Full of Grace

I am making new cedar shutters for our house and smell of the wood has filled my garage. It is the most pleasant fragrant aroma with which to fill my lungs.


Going to visit Peachie in Boston and seeing her happy in her new home, all decorated and homey.


And she took me to my very first trip to an IKEA store which was amazing. Lunching on Swedish meatballs was pretty awesome too.


70 degrees in February. I know it was just a tease but getting even a tiny glimpse of Spring fills me with joy and anticipation.


A developed a stye in my eye. I am not particularly grateful about that as it has been ugly and itchy and painful and caused very blurry vision. But I am very grateful that I have gone my whole life without ever having to deal with one of these before. And hopefully never again.



And of course, this:


https://dorothysurrenders.blogspot.com/2018/02/gender-fuck-thursday-cate-edition.html


which has been on a continual loop on my computer.

The Sad Truth

Planet B?

I was fortunate to be able to take a small break from this year’s bitter cold upstate New York weather and go to sunny Florida to visit some old friends.  I  took leisurely morning beach walks with the sea gulls, took bike rides along a jetty with pelicans, went to see manatees (my friend’s granddaughter calls them chubby mermaids), and marvelled at all the different flora and fauna one thousand miles in distance can make.

I also had the opportunity to sit on the beach to witness the Elon Musk space launch. It was incredible to watch the rocket go up and even more amazing to watch the rockets come back slowly and return to their launch pads. And then the sonic booms. The whole experience was goose bump producing.











Before going on this trip I had no idea what this launch was all about or that it was such a big deal. Literally over a hundred thousand people came to watch, we saw license plates from all over the country and many folks from other countries. And because of all the media attention I learned that it is Elon Musk’s dream to establish a human colony of Mars of one million people by 2040. This launch was just a precursor to the soon-to-come BFR (big fucking rocket) that he hopes will carry as many as 200 people at a time to their new home on Mars.





Then I read blogger Tim Urban’s Wait But Why blog comment that “all our eggs are currently on one planet. If we can build a self-sustaining civilization on Mars, it’s much harder for humanity to go extinct.” WTF? Personally I feel that we deserve to go extinct and I imagine all the remaining plants and animals standing up and cheering when we do.





I recently read that over 20,000 species have gone extinct directly attributable to human impacts on the planet. Why shouldn’t we be next? In fact, we deserve to be next. Americans generate about 4 and a half pounds of trash per person, per day, or 254.1 million tons total per year. Where does it all go?











Even dogs know not to shit their own beds.


This is our home. Why aren’t we talking about the necessary changes we have to make in order to continue the human project here? Personally I think we are just too greedy, too lazy, too selfish to make any of the sacrifices needed because they might inconvenience us or impact our pocketbook.












So rather than clean up our act here we will look to migrate to another planet?!











Based on our performance on this big blue marble, we will only infect and pollute other parts of the solar system. And then where do we go? Until we learn to clean up our act, there really is no Planet B. Just more places to ruin.

Glory Days

My partner Martha is a basketball fanatic. She runs a basketball league for girls and has always coached at some level, these days our school’s junior varsity team. When our daughters were born they got infant basketballs and as soon as they could walk they had hoops.

Needless to say that when our oldest daughter, Beaner, was the tallest kid in her third grade class Martha was thrilled. “You can’t teach height” is what she always said. And Beaner loved basketball. She started playing competitively when she was 8 and played through high school. She almost always played up a level and was always the captain of her teams. She made varsity when she was in 9th grade and started developing a following. By the time she was a junior she had her own cheering section and guys in the front row would hold up signs that said “Marry Me Beaner”, parents would all wish her luck and young players would follow her around like ducklings.

She would say she was not that popular in high school, a designation apparently reserved for cheerleaders, but in the gym, she ruled.

By her senior year college scouts were coming to watch her play but she decided not to play in college, a decision that broke Martha’s heart. Still even a couple of years after graduating people still came up to her when she went to games and treated her like a celebrity.

It has now been 8 years since she’s played and we just went to a high school game together. One parent recognized her and waved. Other than that she was as unknown as I was. She watched the game giving constant critique of the players - “this generation is so lazy”. This generation??? They’re only 8 years younger!

At one point I asked her if she missed it and she said “I miss playing and I miss being part of a team. I do not miss Saturday morning practices and running suicides. But my glory days are over “.

Glory days? She is 26 and her glory days are behind her? That seemed rather sad. Then I realized that I never had any ‘glory days’. I never played competitive sports, never performed in any way, was never recognized, applauded or cheered. As an introvert I am okay with that. It was more than enough to be the mom of two daughters who for brief moments were stars - Peachie having also excelled in her sport and went on to play in college.

Still, I do wonder what it must be like to experience that kind of adulation, even if only in a very small high school pond. And how it must feel when it is over. I guess I will just have to be content to know that I was once on the fringe of their spotlight and can say “I knew them when”.