I met some friends for lunch today. We’ve known each other for eons, ever since going on an epic summer vacation together early in our college years. Although we’ve not always stayed in close contact, we re-connected a few years ago and now have epic lunches together. We were all born in the same year. I won’t tell you what year that was, but I will tell you that we’re all so old that not one of us thought to get a group selfie today. Oh well… In honor of their friendship, I dedicate today’s blog post to Lori, Sara and Teresa, friends of the highest caliber.

Interview with a Crow

Reporter: Mr. Crow, we are all interested to know what you think about certain current events.

Crow: Spring is coming. I must make my nest.

Reporter: Oh, please pardon me – I meant Mrs. Crow. I mean, Ms! Ms Crow! Of course, nest making is an advanced art, an engineering feat. And with little ones on the way, you must be so concerned about the news of the virus going around.

Crow: Perhaps you didn’t hear me. Spring is coming. I must make my nest.

Reporter: We certainly can appreciate you being in a state of preparedness, Ms. Crow, and we are all confident that your nest will be a marvel of ingenuity and completely up to code. These things can get so very complicated.

Crow: The One who made me tells me when and how to make my nest. The time is now.

Reporter: So what will you do about the virus? Surely you’ve given it some thought in these frightening times.

Crow: Spring is coming. I must make my nest.

Reporter: I think we’ve covered that topic, thank you. Well, what do you think about the political scene?

Crow: Spring is coming–

Reporter: –yes, and you must make your nest. But surely that can’t be all you think about! We must all do our part in becoming educated about the issues that divide or threaten us in our communities. Sometimes we must put aside our “nest making” to devote ourselves to more important things.

Crow: You must do what you are made to do, and I must do what I am made to do. I hope you know what you were made to do.

Reporter: Well, I wasn’t actually made, and neither were you. Haven’t you ever heard of evolution?

Crow: How odd to forget the One who made you. I begin to understand the strange nature of your questions. Nevertheless, spring is nearly upon us. I must make my nest. Goodbye.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

I’m still working on self-imposed drawing assignments, the latest one being a study of peacocks. You may (or may not) recall that I did a painting of a peacock in my youth as a wedding gift for my sister, but didn’t bother to look at a photo of one. I’m trying to redeem myself from that sad little episode. I learned a lot about peafowl along the way and decided to write a poem about them. It is the way. (Ha ha – you’d have to have seen the Mandalorian to get that).

A Peafowl Romance

The peahen picks her husband,
By looking at his train.
Bedazzled by his jewel-spots,
She doesn’t think him vain.

He proudly spreads his fan,
And sings his raucous song.
He know she finds him handsome,
(And of course, she is not wrong).

The peacock and the peahen
Begin their happy life,
She doesn’t seem to notice,
She’s not his only wife.

The peahen sits on the nest,
While hubby roosts in a tree.
Only four short weeks later…
…and peachick makes three!

I’m taking requests if you have a suggestion for my next study in drawing.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning. Or not.

I had to bring our little blue Ford in today to the Ford dealership for some minor reprogramming and decided to do a short walking tour of the area while waiting. It seemed mostly industrial and I wasn’t sure there would be anything of interest, but it represented new territory for my feet to wander and for my camera to shoot.

The snow is mostly melted here now and we are all rediscovering what the world underneath it looks like. In fact, yesterday my husband found some mail of ours that had been brutally whisked out of our mailbox by a passing city snowplow back in early December. It has been buried under the snow all these months just waiting for the warmer weather to reveal its presence. Two Christmas cards were among the lost. I was delighted to see them, still readable although a little worse for all the moisture. It was like finding a message in a bottle.

I tried to find some beauty as I walked – you can decide whether or not I was successful. It seemed like slim pickin’s among all the ugly business buildings, but only two blocks away I found a bridge overlooking the river. I heard a familiar voice – my old friend the red-winged blackbird was back in town! I watched and waited to see if he would come out of the tangle of brush and pose for me. He did.

On my way back, I found the perfect shot to describe my meandering ways:

I’m thankful to the God of rediscovered mail and returning feathered friends and of beauty in unexpected places.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning! (I’m trying to cut back on exclamation points and have deleted several in this post as part of the effort. Somehow, they find ways of sneaking in anyway. I expect soon to see them marching around carrying signs that say, “Save the exclamation points!!!!!!!”).

Good evening, campers! Did you miss me? I succumbed to the flu last week and spent the first two days of it sitting on our couch with the chills and fever. You know how that goes. I was only about 18 inches away from the heater, wrapped up in a blanket with my trusty hot water bottle and I was STILL cold! This was my view:

I spent my time watching things (The Cosby Show, Stargate) and reading – not a bad way to pass the time if you are UTW. The entire outdoor world ceased to exist for me, and the things of this world (i.e. my blog) faded away. It’s amazing how illness can reduce your life to the barest minimum of activities.

Day One of the Flu coincided with my husband’s birthday. We had invited our son and daughter-in-law over for a meal which was handy because I was able to text them that morning and press them into service making supper for us instead of the other way around. Best salmon we ever had. They lived with us for 8 months last year and I’ve missed their excellent cooking skills. I went around the house disinfecting everything before they got here and then hid in the basement like a leper while the food was being prepared. When I came to the table, a wall of poinsettias had been set up so my germs wouldn’t have easy access to their plates. It was all very semi-quarantine-ish. The disinfectant bottle and I were close chums by that time.

Anyway, I’ve hardly been outside for many days, but I’ll get back to my regular walking and writing now. There was a full moon recently and I rallied myself enough to go out and get a photo so I can end this blog post on a high note, photographically speaking.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

Raise your hands if you want to read the beginning of my non-existent novel. Let’s assume it’s favorably unanimous. I came across this piece of writing recently, having stowed it away on my iPad years ago where it was quickly forgotten (maybe deservedly so). I’m not sure now where I was planning to go with this, but find it somewhat intriguing. It’s almost embarrassingly autobiographical; I guess I took the advice “write what you know,” literally. I think I was going to write about what would happen if a writer began to get lost in his/her own rewriting of reality and what effect that might have on not only the writer, but also those whom the writer knew. Without further ado:

The Writer’s Journal
I am a writer. There, I’ve said it. I think of things to say and I write them down and give them life. I take these strange little symbols, arrange them like so, and voila – a story emerges, a character steps onto the stage, a world forms before your very eyes. I used to think I was very god-like in that respect. What greater hubris is there than to think that I have made something completely new and breathed life into it? Like the mad scientist, I would rub my hands together with glee, cackling “It lives!!!” But that was before I realized that I was not controlling and creating these things; they were controlling me. Was it sanity or madness swirling around in my brain? You decide.

First of all, you must know that I am an Idealist with a capital I. In fact, I really think all of the letters should be capitalized in my case: IDEALIST. With a few exclamation points for emphasis: IDEALIST!!! (Never met an exclamation point that I didn’t like.). It’s possible that idealism has made a victim out of me, but I prefer to think that I am the keeper of all good outcomes, whether or not they materialize. Perhaps a better word to describe me would be The Happy Ending Girl. The Anti-Eeyore. (And if you don’t know who Eeyore is, close this book right now and go read Winnie-the Pooh or bow your head in shame – it’s your choice.). I discovered some time ago that if I didn’t like the way things were going, I could write a better story, a different ending, as it were, and find fulfillment that way. You, of course, as a rational, thinking person, can see the danger in that right away, but I was too young and naive to understand that I was meddling with things that weren’t my bailiwick.

Shall we start at the beginning? Well, maybe not the very beginning, since you will be completely uninterested in my tender years of childhood. Just a couple items of note to mention:

1. From early on whenever I was being punished and kept in my room, I decided that I had been switched at birth and although I was being raised by these “peasants,” I was actually the daughter of royalty! I’d spin a little fantasy about how my true parents, the King and Queen, were actually searching for me to rescue me from this dreary existence. There were a few holes in this story (like why the King and Queen would be having their baby at the same hospital as my parents), but I ignored them.

2. I was extremely self-conscious. Painfully so. This meant that at any given moment I was convinced that people were watching me, even if their attentions appeared to be elsewhere. If nobody else was around, I imagined that there were people who could see me through any reflective surface, mirrors, doorknobs, faucets… I was never truly alone. I could never lose myself in anything and was alternatively puffed up or horrified by what these “others” could see me doing. Always exposed. I could never really be “me,” I had to be the person that these others wanted me to be, or at least how I wanted to be perceived by them. Think of me as a changling with only one skin.

Even for me, it’s hard to say where, when and how this whole mess really started, but if pressed, I would have to say that the seeds were planted and began to grow in my first year of college. I went to a huge university, the kind of place where you could easily get lost in classes of 300 or more. Believe it or not, this is the perfect environment for the introvert, abounding in places to hide, both figuratively and literally.

Trying to write fiction makes me appreciate those who can really do it well.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

We went to the Home and Garden Show in Minneapolis last Saturday. Here are my thoughts on the experience:

1. We were astounded by the work that must have gone into putting some of the landscaping displays in the convention center, including huge boulders and actual trees. God bless those people for giving us a preview of spring, which I shall share with you.

2. The people manning the booths all fall into the aggressive part of the human spectrum. If you don’t want to get sucked into somebody’s sales pitch, you have to avoid eye contact, and even then, you might still be drawn in by the gravitational pull of the salesperson. They were doing their jobs well, so I am not complaining. I found that a simple disclaimer “We’re not in the market for that,” got me off the hook in most cases. And of course, there were some booths where we were actually very interested in the product.

3. There was a booth selling cricket flour as a protein source. They had cricket cookie samples and also an assortment of dried and seasoned crickets to try. Our daughter-in-law had both and gave a thumbs up on the cookie, but said the cricket wasn’t spicy enough. I eschewed the chewing of these samples.

4. We got to hear Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy (a show I still have not seen). It’s the first time I’ve seen someone get a standing ovation before he even started speaking. In the interest of photo journalism I took a blurry photo to share with you all, but we did not get the wristbands necessary to hob nob with him afterward, so there are no close-ups. During the Q&A, somebody asked him if he’d be willing to do the dirtiest job of all and run for president. His answer, which was long, articulate and amusing, came down to one word: “NO.” Smart fellow.

5. The only thing we bought was a bunch of yellow tulips to brighten someone else’s table. It was like carrying spring home with us.

Reporting for Lynniebeemuseoday, I’m Lynniebee.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

I saw the sky in the street yesterday.
Clouds with tiny wet wrinkles
lay on the asphalt looking up at me.
I felt a surge of happiness
in spite of the freezing wind on my face.
Our distant, cocooned winter sun
has begun that slow, beautiful metamorphosis
into the warm, open-hearted sun of spring.

Look into the mirror again.
Behind the rippled clouds
there are tulips waking up.

Hallelujah!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning (or at the very least, tweak it a little bit.)

I’m not much of a jewelry person. For years and years (and years), the only necklace I wore was a watch on a chain. The only rings I wear are my engagement and wedding rings. Bracelets tend to make me fuss with them subconsciously when I wear them. But over time, a few necklaces have taken up permanent residence in my jewelry box and they each have special meaning to me. When I wear them, I remember the giver. Isn’t that partially why we give gifts – to be remembered with the gift?

In fact, most of the things that have been given to me as gifts, bear an unbreakable connection with the ones who gave them. I’ll be puttering around and suddenly realize that I’ve been thinking about a particular person. “Now what brought that person to mind?” I’ll ask myself. Inevitably, I had picked up or looked at or used something that was given to me by that person. It is always a sweet remembrance, even if it’s fleeting.

That connection between gift and giver is one of the reasons I am reluctant to fall back on cash gifts for special events. As much as a cash gift can be appreciated, it will usually not be associated with anything that brings a face and a memory to mind.

If you’ve ever given me anything, rest assured, I remember you when I use it, see it or (in the case of a book) read it. And rest assured, it is a sweet memory.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

I painted this in high school, which should tell you (if you didn’t know it already) that I’ve always been rather odd. In fact, “odd” was my stock in trade. I took a painting class and wanted to do something different! Well, this certainly was different. The only problem is that I never knew what story I was telling with this little tableau. Is it a tragedy? A comedy? Do these creatures know one another? If there was a musical track accompanying this scene, would I feel sad, frightened, moved, angry, amused, or just plain curious? It’s time to correct this appalling lack of context with the telling of two stories. Gather ’round the campfire, friends, and perk up your ears.

The Blue Bleenies
The Blue Bleenies were just settling in for the evening, when they were stunned to see an unfamiliar beast come into their midst. It had strange appendages on its body, quite unlike themselves. The Blue Bleenies were simple creatures. Not having ears or mouths, they communicated primarily by eye movements and foot flappings. They weren’t very intelligent, either. They ate food through their feet, and dug holes every night in which to sleep. Other than that, they just watched each other and waddled around flapping their feet very expressively. To see this unusual creature among them caused curiosity that quickly became consternation, for it began swaying in strange, fluid movements and moved threateningly toward one of their own. It lifted up one of its feet and held it over the Bleenie’s head. Gasp! It had clearly come among them to eat them! They watched in horror; one of the Bleenies began to weep.

The Dancing Domatilla
The Dancing Domatilla was far from home. She had quite lost her way and was beginning to wonder where her wandering feet had brought her. She saw a bridge-like structure ahead – it appeared to have little blue blobs on it. Curious, she went nearer. The blobs turned out to be adorable little bottle-shaped creatures. Entranced, she came into their midst. She spoke gentle words of greeting, but they just stared at her. Their feet flapped around in the most delightfully amusing ways. She longed to communicate with them, but it appeared that her words meant nothing to them. A moment of inspiration struck – she would dance for them! Everyone understands the language of dance, she thought. She began humming one of her people’s beautiful songs and with it, moved her limbs expressively and fluidly. In one of the most difficult but meaningful moves, she lifted her hand-like foot and lowered it over one of the creature’s heads, symbolizing the act of blessing it. She smiled to herself at the pleasure she must be giving these simple beasts. She peeked at their reaction. Gasp! They all looked terrified; one of the little things was weeping! What could possibly have gone wrong?

**********************************************************************

And there you have it. Still odd, but now at least it has an odd story to go with it.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

This sweet little lady just changed my life: she made me a grandma! A long-distance grandma, to be specific. It has gotten me thinking about how best to be a part of her life from halfway across the country. I’ve known other grandparents in the same position – it’s a lot easier now than it was even fifty years ago, what with FaceTime and Skype. I hope to find other creative ways to get to know her as she grows. So many possibilities! If you’ve been in this situation and have some ideas, do let me know. I think one of the most important things I can do, however, is to be praying for her. It doesn’t matter how far away we live – God always has His eye on her and inclines His ear to me. That’s a connection that cannot be broken.

I probably won’t delete this in the morning.

Leaf Span: Meditations from a Leaf

Back in my glory days
I was named “Miss Chlorophyll”
by the esteemed panel of judges,
and I’m afraid it went right to my stem.
I thought I’d be green and soft and shiny forever.

But one day a cold wind blew,
which shook my branch and hardened my veins
and took the green right out of my soul.
The whole tree moaned, and my brethren cried out,
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen!” as they fell.

I petitioned the Lord right then and there,
“Let me stay. Please don’t shake me loose.”
He strengthened my stem and said, “Watch.”
I saw the green, golden world dry up,
And my own skin with it.

And I knew that this, too, was a glory.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.