Illiterations: Laughing At My Own Expense

My current view -- The Almaden Valley I've always dreamed of just selling everything and moving somewhere new.  I have ties to France, Italy, Mexico, and even Greece.  I think there is a strong possibility that I will eventually jump ship and head there. In the meantime, I am so happy to say, I am establishing myself in the Bay Area.  I love the Santa Cruz mountains and the long views of the San Francisco bay.  My new lil ADU rental here is so perfect in so many ways, and I have somebody who is handling the business I left behind.  I'm considering moving onto a houseboat if I can find one that fits my needs.  I have enjoyed houseboat life in the past, and it will be an easy adjustment once I find the place. My many local friends here really are a boon as well; my network of people has expanded even more in the past year, and I am so grateful for that.  Of course, I'll drop back by the old stomping grounds now and then.  I can't leave my friends to...

Note: This post was put up at the same time as the one entitled, "Confidential."  They are two interesting  experiences both on the topic of friendship and trust and connection. Girlfriends Happy Hour The Girlfriends Happy Hour seems to have taken hold for real. My desire for connection set my feet on this path a year ago. Thanks to a suggestion from my sister that I model a group after one she and her best friend inadvertently created themselves, I seized her idea and ran with it. Our group has been going strong since May and it's now mid-November.  We've enjoyed other gatherings and events outside the happy hour which demonstrates our expansiveness and our cohesiveness. Out of it all I have been blessed with many wonderful new friends and several who have become particularly close and special. It still seems that people generally look to me to rally the troops and remind people of events and post events and even plan and schedule events, but I am definitely working ...

  Note: This post was put up at the same time as the one entitled, "Girlfriends Happy Hour."  They are two interesting experiences both on the topic of friendship and trust and connection. Confidential I'm still getting lessons in how to rate relationships. I'm still trusting a relationship to be more of a friendship than it sometimes is. And that's okay. I recognize it as an opportunity for growth and to not only learn from the experience but to learn about myself. It's good to keep discovering things about oneself at every age, I think. Sometimes though what I do is I give a friend or a group of friends a little bit of power in my life by sharing a confidence that I don't share with just everybody. And I did that recently. Not so much as a gesture of friendship but out of a need to unburden a truth that was holding me back in a group of women. I knew that it could be received in so many different ways and I asked their permission before I shared, request...

Tender people make great targets.  They seem safe and easy to injure.  Often, the assailant has seen others targeting them, and they feel emboldened by the past "evidence" that the target deserves the attacks. The fact is though, that there are people in this world who just have a huge dose of empathy and humanity which keeps them from wanting to injure another, even in the face of unreasonable or even atrocious attacks.  And being tender and kind and empathetic does not preclude a person from also being smart, strong, and well-versed in defending oneself from onslaughts of narcissism and tyranny. Over the years of my life, those tyrannous and abusive people have found that a tender person such as myself doesn't necessarily lack the chops to defend herself.  I am never one to talk about the times I win the fight.  I do not gloat.  I understand that winning "the fight" means I had to fight, and I am never proud of that.  I am never willing to advertise ...

On a daily basis I feel as though I should have something profound to say. My feelings on a daily basis are certainly profoundly amazing; profoundly happy; and profoundly thankful. And I've said previously on other blog posts that I recognize that my readers are probably tiring of me gushing about how amazing my man is and how in love with him I am. Unapologetic as it may seem I still seem to feel profoundly happy; profoundly thankful; and profoundly in love with this man, who shows me, daily, that he loves spending time with me and wants to be with me.  Month by month and week by week, as time passes, I see more of him each week. We are knitting together understandings about our lives; our families; the things we love and the things we hate; our dreams and our disappointments. I think the best of all is that I believe we each feel seen and safe and understood by the other in a world that, by and large, doesn't otherwise do that for us. Whatever else was pulling him other direc...

Do you know a loose cannon?  It's a metaphor and it means completely exactly what I know it to mean and so I use it a lot. But I am very literal, and sometimes I think others may not internalize the reality of that term. "Loose Cannon" is a term that dates back to the days of galleons and wooden ship explorations.  As early as the 1300s, explorative ships from countries in Europe and other places included cannons mounted on the decks to protect them from pirates and other invaders. Cannons, as you can imagine, weighed an immense amount because they were Solid cast iron. Their barrels were thick walls of 3 inches or more, they were somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 to 10 ft in length. As mighty as these old-fashioned defense weapons may seem, their immense bulk and weight were a liability on the ships. There was almost nothing technologically that could perfectly assure that the Cannons would not come loose from their mountings in high seas or a heavy storm. Picture the i...

There's this [boy]. ... It's as if I have taken love heroin, and I can't ever have it again. I've opened Pandora's box, And there's trouble inside.   -- William Thacker in "Notting Hill"  

I was just watching a sappy if still appealing TV series. The details aren't really important but the woman who is the main character is surprised by romantic gesture made by her boyfriend of 2 years and he suggests they get more serious. They're both surgeons and he is suggesting they move in together. I paused it at that point, but it looks like she's going to be evasive and avoid the suggestion. The reason I paused it is because at that moment I realized I am not her. I have always been somebody who would do almost anything for love. Real, trustworthy, solid, love. Which is ironic because I am also the person who has been single most of her life and who has been married and divorced twice and in between the marriages had one long-term significant relationship that also ended. But the pragmatic engineer in me says, "It's not that love and forever are not possible. It's that I just haven't chosen that right person yet." So, there you have it. One of m...

There's a peace that settles over the couple who has reached the "other side" of the initial growing and discovering phase of a relationship.  For most of us, this initial discovery part of the relationship seems to be a bit of each party contemplating the question of whether they want to keep going with this person; is this person the one they want to invest their time and their energy in; et cetera.  Some amazing (and rare) couples seem to simply meet and they are there, almost immediately. Yet, we, the rest of us, get there too.  We just do the "growing into him/her," "getting to know him/her," and the "let's see how this looks when the honeymoon phase wears off," thing.  And, personally speaking, I feel that we--my guy and I--have rounded all those corners.  And I love us!  I love how we look.  I love how we are just easy and understand each other's lives.  I love how we are pretty good at checking in with each other, and how we m...

Rescue is not for the faint of heart. I think a lot of people wander into rescuing by just rescuing one animal.  And perhaps they do it really well. Or perhaps they do it dismally.  When it's just one animal nobody ever really knows what you did. But try to become somebody who is rescuing or attempting to rescue many animals. Try to be somebody who is spreading the word to the community about your efforts so that more animals might be helped. Imagine just as you're finally reaching out to the world that you're helping animals, somebody claims you're doing the opposite.  Perhaps they claim you're abusing the animals.  Perhaps they claim that you are ignorant and don't know what you're doing, or they say you have no idea how to run a rescue. I personally briefly attempted to be in the position helping very young newborn horses by providing a place for them to be delivered as an alternative to their wholesale slaughter. I spent more than two years of my life tr...

So much like a tub of beautiful, fresh-from-the-cow milk, the sweetest, richest, things eventually surface if they are left alone to process. This can be said for cheese and wine and compost piles... And sometimes it can be said about relationships. Anybody who's been reading this blog knows that I have been head over heels about a certain person for over a year. But sometimes even in the heat of passion and love there's an up-shift, and things get even more amazing and better. Such is the case with myself and my man. I think some people who read this blog think that I should share his name. I've come close. But he is a very private person and so I am continuing to respect his desires in that regard. Back to my topic at hand.  Maybe it's just the relaxing of long-term pressure and obligation. He recently, in fact, JUST, retired from his day job. The immediate and amazing impact of the freedom that this seems to have brought him has almost left me speechless. It's as...

My friend Shara put it most eloquently when she pointed out to me something I couldn't articulate for myself.  She said, "women are hardwired to hone in on safe spaces and safety." And she and I have compared notes and we both agree that in our earlier lives before a certain thing happened to each of us that we both went through life feeling safe. We both thought we had it handled and that we were tough enough to stick up for ourselves. We probably weren't wrong for the most part. But for me, on July 4th 2023, in Tahoe Keys, South Lake Tahoe, in the parking lot of the condos, the idea of feeling safe came into clearer focus for me. On that night after the fireworks show had ended and I had dropped my friends off in the parking lot of their condo I was assaulted by a stranger. How we ended up in contact with each other is relatively unimportant. Nonetheless, understanding that most people would like context, I will share some detail. The parking lot where I dropped off...