Little Lady

It has been an interesting month.  Floaters in my right eye, diastolic way too low, blood work, blue skies, verdant mountains.  Family.  Beautiful grands, and a three month old baby.

As every parent knows, babies have a short happy span.  The awaken, need changing, they nurse or take a bottle, they sleep.  Repeat.  But in the morning, between the feedings they are happy, happy, happy.  A beginning smile.



This cutie has captured my heart!

With nearly no hair now (she lost the little bit she had on top) we make sure to keep her head covered until her hair fills in.

She is blessed with the most beautiful hand-me-downs any mother could want. It makes it difficult for her Nana who loves buying clothes for children.

Her female cousin who is two, has the same dress. Both dresses are big on the girls but this summer - look out!   They will fill them out nicely - and maybe can even wear them in the late summer, early fall.  When we are all together again.  This time in New Hampshire!  And in D.C. in the fall

Fun times!

Magnets

Magnets

I miss the warmth 
Of another person

Lying beside me

Our hands pulled together
Like magnets 

Effortlessly, deliberately

An early morning sun 
Rises over the horizon
As we tilet toward each other

While the sun warms our smiles

He is the first thing you notice

There because he wants to be

And you because you care

Two loving faces

Repeat the story

Of your life together

You just want to be close

On Warmth

One of the things I really miss is the warmth of another person beside me. Hands connect like a like a magnet to  effortlessly, deliberately as they rest together on the mattress you share.  A slight roll toward them in the early morning, just as the sun comes over the horizon,  the smile of someone who really wants to be next to you is the first thing you notice. You are there because you want the same thing.  Them.  Their facial gestures tell a story of your life together.  They just want to be close.

I awakened early this morning with that on my mind.  It doesn't happen every night.  I have dated a mixture of people in my seventeen years of singledom.  Some interesting, some really damaged, some caring men.  I suppose when you sequester yourself in a bubble for so long, taking on the identity of another,  you don't see all the people who are just lost.  Lost because of poor parenting, lack of nurturing, importance.  You are lost because you aren't in a place that serves you.  You are there because you made a commitment, you have children to raise who matter more than your happiness for yourself.

The retirement years offer a window into things more vivid than they could have been when you are a student, working full time, taking care of your family and running through your life.  You are caught in the moment of joy and happiness watching your family grow.  You like being a part of something far more important than yourself.  

In any community where I lived, I was drawn to a variety of people.  Much of my interest has been working and hosting people from different countries.  I have hosted students from France, England, Italy and China.  While I thoroughly enjoy European culture, Asian culture fascinates me.  I enjoy eastern philosophies and being among people who live them.  One such person is the woman who does my nails.  She grew up in Vietnam.  One of ten children, she was raised mostly by older siblings. Her mother at the time of her birth was 47.  Vin was the youngest of her family.  Whenever she speaks about them, it is with the deepest love, warmth and affection.  She misses the time when everyone was together.  She doesn't miss the government, nor the poverty of living in Vietnam.  She has been in the United States nearly twenty years. Despite all the isolation, deprivation she exudes so much warmth.  Her husband is quite westernized, as is she.  


Vin is the age of my children and has a six year old daughter.  We talk about relationships, hers, mine.  She wonders how I fare in life as a single woman with my children and grandchildren living at a distance.  I tell her I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  Maybe it will change and I will find a wonderful, loving partner.  I am glad, grateful beyond words that I found myself.   I tell her I am lucky because I can travel to see them, live in paradise and have such a good life.  I know there is someone who wants a heart like mine.  Someone warm, loving who wants to share a life with me.  I am here for a reason.

But it will happen again.  I will awaken, roll over and there he will be.  His hand will magnetize mine, his warmth will spill over, his smile will greet mine.  Our day will begin.  Together.

On Being With Self

For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed my time to myself.  As a child, I loved being in the house alone when I was sick.  Of course that was around age eleven and it was just such a treat.  No one to tell me what to do, or give me a chore.  Just pure quiet.

As I got older, staying home sick from school meant watching the Loretta Young Show at one o'clock in the afternoon.  It was a bit melodramatic, but always a good story.  And, it was always nice to see my family around dinner time.

When I married, being home was nice, too.  In the beginning, it did feel a bit odd.  Being in an apartment one hour away from familiar surroundings.  I was on my own and I have wanted that since I was eleven.  Even throughout marriage, because my former spouse was so rarely home, I got used to my space.  Even loved it.  I really enjoyed when it was just my two children and me.  We would go to the movies, lunch, do something scenic.  We were the Three Musketeers in so many ways.

When the marriage completed, it wasn't much different.  I was used to being alone.  Now some seventeen years later, I love the quiet of my home.  It has taken a while to get there.  Some five years or so ago, I went through a time where I was feeling lonely.  I hadn't quite found the peace within myself I was looking for.  A trip to New Hampshire for one and a half winters in an old age apartment complex cured me.  Though I did enjoy many of my neighbors, it was a bit intrusive for me.  I have always preferred to be away from le miserables.

Instantly, the return home felt right.  Comfortable.  Home.  Some two years plus into my return time, and about to celebrate my fifteenth anniversary here on May 1st, I have come home to myself.  Fully.

I have a cadre of close friends.  They are such a mixture of warm, intelligent and caring people.  I see them regularly and always look forward to our time together.  I also look forward to coming home.

On being with self.  It is truly the greatest gift.

Out Of Kilter

My eyes have told me.  We just need to do it better.  Get our priorities stright.

We don't need astroturf for high school children.  We need a homeless shelter, a larger area for animals at risk.  New moms need to be home with their babies.  Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Canada offers paid maternity leave for six months.  That can be combined with the husband's six month leave offering a new mom one year to bond and raise her baby.  They also have medical care for everyone.  A proactive approach.  It saves both lives and ensures better health.

This is NOT political this IS about human, living things rights.  The right to live a healthy life.

I believe many years from now we will look back at what we have allowed.  Yes, allowed.  The silent ones who did nothing.  The multitude.  The masses.  This is crunch time.

My daughter started back to work yesterday.  She nurses her baby providing an optimal good start for her.  She is lucky because she can work out of her home until a day care center has a spot available for her baby.  She is lucky because her mother-in-law helps out one day a week.  The rest she relies on a 20 something young woman, who also brings her baby, just three weeks younger than my daughter's baby.  Sure, there is the concern the young mother will focus more on her own child.  That can be true even in a day care center.  People do have their preferences.

Couples also have to decide their priorities.  Things, lifestyle or raising their child themselves, if that is an option.

My eyes have told me.  Time to get our priorities straight! We are out of kilter.  Again.

Carte Blanche

Go ahead - do what you want.  You do anyway.

This is the sentiment recently expressed by a local reporter.  At a recent commissioner's meeting,  the request for astroturf for the high school was put on the agenda.  As an Update.  Not as a roll call or a decision.  An update.  Another reporter, after checking the agenda, chose to miss the meeting.  Nothing important was expected to pass.  Or happen.

The commissioner's originally stated that if taxpayers could come up with $200,000 toward the astroturf, they would okay the purchase and would spend another $500,000 on it.  The taxpayers came up with $60,000 - a nice show but not the amount the commissioners originally agreed to.  Boyce Deitz felt it was a lot of money.  The resolution passed 100%.

Citizens, welcome to spend away.  Build a performing arts center for high schoolers.  Let the Superintendent market the astroturf on the local radio show.  Waste, waste, waste.  Oh yes, and we can't afford a homeless shelter, either.

Think I will vote for any of you next go round?  Think again.

Governor As Bigot

The North Carolina Governor is not a moron as some bumper stickers state. He is a bigot.

If we segregate bathrooms, let's do it based on cleanliness.  I want to be in the one which has standards of cleanliness and where only clean folks can use this.  I want to be using stalls where folks wipe off the toilet with clean water.  Oh yes, there will be sinks in each stall so that will not be an issue.  I want to be in the section where folks pick up their dropped towels and other artifacts and place them in the appropriate containers.

We've seen what 'market forces' did to the airline industry and their mini-sized old, dirty, smelly toilets.  You can't even get into the stalls without touching the bi-fold door or worse, touching the disgusting toilet.  Oh, and where are the Federally mandated A.D.A. laws regarding accommodation of disabled people?  How did this slide through?

This, my readers, is why we need regulations.  If folks did the right thing we wouldn't need them.

So NC Governor, get your filthy mouth out of the toilet and do something worthwhile.  Clean it up!  And while we are cleaning, please tell your comrade, Tom Tillis to clean his hands.*  Better yet, let's do a bacterial sweep on him.  Starting with his mouth and hands.

Nope, I wouldn't shake Tom Tillis's hand on a bet.














*

Thom Tillis on whether employees need to wash hands after bathroom use

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/thom-tillis-on-whether-employees-need-to-wash-hands-after-bathroom-use/

Buyer Beware

Corruption is ubiquitious!  Locally in the Cherokee government, state and federal government, people in leadership positions continue to syphon off taxpayer dollars.

At the same time, hospital business organizations take over local hospitals with a CEO whose only interest is money.  Theirs!  In a local hospital, a top OB/GYN physician was removed because she would not sell her practice to the hospital. Since they couldn't change her business structure, they went after her professionally.  Physicians in surgical specialities do have malpractice issues.  She was not the only OB/GYN in the hospital to have them.  She was, however, singled out and her admitting privileges removed.  A couple of years later, another OB/GYN physician suddenly left the area.

Like many physicians who enter health care because they truly want to care for people, in this cost driven environment, hospital business administrators want dollars.  They want ownership.

Even in the late 60s working in a hospital in Baltimore, a surgeon with a large practice had many malpractice issues.  I remember one pathologist telling me the surgeon left a 4 x 4 sponge in an 18 year old woman.  Weeks later, she had a total hysterectomy due to complications from the sponge.  Staff was told never to speak of that again.

I compiled the Tissue Committee Report back then and questioned the physicians many malpractice issues.  I questioned them wondering if there were calculation errors because there were so many.  I was told the numbers were correct, that the Tissue Committee was told to look the other way because the physician brought a lot of money into the hospital.

Know your provider.  Do business with a hospital that has a history of treating people well - health care providers and clients.  And, be sure to stand up to the real people in charge, not the local CEO - go to the top of the foundation that puts these clowns in place.

Buyer beware!

Uncertainty Lives

In a recent conversation with someone, we spoke about all the uncertainties of life.  A new job, a new boyfriend, a new baby, retirement, life.  Nothing is guaranteed. Life is and has always been static. I suspect that will continue.

But it is in how we respond to these changes, these uncertainties that sets the tone for the next breath.   Will it be shallow, nervous, inhibited or a surrendering breath?

Repetitive reactions affect neurons.  What wires together, fires together.  So if we do not want a reactive life, we go back to our meditation practice.  And, it does not get easier with age.  The only thing we have is the life we create without ourselves.  Always.

I have lots of teachers.  One is Thich Nhat Hanh.  Please listen to his responses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ9UtuWfs3U&ebc=ANyPxKpmHfEozLCe1bELhngkgowI3BQs6KBztb431xl3iOd7NArlGXkAlSaY9xZpZveSE7D5FRle9PTockBGX9LxDH2adjniPw

Blowing In The Wind

After a few nights of relentless wind, a calm washes over the mountains.  The birds, still in the wind, once again sing their hearts out.  The flag and flag pole are restored to their place along the porch pillars.  There is a glorious quiet.

Ever since I was a child, I have been drawn to remote places.  Not in the bush country of Alaska, fifty miles or so from town, but close enough to a town where I can meet friends, pick up a few things I need and be grateful I have a retreat away from all of this.  Fifteen minutes in the Nantahala National Forest, depending upon where you are is more than enough.  Tucked away in the mountainside where white pine, dogwood, beech, flame azaleas and sourwood to name but a few provide a canopy.  A haven.

I've have a few pensive days recently.  Cooking scones, making salads, eating berries.  The other night I watched an awesome conversation between the Dalai Lama and some academics.

It is a film a little under two and a half hours entitled, "Consciousness Is Everywhere...Panpsychism, the idea of universal consciousness, is a prominent thought in some branches of ancient Greek philosophy, paganism, and Buddhism. And it has been largely dismissed by modern science — until recently."

http://www.lionsroar.com/christof-koch-unites-buddhist-neuroscience-universal-nature-mind/

As Bob Dylan reminds us, "the answer is blowin in the wind."

Now Voice Activated

Happy April!

If you are looking for a prank, here is one.   Put a sign on a printer used by others that says, 

                                                        "NOW VOICE ACTIVATED." 

Sit back, observe and have a good laugh.  


A recent decision made by our commissioners is using taxpayer dollars in the form of an 82,000 square foot building that may be used by a former commissioner, candidate for commissioner and a few other local farmers. This will be a packaging plant and a plant to sell the food they grow. Their price - $15,000 a year.  That means about $5.47 a square foot.  

Before those folks displayed an interest, a standing commissioner, candidate for commissioner and others looked to use it as a stockyard.  Are you seeing the same view as I?  

While taxpayer money needs to be put to good use, I am not so sure this is the way to do it. And at such a meager price.  This pattern has been erupting just about everywhere.

It could be so easy to just ignore this stuff.  Stay home, work in the garden, meditate, see close friends and family.  But my bodymind, my other worldly connections tell me differently.  IF we are to truly connect, we need to stand up.   

Now go print your NOW VOICE ACTIVATED sign for use at a printer, cash register, or whatever creative thing you have.  And, please, have a good laugh.












The Watermark may take a different direction soon.  Stay tuned.