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the ways of the Universal Wisdom. An example is – why do I always, like clockwork, remember my adoptive mother’s birthdate within a week of the actual date? Mama was born on this date many, many years ago. She died 2-1/2 years ago but her death does not erase her birth.
Mama has been at the periphery of my thoughts the past several days. For whatever it is worth, “Happy BirthDay Mama.” I hope that wherever you may be today, that you have found a greater peace and happiness than you did here on Earth.
On another note, I am opening my eyes to the fact that I turn 50 years old this summer. Not only that, but I am beginning to totally embrace this milestone in my life. I found a really great blog about ageing/elderhood. I do believe that I can feel the rewards of hanging in there with life – wisdom. I am moving toward the empowerment of Wise Womanhood.
As a result, I am re-thinking the perjorative jokes and innuendos that I have made and joined with about aging and its meaning. There’s a lot there to think about but I think it’s enough for today for me to put out there that I am getting ready to turn 50 and I do believe that my best years may very well indeed be ahead of me.
I understand that one of my blogging friends is getting ready to turn 40 and that there may be some negative feelings and/or ideas about this birth day. As your woman friend, out ahead of you by a decade, I want to sincerely say to you that the 40’s hold a lot of life, excitement, and knowledge of self that one could not have held before this age. I celebrate your life and the beginnings of a dynamite new decade!
When all else fails and I’m sick of stewing in my own juices, railing against the inequity of life, and doing my best to jam a square peg into a octaganal hole – I am left with returning to the root of all serenity. or at least any modicum of serenity there is in this, my, lifetime.
Having spent how many days and countless hours trying to write the requested proposal for my school and training site, I am coming to the end of the journey. After sending an electronic draft of the proposal to my site’s executive director this afternoon and receiving a lengthy response from her in return, I am turning “it” over for the day. The end result is not necessarily a categorical “this can’t be done,” but close, and I need to step back and assess my options and my motivations.
But most of all, I just need to accept what is for now.
So, I’m back in the kitchen and I am cooking that comforting sauerkraut dish that I blogged about a week or so ago. I say, “bring on the comfort!” and while you’re at it, dish me up a big honkin’ portion of smashed tate’s!
there are waves.
They wash in
and
then they are gone,
again.
and out of the swamp of apathy and burntoutedness (that’s a word, right?).
I have a busy week ahead of me with much to take care of – income tax filing, student loan applications, proposal at work site for school, pre-doc internship applications, dissertation work, and oh yeah, clients and work.
My SO is at the airport now waiting to board the big plane that will take him home to the frozen northland. The Attic always feels so empty and lonely when he leaves and this afternoon is no exception.
It’s been a low key weekend with much reading both for the dissertation and for entertainment (“S” is for Silence, Sue Grafton’s latest whodunit) and hanging out. So I should be all rejuvenated and ready to lasso me a doggie or two come tomorrow morning.
Both my Ipod nano and myself are in need of fixing. As of yesterday morning, my Ipod refuses to be turned off. Good thing (we’ll see if it’s a good thing I guess) that I bought the replacement insurance. As for me, there isn’t any such replacement plan in place that I know of anyway. I continue to be afflicted with the days old headache and joint pain and wish I could be supplied with new, or at the very least, refurbished parts.
The good news (and there ususally is some if one looks hard enough) is that my SO is being kind to yours truly. And the haze that was hanging out is burning off, letting the sunshine through.
It wasn’t until last year or so that I heard that saying. I do believe that it’s the equivalent of my first grade teacher, Mrs. Spencer’s, “that’s the ticket.” This meant that her student had finally caught onto an important skill set.
Tonight I am (literally) cooking with gas on the Attic’s gas range. I am cooking my fave vegetarian chili. This dish is not my daughter’s fave meal as it’s main ingredient is eggplant and she does not 
like that beautiful purple vegetable.
Along with eggplant there are chopped green peppers, chopped yellow onion, diced garlic, chunks of fresh Italian tomatoes, canned Italian tomatoes, white and dark red kidney beans, fresh dill, olive oil, fennel seeds, healthy doses of chili powder, cumin, dried oregano and basil, coarse salt, and fresh ground black pepper. This will be served over jasmine brown rice along side some fresh baked homemade yellow 
cornbread.
The chili is simmering right now and smells so delicious! And, I’m wishing that all of my friends and loved ones could gather around our table and tuck into some good eating. I promise that I’d cook up something for that daughter of mine that she would enjoy along with her cornbread.
My head hurts so bad that it has split open and gone double on me. And I don’t think that I am exaggerating. Much.
I’m tap, tap, tapping on, not heaven’s door that’s for sure, but on my laptop (aka Toshi, w/long “o” sound) – working on a mini-proposal for my internship site in hopes of meeting the needed head-nod from my stinkin’ school to continue on at this site for 2007-08. And that run-on sentence pretty much sums up my level of confidence in knowing what the “F” I am being asked to write by both the school and the executive director of my internship site.
Meanwhile, my SO is off interviewing to be a reverse mortgage loan officer or as I often refer to such people – “the ripper-off’ers-of-the-elderly-and-oft-times-victims-of-society.” Though, he did look rather handsome in his sports jacket and black turtleneck as he was leaving…
But I guess some would say that I am working (very hard) to enter a profession of charlatans – messing with people’s heads and helping them open cans-of-worms that might best be left unopened.
Yep, that’d be me, Miss Charlatan, and my SO, Mister Preyer-on-the-Aged. Okay, that was worth a little personal amusement in an afternoon of confused thinking and writing.
Wouldn’t it be great if I could find my key to unlock the door to my very own set of virtues? I guess as long as I am wishing, I could wish for unlimited, unlocked virtues to be mine – always, every day.
all day today. I wish I had a bell and that my SO would wear the little nurse’s apron – okay not really on the nurse’s apron, but I’d settle for having a bell and an attentive nurse helper.
I appeased myself for part of the day by watching some of the Friends DVDs that my Santa Daughter left for me in my Christmas sock. I don’t know why I love those shows so much as I really do get how homophobic, racist, sizest, ageist, and sexist the characters are. But for today they brought me a laugh or two…
Through my massive headache and joint/muscle pain the past 24 hours, I have been reminded of how stress and anxiety can and does wear our/my immune systems down. Hope I feel better very soon.
just a brown 
egg. Like in what you see is what you get, or what you are, in the case of the brown egg. And then sometimes an egg serves as a hieroglyphic symbolizing the birthing of a chick, or the breaking out of a new self, or a person with way too much time on their hands and an abnormal affection for brown eggs and hatchling chicks.
As you can read, this blogger’s mind is full of existential meanderings this morning. The brain is a powerful tool full of little tricks in aiding and abetting one’s procrastination. Yes, yes – that’s it — it’s all my brain’s fault that I am pushing away, pulling as hard as I can actually, from the demands of my day.
On the practical front here at the Berkeley Attic, the SO is on another foraging venture to the grosh where he is hopefully hunting and gathering (or is that the female’s role?) ingredients for dinner.
A beef 
pot roast with root veggies is on the menu for this evening. I am concocting my own recipe which so far includes some balsamic vinegar, beef broth, onion soup mix (does anyone actually just make soup from that mix?), with a touch of ground cumin and cinnamon.
And somewhere in my day I will actually tackle one or two items on my ever lengthening TO DO list…
Maybe.
