that's mrs. mediocrity to you

one step at a time is the only way to get anywhere.

good shoes really do make a difference.

don’t sweat the small stuff, just sweat.

you don’t always need a destination
to get where you’re going.

you should say hello to everyone you meet.

there is no winning or losing, there is only doing.

things that are good for you really hurt sometimes.

there will always be someone who can run further
and faster than you, and that is okay.

running in circles can take you to amazing places.

being outdoors is vital, in every season.

whatever path you are on, make it the right one.

watch where you’re going, but don’t forget
to look up every now and then.

you can go farther than you ever thought possible.

you won’t melt if you get rained on.

your toughest competitor will always be you.

climbing hills might be rough, but
the view from the top is always worth it.

some days are better than others.

breathing is the most important thing in life.

blisters eventually become callouses.

when you think you can’t possibly go on,
you can always take one more step.

And so, pickles.

Lots of pickles have been made, 74 jars total, bread and butter last Saturday, dill yesterday. Jars and jars of pickles that aren’t even pickles yet, because you have to wait for pickles to pickle.

With pickles, you learn patience. I like things that teach me patience, I don’t come by it naturally.

Gardening taught me a lot about patience. The cycle of life, the growth and the bloom and the setting of seeds, prepraring for the next generation. This is the life of a flower.

My friend Katie, who is really more than a friend, will be 84 in just a couple of weeks. My mom calls Katie “Blossom.”

84 years is a long time. Long enough to learn about patience. Long enough to come to terms with the cycle of life. Long enough to have lived through the worst thing that can happen, and survive. Long enough to do more than just survive, long enough to relearn how to live. To giggle and to carry on, through endless years of pain, both physical and emotional. To find joy once again.

Katie was born with both hips dislocated, 84 years ago, before they knew how to fix such things. Her son, who is just shy of fifty, was born the same way. But by that time, his time, doctors knew to pop his hips back into place just after he was born. Problem solved.

And that son, the one just shy of fifty, was Katie’s second son. Her first son, if he were alive, would have been 58 this year. She mentioned this while we made pickles. But her first son is not alive, he died when he was six, in the kind of freak accident that could happen to anyone, at anytime, these things just happen.

Only it happened to Katie, who had already, at that point in her life, gone through dozens and dozens of painful surgeries, spent her whole childhood having surgery, her whole life in casts and crutches and wheelchairs. After one of these surgeries, when she was quite young, she was left in a room under lights to dry the cast she was enclosed in from the waist down. But as it turned out, the lights were too hot and the cast started on fire.

Katie, at all of four feet, nine inches tall, has the spirit of a giant.

Many years ago, when I was sixteen, I dated her son, briefly. That didn’t work out, but my friendship with Katie remained. And then it expanded to include my whole family, until essentially, we adopted her as a grandmother. My parents and Katie and her husband spent a lot of time together years ago, before her husband died. Since then, my parents have taken care of Katie in a million small ways. They are like that. Good people. Her son lives out of state now, my parents and myself are her emergency contacts.

But this wasn’t supposed to be a story about Katie, it was supposed to be a story about making pickles. It is hard to tell one without the other. But okay, pickles. My mom and I went to Katie’s and we sliced and we sliced and we sliced some more. Cucumbers, onions, peppers. We put the cucumbers on ice and then we waited three hours for them to crisp. And then later, we simmered but never boiled, and we filled 22 jars, hot jars, hot lids, we wiped their mouths and we tightened down the tops and then, pickles.

During those three hours of waiting, we talked and we laughed and we listened and we admired Katie’s latest doily, which is amazing. She sits there while she watches baseball (Yankees) and crochets these intricate doilies or she knits mittens, dozens of sets each year, just to give them away.

And my mom talked, about her mom and her father, how they used have a huge garden, how they would can everything, even venison. How the smell of the pickles was taking her back to her childhood, which wasn’t the best of times for her, either.

And there we were, three women, 84, 68, 47. Almost two hundred years of living between us. But compared to these two women, my life has been simple, easy, a blessing.

Through all of this slicing and waiting and simmering and chatting, we giggled.

And then I vacuumed Katie’s house and emptied her garbage while she made us egg salad sandwiches for lunch and we ate and talked a little more. The house is getting too hard for her to handle, alone. She is in pain, constant pain, her hip and her spine are literally crumbling. My parent’s house is getting hard for them to navigate, so many stairs. My mom is worried about my dad, her sister, life.

And even through all of that, still, we giggled. Katie, who has a million reasons not to giggle, ever, giggles quite a lot. And it makes me smile and laugh, and at the very same time, it breaks my heart, just a little.

In the end, when we had finished, there were 22 jars of bread and butter pickles sitting on Katie’s counter.

Jars filled with spices, cucumbers, onions and peppers,

love and tears and memories and friendship,

and one whole day’s worth of giggles.

The best pickle recipe, ever.

::  ::

p.s. I will tell you about the 52 jars of dill pickles another day. And if you want the bread and butter pickle recipe, I have posted it here.

It’s easier to go forward than in reverse.

You can’t always stay between the lines.

Manners are extremely important.

Enjoy the journey, and the view.

Getting lost isn’t such a bad thing.

There are times when it’s okay to go fast and
times when it’s important to slow down.

Everything is more fun when there’s music.

You never know what’s around the next curve.

There are signs everywhere.

Being first isn’t the most important thing.

You won’t get very far on empty.

It’s a good idea to let others know where you’re going,
even when you think they aren’t looking.

The road less traveled has a lot more bumps.

We all have our blind spots.

There will always be hills and valleys.

Don’t block other people’s paths.

So much depends on the weather.

Sometimes you have to let your hair down,
and let it blow wildly in the wind.

A moment of clarity so much clearer than I would have liked.

Seeing things that I could have done without seeing. Speaking words that make no sense to anyone but me. Laughing at bad jokes and hard comments and all this party banter. It makes my face hurt.

I would much rather be home, sitting in my garden, even if that means there are mosquitoes.

And then, later, I am home, in my garden, and there are mosquitoes, and black flies, and my funny little kitten who keeps rooting in my heart, growing deep into a place I did not know was there.

There is that risk, again. We take it, all of us, each time we love. Knowing what could happen.

It cannot be helped.

Like these damned mosquitoes. I just want to sit here. They just want to eat. But I am not in the mood for compromise.

There is another cat here, the neighbor’s. I’d like to adopt her, too.
I know she is hungry. I feed her, sometimes. But no more cats, no more. And she is theirs, not ours, although so was my Pepe, when he showed up here, half-dead. I didn’t feel like compromise then, either, although I sort of got permission before I brought him inside. At least I told them he was here. They did not ask for him back.

My mockingbird has learned duck. It is hysterical. Quack quack.
A big cosmic joke, the mockingbird. One of my favorites. Evolution is supposed to happen for a reason. But what is the reason for the mockingbird’s talent? And what about fireflies? What is the reason for the glow, is there one? Or are they just pretty?

Songs float through my mind these days. Lines I remember and don’t know why. Just now, “This is not my beautiful life.” Well, this can’t be anything but my life, I am the only one in it. This is my life. And it is beautiful.

The cats are playing: hide and seek, you can’t catch me, this is my house. Once survival is taken care of, something else kicks in: the need to be entertained.

I just want to sit here and listen. This mockingbird that has learned to quack. It makes me smile, I sit here by myself with a silly grin on my face. The air is oppressive. Humidity 100%. There is no breeze.

Nature doesn’t care what I think, or say or do or observe. She just marches on, in one direction. Nature never asks why.

But still, these cats.

They play.

A weed is only a weed because somebody else says so.

A weed is a flower with a bad reputation.

A weed has a remarkable ability to adapt.

A weed has very strong roots.

A weed is not afraid to be scattered by the wind.

A weed has great tolerance for adverse conditions.

A weed will flower at all cost.

A weed is doing its best to survive.

I’m pretty sure I could be a weed.

Sunbeams make the best mattresses.

Being top dog isn’t all that.

Claws come in really handy sometimes.

You can make a toy out of almost anything.

There is nothing like a fireplace in winter.

Curiosity doesn’t usually kill you,
but it will get you in trouble sometimes.

Speed is underrated.

It is better to be the cat than the mouse.

A warm lap is a worthwhile quest.

A nice bath right before bed helps you sleep.

It’s better to eat small meals throughout the day.

Sometimes you have to share, and sometimes
you can get away with taking what you want.

Emotions can be understood in any language.

It’s okay to expose your belly to those you trust.

When you are happy, sing, when you are mad, grumble.

Life is one long series of meals and naps.

A little catnip every now and then never hurt anyone.

When you are scared and you want to look tough,
give yourself big hair.

:::

P.S. Doesn’t he look like he is posing for a school portait?

If I take my contact lenses out, or my glasses off, this is how the world looks to me.

My vision is bad, really bad. I started wearing glasses when I was in fourth grade. And each year, they got stronger and stronger and stronger. For I while, I worried that it would just keep getting worse, and I would end up being declared legally blind. Finally, when I was a sixteen, things leveled off.

But even before that, my mom used to say that I saw the world through rose-colored glasses. And while I liked the sound of that, I had no idea what she meant. When I turned thirteen, she gave me a tiny little pair of antique spectacles that had red lenses. She gave them to me and she cried… saying that she hoped I would never stop seeing the world that way.

Through rose-colored glasses.

It is fairly easy to pull this off when you are young, easy to be optimistic, open-minded, innocent. Easy to look at the world with wonder. And I know what she meant, now. At thirteen, I was dreamy, a romantic, trusting. I was naive, in the way that it is okay to be, when you are young.

There was a period of time, right around then, when I started getting up really early just to watch the sunrise. I think this was also right around the time I started writing poetry. And I am not a get up early kind of girl, but I did, for most of the summer that year.
Just because. I still remember those mornings, the way they looked. The way I felt.

But as we get older, cynicism starts slowly moving in, one book, one sweater, one box at a time. It takes up residence in our hearts, in our minds, and it can be hard to kick back out. We stop doing things we love, just for the sake of doing them. Time gets in the way, the lack of it. Life gets in the way, things go wrong. Our way of looking at the world changes.

I still have those glasses. I’ve held on to them all these years. I pull them out every once in awhile, and peek at the world through rose-colored glasses once again. Just to remind myself to be optimistic, open-minded, to look at the world with wonder.

I can’t feign innocence, those years are gone. I can’t pretend that everything is always coming up roses, especially on days that are filled with weeds. But I can refuse to replace that naiveté with bitterness. I can refuse to be jaded.

When I grow old, I want to be the old laughing lady. The one with the rose-colored glasses, sitting in her rocking chair on the porch each day at sunrise. I want to greet each day with wonder. I want to end each night with hope.

My vision hasn’t changed all that much since I was a teenager.

My view of the world is still blurred around the edges.

But the light looks really pretty, doesn’t it?

Tuesdays Unwrapped

Nature will always run its course, regardless of where you stand.

Patience is more than a virtue, it’s a requirement.

Every rose has its thorn. But so do a lot of other flowers.

Healthy roots are the most important thing.

Adapt. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it’s too hot.
Sometimes it’s freezing. Bloom anyway.

The right tools make any job easier.

Life is a mystery. You don’t have to solve it to appreciate it.

Hard work is sometimes the best way to relax.

Things often pop up in unexpected places.

Dragonflies love to dance in the mist from a hose.
You should always stand there and watch.

An empty space is an opportunity for growth.

The things you are afraid of (worms) have a purpose.

Determination almost always wins out. Just ask a dandelion.

Mother Nature has no conscience. And we love her anyway.

No matter how many times you pull the weeds,
you will always have to do it again.