Spiders and Moles!

So, my garden is alive with spiders. I have to be really aware of where I am walking because banana spiders love to take up a whole path by running their webs right across the whole thing. For reference to that fact see my post entitled “Ah, Nature.”

Here is a different banana spider in a higher part of the garden.

I had to snap this shot because I was enamored with the way the sun illuminated the intricate work of the web. All my life, I have been really creeped out by spiders but, at the same time, I am fascinated by their artistry when the spin a web.

How do they do this from tree limb to tree limb? Amazing.

Okay, this one looks like it arrived on a space ship! He could be used as a weapon! I wonder if he was the prototype for the Mace in the days of knights and dragons.

I posted this pic on my face book and my friend, Emmy, said she thought it was called a crab spider. So, I googled crab spider and came up with some really strange looking beings and this guy’s picture was among them. The thing that is puzzling is that it is supposed to be indigenous to Florida. It has definitely crossed some borders to wind up here in NC. Carolyn says it is an illegal alien and I am inclined to agree. I don’t know which is the top and which is the bottom but this crab spider looks like it has a dual appearance. Maybe it is like a Jeckle and Hyde, one side dark and one side light. Or the two-faced character from the Dick Tracy comics.

Well, I titled this post Spiders and Moles. I do not have a picture of the moles that live in my yard But I just wanted to whine a little.

Do you know that moles are on the endangered species list? It is not legal to kill a mole, even if they do tear up your yard from border to border. I have been thinking, (I know, this could be dangerous). Since moles are an endangered species and I have an abundance of them living on my property, shouldn’t the government be funding me as a Mole Rescue Mission? I think the word has gone out to all the moles in my area that they can find safety and grass roots to eat in my yard.

Here is another question. Have you ever seen a naked mole rat?? No wonder they hide under ground! Hilarious!

So, when you are feeling bad about yourself, cheer up. You could be this fellow! And if I ever dug one of those up from my yard, I would have to break the law!

Hair for Coni by Coni (FCBC)

It is happening again. The creative juices are flowing and I don’t have a head of someone else’s hair to work on.

My new friend, Gracie, was going to come over today and we were going to change her hair color and hair style. We had discussed it at am AA meeting last week. She asked me what I would do to her hair if she would let me. Hahahah. I love that kind of a lead in. I told her and she was pretty interested in my opinion. Yesterday, she asked if I wanted to do her hair and so we scheduled her to come this morning. Well, she is feeling yucky today so thought it best not to come over. I really do appreciate when folks are thoughtful enough to keep their potential germs to themselves. The last thing we need in this house is a flu or a cold. So, thanks Gracie. We can definitely do this another time.

But… that leaves wanting to do hair stuff and no model to work on. So…. here goes.

This is me BEFORE!

Here I am … AFTER.

I was going for a subtle difference.

I love cutting hair.

Laughter among the sorrow

My mother and I had quite a tumultuous relationship through out my teens and early twenties. Due to her alcoholism, she became unable to care for me, the youngest and last of her children. It was 1960 and d-i-v-o-r-c-e was not something that folks spoke about in the open. I felt abandoned by my father when he left us and divorced my mother but when my mother turned me over to the care of my older sister, I felt doubly abandoned.

At the age of thirteen, I moved back with my mother. She was a single, working, alcoholic mother and my life was thrown into turmoil. I began to act out in anger. It was crazy because I loved my mother deeply. If I did not love her so much, I would not have been so devastated by her rejection. What I had learned was this; when you don’t care about a person, their actions may make you mad or upset, but they do not have the power to destroy you. I thought I could UNlove her and for the next several years, I did whatever I could to try to hurt her. I wanted her to feel as much mental anguish as I had experienced over the years. Little did I know that she had her own mental anguish to deal with. I could not see past my own pain and hurt. Self centered fear had wrapped me in a cocoon of  self pity.

My mother and father had been married for 17 years when my father blind-sided her by asking for a divorce. Dad was a full time musician working the night club circuit. Mom stayed home and took care of their four children. She gave birth to five children but my sister, Janice, died from “crib death” when she was 10 months old. Somehow, my mother lived through that but, I assure you, she never recovered from finding her baby dead. The stress and sorrow almost broke up their marriage after that tragedy.

She had finished ironing his shirts for the gigs he was going to do that week when my father told her he was leaving her. She thought he was joking at first. The look on his face told her he was serious.

From there, my mother’s life spiraled out of control. She was tormented by feelings of guilt, rejection and failure while trying to hold together what was left of her family.

After I got clean and sober and had exorcized many of my demons, I was blessed with the ability to look at life through someone else’s eyes for a change. Reconciliation with my mother became possible when I stopped thinking about me for a minute. As I learned what made this woman tick, my resentment turn to admiration. Oh, not instantly, but over time. I saw past how it all affected me and grew able to see how all her life lessons had formed some of her ideology. Her stubbornness was one of her strengths. It is probably what kept her from suicide. The way she did not pull any punches but could be brutally honest came from her disgust at being BS’d by other people in her lifetime.

There are so many things I have learned through my relationship with Mom. In this post, I want to point out how fruitless it is to hold onto a resentment with anyone. We do not know what crazy nuances have that happened in another person’s life that cause them to be the way they are. There may be some dreadful past event that haunts a person, causing them to seem cold, rude or downright mean. Perhaps they are trying to protect themselves the only way they know how, by keeping you at a distance.

I am not talking about people who commit egregious crimes and blame it on their past. That is a whole ‘nuther series of posts.

I was completely baffled when my mother called me at work one night. She was babysitting my 3 month old daughter while I worked at the local bar across the street from our home. She was drunk and crying and I could not make out her words. I left work like a shot and ran home to find her leaning over Fawn’s crib, sobbing. She was saying, “Please let her live to be more than 10 months old.” In my panic, I pushed her out of the way to discover that Fawn was sleeping peacefully. It took a moment for me to realize that my mother was re-living the horror of finding her baby girl, lifeless and blue in her little crib 20 years earlier. I still can’t imagine how she survived that whole ordeal.

My mother was a pretty amazing woman. If I had never let go of my own selfish hurt and pride, I would have missed out on ever knowing that.

My dear daughter Fawn, THAT is just one of the stories of your Grammy. There are many more. A lot of happy ones and, of course, several funny ones. But the truth of life is that there is laughter among the sorrows. That is life.

Weight Watchers

It’s a new season in my life. Today is day one of my NEW Weight Watchers adventure. They used to call me a Life-time Member but that was back in the old days. I used to go to one meeting per week and get weighed in. I set a goal to reach 140 pounds and I reached that goal and kept my weight off for a few years. Now, 22 pounds later, I am trying weight watchers again. It is quite different this time because I will be doing my meetings online and weighing myself in each week. This fits my crazy schedule much better. Now, I have NO excuses when I go out of town to work.

Someone said to me today, “But what if you lie about your weight loss?” We both cracked up laughing because… WHO would I be lying to??? My jeans? I can hear me now, “Of course, I lost 15 lbs and 2 dress sizes. So, quit squeezing my waist and making me look like I have a muffin top!”

It feels like a completely different system using the points this way too. I have to educate myself all over again and get used to converting my food consumption to points. I am totally up for the challenge.

My Mom and I were Weight Watcher buddies once upon a time. I wish she were still with us so we could do this together again. We were pretty good at keeping each other encouraged and accountable. We walked the through neighborhood together three or four times a week. Not only did we get our exercise in but we had some great talks along the way. She told me stories about her growing up, about her and my Dad and what family life was like before I was born.  I learned  a lot about what my Mom was made of. Those will always be treasured times for me. And we shared a weight loss success story as we both reached our goal weight.

So, here I am again. About to embark on a NEW success story in Weight Watchers. I will keep you posted from time to time on my journey although I will try not to bore you with it.

In case anyone is interested, they are running a special online. You can check it out at WeightWatchers.com The only thing I am not crazy about is that they automatically charge you $16.95 a month for continued membership after your 4 months. So, you need to be mindful of that if you don’t want to continue in the program. You can quit anytime. They are, however, very up front about that and post it in a couple of places so you know what you are getting into. Please let me know if you decide to join. Maybe we can encourage and motivate each other and share recipes from time to time.

Get ready twenty extra pounds. You are going away!

Ah, nature

Today is perfect weather for a walk in my garden. It is amazing how simple it is to relieve stress.

I start off just sauntering across the grass in my back yard, heading toward my flagstone path through the trees. Already I can feel my  mind slowing and my thoughts turning to nature. Peaceful thoughts replace worries.

I stop for a moment to admire the moss in between the flagstones.

The shrubs that are planted around the perimeter give a nice sense of containment without taking away the natural feel of the garden.

We left several of the trees that are indigenous to our area which means…..

HOLY MACKEREL!!!!!

I nearly got a face full of this! Okay, all the stress is back now. Along with a few goose bumps.

Note to self; wear your glasses when relieving stress in the garden!

Beach work

I was working in SC at the end of July. We had one day of filming on a beach and the production company put us up in this hotel the night before. Sometimes I think I live a charmed life.

Having said that, it is time for me to get back to work. I have sent out a couple of resumes. God will open the right door at the right time.

Gratitude list

In January of 1977, I was struggling to break free from an alcohol and drug addiction. I began going to AA meetings and I asked a lady who had been sober for six years (consecutively!!!!) to be my AA sponsor. She was vital to my getting clean and sober. She had done it and her life looked pretty serene and functional to me. I, on the other hand, was living in a cottage that was so old and decrepit that the ground beneath it had settled and the foundation leaned. If you were to place a marble on the floor in one corner of the living room it would roll across the floor to the opposite side and land with a soft thump against the floor board. I discovered this by using a beer can. Apparently I had lost all my marbles by this time. My sink had dirty dishes piled high for weeks at a time and whenever I decided to wash a dish (usually because I was out of clean ones) I would find mold on them. I had no money for curtains and so I linked beer can pop tops together and hung them in strings from my windows. Wine bottles lined the walls because I thought they were pretty. Some how, I had acquired eight cats, all with fleas. This was a sad way to live but sadder still is the fact that I had a little girl living in this mess with me. I was on welfare and food stamps and my rent was paid with a section 8. My Mom had given me her car and it sat under the pine trees in my yard because I was too afraid to learn how to drive it.

The further away from a drink and a drug I was getting, the more observant I became of my surroundings. It was overwhelming to me when I realized how much of my life was completely upside down. I called my sponsor one morning when I was on the verge of hyper-ventilating with anxiety and I poured out all my frustration and fears to her amidst a sea of tears. At the end of my tirade she told me that she wanted me to make a list of things that I was grateful for. “What?? Has she been listening to me at all? She is either stupid or crazier than me!” That is what I was thinking but I managed just to say, “What do I have to be grateful for?” She started my thinking process off by naming two things. “How about the roof over your head? How about the fact that DSS has not taken your daughter away from you? Now, you finish the list. Get paper and a pen and start writing and call me back with your list when you are done.”

I was surprised to have a whole paper covered with things that I was grateful for. I have continued to make a gratitude list over the past 32 years. It always contains some of the same things that were on that first list. Somethings I am just constantly grateful for. Here is my “Top Ten” gratitude list today.

1. I am clean and sober and reasonably sane.
2. I have a conscious contact with my higher power. He knows my name.
3. My daughters have grown into a women of faith and integrity.
4. I am married to my soul mate and we have made a good life together.
5. I have made amends to the people I have harmed and I continue to take my own inventory.
6. I have everything I need in order to live comfortably.
7. I have a few real friends today and I can recognize the ones who cannot be real.
8. I am forgiven and I have forgiven.
9. I like myself even though I am not perfect.
10. I recognize self pity and deal with it swiftly by making a gratitude list.

For You have been my help and in the shadow of your wings I will rejoice. Psalm 63;7

Topping it off

I just have to tell you:

At the end of our already blessed day yesterday, our next door neighbor called to ask me the question of the day!

“Have you guys had desert yet?”

It took me all of two seconds to come up with the prize winning answer.

“Why, no we have not.”

Within minutes our favorite neighbors were at the door with a pan of peach cobbler. Oh, not just any pan mind you. It was a hot, just out of the oven, pan of peach cobbler. Mary had just made it and she said I could take as much as I wanted. Alright, wipe the drool off your chin as I assure you that we had a fresh can of whipped cream to top it off with. A day just doesn’t get much better than that!

Today, I planned my day around an AA meeting. I am starting to know some of the folks in AA now and makes it easier to go to meetings.

I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to stay home and be able to take care of my husband during this stressful time for us. The time has flown by and now it is time for me to get back to work. We are not independently wealthy enough for me to stay home any longer. I know that God has the timing all worked out. All I need to do is keep my head straight one day at a time and God will do the rest.

There is a saying I heard a long time ago that I am often reminded of. “Ninety per cent of life is just showing up.” Well, Lord, I am doing my 90%. Here I am, whatcha gonna do with me now?

Joy of another day

The art of chillaxin.

We are blessed. The fact that these two mutts are so contented in this home is evidence of the peace and safety in my home. Ed and I are often reminded that God has blessed us with favor.

Today, we went out for a ride to Mayfaire. We decided to go to Atlanta Bread for lunch. As we ordered our food, the lady who took our order told us that she would deliver our food to our table since it wasn’t very busy. That was very sweet of her and we gratefully accepted her offer. While we sat at our booth, a friend of ours sneaked up on Ed and scooted in on his side of the booth. It was the first time we have seen Sherry and her daughter, Autumn, since Ed’s hospitalizations. She was surprised to see him with an oxygen tank and while they were chatting and catching up, a Mom and daughter came over to our table. I thought they were friends of Sherry but, they didn’t know any of us. The Mom said that as they watched us walk in, they felt impressed to pray for Ed. Her husband had just been through a catastrophic illness and was beginning to recover nicely so she had compassion for our current struggle. Favor, favor, favor. Sherry told the lady that Ed was a good man who needs to live for a long time. What a blessing to have people say such nice things about you.

After that blessing (and a great lunch) we headed across the street to one of the stores. We have to plan and maneuver things quite differently in order to do some simple things these days. It takes a lot of energy for Ed to have to walk back to the car, get in, get out again and walk into the store (all with a 10 lb. oxygen tank hanging off his shoulder). It was easier for him to walk across the street and for me to go get the car and park in front of the store. I had the car moved and parked already while he was still crossing the street so I got out and walked over to meet him and finish crossing with him. I noticed a gentleman crossing the street at the same time. He had slowed his pace way down and stayed behind, but near, Ed as they crossed the street together. He was unobtrusively, watching over Ed. It was very sweet and unspoken. As I approached them, this other man was watching me with a look of concern. I reached Ed and I turned so I could walk beside him then I turned and said a simple “thank you” to the man. He nodded and picked up his pace, crossing the street before us.

Now, this was not a very big deal and could easily have been overlooked. If I were not already aware of the way we have been walking in favor lately, I would have missed it myself. Today has been another day of favor. Thank You God.

Bucket List

What do you do to prepare yourself for a change? I have this unsettled feeling. It is the feeling that usually indicates to me that there is a shaking up of my world on the horizon. If you asked me, I would tell you that I have been through enough changes in 2009. Thank you very  much but I think I shall pass on this one. Oy, what a year it has been.

I am shocked to stop and think that it is August already. Kids are heading back to school and summer is coming to an end. Time is speeding by.

Ed and I have started talking about a bucket list. We are thinking about the things we would like to do before we, you know, kick the bucket. If you saw the movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, you know what I am talking about. Don’t worry, we are not giving any coded messages. We just realize that everyone is going to have an end sometime and ours is closer now than it has ever been.

Ed has always had a wander lust. He loves to travel… anywhere. His days as a merchant seaman were some of the most fulfilling years of his life for that reason. I like to be with him when he travels, so that is high on our list. Our Christmas trip to Florence, Italy a couple of years ago was the best vacation ever!!

We both enjoy writing. We have co-written a children’s story. We would like to pursue getting it published. That may be a pretty lofty goal because we have no formal training and know very little about the publishing and distributing end of such things. For a certainty, self publishing is not the way we want to go. Without a distributor, we would be giving everyone we know children’s books for Christmas, christenings, Bar Mitzvahs, etc… for the next several years.

Ed is editing a novel he has been writing for, at least, 15 years. That is quite an accomplishment. I am so proud of him. I get to read it when he finishes editing. We will probably try to get that published as well.

These are just the beginning of the  ideas for our list. We have enjoyed a fabulous life together. God has been so amazingly good to us. Because of His grace and mercy, He has blessed us with much more than we deserve. If you had met me 35 years ago, you never would have seen me as the person I am now. God has truly transformed my life from the sad, angry, rejected, self-pitying mess of a drunken junky into the peaceful, contented, hopeful, faith filled, successful hairstylist for film and television that I am today.

My goal for the next little while is to work as much as I can so we can save the money to accomplish our bucket list. That is, unless Jack Nicholson wants to finance our bucket list like his character did in the movie. In that case, we can think of a few more things to put on the list.

Change is on the way. I am not sure what it will be but I am preparing myself by leaning on Proverbs 3 verses 5&6. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your path.” The Message Bible puts it this way; “Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure everything out on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; He’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume you know it all. Run to God.” The words in both translations are a little different from each other but the thought is the same; trust God.