If I start writing now…

… while I'm not really rested, it might upset my thinking which is not good at all. I should be outside playing, why does this always happen, I work best under pressure and there'll be lots of pressure if I don't write right now…

Poor Good Ol' Charlie Brown sang something like this in the musical about him.

I've got no excuse other than everything else I put in the place of time to write. I'm having a ball acting like a retired person who can choose what she does with her time.

I've been contemplating lengthening my  telemerers with laughter therapy… and laughing a lot at the antics of a favorite five year old. Her self-confidence is a revelation. Her language skills astound me. Her sense of humor and sense of human tickle and warm me better than a feathered boa.

Maybe I'll write tomorrow.

Volitional Valentines

My first marriage was lovely but didn’t last long. Danny and I were two, and our parents oooohed and cooooed and kvelled and took photos of us all dressed up.

Marriage number two, to Jeffrey at age seven, similarly didn’t last long. The best part was the “honeymoon” which meant that the taxi driver, in this case it was my best friend Angelika, who only a moment before had played the part of the preacher and pronounced Jeffrey and me "man and wife," had to give us a ride on the chaise lounge, from the top of Jeffrey’s yard, all the way down to the peach tree at the bottom of his yard. 

We walked back up, dragging the chaise, and switched costumes. Jeffrey was next to be the preacher and taxi driver. Angelika and I got married. That was the shortest marriage of all, simply because Jeffrey could run faster than any of the others of us. So technically, my marriage to Angelika doesn't count. Also, unfortunately, during that time in the 1950's same sex unions were not recognized.

Third time’s a charm.

Meeting Mark in January, 1972, and marrying the man four months later in April has turned out to be the best marriage of them all. They said it wouldn’t last because of the short courtship, but here we are nearly forty-three years later, still stopping to smooch while making salad side by side. It was the best two dollars I ever spent - for the marriage license.

As Fats Waller sings: “If this isn’t love, it’ll have to do, until the real thing comes along.”

Hoping your heart is happy all year, never mind the Hallmark Blitz on February 14th!

Ghost Story

The curtain parts. On the center of the piano bench puppet stage,  sits a haunted house made of honeycomb cardboard from the Ikea bed we assembled last week. It makes a swell haunted house. Next to it lurks a Tyrannosaurus Rex. There are two ghosts flying over the whole set. 

Miss D, the five-year-old script-writer, director, and composer is playing spooky low notes on the electronic keyboard, and giving us, her grandparents, directions like, “Just act.... and make lots of scary noises.”

I hit the floor with my fists, like claps of thunder. This activates the sound-sensor in the big stuffed tiger a foot away, and starts him to G-R-O-W-W-W-L-I-N-G. Gran’Pun swoops his ghost low enough that part of the haunted house is knocked off. Our two ghosts get into out-boooooing each other.

Before her Dad, audience of one, gets here, D asks, “Which way shall I run with the signs?” She has painstakingly written “Boooooo” and “Aaaahhhh” and drawn ghosts and a witch on old cue cards. (It pays to save things after all!) She deliberates running right to left and decides upon left to right, because that’s the way people read, and she doesn’t want to have her sign misread as “OooooooB!” and “HhhhhaaaaaA!” The logic is irrefutable. Stifling laughter sometimes hurts, like stifling a sneeze when it just wants to rrrripppp.

To his credit, Dad is an appreciative audience, and laughs in all the right places - particularly when his daughter says, “It’s not over yet!” 

Gran’Pun and I are getting cramps - as much from sitting cross-legged on the wood floor as from the laughter.

She’s a hoooot, this grandie! This is where we’re supposed to be. It’s worth the upheaval, the shifts of tectonic magnitude, the missing of Southern California, and the temporary inconvenience of extra caution due to thuggery that’s moving from San Francisco to East Bay. 

Sunday night, at our third community meeting in less than ten days, we signed on as supporters of Bay Alarm patrolling the neighborhood. They need thirty families. Looks as if the meeting gave them that.

We look forward to many more puppet shows, walks in the park, play-dates with the seven-year-old-young man across the street, and hours of music, magic, reading, and dancing.

Notice the Bats in the "B"

D's re-write changed "I am…" to 

"We are the scariest ghosts."

Her spelling skills astonish us!

If you want to hide something…

For the past week, we’ve been looking for articles that seem to have gone missing in the move. Finally, the sea biscuit, or whatever name you call that computer back-up device - thingy, surfaced! 

The continuing-for-a-month-mystery has been, “Where the Hell did we put those white canvas curtains from the old middle bedroom, and the other two maroon colored velvet drapes from the old master??” We'd hung four of six panels in the new master bedroom. Where could the other two panels be?

Methodically, each of us separately, looked in the plentiful cupboards, drawers, and closets - the search intensifying with each passing day. We were duplicating efforts, but not certain if the other one of us would “see” what it was we were looking for. Distrust of our own and the other’s faculties increased by the hour. Where could two separate sets of draperies be??

Sunday night, after a traditional Chinese Take-Out dinner at our daughter and granddaughter’s house, we came home refreshed, enchanted, and more determined than ever. Mark again looked in hanging closets, while I gave the kitchen, laundry and bathroom areas a “fourth-over.” 

In the linen closet, in the downstairs bath, on the bottom shelf, I had stashed some nylon sheer curtains, fresh out of the dryer, when we had a houseful of company - twelve panels of white sheers, from various rooms at the old house. As my hand lifted them, something about the heft gave away the truth. Not all was “sheer” madness!! I hurried upstairs to Mark’s office, knowing my kinesthetic sense to be nearly as precisely honed as that of a dealer in ‘Vegas. Excitedly, I spread the mass of material on his office floor. Sure enough, the white canvas tabs poked out. We laughed and laughed. 

While separating the white canvas panels from the nylon, and folding-up all of them, Mark asked if I’d like to have some of the sheer white panels in my office behind the crimson velvet ones… we’d hung there January 4, when our younger daughter and her beau were here. 

When the question was only half asked, we both burst into giggles, Oakland neighbors and anyone in L.A. might have heard us guffawing in disbelief! 

We’ve been in my office/healing space dozens of times during the last month and opened and closed those drapes every day, yet both of us were convinced the purplish beauties had gone missing, and would turn up someday.

Truly, if you want to hide something, hide it in plain sight!

The white canvas tabbed ones look smashing in Mark’s office. As for the ones in my office... WHAT burgundy curtains? If ever you want to make M & M melt with laughter just say: burgundy curtains!