Simply Nauseating

I don't have anything earth shattering to report this morning. No giant steps. No long jumps into the Stepping Out hall of fame. The only thing I've stepped into is a pair of walking shoes.

I've mentioned before that morning walks with the husband are among my simple pleasures. I even mentioned that winter walks are my favorite walks of all. That's because I get to dress up like the Unibomber and walk incognito.

We haven't been doing much walking lately. 

I'd like to blame it on the Christmas busyness or the fact that I married a traveling man, but I can't. I'd also like to blame the fibro pain that seems to have settled in my feet of all places, but I can't do that either.

The plain truth is that the only legitimate way to combat fibromyalgia is to move through it. With fibro, less is more and more is less. The less you move, the more you hurt, and the more you move the less you hurt.

No, pain isn't the reason that I haven't been walking; it's the excuse. Laziness is the reason.

There. I said it.

So yesterday morning, I put on my walking shoes and limped out the door with my faithful companion at my side. Bet you think that's what this post is all about, don't you?

Well, it isn't.

It's about what happened after the walk. We were turning into the driveway, you see, when the husband looked up and said,

Looks like we missed an opportunity.  

And then, he pointed.

Can you see it?

It's mistletoe... Smack dab in the middle of our Bradford pear.  It had probably been there for months, but it was hiding under all the leafy stuff.

Now folks,  I know that the Christmas season is over, but mistletoe is mistletoe, and in my world every season is smooching season. So I planted myself under that Kissing Tree and gave him the face until he got the clue.

Stepping out has it privileges.

In fact, I enjoyed the privilege so much that I convinced him to walk again after dinner. We walked  this morning, too, and I have plans for a little blue hour stroll.

I'm convinced that my feet feel better already, and we still have one more morning before he leaves to go out of town.  At this rate, I'll be wearing stilettos by Valentine's Day.

That would be just about how long he's willing to leave the mistletoe undisturbed in the tree, too. He may be a romantic, but he's a left- brained romantic. Apparently, mistletoe is actually a parasite, and he thinks it ought to be whacked back before budding season.  He has  promised to leave just a little bit, though, if I promise to keep walking.

So there you have it:

Why Sir Lotsa Hair Kissed the Unibomber and Nauseated the Neighborhood.

Otherwise known as this week's

  simple pleasure.

Simply Blooming

It's been a while since I posted a simple pleasure, but today I had a discovery too nice to leave unyakked.

As I looked out the kitchen window this morning,
 I discovered this.

No, they aren't birds.
They're buds. 

Those are the lower branches of our Japanese Magnolia.

  Since the bottom of our tree generally lags a few days behind the top of it,
I had a hunch what was going on up above.
I went outside to look, and yep...

She's blooming, all right...

Isn't  she lovely?
Makes me want to set a pink table.

Yeah, I know it's really too early for the blossoms. There's probably some Arctic blast headed our way to zap her into oblivion before she reaches her full potential. That's the way it usually rolls around here. 

All the more reason to stop cleaning and crafting
and take a stroll outside with a shiny red Kodak.

So that's exactly what I did.

Enjoying the pink while it lasts is this week's simple pleasure.

*****
Sharing at Pink Saturday
and Saturday Showoffs

Simply Over

For the past year or so, Dayle at the wonderful blog, A Collection of This and That has opened her blog door every Thursday and invited the world to celebrate the simple pleasures. 

It has been grand.

She challenged us to stop and record the moments that stopped our hearts, to note the things that whispered our names above the noise and said, "Enjoy me, Debbie. I'll be gone in a flash."

I remember the inspiration for Dayle's party. Do you know what it was? It was the simple sight of her twin sister's laughter. Simple laughter... something so small and so common that it can far too easily be taken for granted, as if we will always have those moments,
                 and always have the laughter,
                                     and always have the sister.

We won't.

Dayle noticed that. And because she noticed, she invited us to notice too. Week after week, we gathered at her place for our day of virtual show and tell.

 Mine was always a little heavy on the telling part.

In the year following, I was a pretty regular attender, often dragging Sir Lotsa Hair along with me. He is, after all, my perpetual pleasure.  I brought his rainbow, and his love notes, and his rendezvous.

On my own, I brought everything from 

Bible study to the blue hour...

Calls from the daughters...

The contents from an old box...

Simple treasures, really, and I wonder how many of them would have gone unrecorded in this little blog of mine had a woman named Dayle not stopped to noticed her sister's laughter that day.

Unfortunately, my simple pleasure posts have been rather scarce these days. There's a reason for that, and it's more than just the physical giants I have been battling. It's that those giants, coupled with some rolls in the game of Life, have left me holding a cup half empty.

Oh, I've tried to find the pleasures. I've even noticed them. But when I tried to sit down and put wheels to the words, they just wouldn't spin.

I would think, "Maybe next week..."

Then I relearned that age old lesson about opportunity. Just like a simple pleasure, it's prone to fleeting. There won't be a next week this time. In fact, there won't even be a this week. The simple pleasures party has run its course.

Yeah, I know... Parties don't last forever.

Neither do bloggers.  Am I the only one who gets a pang of sadness when a favorite blogger closes shop?  Some do it conspicuously with a farewell post. Others  just do it gradually and quietly and sort of fade away. And then, there are ones who are blogging one day and gone the next, as if they blogged themselves into the Bermuda Triangle.

I always wish that I had said good-bye before they sailed away and thanked them when I had the chance. Opening your heart and home is a big step, after all.

So today,  I thank you Dayle, from the bottom of my heart, for opening your blog home every Thursday for our little game of show and tell.  I have met some of my favorite bloggers at that party, and I mean it very sincerely when I say that your challenge changed my life for the better.

And that's why I'm going to continue to write  try to write about my simple pleasures, even without a party. In this upside down  crazy world I live in, I need to remind myself that, "... it is the sweet, simple things in life that are the real ones after all."

Simply Silly

I didn’t take a picture of my simple pleasure this week. I couldn’t. I was sitting right smack dab in the thick of it. Besides, it’s kind of hard to hold your sides and a shiny red Kodak at the same time.

This week’s simple pleasure is table full of laughter.

I’m not talking about any old laughter, either. I’m talking table pounding, side splitting, belly laughter, the kind that lifts you right off the ground…

Table, chairs, and all…

OK, maybe that’s a bit of a decoration. Our chairs didn’t literally lift off the floor, but our spirits did.

It was the Sister’s fault.

She’s on a survival kick, you see. Generally speaking, she is always on a bit of a survival kick. The beginning of Hurricane Season just slams it into high gear.  The woman has an emergency pantry stocked well enough to feed an army.  I’ve tried to stock my pantry, too, but I keep eating the inventory. My emergency plan is to move in with the Sister. When I told her so, her nose started to wiggle.

And that’s how the whole thing started.

In our family, the giggle wiggle is the official start of laughing season.  The sister is the straight man in the family, you see. She’s poised and confident and ladylike. When something tickles her funny bone, she tries to maintain that composure behind a warm grin and twinkly eyes.  

But when her nose begins to wiggle, it all goes south.  

It went south pretty quickly, too. What had started as a serious discussion about hurricane preparation turned into plans for our post invasion bunker.  Yes, I realize that’s not really a funny subject, but it is when you consider the group of women planning it has the collective survival skills of Paris Hilton.

The more we planned, the more we laughed. 

The more we laughed, the sillier we got.  

We discussed important stuff like ammunition and laundry soap, and if you could get a little pep by chewing on a coffee bean when the water supply ran low.  I’m not exactly sure what made me snort, but it had something to do with bartering Mod Podge for toilet paper.

None of it in isolation was really all that funny, but the laughter was contagious. 

I'm sure you can all relate to the joy of it.

I'm also sure you can relate to the need for it as well. 

Times are tough out there, folks, and our family feels the pain. We have a farmer in a drought, a salesman in a recession, and a soldier in a war.  We get it. 

But that day, we chose to sit around a table and laugh ourselves silly anyway.  In return, we found this week's simple pleasure.  

*****

Sharing with Dayle
for the  Simple Pleasures Party 

Doing the Bobble Stroke

This week's Simple Pleasure is brought to you

 by the Duchess's pool.

That would be by the pool...

As in, 

the place where I lounge with my shiny red Kodak.

I don't dive. Don't ask me. 

I don't cannon ball either...

Maybe it's just me, but I think a 49 year old woman looks a little foolish
 trying to hold both knees and nose
 while leaping off a spring board in a purple tankini.   

Water-up-the-nose is one of my 426 phobias.

Oh, I can swim if I want to.

I just don't want to.
I can also restyle my hair, but I don't want to do that either. 

So I'm perfectly content to noodle about in the water,

 keeping  my chin just above the surface so as to save the pouf on the roof.
It's a move I learned from the Duchess, the undisputed Bobble Stroke Queen.
 The woman hasn't gotten her hair wet in a pool since 1971.

It may not seem very refreshing to you, but it's more than enough for us.

In fact, noodling about in the water is a simple summer pleasure.   

*****

Sharing with Dayle at A Collection of This and That

Join us for more simple pleasures. 

Simply Refreshing

In full disclosure, this week's simple pleasure actually happened last week.  I just reserved the right to yak about it until we got home from vacation. It's my blog, after all, and I make the rules.

You see, as restful as a vacation is supposed to be, ours rarely fits that description. They may be pleasurable, but there is nothing at all simple about them.  We stay busy packing and driving and site seeing and walking...

                       and walking....

                                and walking...

This year was much the same,

but  in the middle of it all,

 there was one moment that stuck out above all as reaching the level of  

simple pleasure. 

Was it strolling in the surf?

 Nope 

I just put that picture to throw you off track. I'm sneaky like that.

Car games with a captive audience? Singing with the Munchkins? 

Eating my way through Epcot?

No.

No.

and close, but...no.

Instead, my vacation simple pleasure occurred in the middle of the Magic Kingdom, in the middle of the summer, smack dab in the middle of the day.

You see, at a time when any logical family would be ducking for cover inside the nearest ice cream store, this bunch of Huckleberries decided to hop aboard a raft in the blazing sun and sail over to Tom Sawyer's Island.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Somehow, with all those trees, it looked cooler from the other side of the water. Well, looks can be deceiving, folks. There wasn't a breath of air on the island, and after about thirty minutes of following the seven-year-old boy I married

 through the caves 

and across the bridges 

and  into the rifle roosts, 

this hot mama was just about to hurl herself into the River Disney. 

And that's when I saw it.

Simple. Pleasure.

It was cold, too, so cold that I got back in line like a first grader to guzzle some more.

It's funny. We've done our best to glamour up the whole water drinking process. We have our bottled water and sparking water and fancy drinking containers, but in the end, nothing quite compares to ice cold water springing out of a regular old fountain.

I don't know about you, but slurping it up kind of makes me feel like a kid again.

Who knows...maybe we really did find the Fountain of Youth on vacation after all.

*****

Sharing with Dayle at  A Collection of This and That

Join us for more Simple Pleasures. 

Simply Meandering

Most weeks, my simple pleasure is something that sneaks up on me unawares. Even though I'm on the lookout for it, I don't actually plan it. The surprise is part of the pleasure.  Some weeks, though, are different. Sometimes, you're in such need of simple pleasure that you go in search of one.

This was one such week.

It's hot and miserable around here, and I felt the strong need to color my world with flowers.

Too bad I can't grow them.

It's true.  The same girl who loves poetry but can't compose a poem and loves singing but can't carry a tune... also loves flowers... but has a brown thumb.

Sad, isn't it?

Not to worry, though. I just headed to the local botanical gardens. I grabbed the shiny red Kodak, too.  I thought you might want to come along.

I think you can tell a lot about a woman by the kind of flowers that she likes. Some gals like long stemmed roses. Others love the exotic orchids. Some prefer flowering trees; others have a favorite pick from the garden.

Me? I like a random, quirky, clump.

That's the way I like my gardens, too. No carefully manicured rose gardens for me. I like a meandering mishmash, emphasis on the meandering part. You see, it's not just the flowers that I love. It's the effect they have on my imagination.

That's exactly what I get at our local botanical gardens, 

especially in the summer.

Oh, it starts formal enough, with its brick walks and orderly blossoms...

But eventually, the paths become narrow.  

They turn into a little pergola covered walkway.

It's enchanting.  

Can you see it back there? 

It weaves its way through those flowers until it opens up

with a canopy of  Confederate jasmine.

I have no idea what those spidery white blossoms are.  I rarely stop to read the tags. I'm too busy writing the setting to the great American novel in my head.

The brick path picks up again and leads to this tumbled down fountain.  It's surrounded by wonderful old outbuildings and a vegetable garden,  but I'll save them for another day.

I'd rather explore.

That's where the brick paths end,
 and the adventure trails begin.
That's my favorite part. 

Eventually, you make your way  

back to the main cottage.  

It sits behind the fence

And beyond the winding path 

beside the secret garden bench 

surrounded by happy flowers

Simply wonderful...

And that's about it for this summer. 

Come fall, I'll be out there again, ready to make up a whole new story in my head to go along with the fall foliage. But for now, meandering through Mishmash Gardens is this week's simple pleasure.

What about you? What's your flower pleasure?

*****

Sharing with Dayle at A Collection of This and That

Join us for more simple pleasures

Simply A Cloud That Cried Wolf

The simple pleasures party at A Collection of This and That has been on a little hiatus.  I’ve really missed it, too. Funny how you don’t realize how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone.

This week’s simple pleasure is kind of like that.

If you read here much, you know that this blogger is in the middle of a severe drought. It has gone way beyond dry grass and dead flowers.  The roots are showing on the river banks, and the piney stick trees are orange. 

The whole ordeal has turned us into a bunch of sky watchers.  We walk outside craning our necks like owls and do the freeze if we think we hear a distant rumble.

I think it can… I think it can…

But time after time, the little rumble that could has turned out to be the thunder who cried wolf.  Not exactly the story that we had in mind, folks.

And so it was with less than hopeful expectation that I watched the clouds teasing over our house the other day.  I can get a little pouty when hope cries wolf; I admit it. But when the trees started swaying and those rumbles became boomers, I stepped outside to capture the evidence.

 Just in case…

Then I plopped right down on the porch to wait.

And I waited…

And I waited…

And do you know what happened?

 Wolf!

So I put the shiny red Kodak into protective custody and drank it all in.  And if the neighbors just happened to see a little Gene Kelly action going on? Well... that might have been me, too.  

And I thought about the decades that I have spent pretty much nonchalant on the subject of rain. How many times, I thought, have showers fallen in their season without so much as a whisper of thanks?  


I guess sometimes it takes a season without them to remedy that. 

So thank you for your prayers, blogging friends. 

Enjoying the fruit of them was this week’s simple pleasure.

*****

Taking my grateful self to Dayle's place.

Join me for more
 Simple Pleasures

Simply Dimply

No, this week’s simple pleasure isn’t about smiling. I just wanted my title to rhyme.

Today, I'm  yakking about  this stuff.  

Now, I realize that not everyone reading this will *get* this simple pleasure. I’ve come to realize that poetry is like a music style. You either love it, or it hurts your ears.  

Put me in the love it column.

I think there must be some kind of poetry gene, and I was born with it. My paternal grandfather, the fiery evangelist from yesterday’s post, was a great lover of verse.

And then there's the Duchess...  

While most kids have a favorite storybook from their childhood and remember sitting on their mother’s lap as she turned the colorful pages, my best memories are of sitting in the kitchen, or just about anywhere, as mine turned the colorful words.

Longfellow is her favorite, and she interjected him regularly. It was impossible to leave the breakfast table any morning of April 18^th before she began,  Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere… Of course, I never wanted to leave anyway. I stayed for the whole ride and hung on every word like Revere to the reigns.   

I sure hope the sister doesn't recognize this poetry book that I never returned to her...

I’m sad to report that I’m not a poet myself, though that’s not for lack of trying. As a little girl growing up, I fancied myself a great one. I bought those black and white composition books and sat outside for hours, writing Odes.

Because it’s always an Ode if it’s written outside, you know.

Little Debbie Seventh Grader tried to turn her angst into verse as well. Since absolutely nothing rhymes with the word Philip, I turned to free verse. Let’s just say that there are some things I’m mighty grateful that I never hoarded.

After a while, I realized that I wasn’t called to write poetry; I was just called to love it, and love it I have for nearly 50 years.

I say without exaggeration that I can sit for hours with a good anthology. I don’t have a favorite poem or poet, either, although I actually tried to photograph some favorites for this post. I gave up because it was taking too long.

It all depends on my mood.

 From ballads to sonnets, I love them all.

 (ok, maybe not e.e. cummings. he bugs me.)

  

It’s so important to me that I have tried my level best to pass the passion to the next generation.  I spontaneously burst into random acts of senseless rhyming just like my mother did, but it doesn’t appear that either daughter ever caught the bug. I blame their left- brained father who apparently stunk up the gene pool.

So I'm saving my books and my hope for the next generation. In the meantime, enjoying poetry is this week's simple pleasure.  
   

***** 

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Simply Ghostly

In full disclosure, this week's simple pleasure is over a week old.

Due to a series of unfortunate events, I was late getting here last week. By the time I did, Blogger Man had closed the hatch, and my post was unable to fly.  Here I am this week, better late than never, to share the simple pleasure that I have named  Redbeard's Ghost. 

This is the oak grove at the end of my street. 

There's nothing at all unique about it. Spanish moss drips from nearly every oak tree south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Around here, it's as common as kudzu and cornbread, and most folks pass right on by without a second glance.

But I like it. I like the way it hangs from the trees like a scraggly grey beard.   It has a romantic look to it, in a spooky sort of way.

It wasn't the grey beards that gave me my simple pleasure this week, though. It was a beard of a different color.  The other evening, I was driving home at sunset, and I saw something that I had never noticed before.

Don't those scraggly beards kind of look like they're on fire?  

They did to me.

I was completely jazzed by the sight.
The whole grove was bursting with flaming beards.

I pulled Ebenzer to the side of the road to get pictures. I think I sat  there for about 30 minutes just watching the show. Unfortunately,  I couldn't quite capture the beauty of it all. I was still using that borrowed camera, and I couldn't figure out how to work the thing.

I'm so glad to have a new shiny red Kodak...  

I have spent the past week trying to recapture the sight with no success. I guess just like any good simple pleasure, I was supposed to stop and appreciate the moment.  

I'm so glad that I did. 

Watching the sun set on the Spanish Moss is this week's simple pleasure.

*****

Joining Dayle at

A Collection of This and That

for her weekly Simple Pleasures party.

Simply Coming Home

Just a quick post from  me today.
I'm very busy.

Anyone want to guess what I'm doing?
It's quite an adventure, you know.

I've loaded Ebenezer with empty boxes and bins and filled the tank with gas.
Ouch!.

Later, I'm heading out alone to meet Super Dad.

Here...

Now, I may be arriving alone,
 but I won't be returning empty handed.

That's what makes it an adventure.

I'll be filling up the car with this

And this...

And this

And this

And this...

And whatever mess has been homesteading

 in that tiny little room,

 at the end of the hall,

on the third floor of a dorm

without an elevator.

Somehow, we'll make it all fit and still have room for the important stuff.

This.

Bring home a little Whimsy is this week's simple pleasure.  

*****

Joining Dayle at A Collection of This and That

for her Simple Pleasures Party

Simple Rendezvous

I probably shouldn’t have intruded on the moment. It was Sunday morning and a church parking lot after all. It was neither the time nor place for paparazzi. But there I was, sitting in the car trying to finish up my lesson, and there was the shiny red Kodak, loitering on the seat next to me.

You might have done it too.

I glanced up for a moment, and I could tell by his face that she was coming. It just seemed Providential that I capture the rendezvous.

 They meet there every week, the lady and the dark haired man. I’m just not always there to watch it. It would be simple enough to do since she’s such a creature of habit. At precisely the same time each week, she drives past the church, turns into the empty parking lot behind it, takes a w-i-d-e loop, and heads back to park her car in the outgoing direction.

And the dark haired man always waits.

Then he crosses the street and helps her out of the car.

And they stroll together, an odd couple if I’ve ever seen one. He carries the purse and the bible and bridges the height gap as best as he can to steady the arm. She carries the cane and chats as they go.

I used to think that he helped her because she was old, and I used to think that was the reason she let him. She’s turning 99 this week, after all. The unsinkable old lady was born the day the Titanic went down.

Not long ago, though, I realized that I was wrong.

You see,  I was sitting in my car another Sunday morning when she arrived to an empty sidewalk.  There wasn't a dark haired man in sight.

She glanced around and waited...

She whipped out a little compact for a touchup,

and waited some more.

When she finally started to get out of the car, I jumped out of mine and offered to help her.

The Duchess didn’t raise an oaf, you know...

To my surprise, she refused the offer. Oh, she was polite about it, but she straightened to her full height and assured me that she was perfectly fine.

But then she saw the dark haired man giant-stepping across the lawn.

And folks,
 in a move that would have made Scarlett proud,

that antique belle simultaneously wilted and glowed.

 Really, it was amazing.
I've got to learn how to do it.

And she called out,

“Why there’s ma fray~end.”

And she handed him the purse
 and the Bible,

 and she lifted her arm,

and off they stolled across the street.

And that’s when I finally understood.  It wasn’t help that she wanted at all; it was good old-fashioned chivalry.  You see, my offer just made her feel old. His offer makes her feel like a lady.  

And that's my story for this week. In case you haven't figured it out by now, Sir Lotsa Hair is the Man of the House. Capturing his weekly rendezvous is this week's simple pleasure.

*****

Sharing with ma fray~end Dayle at

A Collection of This and That.

Join us for more simple pleasures.