Sit Up Straight!

This is not a picture of me at the computer.

I usually perch on the front edge of the chair as though I’m about to leave in a hurry. Not good for the back or neck or anything else.  But it does leave room behind me on the chair for Marshall, the cat, to join me.  On special occasions he will put his paws on my shoulders and knead my back while he rubs his face on the back of my head.  He does a decent job at giving me a back rub.

Which I need because my posture at the computer sucks.

I’m Still a Child!

When our then-future daughter-in-law signed papers on her house  she exclaimed, “I’m just a child!”

She’s a thirty-something college educated professional woman with a career and life of her own. She has done some traveling and some living.  She’s made many good choices (one of which was to marry our son!)  and learned from the others.   She’s a mature wise adult but something about that mortgage triggered the little girl in her.

How well I remember those feelings. When I was a kid I thought my parents had it all figured out. As I grew older I kept wondering when I’d achieve that same assuredness. Now I’m a grandmother and I’m still wondering when I’ll figure it out.

Did I miss something along the way?  Or did my parents just fake it really well?  If they were just faking it, they did it well!

Ol’ Blue Eyes

The 60′ s  were my teen years.  The years of the British Invasion, the years of the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits.  Every weeknight I’d tune in my transistor radio to the Beatle Battle, a half hour of the latest Beatle tunes, to be voted on by the listeners. After the news at the bottom of the hour the top three Beatle’s songs were replayed.  It was a half hour of music not to be missed.  That was the up side of my teen age music years.

The downside, in my teenage mind, was my dad.  He was stuck in the 40’s.  In the evenings and on weekends his workshop blared out that horribly outdated music.  Band music even.  It was quite awful.  I tried to ignore it, or better yet, turn up  my music, to drown his out.  Which wasn’t easy, seeing how dad liked his music really loud.  It’s a wonder I survived.

But I did. I grew up and had children of of my own.  One day while turning the radio dial searching for a station that I liked, I found one that plays the oldies, from the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s.  The decades that include the Fab 4.  As well as the Big Bands.  I recognized songs from all three decades.  I liked some of them.  Many of them reminded me of my growing up.  And a dad who loved his music really loud. And who also loved me a lot. And I no longer detested his music.  Instead, I found it gentle and kind and easy to listen to.

Now, many decades after my teen years, that same local radio station plays two hours of  Ol’ Blue Eyes every Sunday afternoon. And whenever I can I tune in and fine myself transported to my nearly idyllic growing up. And a dad who loved me a lot.

How did you spend your day?

Hubby and I recently watched a DVD portraying Beatrix Potter’s life.  Ms. Potter was the author and illustrator of Peter Rabbit and many other stories about critters and such. The DVD inspired me to read a book about Ms. Potter who was born into an upper middle class English family in 1866.

As was the custom of her time she was pretty much raised by a nurse, on the upper floor of their house, seeing few other children and much of the time, only seeing her parents at bedtime.  She was  educated at home, alone, by private governesses, and her only real companions were her younger brother and their collection of animals. 

The author of the book* I read makes an insightful, albeit depressing, statement about life expectations for women such as Beatrix. He notes that education, beyond the training of the governesses, was not even thought of:  “Nor had she been considered suitable to be educated, despite the fact that the first girls’ schools had already opened in London (in the late 1840s). As for having a career, that was considered completely impossible.  Girls of her class did not do such a thing.  Working class women might have jobs, mainly in service, but in middle class families women did nothing at all.”*

That sentence really struck me. And as I think about books I’ve read about the Victorian era, it’s true. Women of the upper classes did nothing.  At least nothing of substance. Such women had maids and cooks and gardeners to do all the work.  They fussed about the food to be served  or the arrangement of flowers for the table, but they didn’t actually do anything. Even their friendships were very circumscribed. They very formally “called” on their peers, staying for the proscribed few minutes, talking about nothing, and then moving on to the next visitation. Other than that, most of  those women did nothing and went nowhere.

Understanding that makes it easier to see how difficult it was for these women to know about,  let alone to get involved with, the world outside their front door.   And that makes it easier for me to admire those women who did do something, who did have the courage to moved beyond their culture’s boundaries and take the risk to expand their world. Some of these women started  societies to help the poor, and such. To me, their work  had always seemed rather condescending and superficial.  But perhaps their efforts really were amazing considering where they started from.  

Such was the world into which Beatrix Potter was born and raised.  No wonder Peter Rabbit went exploring.

Which brings us to the question, How did you spend your day?

* P.14 Beatrix Potter’s Lakeland, by Hunter Davies, 1988. Emphasis added.

Taming the Wild Beast

A nearby city is doing some “beautifying” along the interstate including, per the local newspaper, “putting in curbs for a new center median that’s intended to calm traffic.”

That’s all we need to calm traffic?  Some curbs for a center median?  I wonder if it would work on the job?  Put in some curbs to calm things at work.  Maybe at home?   Build a curb down the table to calm things.

Will l have to keep my eyes on how these curbs work with traffic.  They may be on to something.

Looks like this man needs a curb.

Having fun with a paper bag

A new blogger liked one of my recent blogs (thank you) and so I was checking out his blog, as I do with all of you folks who contact me.  In his About he states:  “Bragging rights: I can have fun with a paper bag.” http://theverybesttop10.com/about/

I laughed out loud!  And I was instantly transported back to my childhood and when I, too, had a lot of fun with a paper bag.

My BFF and I lived just across the street from a Catholic School.  They’d cleared a large area, a square block of property, to add a parking lot and gymnasium, but the work was put off for years, I suppose due to lack of money.  Which was okay with us,  since they had created a great playground for baseball games.  And playing with paper bags.

On windy days, when we didn’t have anything better to do, we’d get  a couple of lunch size paper bags and head over to the open land by the school.  We’d open the bags then set them free, letting the wind blow them around.  We’d chase them, catch them, and set them free again.

Just writing about this now, cracks me up.  I see these two little girls running around this unused, gravel parking lot, chasing paper bags.  What a crazy game!  What innocent childhood fun.

Thanks for the memory, fellow blogger!

Groundhog’s Day

I never heard, did you? Did the groundhog see his shadow?  Will we have 6 more weeks of winter?

I vote for spring.  But if winter is here for another 6 weeks I vote for some real winter with snow.

Joe, the dog, votes for snow, too.