"Falling" In Love

This is Art

It is a trap 

To live in a world

That refuses to clap,

Demands silence;

Says this you attract.

Art is the acceptable

Mode of expression.

We view emotion

By our own interpretation,

In imperfect lines,

An object of devotion.

Sorrow, loss, failure,

In moments of desperation

We seek happiness

Through your imperfection.

Life insists on dishing out hurt,

Seeks it's own balance

As if equal rights are

Equal suffering.

Pain is everywhere

And your own is the worst

Yet don't speak of it

Because nobody will believe

You aren't the problem.

     

              MMB

Baked Balsamic Pineapple

Slice half  of a pineapple and spread on baking sheet.

(Equally delicious, we have also used sliced peaches and halved strawberries.) 

Sprinkle with real maple syrup or raw brown sugar.

Sprinkle with Balsamic Vinegar.

Bake at 250° for 1 hour.

Serve with Creme Fraiche.

Recipe from friend Leilani P.

Attempt at Food Art

After I arranged the pineapple pieces in rose petal-like squiggles,

I wanted to draw this in my journal, but knew it's destiny was to be eaten

before I would have a chance to draw it.  I'm no quick draw, so I took a picture 

instead.  Since I was out of Creme Fraiche, I served it here with a mixture of powdered

sugar and creme cheese.  

Greybull, Wyoming at about 9 o'clock in the morning.

Lovely Fall

Pat Weiner, Artist
Teaching me to see.

Tip: Practice What You Preach

Sailor's Warning

Third Grade Slumber Party Fall-Out

They hurt others and

Themselves willy-nilly,

They have a group but

Their world is silly.

With a side of gossip,

They serve up lies,

Become vicious predators

With judgmental eyes.

For those poor souls accepted

Into the popular group,

 To a ritual of cruelty

They must constantly stoop.

But for those who stand,

Suffering is certain

If you do not pass

This crazy initiation.

The lonely losers bear an

Endless awkward debt

As friends fall into silence 

Pretending they aren't upset.

A horrid cycle flourishes

And steeped in their own soil,

Those who join them there

Are used to being spoiled.

But this mysterious grace

We find is meant for good.

Oppression has some blessings 

If for something pure we stood.

The heart grows still and strong, 

Real friends we don't betray.

Trust becomes a treasure

We would never give away.

Blue and Gold at Sunrise

New this week: Sketchbook Skool - A Drawing Journal

Colored Cotoneaster 

 People who want to share their religious views with you

 almost never want you to share yours with them. 

                                               ~Dave Barry

Tonal Roses

I don't never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, 

but to keep other folks' straight is what bothers me.  

                                                              ~ Josh Billings

promised land

Autumn Sky

I am so glad

  I live in a world 

Where there are Octobers.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Orange-y Sunset

My parents had a home office so work happened in, around, and among our family life.  Phone calls about logging jobs happened while we cleared the table and paychecks were advanced while we did the dishes. The lessons we learn from the family segment can help explain the process and challenges on the business side of life. 

One of the major premises of  business coaching expounds on the need to be reliable. Follow-through will make or break a business.  The lesson we can take away is from our kids.  If we make a promise to them about getting an ice cream cone or going swimming as a reward for doing some unpleasant task, we find out just how good their memory is when they spend hours in their swim-suit or wait by the door with anticipation.  On the other hand, they are hoping we forget the ominous threat when we start counting to three, and especially hope our delayed follow-up will match their procrastination. 

 Promises, we learn, are a useful gauge of character - from a simple choice: 

"I found a comic book to read. Maybe Mom will forget about telling me to clean my room," 

to more costly ones: 

 "I would rather quit for the evening than take care of a frozen rental water line at 8 p.m. on a dark evening at 20 below."   

When the kids run to beat the buzzer and quickly forget what they were supposed to do, where do you think they learned that behavior was acceptable?  I hesitate to rent to young people, not because I don't want to give them a chance, but because I know from experience that I'm going to end up learning just when their parents gave up teaching responsibility.  Utilities, rent, yard work, buying a lawnmower, watering, being timely with the monthly payment, being a good neighbor by keeping the noise down: if the landlord is as unreliable about follow up as the parents, the lessons get delayed, the rent goes unpaid, the yard gets ruined, and someone else gets to figure out how to fix the mess.  

Commitments matter.  Our word matters to someone.  A handshake with eye contact should be as good as our word, so the plan needs to be realistic.  If going to the kids' games is important, then we are going to need to make adjustments in other areas.  In a family-run business, this can be challenging.  We attempt to support the commitments made at work and school while we juggle to protect precious play-time.  The upside is that kids love to support cohesiveness in a family unit so they don't ask for much.  They remember rock collecting trips and a few sand castles, hikes, and campfires as if they were a big deal.  The trick is simple: make sure the fun happens with regularity.  Friday night bike rides or Sunday afternoon hikes are easy choices.  During winter months there are games: endlessly beloved Candy Land, checkers and Old Maid, Pit and Monopoly.  

If we promise things but fail on the follow-through, it is probably not going unnoticed.  Tim McGraw sings, "the heart don't forget something like that."  Promises get placed on back burners, but that doesn't mean they disappear.  Every so often we need to make it a priority to check our simmering pots.  That pot bubbling  away quietly is important to someone.  

Being present counts.  When we are present for our customer and paying attention, answering questions, solving problems, that matters in a service business.  When we are present for our kids - listening, guiding, answering questions, solving problems, that matters, too.  We may not be able to tell our six year old how to engineer spacecraft propulsion, but if we help them figure out long division, assist with memorizing the Gettysburg Address or spelling homework and the customer's heat system works, the rest can become a research project.  Being present is not rocket science and neither is keeping a promise.

Rays of Evening

Word Origin & History

 

promise c.1400, from L.promissum "a promise," 

nounuse of neuter pp. of promittere 

"send forth,foretell, promise," from 

pro-"before" + mittere "to put,send" (see mission). 

Ground sense is"declaration 

made about the future, 

about some act to be done or not done.

"The verb is attested from c.1420. Promised  

 land (1538) is a ref. to the land of Canaan

 promised to Abraham and his progeny 

(Heb. xi.9, etc.; Gk. ten ges tesepangelias). 

Promising "showing signs of future excellence" is from 1601.

Think Velcro.

It may have looked easy

But it yanked really hard and deep

When I walked away.

I can’t say goodbye anymore.

It even hurts to sleep now

But I think I can do this

And you said it gets easier.

I say, “When?”

I talk to my heart

When it cries.

Hush, I say. Listen.

Wait for it.

The promise

That never comes.

~MMB

To Your Health

Blend:
Half of small pineapple
Some Dried Coconut
1 Tablespoon Raspberry Chia Seed Jam
1/2 can Coconut Milk
Two teaspoons Coconut Oil
Splash of Pure Vanilla
Ice

Serve separately:
Four or five bite sized peanut butter Snickers squares

Followed by:

One trampoline workout,
One zumba or yoga workout,
100 jump ropes,
25 squats,
10 burpees,
10 times up the stairs
a walk,
10 pushups,

and

a nap.

Natural light
Natural food

Petered out pineapple.  Still good, though.

Crescent Moon

Smoky Signals ~ Indian Summer

Heart Mountain Autumn.

Sundown Across the Road

Can't Get Enough

-of the view out my kitchen window-

Gold Leaf 

Haiku Hacker

My Door 

Late Summer Sunlight,
Crystalline Monet morning
In watercolor.

  

A kayak lesson:
What seems to be a defeat
Is only delay.

                                                                                                    

Winter winds warning
Of coming savage weather -
Prepare for the worst.

Soft Season Shadows
Brushing rustic fence corner,
Indian Summer.

Natural History

Spotted Tussock Moth 
Caterpillar

Love those baby blues.
Beautifies the cityscape.
White wall, lacy trees. 

Electricity
So many lines crossing here,  
Presence of power.

Western Canal Trail Crossing, Mesa/Chandler Line

A selfie with the queen, the president or Angelina Jolie would be the ultimate selfie, right? Some of those have happened. Kudos to the lucky fans but there is just one selfie I need: the self help advice that comes from digging deep within.  Others can encourage us, even share their philosophy but for the long haul, it is really our deal.  The old serenity saying comes to mind:  Accept what you cannot change.  Change what you can.  Know the difference.

Chaos the Theory, versus Chaos the Reality is what I'm talkin' about.  Jerry's chaos reality involves working your tail off, albeit haphazardly, but most of all to not NOT learn something new. If it's inspiration you need, call him perseverance personified.  The number of new things he has learned and perfected since we have been married is impressive, but if you think Chaos Reality is not the result, you have got another think coming.  When it comes to doing it all, he is just sure that pure effort will win the day, so it takes an awful lot to stop him in his tracks.  Tell him he can't and he will show you he can, while cheerfully getting a suntan.

I've always been the support team, the clean-up gal, but lately, it's more like his favorite golf joke about the guy who had a heart attack on the golf course.  When asked what he did after Fred died, the answer:

"Hit the ball, drag Fred.  Hit the ball, drag Fred."

I have been feeling a lot like Fred.  The image of being buried alive has not yet begun to haunt my dreams, but this gal sees the mess growing and this gal thinks there has got to be a better way.  This gal thinks she's smarter than this job.  Desperate for a break, she stops by the second hand store where she picks up a couple of books she doesn't have time to read:  Never Surrender and ta-dah: Thriving on Chaos.  Probably some subliminal self messaging going on, as this gal decides she will quite happily own her own library.  Hmmmm.  Is this gal just hopelessly optimistic?

No one would tell you that I'm committed to routine.  I love to change things up, and I adore fresh ideas.  A clean slate is my delight.  I am as gung-ho as gung-ho gets, but routine as a strategy works over the long term better than full frontal attacks on multiple fronts.  I had three important excuses and a ton of reasons to make it work: my three children provided plenty of incentive to narrow things down.

Until I went deep into empty nest syndrome, my first, second, and third best excuses for routine drove my schedule.  After that, I became a wanderer without a destination and from hopelessly optimistic, approached desperately forlorn. The problem wasn't the kids leaving home.  The problem was losing something profoundly meaningful to do every day.

Last night I had a dream about a very brown and bent, but lively old lady who had built a school for kids in a small space in an area of squalor using a few colorful pieces of cloth, some scavenged teaching materials and love for building up children shining out of her being.

Dreams are a good way to search the subconscious for clues.  Plumbing and renovating has less meaning for me than working with kids, but it is still a way of improving our world.  That's what my husband sees every day, and probably is what helps him look beyond the disordered, uncontrolled center of the hurricane.

The excuse/reason for our state of disorder is that we live from one emergency to the next. While we like to think of ourselves as flexible, willing to drop anything to be where we are needed at a moment's notice, our life has so much flux that I am getting seasick.  I am on that ship right along with my captain, so why would I question his sailing skill? Oh, but I do, I do.  Advice once given that I remember well: just cooperate.  Not difficult, really.  Simple, in fact.  Cooperation is a great thing, I'm reminded.  Synergy - give, to get.  Aye, aye, Captain.

After thirty-five years of marriage, most of which have been consumed with many attempts to live outside of my comfort zone, I admit to abysmal failure in at least one thing.  My body is still in the relationship, but my head is still seeking a method of execution - with about as much success as a chicken with its head cut off.   The "for better or for worse" that I thought would be better and turned out to be a whole pile of overwhelming worse, but not as terrible as it could be, like really losing my head, which I sometimes feel in danger of doing. Whoa. Fried chicken is on the menu, since we are making the best of things.

Still, something must be done because in all seriousness we are in this until death does us part even if we can't stand each other by then.  If love and cherishing goes out the window, then until death do us part keeps me in check - that is, if we don't kill each other first - the finest and most delicate fine line ever.  Strangely, he keeps telling me he would do it all again.  I might do it again if we have "irons in the fire: Ten or less," inserted right after for richer or for poorer, and every time he admits there are too many, we hire someone other than our own family to bail us out.

Hence: Item 1 of the following article.  I really think it says all that needs to be said: attitude is both voluntary and involuntary, and like breathing, we can learn to use it more effectively and with control as in yoga, singing or using it to go to sleep more easily.  Also, we visited two of the kids this weekend.  Support Team (of) One activated.  I have things to do. Optimism dial has been turned up. Ciao.

                         http://www.silvamethodlife.com/6-ways-embrace-chaos/?sr=21

http://mrconservative.com/2014/09/50266-archaeologists-discover-the-actual-garden-of-eden-and-its-breathtaking/

Gasping at the view,
Only blue sky From here on.
I am enchanted.

Or Purple and Blue
Above a busy city
Sunset slows the pace.

Palm leaves in the breeze,
Picturesque at Pizza Hut
Asymmetrical.

Palms and Mesa skies
With sun-spiration lighting.
Artistic evening.

Clouds glowing with light,
Lavender and desert breeze,
Uplifting moment.

 Three Palm Silhouette:
Luxuriously fanning
Bejeweled despot.

The Kayak setup,
Rolling technique disappeared.
Wonder what happened.

A paddle attack.
Half-measures don't cut mustard.
Is it my turn yet?

Practice pro-slider
Launching flotation device,
Seizing the moment.

Orientation
Can you do it upside down?
Sweeping C to C.

Leaving a light on -
Bright night flight lighting the way,
Weary passengers.

Color awareness,
Red Leaves of Lilac
Bathed in the sunlight.

Natural Brown Eggs
Myrna's chickens all have names.
Better than cage-free.