We All Have Our HI's and LO's!

 

I've been working out at the gym for 7 weeks now. I mean, I've been FAITHFUL! Spinning that elliptical machine like a hamster on one of those wheely-things. Pumping iron with the big boys in the weight room. Yep, it's me and a bunch of  twenty-something hunks, three times a week; listening to Ga-Ga and workin' those glutes and abs.  I can tell by the way those boys look at me they're in awe...or is it horror? Their jaws literally drop to the ground when I swagger in and grab my ten pound dumb-bells for a little bench pressing!

But I've got a few come-backs if ever one of them gives me any grief about my teensie-weenie weights.

I'll say, "Hey! I don't see YOUR grandma in here doing crunches. Bet she's sitting in her rocker crocheting doilies!"

 Or how about, "Why don't YOU come back here when YOU'RE fifty-eight. Let's see how firm YOUR butt is in forty years!" (Though I might have to concede that in forty years I'll be ninety-eight and probably won't be making it down to the gym to gloat over their middle-aged spread.)

I must say that I'm feeling pretty darned good, pretty strong. Except for one little thing...my digital scale. It just won't budge; no matter how many gallons of sweat I drip all over the benches in the weight room.

Early this week though, I thought we had a breakthrough. Got on the scales as usual, but instead of the normal one-hundred-something-or-another; there was a super-special digital message just for me. It said, " L0."

"Oh look, honey!" I called excitedly to hubby."The scales are telling me that my weight is LOW! All my hard work is finally paying off!"

"Yeah right! The batteries are low. We need to change them."

"No really, I believe this is a POSITIVE AFFIRMATION from the scale. It SEES how hard I've been working. How faithfully I've been eating my leafy-greens. It FEELS my pain. So instead of just giving me a number--I mean, ANY scale can throw a number on the screen. After all these years of morning chats, it knows me intimately--that I hate, hate, hate numbers. Especially high ones. So it's chosen to COMMUNICATE with me using my preferred medium--WORDS! How sweet is that!

"Whatever. I'll get some batteries tomorrow and fix the dang thing."

Tonight hubby calls to me from the bathroom. "I fixed the scale. It doesn't say L0 anymore."

"Great! Gee, I wonder what it'll say to me tomorrow morning? Maybe it'll say HI. As in HI there Debbie; aren't you looking FIT this morning!"

"Nope. It's gonna say, 'will one of you please step off?'"

Funny guy, my hubby. Lucky he's still standing. He better watch out. Just a few more months of lifting weights and he's in big trouble. When I get super-fit, if he makes another smart-aleck comment like that...I'm gonna pick him up and hurl him across the street like a discus!

Until then, I may have to dig the old batteries out of the trash and put them back into the scales.



pic is courtesy of Sangrea.net

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Beautiful. Useful. Simple.

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” --William Morriss     I saw this photograph on Mother Earth Living's Facebook page of a simple basket placed by the front door with a pretty woven rug. The accompanying article was about how to eliminate allergic irritants. So much of the dirt and dust in our homes comes in on our shoes. So they suggested placing a basket by the door to hold shoes and slippers. The idea is that when you come home, you remove your shoes at the door and replace them with slippers. http://www.motherearthliving.com/health-and-welless/allergens-indoor-allergies.aspx#axzz35lMBQbWv   Hubby and I have tried and tried to adopt this habit before, but I never liked having shoes lying around the doorway. This seems like a nice solution. So I rummaged through my closets and found an old picnic basket I inherited from my grandma. Then I trotted over to my favorite discount store and picked up a couple of new woven-rag rugs for the doorways. Rag rugs are a sentimental favorite to me. We always had rag rugs by the doors and in front of the kitchen sink when I was a little girl. They make me feel like home.       ***

St. Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

Salmon-Berry Blossom
by Debora Rorvig
all rights reserved.

Have you heard of Galway Kinnell? I just recently read something that quoted  a few lines from this poem and immediately fell in love with his writing. The idea of reteaching a thing it's loveliness is so touching!

St. Francis and the Sow

by Galway Kinnell

 

The bud

stands for all things,

even those things that don't flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as St. Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of

the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking

and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

 

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Everyday Holiness--A Different Kind of Sabbatical

Some day I will travel to a monastery that overlooks the ocean. I will unpack a small bag that contains a pair of faded jeans, an old blue cotton plaid shirt, a pair of flip-flops, the Bible I've had for forty years with dog-eared pages, yellow highlighting and important thoughts scribbled in the margins. I will spend hours in meditation and walk by the sea, speaking to no one save God and the occasional seagull. I'll write uninterrupted thoughts in a soft leather journal and go to sleep listening to the waves breaking on a deserted shore.

Some day.

 

 Until then, I have today.

Today I will have a sabbatical of a different sort. I will wash my sheets and hang them in the sun. Then tend to the baby nasturtiums I've been growing on the patio. I'll scrub my kitchen floor until it shines then stand back and look at it with deep satisfaction. There will be moments of thanksgiving; humming an old favorite tune, taking the dog for a walk around the neighborhood, and a few hours stolen to work on my novel. Maybe a conversation or text message to one of my children. The jumbled pile of tangled earrings will be cleared from my dusty dresser-top except for the sparkly amber ones. Those will go into a clamshell I found on the beach last summer. To remind me of glittering waves and a sandy shore. And tonight I'll sleep in freshly laundered sheets that smell of fresh cut grass and summer breezes.

  It's not as romantic as a stay in a monastery.

 

 But it is, nonetheless, holy.

 

In an everyday kind of way.

 

 

 

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