Day: 01/10/2017

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT – IT’S GOING TO BE A BUMPY RIDE

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 27 Comments

Life is a road which urgently needs repaving. It’s so full of pot-holes, rocks, broken branches, quicksand and mud, it’s amazing anyway can navigate the whole distance. What makes repaving plans tricky is no two people travel the same road. Too many roads!

Okay, sure, sometimes paths cross … even run side-by-side for miles — years — at a time. But even when they cross or run parallel, they aren’t a single road.

Photo: Garry Armstrong –Winter at home

It’s like a family with three kids. Say you’ve got an older brother and a younger sisters. Your brother becomes a business man and lives a pretty normal life while your sister discovers her own version of  chaos theory. She proceeds to live a life of crisis and yeah, chaos. Not theory, but the real deal. As for you, you’re not entirely sane, but compared to your sister, you’re solidly grounded. That’s worrisome because you know the weird stuff going around in your head.

Yet all three of you had the same parents and as far as anyone can see, more or less the same upbringing.

So, I guess that road is going to stay uneven. Life will continue to be unfair. It will leave many of us looking skyward, searching for answers and sometimes, for questions.

We have great parents, crappy lives. Horrible parents, amazing lives. That’s just life. Infinitely variable, lumpy, bumpy, and charmingly uneven.

UNEVEN | THE DAILY POST

SHARING MY WORLD AS WE ROLL INTO WINTER

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 32 Comments

Share Your World – January 9, 2017

Winter always surprises me. It comes every year, but it always seems sudden when it shows up and shrouds the world in white.

If you lost a bet and had to dye your hair a color of the rainbow for a week, what color would it be?  

I don’t need to lose a bet. I’m thinking about it anyway. I’d really like it shiny silver, but I don’t think that’s an option. If it were only for a week and I could change it to something less odd, I might go for dark blue with highlights. OR dark red with highlights.

Above shows my current hair color. It is also a test of my camera’s selfie function which I’ve never tried before … and illustrates how many filters I’ve acquired that improve a portrait so I can look more as I want to look — and less like the ancient crone into which I seem to be morphing.

If you could choose one word to focus on for 2017, what would it be?

HIDE! It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

What was one thing you learned last year that you added to your life?

A tree service to spray for insects and a cleaning service to get rid of the dirt! What a difference in the quality of life! Oh, and getting groceries delivered, at least the really heavy stuff so Garry doesn’t have to be the schlepper.

If life was ‘just a bowl of cherries’… which fruit other than a cherry would you be..?

A peach. Of course!

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?  

It was only 8 inches of snow and it was a nice, light, fluffy snow that even I could push with a shovel. And while it is cold, it isn’t nearly as cold as it could be and has been. And oil is still cheap, so the house is very comfortable.

300-two-days-post-snow-09012017_test_004

I’m grateful that although Bonnie got sick, there was a doggy ER we could drive to that is open 24 hours and they are very good … and take payments. I hope we are snow-free for the next couple of weeks!

1969 – MY FAVORITE YEAR

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 25 Comments

1969 was the year I learned to fly. The world was happening and I was part of it while everything changed.

Apollo 11

Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July 1969. I was a new mommy with a 2 months old baby boy. Home with the baby, not working or in school. I had time to see it. We watched it on CBS. Walter Cronkite wanted to be up there too. Up there, with Neil and the rest of Apollo 11. He could barely control his excitement, almost in tears, his voice breaking with emotion. The great Arthur C. Clarke was his guest for the historic broadcast.

woodstock-1

Woodstock was just a month away and there were rumors flying about this amazing rock concert which would happen in upstate New York. Friends had tickets and were planning to go. I was busy with the baby. I wished them well.

There were hippies giving out flowers in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco. I didn’t envy anyone. I was happy that year, probably happier than I’d ever been and freer than I’d ever be again.

I was young, healthy. I believed we would change the world, end war. Make the world a better place. I was still of the opinion the world could be changed. All we had to do was love one another, join together to make it happen. Vietnam was in high gear, but we believed it would end any day. Though we soon found out how terribly wrong we were, for a little bit of time, we saw the future bright and full of hope.

I had a baby boy and I sang “Everything’s Fine Right Now.” It made my baby boy laugh. Me too, because it reminded me of the Holy Modal Rounders. Look them up.

It was the year of the Miracle Mets. I watched as they took New York all the way to the top. A World Series win. 1969. What a year. I rocked my son to sleep and discovered Oktoberfest beer. New York went crazy for the Mets. It should have been the Dodgers, but they’d abandoned us for the west coast.

I wore patchwork bell-bottom jeans and rose-tinted spectacles. I had long fringes on my sleeves and a baby on my hip. Music was amazing and no matter how many ways I look at it, today’s music is an anemic imitation of the creative juices that ran in that long ago year.

How young we were! We were sure we could do anything, everything. We would end war and right every wrong. For one year, the stars aligned and everything was good.

Decades passed. Youth was a long time ago. The drugs we take control our blood pressure, not our state of consciousness. They aren’t much fun, but they keep us alive … no small feat these days.

These days, I worry about Social Security, Medicare,and if  I or the country will survive our incoming president. I am nostalgic about Richard Nixon, a true measure of just how much everything has changed. I know I can’t fix the world. I’ve lived a lifetime. My granddaughter is the age I was back then. I’ve lived in another country, celebrated a 25th anniversary. My son is eligible to join AARP. I moved from the city to the country, and partied with a President, but 1969 is still my year.

Source: MARILYN’S FAVORITE YEAR – 1969