Talk Thursday: Story of my Life

Totally stymied by this topic, what is so special about me except that I am, but then so are you. I am blessed, but then so are you. Really, you just need to stop and count your blessings.

November is dark and gray, even a bit wet. I like November, less for me to do. So I guess I must say the story of my life includes the comment I am a closet lazy ass. By late winter I will be itching to get back into my garden. Right now I’m just hoping for a few days that are dry and open to me so I can get my 160 tulips into the ground before hard rain, ice, snow, wind and whatever pins me happily indoors with hot cups of steaming tea, a fire burning in my woodstove, and bowl week.

When I was a child we didn’t do a lot as a family, then my brother died. My family suddenly realized that life is too short, precious and meant to cherish and be lived – preferable with each other. We suddenly started taking vacations and often if we weren’t hiking we were fishing. Then I moved to Florence, grew up and didn’t fish for a very long time. Psam use to love to fish as a kid until I pretty much ruined that for her by making her clean her own fish. I felt it only right that if you are to fish, you should be able to clean said fish so you could eat said fish. I wasn’t fishing at the time, now she doesn’t fish at all (even though she use to love it) but Burp fishes, Ducky fishes, and now I fish again. Oh, my gosh I forgot how much I enjoyed the peace of fishing. A nice lazy pursuit. Apparently a river runs through the story of my life.

I know an ocean does. I have lived within 16 miles of the Pacific ocean for all but three years of my life – 9 months in Portland (then it was within sixty miles) and two years in Germany (let’s see – three thousand miles, five thousand miles, how far inland is Bolander, Germany?) I guess I was a ways from the ocean. When I was ten I wanted to learn how to surf. Ack, my mother turned white in fear. I’ve been swimming since I was about two, my mother a former lifeguard made sure all of her children learned to swim at very early ages. We then took lessons every summer and then we took advanced swimming and life saving classes. So yes I can swim. My mom said no. My grandfather, thinking himself to be quite wise (and yes he was he just under estimated my resolve) said I could swim to the boats in the bay and back to prove I was strong enough to pass his next test. No sweat. Then he told me if I could swim across the bay to Balboa Island and back (this was in the days before the eternal red tide) with no problems I could learn to surf. That task was history by the time I was ten, eleven max. I use to love to surf.
Yes, the Pacific Ocean roars through my life’s story. Psam, the water dog, on the other hand was lucky to survive my attempts to teach her to swim. Thank you Mr. McKibbon.

Words, a lot of words, few friends, and a lot of chocolate and diet pills are in the story of my life. I’ve always loved words in the books that I cherish, the songs that I sing, the poems I write. I may walk away from one of those but I always walk back. I still have the first poem I remember writing somewhere… it was about taking acid and the specter of death. I go back to my favorite books by Jane Austen when my poetic voice goes quiet. The songs of Crosby Stills, Nash and Young still stir the embers of urgency in my heart. Embers that are fanned into flames by the songs of Dave Matthews’ Funny the Way It Is, Nickelback’s If Everyone Cared, Everlast’s What It’s Like, and TLC’s Waterfalls – yes I can go on. Music is the soundtrack of my life. If you have been in my life for long, you are a song.

Diet pills, I’ve always though I was fat. I look back at my high school, even junior high, pictures and I know I was pretty darn skinny – but I had a bubble butt. Do you know how impossible it is to tuck in a bubble butt? Impossible. And cute bubble butts turn into wide -fat – old lady butts. So I’ve tried most diets known to mankind. Well accept the Atkins diet. My I gained a lot of weight (sixty three pounds) when I was pregnant – I was so big my stomach was four feet two inches around – ack, beached whale. When I moved to Germany my ex-husband use to make me take (yeah, as if I fought it at all - I was fat and desparately wanted to be thin) Antiadiposidium X-112 – pure caffeine – can only imagine how that wound me up. I didn’t lose that much weight. It must have been all that chocolate (Germany has great chocolate and pastries.)

When I was in beauty college (yes, I’ve done that, too) I was diagnosed with PMS. I literally went crazy about once a year, usually around the beginning of my second husband’s hunting season… which began in April with the Spring Bear hunting and continued through the beginning of December and the end of the autumn Bear Hunt. The made me take about a dozen things out of my diet
1) Chocolate
2) red meat
3) salt
4) dairy products
5) refined flour
6) refined sugar
7) nicotine
8) alcohol
9) coffee
10) fried foods
11) artificial sweetners
12) and almost anything prepared - you know canned foods, frozen foods - eat fresh.
– oh, oh avoid stress (yeah, like that is doable). I regained my sanity, lost about thirty pounds, and in the long run kept a daughter and lost a husband. My last bout with PMS came a month before I met Ducky – that was 18 years ago. Yoyo weight gain and loss runs through the story of my life. Now, I’m trying to learn to be happy with myself, grossly over weight.

So there, I am normal like you, I work at being unique, and I am pretty darn quiet in my old lady life. I kind of like it that way. And I apolize for not being more inspired for this post.

Sith,
Cele