WHAT DO YOU DO ON VACATION?


If you're a 40+ hour-per-week worker, your ideas may run toward:
- sleeping in till a decent hour
- taking little side trips in your state because you never get to do that until there's a break
- spending some time working on your house/cabin/boat/quilt/birdhouse
- eating whatever you like, whenever you like
- not cooking three square meals a day
- not shopping any more than absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together

If you're retired . . . well, that's a different kettle of fish. Do you even go on vacation?

Linden Hills Co-Op
Great mural on the outside wall

I did. I came to Minnesota to visit my youngest daughter. So far we have:
- been to the co-op for food
- been to Cub Foods for other food
- been to two used-book stores
- driven around three (or more--hard to keep track) lakes in the City of Minneapolis
- toured neighborhoods of old-money houses built when the cities were being founded (reminded us of The Great Gatsby era)
- bought and cooked pork roast, chicken (in various configurations), roasted vegetables
- spent an evening with my daughter's next-door neighbor, Jane, who provided wine, tea, coffee, and key lime pie, plus entertaining conversation; we took a platter of caprese to share (made with home-grown basil from a pot on the patio, served on little skewers)
- sat on the patio and talked; enjoyed a nice autumn day

Lake Calhoun

- read
- watched movies
- talked
- read some more, talked some more, watched more movies

That's my idea of vacation--don't need a new wardrobe, cruise liner tickets, itinerary made up by somebody else. . . .

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So  . . . how do you know you're on vacation?

Different sights, sounds, people, foods, scenery.
Different magazines and books in my daughter's digs.
No telephone ringing other than mine when my daughter calls me (we usually text, anyway).

Did you know you can survive without television? Microwave? Toaster oven? Socks you forgot to pack? (Of course you knew that . . . you've been on vacation, too.)

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Well, what's the point of vacation? A lot of the above can be experienced without leaving your comfortable rut.

Time away from a regular job may help you to reconnect with your self--your family--your interests that may have gone by the wayside. 

And if you're retired, you get a change of pace--new perspectives on people, life, yourself.

Thanks for joining me in Minneapolis!

At Sunnyside Gardens, across
the parking lot from the Co-Op

WE'RE ON VACATION!

Whee! A week off! 

What'll you do with yourself? Sleep late? Go to the circus? Binge on movies and Ben & Jerry's?

If you don't have the week off, you can take a few minutes--the ones you'd normally use to read Thursday Child's latest post--and think yourself into your favorite vacation spot.

I'll be, in actuality, with my youngest daughter in Minneapolis-St. Paul, seeing the sights, riding the bus (no bus around here), taking a walk around the lakes within the city limits, stalking used-book shops . . . .

Next time I'll upload a few hundred of my photos for your enjoyment--if you can't come along, you can see what you missed! (That promise holds good only if I take the pics!)

Have a great week, look for the blessings, and we'll check in again next Thursday.

Autumn will arrive for sure while I'm away!

LEAVING HOME

I'm not a news watcher, but I get plenty of information--'way too many videos--about disasters in the world. They come to me via The Weather Channel, which I consult daily for settling questions of wardrobe, heat or a/c in the house, and should I even venture out.

Last Saturday my long-time friend from college days called on her cell phone to say she and her two "kids" (Border collie mix dogs) were on their way from Tampa to Atlanta to stay with family. She had food, water, etc. for herself and the kids; what she needed was fuel for her vehicle.

While she drove, she told me about the oncoming traffic--squad upon squad of emergency vehicles, all kinds, heading into the disaster area, mainly the west coast of Florida, hard hit by Hurricane Irma.

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Her phone call brought it all home to me. These things don't happen in a vacuum. They don't happen to "other people" and so I can shrug them off, change the channel, and say how thankful I am that I live where I do, in northeastern Indiana, where we don't get hurricanes or tropical storms. (We do get tornadoes, though.)

The rector of our church has kept us apprised of the best ways to help disaster victims--through our own church's disaster relief program and other organizations, such as the Red Cross. And we pray each week for those families and homes and cities in the path of destruction.

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All of this causes me to think how I would approach leaving my home.

What would I take with me--not knowing how much space I'd have when I got to a shelter? (See photo at left.)

What would I leave behind--not knowing if I'd ever return, and if I did, would I find anything left of the life I'd had to abandon?

In past years, when tornado watches morphed into warnings, I grabbed a gallon of distilled water, a flashlight, sweatshirt, pillow and blanket, and climbed into the bathtub. My cell phone was always with me for updates. When the dog, Joy, lived with me, I took her food and water bowls into the bathroom, along with a few treats and some newspapers for her potty needs. Then I shut the door and we listened to the wind roar and buffet the house. (I still recall Joy's puzzled look--she had a lot of  facial expressions--as we spent an hour or so in this tiny room, me in the tub, she on the bathmat beside me.)

Sometimes I took my laptop with me, if I remembered.

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What would I take now, if I had to evacuate the entire house and go with people I don't know to a shelter some place?

First, obviously, myself. Medications I have to take regularly. Bottled water. Cell phone.

Beyond that, my laptop; a book to read (preferably one of those 500+ pagers I can escape into); clothes I like--hoodies, sweat pants, tee shirt, walking shoes with heavy socks. (I'd probably have to wear them, with no time to pack a bag.)

If I had sense enough to think of it, I'd take my cell phone charger and the hookup for the laptop. But if I'm in crisis mode, it'll be whatever I remember in the seconds I actually have to think about those things.

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When I was a teenager, I remember how much my clothes meant to me. Looking back at it, I think that was because I had very little in the way of possessions. My clothes were me. I had very few books at that time, very few LPs. The house wasn't mine, nor the furniture.

Now, I can walk away from all kinds of things, mainly because I've had a lifetime of accumulating books and music, clothes and fabrics and yarn, furniture and dishes and ornaments. And a house and car.

Yes, I'll miss some of them, if I have to leave them to their fate. But I had to go forward from a house fire, when I was 14, in which we lost virtually everything, and not grieve about what I no longer had. Grieving didn't  bring anything back. And every time I've moved from one house to another, it seems some things never turned up in the unpacking. (Maybe they went to where all the socks go when we end up with one black, one blue, and one gray.) I could do it again. If I had to.

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What it boils down to is this: All the things in our lives are just that--things. Stuff. We won't be able to take it with us when we die. We could leave it to our heirs--but do they really want it? 

I hope and pray you and I won't have to go through the disruption of our lives that occurs when disaster strikes. But if we do, then I wish us strength and courage to go forward from where we are. We can spare a thought to the memories we have, but turn aside from grief over things.

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P.S. - My friend in Florida is home again--no damage to her house! Thanks be!

BLESSINGS

Today is September 7th. 

This is my anniversary . . . 22 years ago today I underwent surgery for cancer. For all of those 22 years I have been--and remain--cancer-free. That is the greatest blessing of all.

But it isn't the only blessing I have. Recent routine tests about my health--mostly heart concerns--revealed that slight adjustments to medications would assist my heart in its work. Who wouldn't want that? A slight tweak and I'm looking forward to renewed energy.

More energy--definitely a blessing!--means my walks at the Y can have more impact on my health--weight loss being one of the most desirable, making my doctors (and me) happy.

Over the Labor Day weekend my youngest daughter made her 10+-hour trip from Minnesota to be with me for the above routine tests. That was on the first day. Then she had two and a half more days to stay with me. Blessings? Absolutely! She loves to do "little stuff" around the house and yard. I didn't have much of a list this time--all the light bulbs were replaced at one of her earlier visits, and the smoke alarms aren't ready for their new batteries. But we found something to keep her occupied. That was in addition to cooking, eating, a little shopping (neither of us is a shop-till-we-drop gal), and lots of talking.

Another kind of blessing popped up when I began laying out fabrics to make a healing quilt for a friend who just discovered she has cancer. My daughter helped me arrange strips of fabric and we finally agreed that these were just right. This blessing isn't just about the right fabrics--it's about creating something beautiful, and healing, for a woman who already has enough life situations to deal with. It's about being a blessing.

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In 15 days we'll celebrate the First Day of Fall, according to my calendar (Labrador Retrievers on every page). Days are definitely getting shorter--as in, less daylight, more nighttime). Temps are running in the 60s for highs and 40s for lows--and this is only the first week of September. We'll have another period of warmth in the 70s or above, usually at the end of the month, about the time of the Free Fall Fair--either heat and humidity, or incessant rain; we try to appeal to all tastes in weather.

One of my blessings is cooler nights--a little heat in the house to take off the nip in the air, then both heat and a/c turned off during the day. My wardrobe runs to long-sleeved tees with jeans or long knit pants, light jacket or sweater or sweatshirt for the early morning visit to the Y (that parking lot attracts a lot of wind over a wide empty space). So far I've managed to shun heavy jackets and sweatshirts, and I've yet to don a pair of gloves. But that's coming.................

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If I were to count all my blessings, like the old-time hymn says, "name them one by one," I'd have no time left to recognize new ones. I'll be revisiting this topic again, never fear. Blessings abound.

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Blessings come in all sizes--gigantic to miniature. Blessings come in surprising ways, and from surprising directions. Blessings can be subtle, barely noticeable until afterward. Or they can be in-your-face, demanding to be noticed.

Look around. . . is there a blessing for you just around the corner?

Wishing you a blessing-filled week.