About Those New Year Revolutions*

I have started and stopped this first post four or five times in the last two days trying to decide what I wanted to say and share, and in which direction I wanted to go, serious or light. 

I was recently reminded of a quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston:

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

What if last year did neither? 

A year without fluidity, or so it seemed.

I got no closer, but no farther away either. 

From what?

Here are some tasty, if general, morsels from my year:

2015 saw the bearing of emotional weight unlike any other that I can remember. Then there were the losses, both physical and otherwise. 

And yet, I traveled far and wide seeing things only one other people I know has ever seen, and frolicked through places everyone else had already been and I always longed to go.

Spent an enormous amount of time with the people I love the most like I was trying to make up for something, but wasted time, in equal measure, with people I didn’t love at all. Though, in all honesty, that was fun, too.

I did so many things right last year, but I made almost the same amount of mistakes. 

I felt to the point of pain. Or pleasure. And I felt intensely human.

So how do I quantify a year like this in a couple hundred words, let alone make it make sense to you? Where to begin? More importantly, where do I go from here?

I’m not longing or looking for fresh starts this year. At least not for me. I am yearning to feel more more intensely. 

In people, in peace, in books, in travel, in thoughts, in writing. 

Just more.

I’ll end this mishmash of words with a story from January 1, 2016 where I set off bottle rockets with close friends in rural Indiana to ring in the New Year:

Too bright and too early on the first day of 2016, we found ourselves completely out of coffee. This is not a good thing when six sets of eyes, who over-imbibed the previous eve, are staring at you in disbelief. 

My house, my run to the grocery store, in my pajamas.

Laying down my Dunkin' Donuts grind on her belt, the far too cheery checkout clerk asked through her, no matter how toothless, yet contagious smile,

“Make any New Year’s revolutions?!?!?!?”

(Yes, that's what she said.)

In my weak attempt to match her enthusiasm, I replied,

“Not yet! You?”

“HA, HA!!! Nope, never do!"

"Maybe I shouldn't either!!! Have a great year!"

"You too, Honey Bunches!"

As I walked out, I couldn’t help but laugh. 

I laughed because of her verve and warmness at such an hour. I laughed because of her mix up. I laughed because maybe she did mean 'revolutions' as words have multiple meanings and contexts.

I will never forget the woman who changed the early morning of January 1, 2016 for the better, so easily and simply. With just a mix up (maybe) and a smile.

May I, likewise, be the one who changes someone else’s day, so easily and simply, for the better, at least one time during this year.

*Revolution

(A simple definition)

noun rev·o·lu·tion \ˌre-və-ˈlü-shən\

: the usually violent attempt by many people to end the rule of one government and start a new one

: a sudden, extreme, or complete change in the way people live, work, etc.

: the action of moving around something in a path that is similar to a circle

Haunted Vacations and Kissing Ghosts

Last week, I happened to be in a part of Georgia in which I’d never laid foot before, the islands off the coast, specifically Sea Island. And it was lovely. Very, very lovely.

The girls had five full days to occupy ourselves while our gentlemen swung clubs. Golfing makes them extremely satisfied and it’s always helpful to have a very happy husband (sort of sounds like one of those lame fortune cookie sayings!). And we are experts at finding things to do and messing around which makes us, girls, even happier!

Sea Island is connected by a bridge to neighboring St. Simons Island. Both are quiet and laid back in a secret sort of way. The knotty trees are dripping with Spanish moss just as the locals are dripping with manners and hospitality.

While renting bikes, we became acquainted with Eric at Monkey Wrench, one of the local places for beach cruisers. He was the first one to speak of them, “St. Simons has ghosts."

Ghosts!

And haunted lighthouses!

And Tree Spirits!

Oh, my!

He didn’t say it like, “Folklore has it the light house is haunted.” He said matter-of-fact, “We have ghosts. Our lighthouse is haunted.”

That grabbed my attention faster than dangling a sweet Georgia fried shrimp in front of my face because guess what? I believe in that shit!

Our excitement built as Eric fit our bikes, shoved us maps and sent us on our way wishing good luck!

This had all the elements of a spine tingling day of adventure. I LOVE being creeped out.

Wait! Luck? Why would we need luck?

It was an easy six mile ride down to the ocean from Sea Island; breezy and cool under the above pictured tree lined streets. Racking our bikes, I snapped this picture with my phone. It’s said to be one of the ten most haunted locations in America not because of the amount of ghosts, but for the frequency in which experiences have been reported.

Wouldn’t you totally buy into the whole haunted thing if you saw this? Look at those clouds perfectly puffy over the tower. Ominous! Ghosts are walking around up there right now! I just know it.

Ten dollars got us a tour with a docent who said in her most serious southern drawl, “Ya’ll know, this light house is occupied, right?” And she went on to explain the “she” ghost, a peasant woman, who lost her wealthy lover, at sea. She stood in the water waiting for him every night, lantern in hand, and when it was clear he’d never return she threw herself into the same water in front of the lighthouse. Her footsteps can be heard running up and down the stairs late in the evening with much persistency.

This is the story the docent believes. See this link for the official “story” of said ghost but I believe her because I like “she” ghosts.

Following our visit to the lighthouse, we embarked on finding the “Tree Ghosts” as the locals call them. It was a bit like “Where’s Waldo?” locating them in obscure trees around the island.

Apparently, they’re world famous and people come to St. Simons Island just to see them. The artist, Keith Jennings, was commissioned to immortalize the numerous sailors who lost their lives aboard the mighty sailing ships that were made from St. Simons oak. The carvings are said to hold the spirits of these sailors and island natives.

Their eyes are always closed as if they’re sleeping peacefully. Although, the guy above looks pissed off. They are just beautiful to see in the middle of nowhere. Some are newer carvings while others are decades old with the tree encroaching on their faces.

Is it possible to breathe life back into a spirit? I gave it a try.

And then my friend Sue just had to go and bring the whole thing down to nasty by telling me to give the Spirit tongue. Who, in their right mind, gives a Tree Ghost tongue?

Very inappropriate. I wonder if there will be any negative and long lasting repercussions for me trying to suck the spirit out of a ghost.

I believe in this stuff.

And I truly believe I HAVE seen a ghost! Right here where I live. Not in my house but next door!

Have you?

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Go check out all the other awesome writers over at Yeah Write! They are interesting, talented and world class!



Oh The Things It Makes You Do...

Have you ever felt as if someone reached inside your chest, grabbed your heart with their hand and squeezed firmly refusing to let go? The first time you physically laid eyes on someone?

I'll raise my hand. And I'll name it. The "Crushing Hard" heart.

My junior year of college, I saw this gorgeous hunk of a guy at a kegger his fraternity was throwing. My best girlfriend, afraid I would embarrass myself AND her, told me to, "Pull it together. Put your tongue back in your mouth and wipe the drool from your chin." 

"Okay!" 

It wasn't that bad but I was crushing bigger and harder than ever before and we didn't know what to do. 

I was bitten by "love at first sight". 

I had him in a class too, Business Writing, and his physical presence (so he walked in and sat down) made my schoolgirl heart want to leap out of my body, onto his desk and scream, "Talk to me, please!" 

There were a few problems...(1) we didn't know each other (some silly eye contact was all) and (2) I was shy.

He always boxed in a campus charity event called "Fight Night". So my girlfriends devised a plan to get this tough, and naughty as the day was long, guy's guy to notice their girlfriend and ask her out.

They cast me as our sorority’s entry for "Miss Fight Night" claiming it was the only way to help a sister out because no one really knew him. RIGHT! Yet, they also knew it wasn't "me" to get up in a ring in front of a thousand plus people, all dressed up, and I’d most likely chicken out.  

Never underestimate the highly motivated.

“We” came in second but he saw me in the ring before his light heavyweight fight. I waved and the hook was set.

Who knew he’d be the most sensitive guy in the world?

Or we’d date for years and think it would last forever.

Over Staying Your Welcome

My childhood best friend came to visit us at the lake with her husband and daughter. And they should not have come.

Their marriage was in shambles and we were certain they’d cancel. However, they thought spending time with a couple in a happy and healthy marriage would guide them through this extremely rough patch. Lucky us, right?

My guy, gone for one night due to work obligations, left the entertainment of Al to his best friend who happened to be having a “guys only” vacation. And the guys wanted to go to “Stimilators” (yes, spelled this way and a strip club).

Refusing to heed a stern warning from his wife, her hubby went “along for the ride” proceeding to get really loaded. At 1:30 a.m., a terrible altercation ensued, as did a black eye. If I’d been awake, his A#@ would have been thrown in jail.

Waking up the next morning, confused and still drunk, he searched for his phone in a total state of panic. Not finding it, we insisted he retrace every step of his night including “Stimies”. Dragging my guy, who wasn’t even involved, EVERYWHERE in desperate hot pursuit. They were gone for hours.

What was on that phone besides important phone numbers?

His wife, not trusting him with good reason, snagged it while he was passed out and proceeded to look through EVERYTHING. Never mentioning a word as he tore the place apart looking.

I felt terrible for her.

Sitting at the end of the pier with his phone resting on the table between us, neither of us talking just staring out at water. And thinking.

Without so much as a single word, she picked up his phone, took a running leap and chucked that baby into the water as far as she could. I’d say about 20 yards, 6 feet deep.

When they got back with no phone, she and I looked at each other. All I said was, “You should call it. Maybe someone will answer.”

************************************

Author’s Note: So my guy was kind of pissed at me when he found out she had the phone the whole time and I knew it but let him go on a wild goose chase for hours. The phone is still out there somewhere!

***********************************

Trifecta Writing Challenge

This weekend's prompt is borrowed from Benjamin Franklin, who once said, "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."  We want you to tell us a story about a guest, invited or otherwise, who begins to smell, metaphorically or otherwise, after three days.

My Random Fourth But It's Not My Fourth Yet

Thanks to Stacy Uncorked who lets all the random flow.

I know it’s technically the Fourth of July holiday right this very minute but we weirdos here at the lake don’t really acknowledge it until the Saturday closest to the 4^th. This year we, whoever “we” are, picked this coming Saturday, the 7^th . So today is just like any other day for me. And HOTTER than H-E-double toothpicks!!!

I guess I’m mentioning this because, as all of you are out picnicking and celebrating, I’m doubling up on my writing since it’s not the holiday yet for us. People arrive here tomorrow. So many that I’m making a hard pressed attempt to displace some of them (in-laws are going first!). My mom, dad and best friend get first dibs on guest beds. Everyone else, fair warning…fend for yourselves!

Tomorrow starts all the decorating and hoopla. The lake will get crowded, the grocery stores packed with lines down the aisles and all the other good stuff that goes along with a holiday weekend. We are applying the “fly by the seat of your pants” approach to the 4^th this year. Give me strength.

Thank God for my mother who will bring the holiday with her!

The Fourth of July makes me melancholy though. Always. It means that summer is already halfway finished and I don’t feel I’ve done close to half the things I wanted to do in the first half of the summer and I certainly won’t be able to fit everything into the second half. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Live for the moment, right?

I’ve had the unique opportunity to do a lot of thinking in the last 9 days. I haven’t written at all, which has felt strange but freeing as well. It’s been just pure thinking time. (I feel some Dr. Seuss coming on here!) Time for tangent thinking and “what if” thinking, and possibilities and changes type of thinking. Peaceful thinking and scary thinking all rolled up into one long stretch of thinking. And what thoughts I’ve had! Damn, I should have written them all down!

Mostly I thought about people. My family, important friends, people that mean something to me for any reason at all, big or small. My life. What I’m like and why? What’s important to me in my friendships? The awesome friends I have and what makes us friends? Why you become closer to some and drift further from others. How certain friends handle hard situations and who sticks by your side even when things aren’t perfectly perfect.

I thought about the concept of “soulmates” and stumbled upon this:

‘Throughout life you will meet one person who is unlike any other. You could talk to this person for hours and never get bored, you could tell them things and they won’t judge you. This person is your soulmate, your best friend. Don’t ever let them go.”

I ran across quotes that made me smile and cry and laugh so hard. I saw a video from over a week ago when my friends visited that someone posted of me on Youtube (take it down, please). 

I saw this and it gave me more fodder for thought:

Life’s Natural Highs:

Falling in love

Hearing your favorite song on the radio

Lying in bed listening to the rain outside

Bubble baths

Giggling

Long conversations at night

The moment you wake in a sunlit room

Lazing on the beach

Running through sprinklers

Laughing at an inside joke

Laughing at yourself

Laughing so hard your stomach hurts

Laughing for absolutely no reason at all

Friends

Having someone tell you that you’re beautiful

And I loved this last one called “Weird Love”.

We are all a little

Weird and

            Life’s a little weird,

And when we find

Someone whose weirdness

Is compatible with ours,

We join up with them and fall in mutual

Weirdness and call it

            Love.

To say these last nine days of meditation were emotional would be an understatement.

Each day friends have stopped by, called or emailed just to talk. Why don’t we make more time for each other on a daily basis? I know life gets in the way but does it have to? 

BLUE and Missing You

33-333 words for:

BLUE: (adjective)

3. a: low in spirits: melancholy

    b: marked by low spirits: depressing<a blue funk> <things looked blue>

Something silly or stupid would happen almost every single day and I'd think of you. I'd pick up the phone to dial your number so I could laugh…with you… until our sides hurt like they always did. Knowing you would crack up, too, even while I struggled to get the words out because I was giggling so hard. Because you're silly just like me so you’d get it. 

I’d run into that certain acquaintance of ours, and quickly insert foot directly in mouth. So typical. You're the one I'd text because you always say, “That wasn’t so bad, really (slightly cringing inside). I’d give you a hug if I was with you.”

I’d see Like Crazy or Somewhere In Time or read a love story I knew we’d both like; and immediately, eyes still filled with tears, I’d think to shoot off an email and ask if you saw the same ones, read the same book. “What did you think? Did you love it, too? What are you reading now?” and know your reply would take no time at all.

I’d sit down to write you a letter like we used to love to do and do so often. Then check the mail basket the very next day in anticipation of your written reply even though it wouldn’t arrive for one week. The waiting would be excruciating but oh so, worth it. It would be the second best part after your words.

Sitting, something touching, whispering, anytime we were together.

I still want to do all these things, all the time. 

Then I’d remember. 

I can’t do any of these things because we don’t do any of them anymore. Sometimes I forget even why.

But I do know exactly why we don't do any of these things anymore and it breaks my heart all over again.

Today, when I wanted to tell you something, I remembered again that I couldn’t and all I felt was blue. I suppose I’m making some progress.

Trifecta Writing Challenge

May Heaven Be.......

A Never-ending Float Boat Ride at the Lake…Your Favorite Place Here on Earth.

I’ve only done one thing harder in my life. It was a goodbye, of course, while holding the hand of my Mother-in-law in her final moment. This girl, who we call the “Big Brown Nurse”, was at Hospice, too, licking that same hand.

Today was the second such painful goodbye. I can hardly think of her, let alone speak her name but I can still smell her on my hands from the last time I stroked her soft ears and held her in the last moments. Looking down, I can see a streak of slobber on the thigh of my jeans and brown hair completely covering my white tee shirt. I don’t want to wash my hands or my clothes then Eleanor (“Ellie”) will really be gone for good.

Her last boat ride.

A few years ago on “her” boat.

 Oh My Goodness, the kids are young (13 & 16 maybe)

 Ellie thinking "When's she going back?"

 Snuggle Time on a Winter Lake Weekend!

 The one who doesn't know a minute without her.

 This morning during her last “good” moment.

She was pretty “hot” back in the day.

Birdie, her best friend who was waiting at the gate for her today.

There won't be a day that goes by where we won't remember you...the sweetest dog that ever lived. We know you are resting in peace, finally!

It's Officially Summer When You Break Out The Disco Ball

I didn’t have my blog last year so this is my first real attempt to portray anything that resembles my actual summer life (with the exception of Dumpster Diving) and what we fondly refer to as our “dance parties”.

And this is exactly how the first one of the summer came to be on the first potential night that everyone could be together (we really only see each other in the summertime). It took one phone call and two boat bys. “Come over for burgers. No don’t bring anything. Just come. It’ll be low key”. Ya, right!

You could cut the excitement in the air with a knife because it was the official beginning of the summer, Friday of Memorial Day weekend. We all know what that means!

Our four families have been busting out the moves, some better than others, since the moment the children were big enough to swing around in our arms without the risk of injury (sleeping babies dance too, you know). It never took much, just one kid or one “grown up” with a bit too much mojo goin’ and it started.

The ingredients for our style of fun are simpler than baking a cake from a box mix. All it takes is exactly 18 people (kids’ ages range from 16-22 and the "grown ups" (ages not disclosed)), our garage with two kick ass 30-year-old rebuilt college speakers, an iPod or two and this...

DJs get changed out every 2-3 songs to accommodate everyone’s tastes and alternate between adults and kids but it’s amazing how much overlap we actually have from listening to each other’s music for countless years. Some country is even tolerated because the college girls insist.

Our two mandatory songs are oldies but they’re the ones the kids request fondly and enthusiastically because of memories and traditions from so long ago.

“Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison 
(funny 90% of us are blue eyed)

And “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond

EVERYONE drops what he or she is doing to dance and sing (scream?) together... All 18!

It hasn’t gone unnoticed (and makes the “grown ups” smile) that our kids WANT to spend evenings hanging with us. They constantly ask, “What're we all doing tonight?” and they’re disappointed if it doesn’t include everyone because sometimes it can’t. They are together constantly, anyway.

We are a sentimental group and always take a moment, on such nights, to look around, take it all in and realize…

This is where we’re meant to be.

We DO have rules, however! Well, only one rule. Cell phones on the table, kids. Your video content will be perused and deleted because, if you remember, we said no evidence and no YouTube. Two were confiscated Saturday morning!

“These Are Days” By 10,000 Maniacs

These are the days you might fill

With laughter until you break

These days you might feel

A shaft of light

Make its way across your face

And when you do

Then you’ll know how it was meant to be

See the signs and know their meaning

It's true

Then you’ll know how it was meant to be

Hear the signs and know they’re speaking

To you, to you