V is for Vision

 V is for Vision

.....Very.......Verbs......Variety.......Vanity.....Velveteen Rabbit.....Verdi the snake....

 You need to have a vision. A very long term vision, full of variety and all sorts of verbs like playing, imagining, dreaming and loving.....vanity has to fall by the wayside.  Fill yourself to overflowing with vision. 

You are probably familiar with the story of the Velveteen Rabbit. If you haven't, go buy it. The classic tale is worth a reread. While you are at it, look up Verdi. Not as well known, but the story of Verdi the snake deals with growing older....while staying young at heart.

  

Oddly, one of my favorite websites that illustrates all this; the very long term vision, variety, vanity and verbs of all kinds, is by a fashion photographer. "The Sartorialist" highlights people from around the world, some famous, most not. He captures people in all their quirky glory. Old ladies from Milan, high fashion models from Paris, people on the streets, on bikes, heading to work, waiting for the bus....love it. (70,000+ people a day agree with me too....this is one well-read blog!)

  The pictures of the older women (and men) are as interesting as any of the other random shots. He knows how to capture a moment in time. Makes you wonder what their story is. Because remember, EVERYONE, has a story. My secrets about secrets,  involves a particular person I would like to run into someday. Just one time. I want to hear his voice, take a look at his hands, see how he walks and relates to other people.
Voices, hands and how a person carries themselves down the street are all intriguing to me.

(V is also for Vague apparently

just chalk that last comment up to being a simple secret)

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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.

"You become.

It takes a long time. 

That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily,

or have sharp edges, 

or who have to be carefully kept.

Generally,

by the time you are Real,

most of your hair has been loved off, 

and your eyes drop out 

and you get loose in your joints

and very shabby. 

But these things don't matter at all,

because once you are Real 

you can't be ugly,

except to people who don't understand."
— The Velveteen Rabbit 

This is a 7 minute video of blogger Scott Schumann, aka, The Sartorialist. Sharing his artistic process, I especially love two phrases from this clip, paraphrased..

"you have to fall in love a little each day, allow yourself to be seduced a little each day "

and

"lack of knowledge really helped at the beginning" 

So true.

Love and discover  

and toughen up

You don't want to be "one of those who break easily

or have sharp edges, 

or who have to be carefully kept."

 

W is for Wonder Bread House

 W is for Wonder Bread House....and ultimately writing for a living. The truth is, like the last W post in the A to Z challenge, I am re-posting an essay. It was written in response to a call for stories about moving...it wasn't chosen, and I didn't know what to do with it...writing for a living is time consuming, and full of pieces of myself that I don't want to throw away. Ah HA, I will pop it in the W post, like piece of toast. Perfect.

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Moving from my dream home to a small cookie cutter suburban slab turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to my family.

To say moving to my current neighborhood wasn't my first choice would be the understatement of the century. I grow up in the country. The school I attended had annual "tractor day" which meant students could ride their tractors to school. Senior pranks often included some sort of farm animal being released in the halls. This is how I envisioned raising my kids, in an old farm house with wide open spaces. When I married, compromises had to be made. We happily settled in a century home not far from the road I grew up on. A street with side walks that led to town.  I could have lived there my whole life. But that wasn't going to happen.

In the wake of a new job, other life changes and a "deal I couldn't pass up," I landed in a suburban development. I complained about living in a "bag of Wonder Bread" and all the things the kids would be missing out on. My heart sank at the sameness of it all. I missed the large oddly shaped rooms and creaky floors. Strangely though, this move has been the best thing that could have possibly happened to my family. No longer do I have to spend weekends repairing the latest thing to go wrong in a century home, and without a basement anymore, rain doesn't cause concern.

Now we can take bike rides to the nearby park on the weekends, or head to the neighborhood pool. The kids love having friends around every corner. Pick up basketball games and rollerblading hockey games are common on our quiet street. And my boys do get the experience of farm life in a way. They each have a lawn tractor, complete with snow plow attachments and work year round for several of our busy neighbors.  I've gotten over the loss of land and enjoy my small plot to the fullest. My gardens look better with a tighter frame; a little really goes a long way.    

I'm content in my Wonder Bread house and enjoy customizing it to our needs. Pulling into the drive now, I realize how much I love the tiny place. Turns out, it isn't the shape of the house or even the location, it's the family that matters. 

X is for Xena Warrior Princess

X is for Xena Warrior Princess, 

why I am not a nurse

I never saw this show in it's entirety, but I fought for a lady's right to watch it. Back in the 90's when this show was on, I worked in a nursing home. This was back when I had the ridiculous notion that I was going to be a nurse....even though I am horrible with specifics, math, science....and don't really buy into the drug company notions about how things should be treated...everyone and their brother told me I should be a nurse..anyways...

As a nursing assistant I became close to two ladies in particular, Leona and Marian. I'd even come up on my days off just to visit with the two of them. Marian never married, she didn't have any living family and all her friends had died. Leona had family, but they all lived out west and she hadn't seen them in years.
 
Leona was a dark haired lady, she was probably gorgeous as a younger woman, probably a Lucy Lawless type.  Marian was small and a little mousy, like Gabrielle in the show, but clearly she had stories to tell. They were both spitfires, Marian would call me at home and it was as normal as if it was my best friend calling.

They didn't like all the silly activities in the home, they had no desire to play catch with a beach ball, or sit in on bingo."It was rigged so everyone could win something they don't need" Leona said.  But, she'd go sometimes and win a little stuffed toy to give to my daughter. My two oldest spent time with these ladies too, we'd pop in to see them, with drawings or flowers.

Xena was their favorite show. It was a ritual, they'd set their chairs up and send one of the nursing assistants for coffee and cookies. Everyone knew not to bother those two until the show was over, or at least at commercial.

That is until the time slot was moved back an hour.

One night I was at home and got a call from Leona, she was mad, really mad. It seems the nursing assistant on duty made them go to bed before Xena came on. They were not even allowed to watch it in bed. Lights out. This was ridiculous, it had to be a mistake. I went to work and was told the new policy. Insane. These are adults. They have lost everything, their freedom, homes, family, friends...who are WE to say they can't watch TV at night. I made a fuss, I secretly turned on Xena for my friends. The director found out and I was warned. whatever. It was a stupid rule, it only made it easier for the nurses on duty, it had nothing to do with quality of life. Where did these people have to go in the morning that they had to be in bed asleep at 10 pm.


Then it happened. Leona's "neighbor" in the room next door died. This tough old broad (it's okay, she would have liked that title)  always sat in the hall outside her room and played solitaire, or poker with whoever she could find. One night while I was on duty, she had a heart attack. I was expecting to see nurses rush to action. Maybe a doctor called, or the ambulance... No, the nurse moved her to her room and there she died. It seems she had a "no resuscitate" order in place. I didn't know those existed.

While I understood, in theory, the nursing home was for some a final stop, it didn't really sink in until I saw this woman die. She wasn't the first to die, but she was the first I saw that no effort was taken to save her. That was it for my nursing career. I quit being a nursing assistant the next day. I moved to the activity department and blocked out reality as much as possible. I ran bingo games, and planned parties, tossed a beach ball and painted nails. Leona and Marian thought it was pretty funny and actually started attending all the silly activities.

Leona and Marian never got to see Xena again, and it still hurts to think about that. They both died within months of each other. I wasn't there for either of their last moments because I had moved an hour from the nursing home by then and only stayed in contact through occasional visits and phone calls.

The point of the story is......well, I am not quite sure. It's just a story that was a building block in my life.
Some themes....Fear- Growing old doesn't scare me. I am looking forward to seeing the other side of 100. Nursing homes scare me.
Anger- Losing freedom makes me mad. Treating elderly people like their opinions don't count makes me mad. Even if what they want doesn't make sense, Xena was the last thing you might think they want, but just ask them...they are PEOPLE.
Love- You never know where you might find a friend.

Y is for Yogi

Y is for Yogi...one of my past job titles was, "desk yogi"  

I worked at a yoga studio, ran the desk, set up classes, sold merchandise, cleaned up and occasionally watched a child or two while their parent went to class. 

All this in exchange for unlimited yoga classes.

While I loved the studio, it was warm and smelled spicy, (not sweaty-the candles were spicy), over time the redundancy and calm was maddening. Next door to the studio was a massage therapy center and then on the other side, some sort of completely silent office space. All I know is that the woman who worked there always wore gray and didn't smile.  The peaceful studio with it's slow moving, smiling instructors who rarely talked above a whisper seemed to get smaller and smaller.

As a writer who spends great expanses of time basically alone, wrapped up in words and thoughts...I crave chaos, new sights and sounds, the less predictable. Instead of taking advantage of my free classes, I'd skip them in order to run in the woods with my music turned up high. Or grab my kids and go rollerblading, or biking anything to see something new, to do something a little riskier, a little louder.

While I left that studio- I still practice yoga....at home....occasionally.

I am well-versed on the benefits, and saw the results for myself. The stressed out executives who came in and transformed into sweaty calm versions of themselves and the insecure giant T-shirt wearers, who quickly gained body confidence and started dressing in bra tops and stretch pants. 

But for me, more of the same-quiet, wrapped up in my head days needed contrast.

In conclusion-Y wisdom of the day from a former "desk yogi"
When looking for exercise, (or part time work)  sometimes it helps to do something completely opposite to what you are used to.  ~ommmmmmmm~ 

Z is for Zelda

I wish I could have met Zelda Fitzgerald. Born Zelda Sayre in 1900, married at 19, her life was full of obsessive and erratic behavior. This is just the outer package. From her own words, I think she was terribly misunderstood and thrown in the "crazy box" too soon.

She was a painter, a writer, a dancer...reckless and full of life.

( in a slightly unrelated parallel, since this is "secrets about secrets" I was born in a zero year and married at 19, spent time in an institution for an eating disorder and am an artist and writer.. love all aspects of dance.....and have done seemingly reckless things throughout my life)

Some of her quotes....my favorites...

" It's very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled "the past," and, having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue. "
~ how to handle life....

"I wish we could spend July by the sea, browning ourselves and feeling water-weighted hair flow behind us from a dive. I wish our gravest concerns were the summer gnats. I wish we were hungry for hot dogs and dopes, and it would be nice to smell the starch of summer linens and the faint odor of talc in blistering summer bath houses... We could lie in long citoneuse beams of the five o'clock sun on the plage at Juan-les-Pins and hear the sound of the drum and piano being scooped out to see be the waves."
~ wonderful imagery...

"Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold." 

~so true, I love people I've lost, babies and foster children with more intensity that I would have thought possible. Even when entirely broken, shattered - the heart still holds immense quantities of love

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  and finally, Zelda nailed it when she said this...

"I am really only myself when I'm somebody else 

whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination."  

This is a trait of creatives, sometimes it seems we have to play make-believe just to be who we are.  Yes, it sounds crazy. I am not denying it. But nothing sounds truer than crazy sometimes. 

In thinking about Zelda and her tragic story, I am more grateful for my supportive family and friends. 'nuf said.

Z to A in May - What the Hay

Well here I go again....this time backwards :)  "Z to A in May" was the brainchild of Marie Ann, a fellow writer with a knack for blogs. She pulled four of her blogs through April...AND...read and commented on who knows how many other posts. I am awed by her awesomeness.

Challenge starts May 2nd. If you want to join in with your blog, hook up on this Write, Wrong or Indifferent post that outlines the rules and lists all the participants.

  Aside from this challenge, I have a few other major goals for the month of May;
* Keep up on my Yahoo! beats - on time=maximum articles, I've been slacking on my daily sports beats :( even though those articles really pay the bills!
* Work through the next 30 days of P90....man alive, that program is TOUGH..but I have an out of town wedding to go to in June and WILL NOT be the chubby chick, or crab because of my flab!
* Up my rating on a particular ghostwriting site. I haven't taken it terribly seriously in the past and my score reflects that....no more. I will be giving them my best and in turn...
* Double my income in May.....okay, this is ambitious, but entirely doable.
* Plan my gardens....normally, I have several drafts of plans by March, but the weeks just flew by this spring and I only vaguely know what I want to go where.
* Oh, and the other challenge. A group of Associated Content writers are planning on doing an A to Z challenge with our article submissions...one a week for 52 weeks - A to Z.  I am considering following a theme..anti-aging articles, or art-related content, or maybe all sports related, in order to fit into other writing goals I am working towards.....

 Goooooaaaaaal!

Z is for Zoo

Z is for Zoo....last post in the April A to Z blogging challenge. I made it to the end with this blog. My other three blogs had to drop out of the race. Too many other deadlines to meet this month.
Today, I am fighting an earache that won't let up, so I am keeping it simple.

I love the Cleveland Zoo.

Several Ohioans told me that if I like Cleveland, I'd love Columbus. 

I took the trip, and I don't like it better 

at all.
I like my zoo and my familiar animals. The relaxing walk, and free Monday admission.
I like not seeing an "environmental advertisement" every two feet...."Columbus Zoo, I am talking to you."

But....I s'pose, it could just be the memories of growing up going to this particular zoo cloud my vision.
maybe

The following are a few of my favorite recent shots from "my" zoo

 Feel free to add a caption for Joe the camel and his pal........

 or this stare down.....

or the peeping Tom monkey......

And I'll go look for my heating pad for my ear. : (

"Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day.
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way,
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!"