The 50^th anniversary of Woodstock is in 2 years. That seems CRAZY. I was just graduated from high school in the summer of 1969.

We watched the movie Woodstock on Amazon the other day. Had to pay to rent it, $2.99. It was worth it. It was really fun to see all those great artists again, at their beginning. It did disappoint me in that it didn’t show some of the iconic bands playing their iconic songs that were sung there. Like Jefferson Airplane, later Jefferson Starship, did their songs White Rabbit and Don’t You Want Someone to Love at Woodstock, but the movie only showed some obscure (if any of them are) song. Still….crazy to watch Grace Slick and company. We really enjoyed Santana too. Man, can Carlos Santana shred a guitar. Arlo Guthrie singing “Flying into Los Angeles, bringing in a couple of keys” brought back a lot of memories. Lots of great talent, lots of people, it’s how it all began. I think the final count was something like 450,000 young people in attendance, less than 100 arrests, no violence, one birth.

I wonder, sometimes, where everyone from that “cultural revolution” went. Most of us (and I include myself loosely because it was my time in life, though I was in Iowa while Woodstock went on) kind of ended up in regular mainstream kind of lives for 40 years. With regular jobs, and families, and mortgage payments and credit cards. We were so full of ourselves in those days, thinking we were going to change the world. We just didn’t realize how slowly real change comes. Nor did we ever expect the polarizing politics that are in place today.

Now many of us are retired, or thinking about it. I’m retired and now live in a warmer climate. I live in a town full of people like me, and here, sometimes, it feels like the cultural revolution goes on, mellowed by age and life. Almost feels like a full circle kind of thing.

It was fun to watch the movie again, and relive memories of that very free and slightly wild time in my life. There have been some anniversary concerts, I think one of them had 50,000 attendees. I can’t imagine what the 50^th anniversary concert will look like. I hope it’s grand, and some of the original artists are able to come back for it. I’ll keep an eye out for plans.

Far-out, and be cool.

It’s been a few days since I’ve written here. This morning I had some time, and sat down and wrote a piece on living in the flow has made my life so much better. I was almost done and just trying to draw some conclusion, or at least articulate it. I decided to go for a walk with Dan, and come back to it later, ostensibly when I returned.

Later turned into 4 or 5 hours later, and I came back to the lap top to finish it. Suddenly, my touchpad no longer worked. Luckily I have a touch screen computer, so was able to get it to shut down and restart, but not until I had saved my blog as a document. I thought it odd that I had to save it twice, but I did. Shut it down and restarted it, and still no touchpad. Grrrr.

I used the touch screen to access “Settings”, and then touch pad. I set the touch pad for “most sensitive” but it still didn’t work. So using the touchscreen, I accessed “other settings” and after doing a lot of searching, found one that said “Enable”. I touched it, and voila! The touch pad now works.

Back to the blog. With touch pad and touch screen working, I went to recent documents to retrieve the blog I’d saved twice. It appeared to come up, the title showed at the top of the page…but the page that loaded was blank. Try again, nothing. Whatever glitch caused my touch pad to be disabled, also made my blog disappear.

After taking a few deep breaths, cursing under them, I walked away from it for a few minutes. And thought, ok….go with the flow. The blog wasn’t meant to be published. Right? I mean, how do I know that? Because it’s gone……it is the way it is.

A lesson, as it were, in learning to go with the flow. Even when it’s a pain in the ass. Instead of posting the first blog which took me some time to write, and consider, I’m posting this one in it’s place. Which is probably not as interesting as the anecdotal one that is now floating out in cyberspace and the ethers somewhere, but more to the point. Go with the flow….I get it, universe. I get it.

Love and light to all

My life, recently, has been about pests. Getting rid of them, which, in Florida, is apparently an endless task.

First, I had these things called “ghost ants”. They are the tiniest little buggars, the size of this period at the end of the sentence. They love sugar. I left a birthday cake for a friend on the counter and 10 minutes later 100, maybe 1000, of these things were crawling all over the plate. (Weirdly, they did not get to the cake, just the frosting on the plate.) I have been trying since I moved here to get rid of them, but that was really the last straw. Right after that I happened to be at Dan’s when his condo got it’s every-other-month bug treatment. We arranged for him to come to my house, because I am sick of these things. He came and I spent $85 for the initial treatment, which included dealing with the fire ants that live in the ground around my flower beds. Now he will come every couple of months to maintain. I have only seen a couple of them since he was here.

Second. As soon as I got rid of the damn ants, the fruit rats came back. And they ate a hole in edge of the recliner at the end of my couch. Maybe since there was no food they could eat? But it was obvious, because they left a couple of rat poops on the seat. Freak me the F**K out. Also found that they had chewed through a zip-lock in my pantry to eat a hole in the taco shells inside it. And tried to get into the gourmet popcorn which we buy at the fresh market, but couldn’t it. Gratefully. Again, I have had enough, and Dan too. So we called the bug guy again, because his company is “pest” control, not just “bug” control. He came back, and explained how it was going to be difficult to definitively get rid of them, but that there were ways to deter them. He set better traps than we had, he put bait up in the attic that would make them sick and die, and he put bait traps around the yard that will make them sick and supposedly drive them away. He thinks it will work, but we can’t be sure. He will add dealing with the rats to my every-other-month treatment for $10 more.

Third. This morning, Dan came out of the bathroom and told me he saw some critter poops on my bathroom sink. I mean, REALLY????? I looked at them, and they are mouse poops, not rat poops. No sign of rat poops since the bug guy set the traps. Now I have mice. I mean, seriously, WTF???

And this all on top of those giant frigging cockroaches, palmetto bugs. I saw one in a cabinet the other day, alive, but it disappeared before I could catch it. A day later we found one standing still, right side up, on the floor. I hope it was the same one.

I am tired this am. We went out to open mic night last night, had a really nice evening, and then were up quite late. I’ve been exhausted lately, (rheumatoid arthritis can make you really really tired) but yesterday had a good day. Today I am tired though, and the damn mouse poops did me in. Told Dan I was so sick of dealing with this crap that I was ready to sell the house. He said, “Deb, welcome to Florida. They are just part of life.” Thank God he is in my life. He shares the good stuff and the bad stuff with me. Never walks away telling me it’s my problem. That’s priceless.

I still love my life here, but at the moment, am sick of this downside. Probably need to get some sleep, lol. Love and light.

It has occurred to me that one reason writing is my preferred method of communicating is because I can just back out the words, if I decide I don’t like them. Or stash them where no one will see them. Or just edit them, change them, at will before anyone has read them.

Sometimes I wish I could do that with the spoken word. Don’t we all wish we could take back some of the words that come out of our mouth? I realize that I can think things, but stash them and NOT say them. But too often I speak them without first fully comprehending their effect on the person to whom I am speaking. (Did that sound like Lily Tomlin? “Is this the person to whom I am speaking?”) Of course, then we find ourselves embarrassed or apologetic or some other negative emotion that’s not exactly pleasant.

So, last night I was trying to write. A poem, to be exact. I started with a basic idea, and wanted to write a haiku, but could only make it a 4 line verse. Not happy with it. Opened a new doc and just wrote the first thing that came to my mind, because often that turns into something. But, it didn’t. Then I fell asleep with the computer on my lap, and gave up, lol. So, this morning, on perusing what I wrote, I kept the first 4 line poem, and the second, I deleted. Ah, the loveliness of being able to once again have a blank page, where that false start of a poem no longer appeared.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do that when talking to people? Especially people who we love, who are important to us, but with whom we may have a disagreement? Just not say the things that we won’t like 10 seconds after we say them? Not say the things that as soon as we say them we realize they are ridiculous, or hurtful, or maybe hilarious but not true? Not sayin’ that I do this a lot, but like most people, I do it. And wish I didn’t.

Writing is so much easier, because it doesn’t take place in real time. It is a conversation we are having with ourselves, and maybe others, but with a delay on it, so we can edit it, or choose not to say it, or get more information before we do, or consider the consequences better. But perhaps I need to work on my verbal skills a little. Or a lot…. Maybe become more present in the conversation, in real time, and more thoughtful about what I say.

Hmm. Present, in the moment, in the conversation. That alone causes us to be more thoughtful, doesn’t it? It’s kind of like writing, I guess. If you’re in the zone when you write, then it’s easy and it’s clear, and it pours out of your heart. Too often in a conversation I am multi-tasking, having a conversation and thinking about what we should have for dinner, and if we need to get to the store, and is there laundry that needs doing, and I should be calling my sister too.

Just musings this morning, on being able to just back words out of my life, with so much ease. Push of a button and they are gone, and I can start fresh. Spoken words don’t afford us that luxury, so I think I may try harder at weighing the words I speak before I speak them.

Now to decide if I want to publish this.

Love and light, everyone.

He lays beside me, asleep. It is uncommon, really, for me to be awake and untired while he slumbers so deeply he does not hear me or feel me get up. Often, I get up to use the bathroom, and he is waiting for me to come back, and folds his arms around me, and kisses me, holds me until we both fall asleep, or at least until I do. Deep, relaxed happy sleep, because he is there beside me. He is not a good sleeper, and I say that as one who was not a good sleeper for decades. But now, next to him, I usually sleep well. He makes me safe. Unquestionably. Unfailingly. Unconditionally. At least, it feels unconditional.

I suppose if I turned into a bitch, if I betrayed him, he would no longer love me, or lay beside me, or be waiting for me to come back to bed. But I can’t imagine not treasuring what he gives me, and risking the most happiness I have ever felt in my life. I have had plenty of misery, and unhappiness, and betrayal. But never for a moment from him, and I never for a moment want to give that to him.

So here I am, 2 hours after we went to bed, writing. I have no reason not to sleep except I am not tired. I didn’t fall asleep watching TV tonight, with his head on my lap as I sat in the recliner end of the couch. I lay in bed for awhile, I put on my sound app of waves crashing, I perused FB on my phone, and I finished reading The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. I thought about starting a new book. I have a dozen, at least, books on my kindle that I have not read yet. I buy them from Bookbub, and some are the free books that Kindle gives you each month. I can’t remember what any of them are about, save the first Outlander book. So tomorrow, I’ll look them up on Amazon and get a description of each and then decide what to read.

I am happy to hear him sleeping. He snores quietly, not the door-rattling snore of my ex-husband that could wake me from the guest room across the hall, with both doors closed. God that life seems so long ago It was, actually, I suppose. I sometimes wonder if I ever really lived it, thought I know I did. Now, my man snores like a man, a good man. It never wakes me, once I get to sleep. And I can get to sleep while he snores.

There is peace in this house. A rich, loving peace that permeates the air, the furniture, the fuzzy snuggly blanket he bought for me because I am cold half the time with the air conditioning on. There is no angst. I know now that the absence of pain is not happiness. I suppose I knew before that I was mistaking not hurting for being happy. Slowly that seed germinated and grew and flowered. I moved to Florida and I was happier than I’d ever been, to leave winter and mortgage payments behind. I was still carrying some of the painful, unnecessary baggage with me, though. Then he and I met, as I was letting go of the last of that baggage, that heavy duffel bag of left-over, unresolved emotions. I had just gained clarity, and expunged them from my life, and in walked this man who was honest, and accountable, and able to love (though he wasn’t really looking for it). It only took a few weeks until we found ourselves spending 24/7 together, making the 10 mile trip between our houses every few days. He was welcomed into my family, and I into his, and now I can say, with no reservation, that THIS IS HAPPY. There is no pain, no uncertainty, I am never waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I’m going back into bed, and try to sleep again. I know I’ll be exhausted tomorrow if I don’t. He might wake and worry if I’m not in bed. I’m happy tonight. I think I can sleep.

I have always said I don’t need anyone. I thought that meant I was needy, and I never, ever, want to be needy. It has come to my attention, however, that needing someone does not automatically make you needy.

I have a few people in my life, currently, that I need. My son, my family, and most of all, at this moment, Dan. That doesn’t mean I can’t function without any of them, it means that my life is fuller, happier, richer with them. Needing someone doesn’t automatically mean draining them of energy, taking and never giving, being unable to be alone because of our own insecurities.

Those who have followed my blog for awhile know I have been through the wringer with men. It made me independent, determined never to need anyone. I might want them, I might love them, but I never wanted to need anyone. It felt too vulnerable. It felt like hanging from a limb by my fingernails, because when they disappointed, or betrayed me, the limb would break and I would fall to the ground and break.

Then along comes this incredible man, Dan. Who has never betrayed me in the 6 months we’ve been together. I mean, not for a second have I ever had to question his love, care, concern and commitment to me. (And I believe he does not question mine for him.) As a result, now I need him in my life. He lifts me to bright places I have not seen before. He wraps me in a love that is grander than anything I ever knew possible. He climbs out on the limb and pulls me up, instead of sawing it off. Then he finds a limb that will hold us both.

I am so grateful for him and the other people in my life that I need. I am so grateful that I am able to need someone without feeling needy. So glad that there is someone in my life who makes it easy for me to lay down my armor, and let me in, let me breathe freely, unafraid.

Love and light to all.

In

Slow

Motion

Hearts entwine

Breath hangs in the air

Love’s roots grow where seeds are planted

By Deborah E. Dayen

Picture from medexpressrx.com via Google Images

I have been working to get rid of some of the overwhelming amount of political posts from my FB page. While I am still strong in my beliefs, I feel like every day it is just more of the same. More stories about a president who dishonors the office, more stories about new ridiculous, but similar, things he’s done, more stories about what will happen if he makes it 4 years and more about what will happen if he doesn’t. Ad infinitum.

I am in my 60’s, and have worked hard in my life to have the life I have right now. I just don’t want to hear about this stuff every day. I want to know major news, like that Mueller’s investigation netted some charges, but not how many times the president played golf, or tweeted inane stupidity in the middle of the night. I know who he is. I don’t need reminding every minute of every day.

I need reminding how blessed I am. I need reminding how beautiful and loving this world can be despite the fact that there are people like him and his entourage in this world. I want to focus on what lifts me, not what weighs me down. I want to remain aware of what is happening in politics, but not so focused on it that I can’t appreciate all the joy that is there to be had.

I guess I am a little selfish about my retirement, my golden years. I just want to enjoy them.

The way I’ve eliminated the stuff I don’t want to see from my FB is to not “like” it, even if I totally agree with the post. I have begun looking at my “pages feed” which is where all the posts from the funny and spiritual pages I follow had disappeared to. I have begun to post on my Live Like Water page again, after a long period of ignoring it. ( https://www.facebook.com/LivingLikeWater/ Please check it out, I’d love to have you!)

Now finally, after doing this for about a week, I am losing some of the political posts on my personal feed. And I am reminded of the things that are important, like love and compassion and hope. Yay! My head is in a much better place.

Which, hopefully, will lead to me writing better blogs.

Love and light, everyone.