Tweets, Sweets, PRGs and Shame

There is danger in conducting international policy using 140 characters, especially if insults are being flung into space on the wingless tweets of a narcissist with intent to threaten a wildly irrational leader of a cold-war country north of South Korea, who seems intent upon lobbing a nuclear warhead into our country's space.

Sleeping soundly is no longer an option. I feel as if I've been flung back into junior high school when the bus ride to the campus took us seventh graders past house after house where fall-out shelters were being dug. Dreams of those days featured me weeping at the total extinction of all creatures on this beautiful earth. Somehow, I was looking down on the events from on high - as if from somewhere off-planet. If you've got coping mechanisms to share for use in these troubled times, I'm all ears.

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Celebrating the beginning of my 70th year over the weekend involved some sweet treats. In addition to some stellar flourless chocolate cake in the shape of a heart, thanks to my honey Marko Pun-O, there were various kinds of chocolates at a women's retreat I attended Friday through Sunday. Chocolate amongst friends seems to bond us, much the way a lovely wine may do by empowering us to bolder, more authentic disclosures.

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I disclosed to my older daughter that on my way home from the retreat on Sunday, I stopped at a very crowded estate sale in the neighborhood. The reason this final day of a three day sale was swarming with people was that all were invited to fill a large packing box to the brim with ANYthing and pay only $5 for the total content. It was the fabric that was my downfall. Gorgeous fabrics and hand-tatted lace, hand knit scarves by the home's owner, who was there and with whom I had a lovely chat about her quilting days, Ukrainian cross-stitching, and downsizing. Clearly, she was ready to downsize. Clearly I'm still operating while at the effect of my family's curse: the PRG or the Pack Rat Gene. All fabric has since been washed and is now hanging over multiple chairs in the dining room to dry. Autumnal colors, vivid greens, batiks, silks, linens - just every sort of wonderfulness for projects well into the future. By my seventy-fifth birthday, if I haven't completed some of the dreamed-of quilts, collages or costumes, then please remind me it's time for my own garage sale, won't you?

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The most salient nugget I brought away from the retreat has to do with shame and the pervasive quality of it among my sisters on the planet and me. I joke that if it's a smoggy day in LA, it's my fault. Sad but true to say, that's how I feel some days - as if I should be a better person and solve these problems that dog us all. Hyper-responsibility syndrome? Maybe.

It's no wonder that more realistic extensions of myself into the world, when not done to my highest standards cause me grief. I've been a non-blogger for two weeks preceding this entry. Mostly, for six and a half years, I've been showing up for myself as a writer, using My Monday Muse as a carrot in front of my nose to keep my chops oiled. I have little to no expectation that anyone is reading it. Most of it is, as the title states, merely musing. But when I don't follow through with my intent, I feel bad. So, I'm writing a mish-mosh now, as a place holder for better things to come... hopefully before my 75th year. I'm not sorry to be using more characters than the tweeter in chief.