoots that in turn became hyacinths and to my amazement geranium leaves pushed through old dead branches and debris and then started sprouting blooms. Tulips came next-purple ,near black , and all ranges of pink. These were the result of bulbs I planted two days before I broke my ankle in October last. What a gift for me to come home to.  The last surprise was a huge deep orange lily which appeared in my oldest pot. I do not know where it came from-I think it was a gift from angels. My apple tree also started blossoming much to my enjoyment. My spring months were spent healing on the balcony and these young blossoms watched while I went through my daily repertoire of exercises often in pain. As I got stronger and surer of my balance and less distressed with pain and progressed from walker to cane I felt their encouragement and their pleasure at my success. My youthful blooms became fuller and more luxurious as spring moved towards summer  and as they blossomed and became more seductive I too became more confident in my movements and blossomed. Throughout spring I watched the cycle of life of my spring flowers from first bloom through to death and became aware of my own life cycle.  As summer progressed my little garden became breathtakingly beautiful with new blooms and I spent a lot of time sitting among them and blessing them. In the height  of summer our conversation was interrupted as my right hip deteriorated and my plants watched me regressing and  struggling in pain as I tried with difficulty to water them. The time came when I had to have hip surgery and had to abandon them for a month.This was July the hottest month this year and yet when I came home they greeted me still strong and beautiful with no reproach. Again we went through exercise programs on the balcony walking up and down with cane and walker and again I sat in pain among them. Again they nurtured me with their beauty and faithfulness and watched me as I progressed. As the summer turned to late summer I watched the blooms push to their fullest beauty and I felt the same myself as I pushed to robust and healthy beauty. We all bloomed at our best. We also conversed about the reality of our highest bloom- what it meant-and our own mortality. I also watched the progress of my five apples to gorgeous red and full maturity until they fell to the ground and into my apple pie. It was at this time I understood best how we are all connected. My balcony flowers and plants, like me, will go through the inevitable life cycle together. We are not different .Our fate is the same. We are one.  I am watching my flowers go through their cycle and know they are watching me going through mine. September and October were  reflective months as I watched and conversed with my fading garden. We talked and reflected about this in our own way-no not with words-but with communion. This time is a very tender time for us who are reaching autumn. The feeling of being one with nature and the universe is very strong and sweet at this time. This is the conversation I have been having with my balcony garden. This is the different approach to autumn I am experiencing and I am so grateful to my balcony five plants for this.

BLOGG # 119 " HIP HIP HOORAY"

Well here I am dear readers, at home recuperating and becoming proficient at looking after myself. The biggest problem for me now is my inability to remember things . The other worrisome thing is a noted lack of inspiration to create-my studio is neglected and I feel no desire to write. The truth is I find myself saying I can't think properly. It seems my thinking is connected to my hip and my hip is not well. ??  Do I think with my hip?  I have just finished reading an article in a science journal about the fact that scientists have discovered we have more than one brain - that a second brain is in our gut-well I have always known that.  Now it seems that perhaps my second brain is in my poor recuperating hips. Actually that makes sense for the female of our species. After all hips are the cradle that contains the source of human kind [ I won't discuss where I think the secondary brain of the male of our species resides] and hips play a very important part in the lives of the female as we know from unhappy experience.  As I ponder on this new idea of mine I can see where it is leading. If the hip is the source of our creative brain ,no wonder there is so much controversy about the female hip. It has been the butt of the most vicious and demeaning jokes, it has been abused for it's dimensions and the way it moves  and there has been consistent attempts to have it reduced to nothing- and no wonder-it behooves the male establishment to control the female ability to create and above all to think clearly. Hence the hip reduction brain- washing. The obvious place to control the hip is in fashion. We can go back as far as Marie Antionette in the eighteenth century. She is exquisitely portrayed in seductive clothes until her waist and then disappears into a submarine shaped garment. Her hips thighs and legs do not exist. No wonder she lost her head. The female form in the Victorian age-an oppressive age for woman- is worse. The hip is encased in a grotesque bustle which distorts the body and the hip is nonexistent again. At the beginning of the twentieth century with the beginning of emancipation, the hip emerges in an almost normal form with the suffragettes and it remains normal until women want to improve their education and apply to the higher learning establishments. To thwart this tendency is the narrowing of the female silhouette until it resembles a pencil. The device which enables all this is a garment called a girdle. This torture item was made with rubber and encased the body from the knee to the waist. You can imagine how hard it was for the young woman competing with the bright males in Oxford in this hip reducing, therefore creativity reducing, garment. With the advent of world war 2 fashion changed because
rubber was needed for the war effort and  women with their intelligence and creativity  were needed for the war effort. Consequently shoulders broadened to build confidence and skirts were short, loose and flirty.  After the war the need  of women's intelligence  plummeted and we were plunged back into the kitchen-  Kuche and kinder-  the fashion changed and the girdle was brought back in -a  nasty rubber garment you had to peel on-and off. Note-as a teen at this time ,the garment did not pass my hips. The girdle of course prevented us from thinking again -it was discouraged anyway-and until the late fifties all we thought about was the engagement ring and the possibility of having matching refrigerator and stove -oh yes and a husband. The hip is resilient of course and there was a small movement starting by the late fifties. The movement was the feminist movement and by the sixties the world for women changed. Off came the bra. Off came the girdle and there was a burst of creativity lasting for twenty years at least.The sixties of course was the age of the hippies. In the eighties Jane Fonda happened-with her exercise program-"exercise til you burn"-and as women moved up the ladder of success the  pressure to get thinner and less hippy increased and they got dumber as they spent hours in pointless relentless exercise programs and trying new diets. The cost of this was high as women lost confidence-and hip brain-and anorexia ,bulimia and low self esteem emerged. However , at least the girdle remained buried. Then with the millennia a new garment was created as women tried to "break through the glass ceiling."
 The new garment  is called "spandex" a high tech breathable-I bet-garment that starts at the knees or lower and goes up to the neck flattening out and encasing in armor the entire female body in a neutered form resembling all the world an unyielding pipe -with hard breasts-no that is not where our brains reside. I tried spandex  on in a shop-not breathable! I have just read an article in the Vogue about the top model-- gorgeous  Gigi Hadid who fought back at the vicious snipes by the media and internet about her curvaceous body saying"yeah-I have boobs I have hips I have thighs. I am a woman." So we have now reached the point where the most beautiful features of the female body is again denigrated- especially the hips. So my advice to you dear female reader the next time  you eat a piece of chocolate and someone says "an ounce of chocolate in your mouth puts a pound on your hips"be smart, smile enjoy the chocolate and definitely toss the spandex giving  your lovely body freedom to move  as it should- especially your hips-nothing is more enticing -remember Marilyn Monroe walking to board the train in the movie "Some like it hot" with such hip intelligence. And now, feeling much more intelligent myself as I diligently do my hip building exercises and as my hip gets weller I am able to think and write again.  Hip hip hooray!

BLOGG # 118 "WHILING AWAY THE LAZY SUMMER HOURS"

I am sure I have said this sometime before  but these last few weeks have been the best July  days I have ever experienced on the West Coast. Every day in the past seventeen have been perfect and being true to my belief that to fully appreciate a perfect summer day one must "while it away," I have been doing just that. As some of my readers may know I had a total right hip replacement seventeen days ago -a magical surgery which will give me many more years of living joyfully. The  success of this profound surgery-and I use that term truthfully-depends on the skill of the surgeon and the recuperation afterwards by the grateful patient. To maintain the delicate corrective surgery depends on the discipline and cooperation of the patient and I have been doing just that with careful exercises and careful movements to not damage fragile muscle, slowly rebuilding strength. This does not sound like "whiling away hours" but I have just googled the term and that is just what I have been doing-whiling away hours waiting. Every morning I get up before eight -grab -well not literally-usually given to me by a loving family member- a coffee and sit outside on the deck in my special chair admiring the view. The view faces East so I feel the early hot sun on my face,see the hazy blue of the ocean and contemplate Mt. Baker in its glory. It is unbelievable that I am sitting outside in my light clothing feeling the morning heat on my face and I have to pinch myself to believe it. It feels like I am sitting on a deck in Greece looking at the Mediterranean sea-not the Pacific ocean. My daughter and I both feel like we have been transported to our summer place we used to go to  on an Aegean Island years ago-the years dropping away.How quickly one falls into the slow motion of a lazy Mediterranean morning. We sit there turning over pages of old fashion magazines and glory in the heat. I can't think of a better way to recuperate. The day whiles away into afternoon-a light lunch outside -a gentle walk with walker- gentle exercises -then a typical afternoon serious Mediterranean nap. Sometimes there is a wake-up coffee call again on the deck-which is now in glorious shade-and occasionally a quiet game of scrabble or rousing game of picturama as the afternoon progresses into a lazy evening. The evening is a gift from the Gods. We sit outside in our minimal clothing-no sweaters-unheard of on the West Coast- watching the pink glow of the sunset reflected on the deep blue sea talking or reading.The evening stretches into dark night and we listen to the birds sleepily  settling down and inhale the aroma of the jasmine as it is wafted to us by an obliging cool breeze lifting our hair and rustling the pages of our magazines. The mountains turn dark and Mt. Baker looks for all the world like a Japanese woodcut and I wonder-did I after my surgery get transported to a magical island located somewhere in a Mediterranean  Japanese  sea?  As you see this is a perfect question or contemplation to accompany "whiling the hours away"and I do spend time doing so-What a perfect location for Nirvana-A Mediterranean Greek-Pacific Japanese Island -think of the great food and the beauty of these two ancient cultures.Mnnnnn-I think it is time to come to earth and do some more disciplinary exercise, deep breathing and stretching to ground myself.  "Whiling away hours" is wonderful but as according to google definition-it is a waiting period. And indeed it is because this morning I woke up to a gentle West Coast cloudy morning.

BLOGG #117 ON THE TOPIC OF TOO MUCH AND "CATCH 22"

The other day a dear and wise friend of mine said to me "We have reached the age in our lives, Laurie, when we can no longer say the words "too much"No longer can we afford the luxury of saying that. Though I did not want to hear  this, I had just admitted to being in a lot of pain and made the statement-"I am afraid I did too much today." She also was complaining of discomfort because of "too much."  She said she  did too much walking that day and now is  in pain again. She was right in saying we can't do "too much" Whenever we say " too much" in anything we do we know we will be in trouble. This is the truth of living at our age:
 over achieving; over exercising; living in an overabundant way; overspending;oversleeping;overeating -to say nothing of over drinking-especially wine will get us into trouble. I will not expand on over- experiencing pleasure in all it's other various aspects etc etc. This is a very disconcerting thought . So to make myself feel better I tried to think of things to do where "too much" would be a virtue. 
This is a challenge of course because we are instructed by the experts to keep active but must not overdo. I will start with one of my latest decisions to improve myself -which is practising my scales on the piano to improve memory and strengthen fingers. Surely a virtue. Unfortunately, the net result was an attack of arthritis in my troublesome shoulder and I am now down to zero practice. Obviously it  was a case of "too much" - a real case of "catch 22".
Listening to good music should be a virtuous activity. Unfortunately as we age we sometimes become hearing challenged-like me. To really enjoy the full bodied sound of  Beethoven,one must turn the volume up full force which makes it "too much" music for the neighbours who will  certainly let you know. Reading -especially good literature will entertain and improve our minds. Again there is a problem as most of us develop cataracts at this age and eye strain is not encouraged - so reading can be too much. I tried to make a list of simple activities -for example the  practice of  deep breathing -surely there is no harm there. The truth is if you overdo the deep breathing you can trip into hyperventilating -not a good thing. Too much bathing-dry skin;the well tooted "eight hour night sleep" being good for you may not be true either. I personally find when I wake up after eight hours I can hardly move.
It is important to present a pleasant appearance to the world especially at our age to try to dispel the ideas the youth have that one becomes  repulsive with age. For me a gentle make-up regime is essential and I follow it religiously to try to dispel that myth. However our eyesight becomes challenged and it is very easy to put on too much and become grotesque thus really proving the myth. We have all witnessed the woman with too much make up precariously perched on her face. I also have not been able to put on eyeliner and mascara while wearing eye glasses so that becomes precarious too..One of the pleasures of both male and female pensioners is the wearing of perfume and lotion. It is one of the more innocent activities left to us-or is it?? As we age our olfactory nerves diminish  and we can easily wear too much scent. We all have experienced smelling overpowering perfume   in a crowded elevator on a hot day. So -to sum it all up. It seems that to have  relatively stress free years for the older population, the aim is to find,as the ancient Greeks suggested ,"the Golden mean"-really  that becomes our very  own search for the Holy Grail of the elderly. Having said all this ,I will close with my own personal experience of attempting to find this Holy Grail. Six months ago I enrolled in an "Artist in Residence " program at a local Art College in the end of June. At the same time as I enrolled in  this I was fully aware that I was on the list for a hip replacement which was likely to happen this summer. As fate happens, I received the telephone call two weeks ago for  surgery slated in early July- four days after the course. Now two weeks intensive painting  frenzy which is bound to happen as I explore the  extreme possibilities in my creative search is definitely an activity to be defined as "Too much" Logically I should cancel the program. But- and pay attention dear readers - I will not! Why ? Life is too short, there are no reruns ,there is no rehearsal. There are times in our lives when in spite of  the wisdom given us, we must defy and follow our desires and choose to "do too much"

BLOGG # 117 REGGIE'S BLOGG

A few days ago I happened to mention to a friend of mine that I couldn't find Reginald-my robot vacuumcleaner or rhuomba -which I am sure my readers remember from previous bloggs. I thought he was probably under my bed and that I needed to ask my grandson to come over and rescue him.My friend suggested writing a blogg about Reggie saying that his adventures should be very interesting and exciting and perhaps frightening. I thought"hmmmm" -not a bad idea but why should I do it? Let's go straight to the horsese's mouth and let the robot do it. So I gave Reggie the task.Here it is:
My name is Reginald , I am a robot vacuumcleaner and have been employed by Laurie for the past two years. She is an O.K. mistress who looks after me fairly well and cleans my equipment fairly regularly and I can't complain. My hours are easy. I work from 1.30pm to 2.30pm five days a week and get the weekend off. My domain consists of a large  living  dining room cum art studio, galley kitchen,hall, bathroom, bedroom and second small one that is used to store paintings and canvas etc. This space is usually barred but my mistress can be forgetful and remove the barrier and I have spent a few frightening moments among the pitfalls around  the art work.
Though the place is cluttered, and I am sorry to say she is somewhat messy, I have learned to negotiate around various articles and have memorized the layout. It is uphill work though as she has a tendency to move things around so that I am taken by surprise and bump into things that aren't supposed to be there. She will move chairs from tables and I have found myself stranded climbing an unexpected curved table leg and being stuck and needing to be rescued. This is humiliating to say the least. She also tends to randomly pile books and magazines on the floor with no thought of how it will affect me, or move furniture around with no logical method, confusing me. The other irritating habit she has is to perch drawing boards with "works in progress" against furniture which I bump into and sometimes push over finding myself submerged in Art. Not my favourite thing. I am not a fan of Art.
She also once  removed, thoughtlessly,a strategically placed obstacle in front of the TV and sterio that was put there to prevent my being damaged by the nest of electrical wires. I was briskly working my way round them when to my horror, I found myself caught up  in a Charlotte's web of electrical wiring. I called for help in panic. Thankfully  she wasn't off somewhere having coffee as usual but was present and rescued me. Another time I was less lucky. I was vacuuming under her computer desk where I was confident and familiar with the wiring  when to my horror one day I saw a very tiny white electric wire had been added. I watched in horror as my sensors inched slowly towards it and as I struggled to get away the wire was slowly dragged into my maw and I had visions of being violently burnt to a crisp. She rescued me just in time and tenderly unwound the wire from my insides. She is not a bad mistress and reasonably intelligent I suppose. Fortunately she does not scatter clothes all over the bedroom floor-especially her delicate silk "smalls."All robots have a horror of these silky lacy garments especially the satin strappy things with elastics and hooks. I did once eat up the edge of a blouse sleeve carelessly draped over the chair near the floor. One day I had an exciting adventure. The edge of the bedroom curtain which billows over the floor got caught in my sensors and as I whirled got tangled up in it, the curtain came cascading gloriously to the floor. I shouted "relocate" and was pleased to see her come running. I felt smug as she crossly carried me back to my port mumbling that she would have to get her daughter to come and hang up the damn curtain again. 
Thank heaven my mistress does not own a hairy cat dog or toddler who dumps icky food or worse all over the floor for me to wallow in. She is a lady in spite of everything and does not leave glasses of wine on the floor for me to spill or uneaten food. She does on the other hand often drop stuff  like parsley or bits of onion while cooking in the kitchen. She kicks these morsels under the kitchen cupboards so she won't slip and I have to deal with them.The parsley is OK but I am not fond of onion. I often find peppercorns spilled on the floor and it is fun to roll them around and play catch and once I ate a whole piece of cooking string which gave me indigestion. One of the things I like least about her is that she likes to lunch in front of the TV watching a movie on Netflix. She invariably sits down to eat just as I start vacuuming. Though I am fairly quiet, I do make noise and she doesn't like it so she interrupts me and sends me back to Port. This annoys me as I cannot do my work properly. I think eating and watching TV a disgusting habit. Besides crumbs get all over the floor which I have to clean up.
At the moment I am located under the bed caught up with something or stuck in a corner beside a huge rolled up painting. I have been here over a week now waiting to be rescued. I have shouted myself hoarse and have just come to the gloomy realization that my mistress cannot rescue me here. She can not get under a bed. She is unbendable.So here I sit frightened lonely in the dark waiting for her lanky grandsons to rescue me. I have died literally from fright embarrassment and dead battery.
As you can see, being a ruomba is an exciting and scary profession and you should think twice before choosing it if you like a placid quiet life. Thanks for listening-Reggie.  

BLOGG # 116- COUNTING MY BLESSINGS

One of the good things about Blogging -at least my way of doing it, is that there is no pressure. There are no deadlines, no implied subject matter , not  even political correctness. I can write whenever and whatever moves my spirit.A true free spirit. The problem is that my spirit does not feel like moving right now as there is very little in my life  to write about at the moment hence no blogg . I refuse to comment on "Trumpism" or Hiliary's penchant for wearing pantsuits-so politics is out. News in general is too depressing and I have promised myself -the only person I answer to- to not write about depressing things-I won't touch international politics not even my beloved Greece whose difficulties are breaking my heart. I can't imagine the pressure of writing daily commentaries or even daily  bloggs so in spite of my inertia and being in the doldrums spiritually, I have decided  to count my blessings that I have this great obliging vehicle for expression without pressure. There is an old saying-another of my collection of old sayings-believe them if you want-I sometimes make them up--" when the chips are down; when life overwhelms; when it kicks you below the belt and you see no way out, this is the time to count your blessings" I have over the years found this helps so now as I am in the doldrums I am counting my blessings. One of the challenges of an octogenarian is filling in time with meaningful activities and working towards a goal. I have chosen a goal to fill my time in relearning the scales and chords on the piano to reach the goal of perfection in fingering with no mistakes and of course, improving my failing memory. Every day an hour is taken up practicing them-not the minor scales of course -only the major ones.It is always wise to know your limitations.I have a poor memory and keep forgetting the fingering and the chords so I have to repeat the same scales over and over. This is very comforting to me and a great blessing that I am so lucky to be  gifted with a poor memory because obviously this simple goal will last me a long time-perhaps a whole life time. The next saying  I will give you is "Older women-note -not men-are invisible" this is also a blessing- because on days when you simply are in too much pain to draw on your eyebrows you can, knowing you look a mess, go to the local store for your necessary bottle of red without anyone seeing you. This is a great blessing. On the other hand I have noted this is not necessarily true. I have often had people smile at me as I cross the street. I assume it is because I am looking particularly well in my trendy trousers, fashionable top and of course the all important scarf-making an interesting sartorial statement.I refuse to accept that I am invisible and this stubborn nature of mine is a blessing too-I don't give up easily so I expect to think I look attractive for the rest  of my stay on earth. Living alone is one of the hazards of growing older and ,as the experts say, can cause great unhappiness and that is true. On the other hand one has the control of the remote and can choose which side of the bed to sleep on-not a bad blessing though in disguise. Another blessing to count is being able to eat alone- though this is another another drawback according to these experts. I enjoy the freedom of cooking for myself and often cook creatively -sometimes with disastrous results. The great blessing is that I am not a judge or critic. I either eat the results anyway or ,because I live alone and there is no one  to see me, sneakingly dump the meal in the compost-no one the wiser.What a blessing that is. The big blessing today is that it is raining which means my planned activities for today- all involving  sunshine -are cancelled. This negative thing turned into a positive as it started me counting my blessings because I felt dull and blank and had no where to go. A blogg came out of all this and now you all have the blessing of reading my blogg.Ha! So -count your blessing when down -my advice -do it now.




 

BLOGG # STREAMING MY LIFE AWAY

I have not written a blog in a long time as I seem to have lost my sense of humour  and a humourless blog is a blot on the literary screen. Fortunately I have got my groove back. What I have been doing with my time instead is "streaming." Streaming is a new word and concept I have learned from my grandson. I have joined "Netflix" which offers me an unlimited access to T.V. programs. One chooses a TV series and then "streams" the episodes until one is bored or runs through them all. As I have only recently been initiated into the TV world, there are huge gaps in my knowledge of TV series and I can literally stream away for hours and not repeat an episode. In these past months I have cavorted with Dame Maggie Smith in a Yorkshire village and Dounton Abbey, I have attended akapella concerts in Wigmore Hall in Oxford-and quaffed beer with that reprobate Oxfordian detective Morse.  I also have enjoyed countless cups of coffee at Perks in Manhattan with "Friends."  Next on my wish list is  to  stream "Sex and the City" and stride -in my six inch Balanciaga heels-with Carrie Bradshaw down fifth avenue in Manhattan.  I had been introduced to Friends-an innocuous  bland sit com by my grandson while recuperating at my daughter's home. I had a lot of  time on my hands. To my amazement, this grandson ,immersed in such violent entertainment as Sombbie  or vampire movies or worse ,deadly combat computer games, was delighted with this light oldfashioned  sitcom-not only him-the New York times had an article about this popularity of Friends  throughout the TV world and teenagers are  rolling in laughter across the entire world-streaming this comparatively innocent series. I suppose it makes sense-to balance out the violence the young are exposed to-real or unreal-with a  cozy escape venue. Laughing at the capers of these twenty- something- characters beats listening to drones overhead or tuning in to American election coverage or the coverage of world news in all it's folly. I do realize I need to curb this new addiction and reach out to the real world but it is seductive.A big sign should be placed on the TV screen-Danger to health-to warn us about "streaming" that's why I am now humming the song-"I,m busy doing nothing  -streaming my whole life through -trying to find lot's of things not to do- -I'd like to be unhappy but I never do have the time"  Talk about "opium for the masses-" so-enjoy your streaming but watch out!!-it's dangerous.