Trifecta of wonder

Today was certainly a day when the Universe handed me three lovely gifts. I was out of town and after my last appointment of the day I recieved three little treats within an hour.

First: I was walking out of an office building, when I looked down to see a perfectly formed little birds nest. The whole family was gone, moved away, there were no eggs in sight, so I picked up the little habitat and gingerly placed it on the passenger seat for the ride home.
Second: A rainbow appeared in the sky and stayed there for the entire drive home. Just sitting up in a cloud really. Quite beautiful
Third: A blue heron flew across the sky right in front of my car. It was elegant and appeared to be flying almost in slow motion, oblivious to any primitive motor vehicles below. This creature was a thing of beauty.

So, the hat trick of nature's wonders, just for me. I feel giddy. I am placing the nest on my altar. It's an altar of beauty really. Beautiful things that others have given me over the years, or that I have collected that have special meaning. For anyone who cares to know, here are the items on my altar:

An icon of the Virgin of Guadelupe ( don't ask, it's like some sort of new obsession)
A bottle of black sand from Hawaii- a special gift from my sister Nancy and her husband Tom from their vacation many years ago
Starfish-a gift from my daughter Angela from when she went to Florida as a child
Rosary that I won in a fourth grade spelling bee (the begining of my nerdification)
Red sand from Red Rock Canyon given to me by Bobbie Joe
Fools gold that I panned for myself at a cheesy "gold mine" in California on a trip with girlfriends
A music box with a man and a woman who dance around in circles under a glass dome- I searched for years on the Internet before finding this as it reminds me of my grandmother
Several rocks that were given to me as gifts-what can I say, I dig rocks
Turtle carved from driftwood- a gift from my friend Susie, plus the turtle is my totem
Feathers- I collect them
Ceramic toad with mushrooms painted on it (that's a story best told over drinks)
Smooth stone with the words "Carpe Diem" painted on it (that is my life motto)
Heart shaped ceremonial rattle-given to me by Susan
Large crystal given to me by one of the few "real psychics" I've ever met-good woman, good energy

So now I am taking this darling little bird's nest and placing it on my altar. It will house my newest hopes and dreams. I will write them down and place them in the nest tonight. Perhaps with time and intention they will hatch into reality. The world is a thing of beauty, this is for sure. Today I am grateful, just so grateful.

Oh man, I LOVE this!

My sister just gave me the news last night: SMART IS THE NEW SKINNY!

Now, maybe for some of you that doesn't mean anything, but for all of us who were never the prom queen, this is the best news since Paypal!

I have always been the girl ( I use that loosely as I am 53 after all) that the guys want to talk to. Yeah, they want to talk to me about their girlfriends. I am the one they all came to when they needed "advice". As if!

Having been through marriage and divorce I now chuckle if any of my married friends even so much as glance at me for advice "Uh, need I remind you that I flunked that class with flying colors???"

Yeah, well, back to smart. I don't think I'm a genius but I am clever. I remember stupid shit that no one else does. Example:

First woman to win the Iditarod in Alaska=Libby Riddles

Why do I keep this bit of information in my head? What, in case I'm sitting in a bar some day and a couple of hot looking men are discussing the Iditarod when I overhear them saying "God, I cannot remember the name of that first woman who won it, if only there was a woman so full of trivia, so resplendant in her nerdification that she would know the answer in an instant, now that would be SOME woman. . ."

I would look over and say "Pardon me?", and at this point I would deliver a pregnant pause allowing them to notice me because up until this point I have been UTTERLY INVISIBLE. Surprised to see me sitting RIGHT NEXT TO THEM, they would turn and say "Huh?"

I would then say, in a very sexy 'come hither I am your intellectual dominatrix' voice "Weren't you maybe thinking of Libby Riddles?"

This is the part where their eyes glass over and they begin flirting with me, but HELLO! SNAP OUT OF IT, THIS IS REALITY!

They say "Uh, maybe. Thanks." and turn around. Okay, well I was only here for the bar peanuts anyway you knuckle dragging trogladytes.

I would still take Will Shortz and Ira Glass over David Beckham any day. Smart IS sexy in my book. I only hope there are still men around who feel the same. NERD ALERT!!

Chicago can relax now

The residents of Chicago have thrown open their shutters and the confetti is falling in the streets. Everywhere you go strangers are grabbing each other and planting fat juicy kisses on one another in collective celebration of: the return of legal foie gras. Yes friends, now chefs across the city can serve this worshipped delicacy without the liver police making a raid on their beloved kitchens and shutting them down in the wee hours of the morning. This much sought after tastiness can be traced back to the Egyptians, and all over the world people seem to crave this weird and fattening food.
Here's the thing. In an age where we can have any food we want, at any time of the day or night, in a city that is alive and vibrant and one of the worlds Mecca's of savory delicacies, do we really need to have what the French call "fatty liver"?
Now, I'm a carnivore, I eat meat, but at least I do it with guilt. I know I am eating an animal that was kidnapped, blindfolded and given a cheap cigarette, then backed quietly against a barn door and shot between the eyes. (okay, okay there may be some other version that includes electric anal prods or some such thing) but I enjoy my steak with a sense that some Karmic retaliation WILL be boomeranging it's way back to me some day. I accept that, pass the garlic.
But Foie Gras? Really, keeping geese and ducks in small cages, shoving tubes down their throats three times daily to fatten them up to the point of disease, then gutting them in order to feast on their sumptuous fatty livers just seems so, well, so unseemly. Aren't we a tad better than that? Don't we have enough fatty crap to eat what with all the lamb chops, steak fries, battered mushrooms in savory oil, steamed lobster in a carafe of melted butter-need I go on?
It seems to be the very height of American pseudo can-do that we have ingeniously grabbed onto a way to make a simple, and might I add innocent, duck become even fatter for us. It's like one of those horrible fairy tales that you start reading to your children only to discover it's riddled with grizzly tales of gruesome boogey men and disfigured and menacing trolls. "So, the shrivled old witch kidnapped the poor lost duck and put him in a wire cage no bigger than the little duck himself, forced an awful metal tube down his gullet three times daily, all the while chuckling to herself that she couldn't wait to cut open his FATTY LIVER and eat it raw!"
Maybe its because I grew up Catholic, or maybe it's the old hippie in me, but I draw the line at Foie Gras. Today I am stating for the record that I may still be eating food that once had a face, but I will not eat a liver that is fattened by torture.
Besides, one look at the average American backside tells us all that we have collectively too much junk in our perverbial trunk! Time to eat more sprouts and enjoy a little wine. Time to make peace with the fact that just because we CAN eat the fattened liver of an innocent duck, doesn't mean we should. I'm just sayin . . .

Even Spock knew this!

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". As Hillary Clinton drags her sorry ass around the next few states left in this race, she will drag the Democratic chances for a win in November with her. And you know what the sickening part is? She doesn't care! Oh yes friends, she's in it to win it, make no mistake about that!
What we've learned about Senator Clinton is that like her husband, she will say and do ANYTHING to get where she wants to go, and she believes that she is entitled to be the next president, even if it means ruining the party, running up the debt of her campaign, and alienating a huge portion of the Democratic electorate.
Somehow Hillary didn't get the memo: Girl, it's over. Really. Pack your party clothes and take your cases of prepackaged confetti and go. What ever modicum of class you brought into this race has been eclipsed by your indefatigable thirst for power. We don't want you here, bottom line. We don't want a person who will sacrifice the entire election in November just to make herself look good in 2012. Your tender has lost its value and the trading floor is vacant.
Any respect I had for Senator Clinton in the begining of this race, and I had some, is now evaporated and I believe that if the Democrats lose in November it will not be because Senator Obama couldn't pull it off, it will be because in this pivotal moment in history, one woman with an overweening desire for power, would not concede that she had been bested in a hard fought race. SHE will be the reason we lose in November, and I hope she can live with that.
It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw on a pick up truck that read "I'll give up my gun when they peel my cold, dead fingers from around the handle." Hillary's fingers are ice cold, and her chances of being elected are dead, again I am asking: Who is going to peel her away from this quest for the holy grail that she thirsts for but cannot attain? Howard Dean where are you?????

Hillary and Addicus Finch

Okay, does anyone else see the similarity between Hillary Clinton and her erratic behavior and the rabid dog in "To Kill a Mockingbird"?
It's an old dog, that never hurt anyone. (that's quite debatable with the Clintons, but I digress) and all it wants to do is be loved, adored and kept around the big kids table for as long as possible. It fancies itself quite the bulldog and wants to sleep in the big house and be allowed the run of the yard.
Now, while the food was plentiful and the race was going neck and neck, Hillary was a faithful soul, all wags, few bites. But as Obama has taken the lead it appears that Senator Clinton has taken on an almost rabid persona, vowing to win at all costs and numbers be damned! She's running up a tab that she won't be able to pay and she leaves a trail of helpless vendors in her wake who are now left holding the bag.
She's staggering, she's lookin shaggy, she's got that wild eyed look of a feral and dangerous creature that is no longer able to be trusted.
Who's going to be the Addicus Finch that will get the big ole shot gun known as REALITY ( and HOLD YOUR HORSES MORONS, I don't mean a REAL gun) and take her down?
Howard Dean, for the love of God man, get this woman in a closed setting and put the muzzle on, and while you're at it grab Bill. They are dangerous to the party and they've bitten enough people now to make them a down right liability to the Democratic Party.

I remember momma

Today is Mother's Day. I awoke with a quiet knowing that today is Mother's Day and I am motherless. My mother left us when I was 35 years old. I had just filed for divorce that same week, and my life felt like a too-big pair of ugly pants that had just fallen to my ankles. How would I make it now, my mother dead, and me alone to mother my three children? It's not as though my mother was involved in my life so much, she wasn't. For many years she was ill with things I will not speak of, and we were not close until the year before her death. Her illness, which eventually separated her from friends and many of her family, brought us closer. She was grounded by the oxygen tank, and it's umbilical cord. She was on house arrest with the crime of being ill. But it gave us the opportunity to be still with her, to help her, to talk to her and listen. It was so hard to see her suffer that when she died, I felt relief for her. Laying next to her in the hospital on a little cot the night before she died, I listened to her labored breathing full of bubbling, congested agony. If I slipped off to sleep I would awake with a start and listen to see if she was still there. Just after I went home that next morning she passed away. Her suffering ended, ours began.
Life without your mother is a wrenching blow that guts you, leaving a path of your bloody entrails for the world to see. And what's more, you don't care. Let the blood thirsty wolves of life come and rip me to shreds while I sleep, what does it matter any more?
But then, life goes on. You learn to grow up, learn to stop waiting for her to call, she won't. You learn that what ever gifts she gave you are all you have to last you for the rest of your life, so guard them well.
After I dressed this morning I left the house early, went to the store and bought a bouquet of flowers. I drove to the cemetery and placed them at my mother's grave. That, and a Bud Lite I brought from home. I stood in the rain and thanked her for the gifts she gave me. She was resourceful during the poorest of times. She was industrious and never gave up. She worked at her faith, praying, seeking, beseeching God for everyone's needs. She had a marvelous sense of humor, and a hearty laugh. She hugged everyone that came into our home and made everyone feel welcome. She had a fierce protective mother shield that no one could penetrate, and I knew that anyone who would ever wish us harm would recieve a serious Marg Vogel ass whooping. I felt loved. She was not a perfect mother, and now that I am 53 I see that none of us are, but she was my mother. And today, this Mothers' Day, I dearly miss her.

Maybe I can

Today I took a risk and it paid off. I joined the Playmakers runners club a month or so ago. I didn't mean to, I thought I was paying for the 5-K in Lansing, but anyway, I actually signed up to join the runners club, which is ironic as I am a walker, not a runner, and aren't you enjoying this run-on sentence?
So, I thought maybe if there were a walker amongst them I would be enticed to go try to train with them on Saturday mornings. I emailed the race team leader and asked "Will I be the only 53 year old there?" She assured me that there were walkers as well as runners, from all walks of life.
I tried on several tee shirts before leaving for the park. I decided not to wear the Playmakers Team shirt I got when I registered as I thought I would look like I was trying too hard. Then I tried on several more shirts that were too baggy or stained. Finally, the hell with it, I threw one on and left. I felt very nervous at first, then I just thought, "Who cares? I'm not trying to compete with anyone, I just want to work out with others who want to do the same!"
They were very friendly and there happened to be a woman my age just heading off on the trail. Her name was Olga and she graciously let me tag along. She told me that she was training for a half marathon in October. "Wow!" I said to her, thinking I could NEVER do that. But you know what? All I've been thinking of all day is "I wish I could do a half marathon. "
I think I will try. That's it. I just think I will try. It would be an astounding accomplishment for me to be able to do it, and having that as a goal will be good for me. Already today the three miles seemed like nothing, so I know that I will be able to build up to 4.5 soon.
I took a risk and found others who are also, like me, trying to stay healthy and fit. It's a nice club to belong to, not the Playmakers Club, but the "I want to stick around on this planet for a long while more" club. I want to maintain my membership.
In the tortoise and hare race I have always been the tortoise, but I usually do cross the finish line.
I encourage anyone reading this to take a risk and try something new. Only good things will come of it.