Very rosy this morning!

Ever wait for something so long you start resenting it? If this booger takes any longer to bloom I may just walk out back with a blowtorch and end its my suffering.

Yesterday:

Do you ever want to scream ‘bloom already, dammit’ at your plants?

It still looks like a rude gesture, but at least we can see a hint of pink in the tips… and three out of four ain’t bad.

Today at 9:35a California time I start working on my 53rd year. This is sort of like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year for me. Another beginning, when I take stock, count my blessings and make silly resolutions that won’t be kept.

I’m thankful for more than can be written down. First and foremost, of course, is God’s infinite Grace and I’m truly grateful that I could recognize it during even the darkest times in my life.
I’m also thankful for Green. It’s my favorite color mainly because of scenes like the one above. So fresh and alive I can smell the ionization in the air.

Where was I? Oh, that’s right. How quickly the faculties fade! Heh…

Now that crone status has officially been reached, I have some wisdom to impart. Very little, just a few things you already know, really, but I feel like writing it down.

First, don’t be so damned hard on yourself! I know thin people who are riding themselves over ‘those last five pounds’. Please! Go to a grocery store near a retirement village one day when the buses are pulled up in front. We come into this world a crying, wrinkled mess and we most likely will go out that way. What you look like is of no real consequence; it’s what you feel, how you act and the way you treat others that matters.

Forgive. Bearing ill will toward someone for some wrong, whether real or imagined, only hurts yourself.

That old saying ‘Life is what happens while you’re making plans’? Completely true. Not just the big events, life is the minutes of the day. Like the months or years, they’re gone so quickly and we wake an old person one day with no idea how it happened. It’s impossible for humans to appreciate all the minutes, it’s simply not in our nature; but at least we can pluck a few out of every day and revel in them.

Lie in the grass and gaze at the sky. Give thanks. Play. Become completely irrational and cover the dogs with silly string. Doesn’t matter; this is life. Sick, happy, depressed, drunk… it’s ours, each second. We waste so much. Myself included.

In the end, life seems to be captured by photographs. That’s why most people would run into a burning building to save their photo albums; the memories of moments contained within can tell a life story. Oh, but the moments not captured between cardboard pages, those precious memories never tethered to notions of who we were or what we felt… those are the ones we ourselves treasure and replay, again and again. Make them often, store them up for future use. You will need them.

That’s it. Happy birthday to me! BFF Bonna sent me a Webkinz dachshund [that I've already registered], two luscious candles and a card that made me cry.
Bonna is the only person to never forget my birthday. Ever. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish and I should know, since I forgot YsD’s this year! Yes, I do feel bad about it and don’t know how it slipped past… I must have been combing silly string out of the dog’s fur and forgot…

And finally: proof that I wasn’t always afraid of clowns and actually liked that doll, at least in February of 1960! Will wonders never cease?!

Love this unplanted garden entry purely because the rain made some of its leaves as diaphanous as a pixie’s wing!

My plumeria is almost ready to bloom… I just planted this small, stick like plant a year and a half ago… and these will be its first flowers!

That thing in the center that looks like it doesn’t belong? You’re right, it doesn’t. It’s an insect’s ass. Danged thing was in every picture I took, hanging about in various positions.

…with reruns! I don’t care; there’s nothing pretty here so I’ll be uploading some of the images that were on beannachd…