SWEET DREAMS

sunset in my own backyard

sunset over the Roosevelt Library

There's nothing more restful to me than thinking back on those good days when life was less complicated and people had more time to enjoy things together and to really enjoy the simple joys of life... on weekends, and on a week's vacation... A weekend? What's THAT? hmmmm... and it seems to me that most people don't even GET a week's vacation these days ... do they?

I REMEMBER how gas was never an issue and Dad did a lot of repairs on his cars... but cars were less complicated then. We went on day trips every weekend... sometimes all the way to Albany, or into Connecticut, or Massachusetts... just to explore, and to enjoy whatever we happened to find of interest. The least expensive way to enjoy a weekend, and I suppose it still is actually, but I still can't afford to do it much these days... and risk running up the mileage. When you have kids, it costs to do anything, so it was a trade-off, I guess you could say... and it was wonderful!!!

We packed a lunch and went on an adventure! There are always free things to do when you look... These days people pay for day-care and to have their kids in sports, and every time you turn around something is costing a small fortune in school, too. We never had to deal with that. I was in Scouts, and that was about it, until I was older... but I was never idle...

REMEMBER WHEN: Kids used to play outside in one another's yards during the warmer seasons... There was always something to do OUTSIDE that didn't cost much at all. Swing sets kept everyone busy for hours... and lasted for years... for an investment of something like $100.

$20 for a basketball kept the boys busy, or about the same for a bat and ball, and it's funny to think of how that seemed like a lot in those days... then wiffle bats and balls came out, and hula hoops, and frizbees... There were balsawood planes, PAPER kites, playing with the gardenhose on hot days, while watering the lawn... fishing poles made from bamboo poles... and EXPLORING!

The biggest individual expense was a bicycle, and they were like $30 usually... and everyone had one. Girls used jumpropes a lot... and we all played TAG and games like that, every day, before and after supper, during the school year, and in the cool of the evenings, in summer ( back when it got COOL when the sun began it's decent! ) Kids loved planting things and watering them, and washing and waxing the family car in exchange for a trip to DQ... raking leaves in the fall, and burning them and then getting the reward of toasting marshmallows over the embers... back when they still allowed that, without a permit...

After literally getting DIRTY, with good, wholesome," grow a vegetable garden" DIRT, taking a bath as a kid was like heaven, to me, anyway. The heat of the water would take some of the chill from the air in the bathroom. as I'd sink into the hot water up to my neck, and soak til I shriveled. It felt briskly chilly when I got out, and mom dried my hair with the hair drier... and then into cozy flannel nightclothes, a bathrobe and slippers to cozy up, and have a cup of tea and with cinnamontoast, in the livingroom, watching something like DONNA REED, with the family, until bedtime... ahh...

I have the window open a bit tonight, for the first time this year. I'll go to sleep smelling the cool fresh air... and thinking on these sweet memories, with some gentle waterfall music on Pandora to lull myself off to la la land for a few hours... SWEET DREAMS

Moonrise over Norrie Cove

Enjoy the view

These were taken a while back, at the Roosevelt Estate.... and I just thought that you might enjoy the view and a little virtual tour, if you can't get outside today ...

MY LITTLE TIME-WARP STORY

My Little Time-warp Story ... for my friends who wonder about me sometimes ( haha ) ...

Time passes much too fast. On the outside things go along from high to low from one thing to another, and yet I don't feel the passing of time as I used to... since I came HERE. Then suddenly I look up and a week has gone! I had thought I had been working at the theatre for five years and then realized I've been there for 6 1/2.... and I've been living here, with my mother, for nearly 14. My older son has been here too, but don't ask me how long. I forget ... So I'm going to get some notebooks or something and start jotting down things from calendars I've saved, so I can get a sence of what I did in each year since I came here!

I'll do that on the deck, in the sun, as soon as it gets a mite warmer. And do some yoga at the same time... with Breathing ... ( "breathe deep through the nose, pushing the tummy out, fill up up up to the top of the throat... hold to ten... exhale through the mouth as if you were going to blow down a little pig's house ... repeat " ... I learned that years ago, when I was folksinging all the time)

I'm going to go walk and loll in the local parks as soon as it gets warmer too. Of course I could go walking in them NOW, but somewhere along the way I stopped doing it.... and it's harder to get doing it again when it's chilly and damp because I'm creekier. (Which actually means, I need to loll on a lawn, basking in the sun and doing some stretches, along the way, til I get used to it again. ) I'll bring my lunch, my cellphone, and my guitar, a pad, pen and colored pencils so I can do little drawings of things I see along the way  ( as I used to do * = ) Now and then I've made fluorescent paper airplanes for kids I meet there. They glow amazingly around dusk. Dapping stones on the river, and wading along the shore is great. Maybe I can get my older son to come along sometimes this year ; )

I'd been feeling very stressed and claustrophobic, and then it dawned on me that it's has been 2 years since I did much of anything outside ( ... hence, 2+ year build up of Cabin Fever. ) I noticed years ago that when I don't commune with nature, regularly, I begin to fall apart. I could have the nicest place and the best food and all that, but if I don't get outside, for hours in a week, for at least half an hour every day, I begin to fade.

But, well, it was very hot and humid and rainy the past 2 summers, most especially. ( MY room has one window and it faces North.... so it's never sunny. That makes it feel cooler in summer, but day and night are much the same in here.) There was an unexpected interlude when my mother went to stay at my brother's for a year... Then a year later, she came back, just as suddenly, which threw me off my "new and improved" routine. Such is life, so they say...

While she was on her little vacation across town, I had the use of my old room, over the garage, with it's two windows, breezes, sunlight and floorspace. SO I was doing my exercises at home (instead of always going to the gym ) with my mini-trampoline ( aka BOUNCER ) and such, and doing more with my guitar. I didn't have to worry about the heat OR getting rained on. It was SO hot I didn't want to move from in front of the fan, unless I had to, and it was so nice here just having the window open, listening to the sound of the rain.

That winter while she was away, the cooler temperature in the house was nice... kept at 65... instead of 80, as she likes it for her old bones... We were actually catching up on our sleep deficit and getting our natural rhythms back by Spring... when she came back with very little warning, and in all that happened with that, I lost another year. Big changes do that...

I don't mean to sound like it's something personal. I am grateful to life, and others, for what I have to use while I'm here on earth. This is just how things interact... or how accidents occur at 4-way intersections....

Thirdly, came the long awaited LAPTOP. After holding my breath for several months and praying I wouldn't have to do a major repair on my car, so I'd finally be able to get a laptop, I DID! To which I breathed out as if I was going to blow down a little pigs's house! 10 years of endeavoring to get one and finally it was HERE! ... and I wanted to learn as much about it as I could while I could get some help from my older, computer literate, son, while he's HERE too.

( Summer tends to fly by in one mass of heat and humidity anyway, these days. It used to be that you knew when a day went by because it began to cool off as soon as the sun went down. Now it's more like well after midnight. I suppose it's from the buildings and asphalt holding the heat. Like the salt water from the ocean creeping up the Hudson, New York City is rising... Now, almost to Germantown... )

BUT THIS YEAR?! I'LL BE BACK! (ahHA!)) because I looked up and realized how long it had been since I took my walks regularly, and went to the gym, and rode bike, and said, " HEY! WAIT A HOLY SECOND HERE...WHAT THE...? " and since then I have been chomping at the bit, planning and preparing for the warmer weather... rehearsing it in my head ... like getting ready for a camping trip or something. So when it comes, I'll be ready * = )

Those who know I work at the local CINEMAS, might have noticed that I didn't even work any of the MATINEES last summer. Maybe not the year before either. Hmmmm. I got on a TOTAL night schedule because it was cooler... BUT it was annoying and depressing. ( If only we still had the one air conditioner ... That helped. ) That's when I'd do laundry and even got doing the dishes and all that... at night... but I really am a DAY person, so that took more energy, after being drained with the heat all day too... so I was always tired really, but not desperately so, just somewhat drugged without the drugs lol - J was too hot to sleep too, so we kind of kept one another up and kept each other going - "You want a salad too, mom?" - "Ok after I finish folding this laundry... " )

Fall came and the habit stuck as summer heat was replaced by windows closed and the thermostat turned to 80 degrees. From hot and humid, to hot and dry, and dusty... and the sun setting at 5 instead of 8, not that I much noticed, here in the room with the one little window, and one dim light hanging over the bed, on the NORTH side of the house. Well, I might have, except that Fall through Spring there are no MATINEES to work.... only nights.... so the night schedule stuck without any difficulty.... except that it was grating on my nerves.... and I didn't know what it was, until I took a look back...

Well, yes it is hot in the house, and for me personally, too hot. That in itself makes me sleepy all the time... but then again, winter is a time to take it slower, as nature here in the north keeps saying, with the sunlight less, the cold weather upon us, the trees asleep, and critters hibernating, so being cozy and resting a lot is normal for winter. 80 degrees isn't but then again, if you sit too close to a fireplace it can be rather uncomfortable too...

By Spring, I always look foreward to the thaw... the longer days, the mild temperatures, and to a summer where I'll be active and productive, as the plants that grow in gardens are, with the flurry of finalizing that year's plans, in the fall, which I see as harvesting the satisfaction of things well done.... to rest and prepare for another year, in the winter months...

Well, perhaps this summer, I'll do laundry and stuff in the morning, work MATINEES in air conditioning during the day and sit outside with my guitar in the evenings... at least until the parks close. That would make sence. It's what I was doing. It was good.

* I hope I didn't bore you, but I, personally, find things like that to be an interesting study... How did this effect that? What caused this to occur?... How will this color look next to that color and texture? ... How will a teaspoonful of Allspice alter this recipe? ... and so forth and so on, ad infinitum. In my next life maybe I'll come back as an apprentice of Merlin; after all, I've experienced this time-warp thing, and YEP... it's real....