Day: 05/01/2018

SLEEVES, SHOES, AND BELTANE – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 29 Comments

SLEEVES, SHOES, AND BELTANE

We are in a hurry. For us. Doctor appointment in a couple of hours. On days like this, I have trouble getting dressed. I try to put on a tee-shirt and I can only find one sleeve. The other seems to be missing. I can see it. It’s there. But for some reason, my left arm absolutely won’t find it and when finally, my shirt is ON my body, the shirt feels funny. Because it’s backwards.

The pants were new. Rather than trying to find a pair in my chest of drawers — so over-packed with stuff for every season  (because I can’t climb up to the attic anymore), I went for the new ones. I could find them AND I knew they probably were not covered with dog hair.

Everything else is covered with Duke’s fur. The Scotties don’t shed much. They stink (they need grooming, but I need $100 or is it $110?) to get it done, but at least they don’t shed. Much. Duke’s long white hair, on the other hand, has a positive sticking power that’s right in there with tape.

Tape. That’s the stuff that sticks to every except the package you are trying to attach it to. It writhes around your fingers. When you give it a tug, it splits four ways to Sunday and there you are, trying with your stubby little fingernails to get it even so you can use it.

It wouldn’t be that hard except when Duke was just a little younger, he gave it a few hefty chomps. Thanks, Duke! You’re our guy.

Finally, I could only find one shoe.

I am certain I went into the bedroom wearing both. I can’t imagine I limped down the hallway a clog on one foot, the other in a sock . Since I’d found one shoe, surely the other was nearby. But time was short.

Wildflowers in an empty field in upstate New York

Eventually, I put on an old pair of L.L.Bean shoes I bought in Freeport, Maine maybe 15 years ago. They still fit find and look pretty good — if you don’t look too closely. Somehow, Tinker missed finishing them off in her years of determined effort to chew every shoe I owned.

I’m dressed. Black yoga pants. Serendipity tee-shit. Black sweatshirt. Half socks — it’s going to be warm. And I have coffee. Meanwhile, WordPress would like to know how they did “fixing” my computer. I told them. “Pathetic, useless. Out of touch with your customers. I did it myself but you are taking credit when in fact, you actually did NOTHING.”

I wanted to wear sandals, but this is the first warm day this year. I need a week of warmth to feel ready for sandals. I don’t want my feet to be disappointed if I have to return to real shoes.

My day has begun.

Today is Beltane. I remember, back in elementary school, for the first four years we celebrated Beltane with a little festival and a genuine (built ourselves) Maypole. The girls danced, but only the sixth graders. I was too little and too young.

By the time I was old enough to participate, the school had transitioned into some meaningless modern event — and no Maypole. No more Beltane. I have yet to do my Maypole dance. Probably not this lifetime.

Happy Beltane to you all! May your day be filled with joy and sunlight and flowers and hopes for a brighter summer and warm, flowery days to come.

Beltane… – Sue Vincent

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 4 Comments

One of the great festivals which I would so much love to attend!

Sue Vincent's Daily Echo

The ancient festival of Beltane has always been special to me. As I child, I was caught by its magic when my grandfather first read me the story of ‘Borrobil‘, where two children walk between the Beltane fires and are whisked away into a land of myth, magic and the obligatory dragon.

For years afterwards, every time the number seventy-seven bus passed the conical hill on the way to town, we would talk about Beltane. I learned its legends and traditions, and more than any other of the festivals of the turning of the year, this one is close to my heart, rooted, as it is, in fond memories.

Over the years, I have celebrated Beltane in many ways and in many places. I have danced around a Maypole, weaving the ribbons in the pattern of life. Joined a spiral dance in the streets of Oxford.  Seen…

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CEE’S WORLD SHARING EVENT – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 9 Comments

Share Your World – April 30, 2018

Do you use paper money? If so is your money organized sequentially according to denomination?

Basically, no. I never have any paper money. It’s common for me to not have a single piece of folding money in my wallet. Maybe a few odd coins, but that’s it.

Everything costs so much, there’s no point in trying to keep enough cash for daily use. You take out $20. Remember when $20 was a week of money for everything including coffee and lunch?

You go to the grocery. Buy a newspaper and a jug of lemonade and you’ve got $3 and some change left. The amount of money I’d have to carry around would be ridiculous.

Now … the real question … are your credit cards in order? The answer is that the things I need all the time – driver’s licence, bank card, Medicare, Blue Cross, Social Security, and all those cute little cards that have the serial number of my various spare parts … those are in one small section of my wallet. Everything else is wherever it landed.

You are comfortable doing nothing? For long stretches of time?

Does nothing include using the computer?

If yes, then absolutely. If not, absolutely not.

What is your greatest strength?

I can think problems through and usually figure a way out. Next, if I can’t find a way out, I am pretty good at shrugging and saying “Oh well, something will happen … ” and usually, it does.

Third? I know when to apologize. If I’m wrong, I say so quickly and emphatically. There is nothing to be gained by letting bad vibes accumulate.

What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week?  

I loved getting the roses pruned. One more nice day would have really helped, though. I thought we’d get at least two days. Now we are awaiting another nice one. The princes of meteorology make promises, but I’m beginning to not trust them.

MAYBE NOT THE FINAL CACTUS FLOWERS – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 19 Comments

The red leaf on the bottom left is going to be a flower.

These look almost like some strange perching bird

I was sure it was my eyes. New glasses or give up seeing. But today, with light on the subject, I took a bunch more pictures and they were all fine. So I guess the moral of the story is that an f2.8 lens can’t shoot sharp pictures in near darkness. Go figure, right?Almost all of these came out well, so there are easily a dozen (more maybe) waiting to be process.

It will take wing, any moment!

But I noticed that many of the end sections of cactus are red. I’m not sure how it works, but when the ends of the cactus turn red and develop those little thready things, it will become a flower.

I love the variations of color

If all those red sections become flowers, I suspect this plant is going to have a lot of flowers. I need it to stop flowering soon so I can re-pot it. The earth is very old and can’t have much nutrition in it, though a Christmas cactus doesn’t need much nutrition.

The color of the flower really does change significantly depending on how the light hits it. They are almost transparent and always translucent, so if you get them at the right angle, they look like fairy wings and you can see the color are composed of dark red streaks.

Thus the differences in the intensity of the colors depends on from where I shot the picture.

FLOWER OF THE DAY