Blue Skys

 Do you ever wake up in the morning and for just a few minutes you have ideas so clear in your mind about something, like what I might want to chat about here.  Then later when you sit down to type it just vanishes.  So I guess that makes something to type about.  I just finished a super good book called Water, Stone, Heart.  I would like to remember a few pages but know I probably wont.  But the feeling I got was the importance of community.  We have learned to live our lives so separate from others, especially I think in the big cities.  The main character in the book is a guy who went to school to study architecture and then went on to be a professor who never built anything.  He just taught about it.  When his wife walks out on him he takes a class in England to learn how to build stone hedges.  The author did a great job with his research and I am sure has his factual stuff down.  But in working in this little village on the Cornwall coast he regains his true passion of wanting to create real live communities like only Europeans seem to be able to do.  Of course he finds his soul mate and makes friends.  I loved the ending that of course always leaves the reader wanting to know more.  So for today I guess this is what I want to write about.  We get out and walk about 10 blocks around our quiet little suburban neighborhood every morning.  It really feels dead, as we rarely see anyone outside, other than maybe a couple other older folks trying to get their exercise in too before it gets to hot.  We live in a nice little burb a couple miles out of town with prob about 45 homes.  Kids come home from school and go inside and mostly don't come out unless its to load up and go somewhere else.  I feel good that we don't have loud neighbors and very few barking dogs but again it just feels sort of dead.  Am I getting to picky in my old age?  I want to see (really see) how I feel on my next trip down to our vacation house.  Want to see if it feels anymore like a community or just the same as here as that's the way we Americans know how to live now.  No more front porch sitting, we sit on our back porch that is covered and look at our fence which provides us privacy from neighbors,  we all do that.  Is it a fence for privacy or a fence to keep the world out?  Or maybe our way of living is a choice we make and we feel isolated because we isolate ourselves.  Hmm  

Thought for the day:  A stranger is a friend you haven't met.

There is only Now

There is only Now

 Well about every 2 years I decide I will get back to blogging again.  Well this time I think I really mean it.  I like to journal and I have not done much of that lately.  I have done some ancestry investigation and that is fun but can be very time consuming.  A lot has changed in my life as it has in everyone's the past couple years.  Number 1 being the pandemic Covid.  Wow!  So much sickness and death, also so much misinformation and mistrust of the health system and government. So much of the country was shut down for months, that we are still feeling the effects.  Vaccine is available but many won't take it.  For us personally I have always hated putting any drug or inoculation in my body.  I had to take the regular flu shot for years as it was mandatory in the medical settings where I worked.  Once I retired I stopped till the last couple years.   I am 74 now and hubby is 89  and we agreed that we could not wait out this thing. We did take the vaccine when it was available to us.  We have tried to be careful, doing the distancing thing, and hand washing.  We only go into stores early in mornings when less crowded.  But we have not stopped living.  We actually travel more now than before.  In Dec last year 2020 we rented a vacation house on the gulf of Texas for 3 weeks, and fell in love with it.  So we went back in Dec to look at houses and made an offer on one. It is in a small shrimping town of less than 5,000 population.  We took possession in March and went down to spend over 2 months.  It is so freeing to be there and no commitments to anyone but just us. Hubby would like to move but we agree that at his age it just doesn't seem practical to give up our home and do this permanent.  It is a bit less than 700 miles down there so we decided we would just play each trip down by ear and stay a few weeks then come back "Up Home" for 2 or 3 weeks then go back "Down Home".  We will see how long it lasts. With me being the one to do all the driving and most of the decision making is new to me so we are just living one day at a time.

I read somewhere that Yesterday is a memory, Tomorrow is a dream, There is only Now!  That is pretty deep if you really think about it.  When I see a really pretty sunset or experience something new I like to say in my head "there is only now"