Through the eyes of gratitude, everything's a miracle.

 Reflecting on blessings ... SO.MANY.BLESSINGS ... I never want to take for granted the many blessings that God has given us.

This time of year will always be my MOST favorite time of the year.  The color, the smells, the weather, the festive and celebratory energy of the season, it leaves me reeling in rhapsody!

We've finally gotten around to putting our plans together for our lake house remodel, and it's beginning to take shape.  They laid our new wood floors last week -- I won't be able to see them till next weekend, the start of Thanksgiving week, as I'm working in WV this week and next.  But a sneak peak of their rich loveliness, the view from our sunroom.... and a few more pictures taken of the season's glory.

Just settle down!

I want to shout it from the rooftops, across the billboards:  Just settle down, people.

Everyone seems to have their panties in a big ugly, hateful, spiteful, judgmental wad.

What has America come to?

Newsflash.  (Not the fake news, the sobering truth!)  It's not all about YOU.

Narcissistic, selfish, self-righteous gluttons for attention.

Just settle down.  Take a look around.  More importantly, look up. 

Focus on the good, the lovely, the grace that none of us deserve.

The rest will take care of itself. 

Always does.

Is there a vaccine for this?

In this never-ending lull of nothingness, boredom, restlessness, concern for the future all brought on by this Wuhan  Coronavirus, I keep thinking I want to "bleed" from my blog -- quoting Hemingway -- but my brain won't fire.  My heart is hogging the power.

Reading, I can do.  Writing, I stall.

I'm reading Lisa Scottoline right now, "Killer Smile."  I love her writing style.  This book was borrowed from my neighbor (while libraries and book stores remained closed), and it's not one of her best, but I'm hanging in there.  One thing about Scottoline, she never fizzles when it comes to humor.  Her books are brilliantly punctuated with her uniquely comical wisecracks.  That alone is entertaining and keeps me afloat to the end.

I stumble upon Blogger this morning and my mind goes blank.  I say to myself, well, I could start with my reading list.  Maybe I'll get inspired.  I'll release.  But then it occurs to me -- as it did this morning when looking on Pinterest for a recipe -- that I don't want to wade through endless rivers of endorsements or piles of propaganda and rhetoric to get to the core, the good stuff, the reason I'm there:   To read a blog post.  To check a recipe.

To wade and wade and painfully wade, as a page loads and reloads with the pop-up CRAP -- AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT, she said.

But then I confess.  I'm not a professional blogger.  I am not interested in getting paid for words I put to paper -- or to screen?  I just come here to purge.  To clear my cache.

I'm a novice blogger.

I'm novice at a lot of things.  A neophyte.  Scrittrice amatoriale.

And lately I lack consistency.  Is ANYTHING consistent anymore?  Uh, NO!  I've shamefully morphed into a sloth.

Is there a vaccine for that?

Go ahead. Make me laugh.

It really does.

Keep it light, peeps!

Life Verse

The White Noise of Winter

I've always been a seasonal sort of woman, embracing each, patient till the next.

In later years, I've become -- well, less patient.  I'm pretty sure it's a vitamn D thing.  The older I get the more I need.  My deficit accumulates, and I suddenly feel an overwhelming sense of suffocation.  Immobile.  Fuzzy-brained.  Apathy and indifference to things that normally captivate me.

The monotony of winter's cold air and the lack of sunlight seem to have a deafening effect on my ability to stay focused, stay positive, move forward.  Beginning as an elegy, it finds crescendo in the increasing frequency of frigid temperatures, dismal gray days, lifeless black and white landscapes blanketed with dry and biting winds, leafless trees, brittle yellow grass -- or no grass at all.  Day after day.  BLEAK and DEAFENING.  A forte of winter's white noise.

Driving home from a job last week, I was thankful to see a cloudless, sunny sky.  Despite the deceiving cold outside temperatures, driving down the highway I opened my sun roof and stretched my face to the sky, lusting for the warmth of the sun's rays on my face.  Drinking down every.glorious.drop.  And with every second that passed, an opaque veil began to lift from my eyes, cobwebs began shredding and loosening from my mind, and deep, stirring energy was restored to every nuance of my being, all negative thoughts dissipating.  Gone.

And for the next several minutes, the white noise of winter was defeated with the distant sounds of spring and summer.....
children's laughter, water splashing, waves crashing, live music on the levee, seagulls squawking...
Enveloped in an allegro of all things summer.

Spring is on the horizon.
Let me just hang on a while longer as I learn to navigate and silence the white noise.

My Life of Check Boxes

Since changing jobs from the courtroom to freelance in June of 2017, the reality is that I definitely do not have the extra time I thought I would have.  Freelance implies flexibility.  Flexibility implies time for ________ whenever I want.  Not so.  But I can't really explain why.

Some of it (a lot of it) is self-inflicted.

So in the freelance world of court reporting, we transcribe everything we write, unlike being an official in the courtroom, where only appealed cases are transcribed for the most part.  Transcribing every single word of every job shapes one into a better reporter for so many reasons.  We see steno that we need to write shorter (for speed) or a different way (for speed and accuracy).  So every day becomes a game, sort of.  What will my accuracy rate be today?  How many steno strokes will be perectly written?  More today than yesterday...than last week...than last month.  And on it goes.  And part of that insanity involves daily practice, over and above what we do on the job.  So we commit (those who strive for excellence) to practice every single day, no exceptions, even when we're sick, or have company, or plans, whatever, we fit it in somehow.  That accountability is the ticket.  As a result, our writing gets better and better with each passing day.  We compete against ourselves.  And this is incredibly addictive, as boring as it sounds.

Example:  I recently began writing the "evalute" family a different way to lessen hesitation and ensure accuracy.  So I use each of those words (evaluate, evaluated, evaluator, evaluation....) in a sentence -- which I get from this amazing online site, sentencedict.com, then record 10-15 sentences of each word into my iPhone, and that becomes my practice for the Daily Challenge that I belong to on this amazing court reporter website.  We mean business.  We don't play around.  We keep track and we commit to this insanity daily.  Over and above our work.

Check.

Next:  I began a commitment last September to learn a foreign language (on my bucket list).  I'm using Duo Lingo, and it is the coolest app for learning!  It's effective and it's fun and it's addictive.  I've learned SO MUCH in such a short amount of time.  My Italian vocabulary is now in the 1,000's, but in reality, that's really not that much.  Or maybe it is.  But the point is:  Ya gotta practice.  Every day.  And depending on how long it takes to get through your daily practice lesson, that can mean anywhere from 15 mins to 30 mins.

Check.

With my recent diagnosis of hip issues, and even before, I realize that I've gained weight -- both from feeling sorry for myself and overeating and from not exercising as much as I used to.  My butt takes up a lot more room in my jeans.  And it's not good.  Not with MY thighs.  And so I've commited to different forms of exercise most days of the week.  That takes time.  But I don't have a choice.  This is my health.  My sanity.   A direct impact on my emotional health.

Check.

So whether I'm at a deposition taking down the record, sitting at home at my desk transcribing the record, practicing so that I can take an even better record; practicing Italian, or working out, all of those check boxes take up far more time than even I realize.

So little time to do so many other things that I crave.  Reading.  Journaling.  Junking.

I do what I can when I can.  And that is enough for now.

After I finished my job this morning, I was heading back to my parking meter and spied a cool new building (not sure how new actually because I haven't been to this town for a while) that was beckoning a visit from me.  The Market.  All right.  I like that.  Inside there were shops, ice cream, restaurants, a brewery with wine and craft beer, a paleo quick-bite place, and maybe a couple others I missed.  The clothing store, called The Hip Eagle, had this yummy chunky charcoal cardigan oozing with texture and style -- half price!  A perfect gift for my daughter-in-law's birthday March 4th.  What fun!  I found myself wandering, wandering, wandering .... looking at things I didn't even want.  Just because it was fun.  I liked this place.  A lot.  I finally had to drag myself back to the car and get my butt home so that I could begin checking off my daily boxes.  (Note to self:  Get back to this place some evening for a craft beer and music on the patio!)

Wow.  What a boring life, right?

It is what it is for now.  But it keeps me busy, focused, challenged, purposeful.  And maybe that's a good thing as an empty nester.  Filling up my life with things that demand my time and attention and help to keep me distracted from the reality that I miss my sons.  I miss being at the lake more.  I miss goofing off in the afternoons (like I used to when we had short days in court).  This is my current chapter.  Every day I go through my list, checking off MY daily boxes.

And it's really NOT so bad.

Rendi ogni giorno

il tuo capolavoro.

(Make each day your masterpiece.)

- John Wooden