Tagged: puttingwordstogether

It’s funny how envy works. Listening to the good news of a friend makes me envious sometimes. Not in the sense that I wish it were MY news, but just in the sense that I wish I had news, too. Even when you have things just fine, excellent in fact, it’s a weird feeling to find yourself envious of someone else. Not because you want whatever it is they have going on, but because they’re so excited about it and that feeling of excitement is such a rush that you are reminded of how fun it is. It’s much easier...

Bring up moving in conversation and it jump-starts things. People either love to do it or hate it with a passion, it seems. Even talking about packing and/or unpacking in conjunction with a trip raises all sorts of sympathetic flutters and groans of compassion. I’ve always liked packing and unpacking. There’s something very Christmassy about it. When it’s for a trip, packing is like wrapping up presents to give to yourself during vacation or traveling. And when it’s for moving, unpacking is all about opening great big boxes of presents you haven’t seen in awhile, and giving yourself the gift...

I envy people who have an instinctive ease with conversations…who can start them, keep them going, make them interesting. Even though I can hold my own, I don’t consider myself skilled at getting conversations rolling or keeping them afloat. My instincts are always to be the listener in any group, and not to be the one out there stating opinions or sharing anecdotes or telling secrets or even my side of things. Far too often, my conversation contributions are MENTAL: taking place in my head where only I can hear them. What I think is interesting about this, is that...

Do you think yourself beautiful? Are you pleased or, at least, at peace with your appearance? If not, what would you do to remedy it? Apply make-up? Straighten or curl or color your hair? Whiten your teeth? Lay yourself bare before a knife to correct what nature deemed your lot? Remove, add, lengthen, shorten, dye, reduce, enlarge, change. Catching part of a documentary on the increase of cosmetic surgery in China, I was appalled and mesmerized by the young girls who were undergoing operations to lengthen their legs. 6 months of pain and re-learning completely how to walk (no mention...

I was kind of yanking my brother’s chain when I wrote yesterday’s post, and obviously, since he’s one of the few that hears the tone of my voice in his head when he reads my words, simply BECAUSE he knows me (too) well, I figured he would get that. See, it wasn’t really him (he?) that sparked the post I wrote, but it was he (him?) that sent me the link to the essay that DID spark it, so he got sort of associated sideways and took the brunt of the blame, quite unfairly. Robin Hobb thinks what I do...

Do you ever stop and think about the fact that all the people around you, the people on the bus, or the woman riding horseback in the field by the road or the folk that wander purposefully up and down the aisles of the grocery store you’re in, ALL those people are thinking and doing and living their lives just like you? Sometimes it freaks me out a little bit. It used to freak me out a lot when I had this kind of epiphany every once in awhile in Chicago, city of 9 million plus souls. And half the...

The days keep getting away from me. Even as I sharpen my gaze, fixating on the color and the lightness of the evening sky—is it more cobalt than black at 4 o’clock?—is it lighter now, just slightly? It is! A miniscule difference that lights up my whole attitude—they seem to begin, whiz past, and end more quickly than ever before. In addition to the still-more-frequent than I would like blurry eyes, I’ve been plagued this past year with a recurring eye infection that is very irritating coming as it does with constant watering, sensitivity and redness that the strongest eyedrops...