Stumping for Bernie ... Democracy in Action

Bernie's first LA rally August 10, 2015 ... the seed is sown  

When volunteers flocked to the March Super Tuesday primaries, I had flashbacks of spending 5 days canvassing for Bernie in Iowa way back in February. 

That was my – and a majority of California volunteers’ – first foray into politics in the trenches, the byways, the neighborhoods, the wrong addresses and large barking dogs -- some of whom were not on a leash in neighborhoods that did not have fences.

I went to Iowa on a whim; my new neighbor turned out to be the SoCal coordinator for the Bernie team and asked if I would like to canvass in the first caucus of 2016.  I slept on it for a few nights while the feeling of “If I believe, I should be on the team” grew. 

After I said yes, the fun began trying to get a flight into Des Moines and then a ride to Iowa City, where California volunteers would be working. My neighbor helped get me a flight to Des Moines in time for a rally the first night that was to get us all together, enable those staying in the same Bernie BnBs to meet and hopefully attract the press by flashing lighted Bernie signs (donated by ice cream czars Ben and Jerry) as we rallied.  (Alas, local campaign workers cancelled it, lest it conflict with previously planned events, but more of that shortly.)

Getting home gradually took over my life: flights filled, a computer shut down and wifi went out. I had to look for flights out of neighboring states, trains and  busses, any type of transportation to get myself home. Three days later I had a flight out of Kansas City and a promised ride to the KC airport.

Departure Day I woke up excited and ready to go, then checked my phone.  The first message was, “You need to take a bus,”  from the promised ride from Des Moines to Iowa City, who was already in Iowa City because there was no rally(!)

There was only bus, it left at 11:30 p.m. and got into Iowa City  at 1:30 a.m.  I still didn't know where I was staying. Taking three deep breaths, I found a group landing in Des Moines 75 minutes before me, pleaded with them to wait and got a yes with 15 minutes to go before my ride to the airport in LA.  

Armed with confirmed reservations on four flights and the promise of two rides to get to the right airports, I delegated where I was staying, who I would be with and where my next meal was coming from to the organizers and a bag of gluten-free bars.

Iowa was euphoric. Enthusiasm abounded. The group buzzed for Bernie and laughter was the language of the day. We were rookies and strangers with only a state and a belief in Bernie's revolution in common. The coordinators were new as well -- oddly even the locals seemed new to their caucus voting system.

We had armed ourselves with cellphones and apps that were supposed link CAL volunteers via texts. on the theory that once there, emails would be unreliable.

I, for one, never considered that my wireless company would not stretch all the way to Iowa. Also, a lot of people post rally were texting, messaging, sending photos, taking videos and otherwise filling the bandwidth to the gills, leaving many of us muted.   

Enter the straightforward dependability of Midwesterners. I got selfless offers of help and my-word-is-my-bond promises from downhome, honest folks. After I borrowed one stranger’s smartphone, he promised to drive by on his way out of the parking lot and pick me up if I was still stranded.

I lived on the kindness of strangers, and there were a lot of them. I walked miles, with most people not home. I left door hangars with where the caucus was, the time and when to be there. Some places I hung it over similar material from Hillary’s paid volunteers.  All names on our lists had been phone-banked and said they were Democrats leaning toward Bernie or Hillary, so the Republicans I ran into were a surprise. Didn't matter: was a treat just to talk to live people.  

The challenge was the maps. These were sketchy neighborhood outlines from city streets to suburbs with huge lawns to working farms (I got all three over 3 days).  Not every house was to be canvassed, so plotting a course linking live ones on the list was a challenge, especially as we had nowhere to go to puzzle things out and the wind blew the papers out of our cold hands. Numbers were hard to find, skipped wildly and randomly, even finding the front door was a challenge, especially in the country.  I trudged one whole day muttering: “At least it’s not raining.”

My last day -- with  the sun setting in the west, feet aching, a bruise rubbed on my calf from seldom-worn snow boots, fingers frosty because I had to remove my gloves to use my GPS and not having spoken to anyone in several hours -- I rang a doorbell: a whoosh of warm air welcomed me as the resident, smiling and happy to see me, ushered me inside to rave about Bernie.

Memories:

More than 4,200 at the Bands for Bernie rally on the University of Iowa campus Saturday night, where I was interviewed for CTV (Canada’s national news org). 

The final “victory” rally (when we didn’t yet know if it was a victory) where my favorite photo is of Bernie and family leading the applause for Hillary Clinton (Bernie leading by example to a reluctant crowd).  

The letdown when Iowa City results revealed the millennials had packed the free concert, but not bothered to vote…the  first niggling of a worm of doubt.

Highlights: My hostess Nan Tayor greeting me with gluten-free bread she’d borrowed from her church; the Republican who gave me directions how to get to a particular street: “You can cut through that backyard over there, or go to the end of the street and turn right.” My mind stopped working after “cut through that backyard” –  I’m from California, where you could get shot doing that. Spotting a grinning face above a lighted BERNIE sign at the Des Moines Airport after searching for my ride for 30  minutes and beginning to despair I didn’t have one.  The Berners from Chicago who stuck with me all day and found me in the crowd after my phone went out to give me a ride home.  

Even now, when Bernie is again doomed and ignored by the media and pundits, I would do it again. Democracy in action. Revolution in progress. An informed electorate will elect the proper candidate for the United States of America, but they absolutely must vote, and it takes volunteers to get them there. 

Generational Tweener Gappers

The title refers to both the Generation Gap made popular in the 60s/70s when the Vietnam War/Civil rights drove stakes through parent-child relations and the 90s-to-now Tweener category of parents squeezed between needy children and aging (needy) parents.

My parents are gone and kids on their own, but being the bridge over troubling waters continues just living in the rocket ship of time called the 21st century when things change almost faster than you can buy them and confuse minds from a slower era that allowed adjustment time to get used to and learn new things. The gap can become an unbridgeable chasm without us.

Badger Pass, Yosemite, winter 2104.

I took this photo during the two weeks of snow in Yosemite this year because I see in it the wondrous variety of trees, even of the same variety, which fascinates me. Growing in close proximity but slightly different conditions, some grow straight and tall, others curve a little, then straighten out, others grow straight, then curve, then swing back to straight and some just let go and serpentine their way toward the sun. The straight trunk in the background is the older generation, with subsequently more free form trunks showing youthful spirit as they get nearer  the camera.

OK, that's my flight of fancy, but there is no doubt that being 64 (and more) assigns you a place in the middle, the straight-then freeform curve-era of old and new, trail following and trail blazing, not just between parents and children, but everyone, really.

I am in a choir where the 75+ members are proud of not being in the 21st century. They do not want to use computers or smart phones, which means the only communication is land line and snail mail, which means they can't keep up with rapid change like a change of time or cancellation date unless they are home and near their phone. I have described the wonders of smart phones, and they are amazed and briefly consider how convenient it would be to get an email telling them of a new gig, a contact list of members or a map to a new destination, but it is fleeting. They are secure in their known world and wish to remain that way.

The younger (65 and less) members are happy to surf for directions, open to new gigs and available instantly to discuss change.

The challenge of pleasing both falls to those of us in the middle who remember days when what you bought worked and if it didn't you took it back and they apologized and gave you a new one. We accept that that is over. We work with products that don't seem to work and keep at it until we find a workaround to get them to do what they're supposed to do (starting with reboot).

I don't know when I started being intimidated by computers. I got one of the first laptops (before they were called that) to write my news stories at council meetings and send them in via a suction cup and phone receiver. It had 7k memory, which I boosted to 14k so I could write two stories on it.  I moved on to the workhorse Tandy 1000, which taught millions of us how to compute until outstripped and overshadowed by upstart (now called startup) companies. Since products lasted years or more back then, I plugged on with it until my boys begged for a newer version. When I finally caved in, I was several generations behind and it was then, I think, that intimidation crept in, because the new versions came with no instructions and I got lost in the confounding upgrades.

I have since regained some control of my electronic devices from smart phone to laptops to tablets, but I still dislike upgrades, which some apps do constantly while others update without requiring me to learn a whole new system.  I prefer the latter but deal with the former.

This all enables me to understand why my mother, and others of hers and similar generations, do not embrace digital delights. They remember times when you were granted time, all that you wanted, to learn something new without the hurry-up-and-Get-It of now. My sons have taught me to try to figure out my problems first, and only call when I am stuck. This has made me much more proficient at solving problems online as well as saving them the time of redoing what I've already tried (like reboot).

The hours I spend getting things to work as they should on line are frustrating, even enraging, but they've made me lose my fear of computers and relegate them to the machines they are, knowing I can get them to do what I want using my amazing human brain - or my boys', should I fail.

The older generation does not want the hours of frustration, the feeling of incompetence, the weeks of learning, the daily nuisance of things that don't work the way you want, but which you can't take back.

And I understand that.

Along with the younger generation, that accepts this as a given and sails through updates, upgrades and new iterations every 6 months. Change is not something to fear, but to embrace (did they finally fix the bugs this time?) They can be brisk with the older members, especially when things can't happen quickly and easily. We in the middle soothe feathers on both sides.

So we mail maps and newsletters to the oldsters and post emails to the younguns. It's the way things are when you are a bridge between troubled waters. It is sometimes funny, often frustrating, but totally worth it, because all of us trees make the forest of our choir richer and more interesting.

Confusion in the Ranks

I am past 64 now, so remember even longer ago than the title of my blog suggests. It's too much trouble to change the title, so I leave it, with apologies to anyone that that ruffles.

I have also lived outside the United States of America for nearly half that life, so when I come home, it's been fun finding the things have have changed. One of those brought up memories of grammar school (when it was still called that because they actually taught grammar back then), when students would stand up at the beginning of the school day, put their hands over their hearts, recite the Pledge of Allegience and then sing the National Anthem.

I was invited to a women's club meeting just yesterday after my yoga class got cancelled when nobody showed up and the woman on the recombinant bike next to my treadmill started to leave and offered to pay for my lunch (I find free food irresistible) if I wanted to go. Off I went in my yoga outfit covered with a long green fleece sweater from Canada. No one gave me a second look, they were too busy having fun, bless their hearts.

I was only slightly jarred when they stood up to start the meeting and then all turned to the front. I thought it was for a prayer, but it was to recite the Pledge. I cannot recall the last time I was anywhere that did this. Like an old racehorse - or dog - I promptly placed my right hand over my heart and recited along, stumbling only over "indivisible" - not a word you hear often these days.

The ladies then swung into a rousing rendition of...God Bless America. Not the National Anthem, which is a challenge to sing even in grammar school, I admit, but still it's the country's official song. What got me was that some of the ladies kept their hands over their hearts while singing, as if the song is official, like the Pledge, or a stand in for the Anthem. I wasn't sure what to do, not knowing what changes had been made since the last time I lived in the States. I was pretty sure I would have heard if the Star Spangled Banner had been changed, and there seemed no reason to honor God Bless America with a hand pledge, so I sang with my hand hovering in the vicinity of my heart, not wanting to offend anyone.

Today my brother forwarded an email attachment about the Pledge. Coming so quickly on top of my reintruduction to it yesterday, I was curious. Seems the version I first learned in school did not contain the currently-controversial phrase "under God," as that was officially added in 1954. That was the fourth and final (to date) change to the 122-year-old text. Baptist minister Francis Bellamy composed it for a youth magazine to promote patriotic passions in the populace in 1892, focusing on the youth in the schools. He was - and I was frankly taken aback at this - a Christian socialist. I'm pretty sure there are no Baptists today who would cotton to being called a Christian socialist.

Mr. Bellamy wanted something quick that promoted allegience to America, and he choose his words carefully, including "republic" as more accurate than country or nation and leaving out equality or fraternity because those would not apply to blacks or women in 1892. So it seems the Pledge is one of the first examples of the power of advertising - schools that recited it could buy flags at cost and were urged to post flags to which the Pledge could be recited each morning, inspiring patriotism. Children even saluted it with a Nazi-style arm raise, which was changed to the hand-over-heart for the kids and everybody in 1942.

There's more, but I am impressed all this has happened over this small, originally 15-second pledge to the flag of our country, and the republic for which it stands (this was created for grammar schools, after all). Whether to redact the last change of "one nation 'under God,' ' to return to "one nation indivisible" - which referred to the Revolution and Civil Wars which jumpstarted the country - is under current consideration.

That the United States of America is the only county, other than the Phillipines, which copied us, to have and at times required and expected its populace, particularly its children, to daily pledge their allegience to its flag and the nation behind it, is something I never thought about.

I have now. I remember when it meant something. When the sight of the flag, Old Glory, send shivers through me, when I looked for it among others and was thrilled when I saw it. Apparently, 45 of the states allow school students time for the Pledge (and anthem, I suppose) in the mornings; individual school boards and schools determine what they will do during that time. I have no figures on how many still recite the Pledge. I'm not sure how thrilled our young citizens are when they see the Star Spangled Banner waving.

As they say, we've been good and we've been bad. We've been great and we've been dismal. We've set standards at the highest order and brought them down, too. We are, like everything, a work in progress. But there are so many things the world can thank us for: not the least of which is an attempt at equality and fraternity, goals so elusive only a few countries have even tried to follow our example. And so long may it wave and long may students learn  to recognize both it and the great Republic for which it stands, with pride.

Snail Mail Carries Love

 "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." 

                                                                                  Anais Nin

I'm sitting at my desk looking at two envelopes. The kind where someone had to go out to a store, look for one they liked and buy. Then take it home, write something, seal it, find a stamp and a post office and mail it.

Yeah, snail mail.

Not quite the Pony Express, but close. The only real difference is the current delivery system doesn't eat hay.   

I have them propped at the back of my desk side by side. They resonate love, and I'm a sucker for that. And the willingness to go to all that trouble to send me their love in a card, and I'm a sucker for that, too. Emails aren't at all the same thing. Both have return addresses, so I know the pink one is from my brother and yellow from my sister. I am faintly surprised that my handprinted name, juxtaposed so closely together, is remarkably similar. Endearingly, they both included my middle name. Only two others still living do that: my sons.
 
Just a few weeks ago, I had all my family with me, sleeping under my roof for the first time in 20 years. I had the same delicious feeling of peace then. All was right with the world. My family was together with me. Hallelujah.

I have treasured these letters since they arrived, a couple of days apart but both mailed the same day, well ahead of my birthday. Just a year ago things were entirely different. My big sister and I were at odds and my hapless big brother in the middle  trying futilely to make peace. 

At the beginning of the last reunion.

He brokered a sibling summit a few years ago to let go of old grudges, change attitudes and become loving, supportive brother and sisters. For the first couple of days, we enjoyed the mountains, the meals & playing liars dice in the evenings. Then the chip on my shoulder got set off by something my sister said and we were back to belligerence, suspicion and animosity. Sigh.

Then I moved. Not just from Canada to California. Not just from a cave-like basement to a sunny duplex in a community of friendly folks. Or from hermithood to next door to family. I moved my attitude by taking the Landmark Forum the first weekend of 2013. I learned a lot of tools in three days to help explain who and why I was and why I got consistently identical results being who I was; tools I still use to see things as they are and not as I want them to be.    

I saw, suddenly and with horror, how I had treated my sister forever. I cringed that I had unquestioningly bought into a family legend that she was imperfect and troubled that allowed me to treat her with arrogant superiority. 

The instant I saw this revolving scenario of our relationship, I was aghast, ashamed of myself, compassionate toward my sister and grabbed my cell. I blubbered that I was so, so sorry and promised I would never, ever treat her like that again.

Poor soul, she was totally confused at my out-of-the-blue call, dumbfounded by my admission and gobsmacked at my tearful promises.

After a bit, when we'd both calmed down a bit, she thanked me.  "Nobody's ever told me that before," she said.


That hit me between the eyes: What would it be like to always be the bad one. The one who makes the mistakes. The one who fails. The one who needs help. The scapegoat. And I'd bought into it. Little sister with chip firmly on shoulder.

I am forever greatful to Landmark for those three days. It took that long to get over myself, get the concept and move into a new relationship. Suddenly I had the possibility of having a sister. A real one I can call and talk to and who cares. And a brother who doesn't have to be in the middle anymore. The three elders of a family. 

Back to the envelopes. I have gotten cards from my sibs before, but never with the emotional vibes I get with these two. Connection. Love. And anticipation, because we're getting together  next month and are all looking forward to it. 

For the first time in our lives, I believe. 

My birthday is Friday. I get to open the cards and read the words they wrote and chuckle at the clever cards they like to send. 

I may just keep the envelopes on my desk for a while. 

It's never too late to connect.

Past 64 and No Longer Counting

Rappel course leads to full scale canyoneering. Can't wait!

OK, I started this when I was looking at Official Old Age from below.

Looking at it from above is an entirely different matter in many many ways.

I was in a safe, sensible, small Canadian community. I hiked mountains, played tennis and pickleball, snowshoed, exhibited photos in art shows, sang, drummed, did balloons and face painted and most precious of all, had the WGG (World's Greatest Granddaughter) on sleepovers where we learned to navigate steep and/or icy trails without slipping (taking small steps),  climb and swing in all the playground parks, take discovery walks, read books, eat ice cream  and share cinnamon buns.We were just getting into liking the same movies when I left.

I could have felt safe and secure: I had universal health care and government pensions, for Pete's sake. Instead I felt increasingly closed into being over 64. Amazing, but there it was.

So I moved away. About as far away from a tiny Rocky Mountain Canadian town as I could get...to Los Angeles.

Where I rappel and hike, and sing and dance and do things like moonlight kayaking and tide pooling with mixed groups of like-minded folks via the best use of the Net since emails: meetups.

Meetup.com is global, and growing. Its time has definitely come. I actually joined in Canada, but didn't use it much in a small town where you pretty much know somebody who knows somebody for any crazy activity you care to do.

Newport Harbor for the June super moon.

LA has almost half as many people as Canada, the country. Meeting folks is hard to do and not advisable where you spend a lot of your time: on the famed freeways. Meetups connect tennis partners. Hikers. Photographers. Kayakers (or pub crawlers, art appreciation groups, movie fans, do gooders, adventurers, volunteers...there is a saying that if you love to knit but only have an hour from 10 to 11 a.m. on Tuesdays to do it, you can find a Meetup for that). Nobody cares if I'm looking at 64 from above or below, they just care if I can keep up. And if I can't, I find another meetup where I can. I've flashed-mobbed at a major studio, climbed the hidden stairs of LA, tide pooled, hiked Joshua Tree...and I'm pretty much a rookie.

This move was my hardest yet, not just leaving the WGG and the length of time I was alone on the road down, but in terms of leaving lots behind and starting over here. Meetups mean I won't spend the first year or two doing everything alone. You may meet soul mates on meetups, but mostly you just enjoy the time you're together in company. You may see them again on another meetup, or you may not. Doesn't matter, you will meet more lovely, like-minded folks at the next one. Those who aren't lovely or like-minded can get their names stricken off lists by those who organize the events.

So I rappelled. Fifty-five feet down a sheer cliff in the hot sun. It was scary. The other lovely, like-minded folks were scared and brave to varying degrees, too, but we all made it down. Went off to have pizza and a cold beer and some laughs, then home. If I need a 4 mile walk, I can sandwalk on Monday evenings on the beach. Or speedwalk a 4-mile trail through an ecological reserve early on Saturday mornings and have the rest of the day to get things done.

I'm hooked. What a grand idea. The Net bringing folks together in real time. Love it.

Letting go...

Her ears began drooping a few weeks ago; no one knows why...

It's been a long while since I posted. Life happened. For those of you who are new, fair warning: this will be about cats and death: bail out while you can.

Since I left 64 a while ago, life has right turned north and south, the last time in December to LA to help my son and daughter-in-law with their foster-to-adopt baby. I took a week to drive down from Canada because I was tired of driving 14 hour days to get somewhere fast. I visited friends on the way down and got to the infamous 405 at 5 in the afternoon. Angelenos will know what that means, but basically it took 90 minutes to make a 30-minute drive to my new home. Five minutes after I arrived, the kids got the call and 20 minutes later we were the proud foster family of a 9-month-old girl. OMG.

What prompted me to blog again was that I've hit a Letting Go section of life that I was ill prepared for - that most of us are ill prepared for, I think. Maybe it's losing the baby; as a foster it's always a possibility and did happen once, but we got her back. However, this is about cats.

Letting go is not just moving half a continent away from friends and family and the familiar, it's long-time friends who die unexpectedly or face a diagnosis of death. It's losing Mom and realizing how precious it was you had those last visits to reconcile and get in that last, great, loving hug.  I had no hesitation when they called me and told me Mom was fighting the breathing mask, wanting it taken off. I said she knows what she wants, don't waste any more time, go and take it off now! She'd been ailing since a bad bout of pneumonia 8 years before and the savor of life had been getting thinner for her. No one knew or expected her to die within five minutes, but I am so glad I was home, near my phone and able to support her decision.

Now I'm making the decision for my loving kitty. It's a different decision with a creature who can't beg for her mask to be removed.

Pretty Kitty

I had no intention of adopting a cat in 2002. I'd been mulling the option of a companion for my 7-year-old companion Cowboy because I was working long hours as the assistant editor of a daily and thought he would appreciate company. I just happened to go to the pet store on rescue adoption day. A woman and her two daughters were making much of a ginger tabby kitten while a prim, black tabby kitten sat alone in a giant cage that a St. Bernard could have jumped around in. Milk-tipped feet placed daintily together, long, black-striped tail wrapped neatly around her, head up, ears alert, she stared at me with the biggest eyes I'd ever seen. Before I knew it, Cowboy had a companion.

She can't bug me here

The next decade I would torture her with two major relocations: one to Canada and one to LA. I would leave her for long periods. I would allow her outside, knowing she would never stray far from the front door. I couldn't train her to a leash because of her agoraphobia, but she was always my dainty, pretty kitty, nearly silent, shy with visitors until they'd been around for a while, loving to me. That Cowboy was not happy with a companion was plain: he bullied her, pinning her tiny body to the floor by her neck, leaping higher than she could to get away, stealing her food.

Fat cat

Then she outgrew him and returned tit for tat. I yelled at her when she leapt on top of him when he was sound asleep, provoking a mad squabble of flying fur and loud meows. When I realized the resulting hullabaloo was his only exercise, I left them alone.

Two years ago, when she was 9 and Cowboy 17, I stopped attributing her weight loss to the lite cat food I'd been buying for adult, indoor cats -- and became concerned. She wasn't eating the special food. She wasn't eating much of anything. She was starving. Canadian vets took blood & still didn't know what was wrong. Gave me pills to give her. She seemed to get better, but then stopped eating again. I took her to a different vet, who took more blood and an ultrasound. Suggested it was cancer. I asked her to make sure, thinking they would just take a sample or something. She came back with a negative on cancer, a feeding tube and a diagnosis of lymphoplasmacytic cholangiohepititis. I fed her 6 times a day through a tube that plugged regularly with a syringe that stuck regularly, coating my bathroom, her and me in high protein cat food, and gave her 6 medicines several times daily.

Skinny is not better

The tube plugged permanently and we embarked on a year of Getting Kitty to Eat. A year of steroids and a running account at the local Global Pet Food store trying dozens of brands. She seemed to get better, then not. More vets, less weight. Started feeding her high protein food by spoon. She was docile, compliant, gulping it down as best she could with no appetite. Took her to the vet and she'd gained 3 ounces. Dared to be hopeful while the vet took her away for blood tests. 

Then the vet said there had been an "incident." Miss Kitty had been her usual compliant self, then began meowing loudly and breathing heavily, opening her mouth to gulp in air. Her panting was at a furious pace. Had this ever happened before?

No. And I vowed it wouldn't happen again.

Enough. Like Mom, Miss Kitty was tired of the tests, the chemicals, the handling, feeling lousy. She had been as good as she could be, and what she needed was to enjoy the time she had left. So we set a time a week away and I took her home. I've been giving her all the food I wouldn't let her eat when she was healthy: cheese, milk, yogurt, meatballs, tuna, tamales - if she'll eat it, she gets some. She never eats much and keeps most of it down, although the shrimp from Bubba Gump's came back up, but it was battered and in cream sauce. But whatever she wanted, she got.

She was in ketosis, a state where your body is starving and uses its fat reserves for energy. Except Miss Kitty doesn't have any fat reserves. My Dad had Alzheimer's and when he forgot how to eat, he was allowed to quietly starve. The quality of life is highly questionable on forced feeding. We'd tried appetite stimulant pills. She spent a day being agonizingly hungry with no appetite to eat anything. My quiet, tiny-mew kitty was in-my-face meowing constantly, all day and into the night. I stopped the pills.
 
We passed a quiet-for-her and tearful-for-me week that way. I considered how to let go: a drip at the vet's, a place where she's already suffered through an extreme anxiety attack, or home, eating whatever she fancies and fading away.

Letting go -- when we don't want to, but trying to do it in the best way for the sufferer, not us - is part of life now. I hope, pray and trust that someone will do the same for us when it's our turn to let go.

Thanks list

Fireworks echoed from the mountainsides...

 It was a fabulous family Christmas that I almost didn't fully appreciate -- until I kicked my self-centered butt, woke up and smiled at the joy surrounding me.
I suspicion why I can get tied up tightly in paranoia, envy, anger and the like, but it no longer matters why. At some point in every life, why no longer matters.
Just what you do.
So what did I do when I got overwhelmed? I left. Removed my sad sack butt from the festivities and slunk off to bed where I woke up refreshed and ready for another great day.
Resolved to be happy that I could spend time with my beloved sons rather than rehash the reasons I was late/grumpy/whatever.
My thanks list for this morning -- the first of 2012 -- included: ailing Miss Kitty eating (thanks, universe); early Christmas morning alone with the WGG (thanks, Linda); way cool Freakonomics book (number two son); breakfast with both sons and one daughter-in-law (number one son); fireworks last night (thanks to me for kicking myself out the door to hike over to see them). I came up with it while hiking with the Meanderthals -- the peppy group who scale mountains in the Bow Valley and beyond well into their 70s & 80s -- this morning on their annual New Year's Day hike & lunch.

...and lit up the forest for hundreds of happy fans. 

Last night, after jamming my jeans over my jammies and hustling my butt over to Cougar Ridge, I was comforted by fellow revellers toasting in the New Year, splendid fireworks down on the valley floor and the pinot noir I'd brought with me. Had I stayed in the lounge chair watching the celebrations on television and feeling sorry for myself because I'd been cancelled as a New Year's Eve babysitter, I'd have experienced none of them.
You make your own happiness, and I started the year out just right.
It's gonna be a great year, 2012 is.
We can all make it great.