Category: Commentary

Pre-Sixties Inventory

‘Twas the night before sixty
And while tossing in bed
I considered my body
From my toes to my head.

My arches have fallen
My calves ache with fatigue
Poor ankles are swollen
Oh, where’s the Aleve?

My thighs nicknamed thunder,
Hips ache all the time.
Stomach pooches with abandon,
Breasts droop, it’s a crime!

My neck’s crepey like a chicken’s
My face wrinkled like a Sharpei’s
But brown eyes still a’twinkle
While brown hair’s turning gray.


The changes have been gradual,
And not overnight
Thank goodness I’ve had time
To deal with the fright.

Today’s the day I kiss my fifties goodbye. I’m really looking forward to this decade. If it weren’t the middle of the week I’d go out dancing until 2 a.m., drink my companions under the table, and run naked through the streets singing “Born to be Wild” at the top of my lungs. Good thing it’s Wednesday. 

http://youtu.be/xm5DPlNCmtk
Peace, people!

Strike While the Flower is Right

Three different times on Thursday I passed a garden area adjacent to the school at which I’m working. This garden featured the most gorgeous purple flowers. If I knew anything at all about plants I’m sure I’d be able to tell you their names, but I don’t, and I can’t.

Each time I walked by I thought to myself, “Those gorgeous flowers for which I have no name would make a perfect snapshot of the day on my blog,” but twice I didn’t have my camera with me and once my arms were loaded with testing materials.

Finally at the end of the day I found an opportunity to slip outside to take a photo of these breathtakingly beautiful plants. Alas, I was too late. Each of the blossoms lay wilted on the ground.

Now I have no idea what happened. Perhaps some group of ornery elementary students couldn’t help themselves and dashed the flowers to the ground. Maybe aliens were responsible for their demise, shooting death rays from the depths of space thinking to annihilate life on earth, but succeeding only in killing certain flowers. In that case we dodged a bullet, wouldn’t you agree? 

But maybe it was just that time in the flowers’ lives. They’d reached the pinnacle of their collective existence and then simultaneously expired depriving me of a lovely photograph and the world of their fragrant beauty. 

You know there’s a moral to this story, right? Stop and snap a photo of the unknown purple flowers. Gosh, that might just catch on.

Peace, people

It’s My Party

My birthday is October 5, and I will be 60! Let the festivities begin today and continue throughout this greatest month of the year. 

In my honor, another Lesley (close, but no cigar) will sing the most ambivalent party song of all time:

http://youtu.be/V6Uo1nNt6LU

I’m not crying, even though I’m now officially older than dirt. Nope. I’m dancing, y’all!

https://g.co/kgs/ZgmE5y
Peace and party, people!

Best Laid Plans

Studly Doright never sets an alarm. He’s been getting up at the same early hour for the past 40 odd years now unless he’s sick or on vacation. So when I realized he was still in bed at 6:42 this Friday morning I immediately checked to see if he was still breathing.  

Having confirmed that was still among the living I shook him vigorously. “Hey! You’re still in bed.” 

“Mmphm,” he replied.

“You are late for work,” I persisted.

“Not going in today,” he mumbled. 

“Oh.”

“I’m taking you to the beach for your birthday.”

Well, alrighty then!”

So here I am, sitting outside a hotel in Destin, FL. There’s not a beach within a mile.

“I swear,” Studly swears. “I booked us a room at the beach.”

There might be a reason I always book the hotels. Sigh. 

Literally Laughed Out Loud

Note: I freaking hate Donald Trump, and if I had died in Hurricane Hermine I’d have wanted his sorry ass blamed for it. Carry on.

The first time I came across the picture featured below on Facebook I guffawed. I was sitting in my den with a cat on my lap and laughed so hard that said cat leapt to the floor and hid under my bed for the remainder of the day.

Why one might ask did I find this seemingly harmless statement so funny? Maybe it’s because the closest Trump has been to religion is screaming “Oh God” in the throes of climax.

He thought Second Corinthians was correctly cited as Two Corinthians. Twice divorced, he’s cheated on at least one wife and tried to talk Marla Maples into having an abortion so he wouldn’t feel obligated to marry her. He regularly insults women who do not meet his standards of beauty, calling them fat pigs among other choice names.

Yet some conservative voters herald him as planning to bring God BACK to the White House. Pardon me if I’m missing something, but isn’t God supposed to be omnipresent? Hasn’t God been right there all along? Even back when Richard Nixon was engaged in criminal activity from the Oval Office, God was right there.

We are a nation that officially recognizes a separation between church and state.  That’s as it should be. I’m a Christian, yet I understand that it is critical we keep this separation. Once it’s eroded, all manner of misdeeds can and will be perpetrated in the name of religion. 

Any time a politician claims Christian values, or proposes to unite us under one God, I automatically become suspicious. What are they trying to pull over on us? I’d much rather hear someone say they advocate for equality for all people under the law. That’s what I want, not false claims of religiosity.

That’s all for now.

Peace, people!

Close Encounters of the Arnold Palmer Kind

As I listened to one celebrity after another pay tribute to the recently deceased golfer, Arnold Palmer, yesterday afternoon, I recalled my own brief encounter with this legend of the links. 

For Christmas one year I’d purchased club house passes for Studly Doright and my dad to Arnie’s Bay Hill tournament in Orlando, FL. We lived in Melbourne, FL, at the time, so we were only an hour away from the course. I have to confess that when I purchased the tickets a part of me was secretly hoping that I’d get to attend at least one day of the tournament. As it happened I ended up using the passes more than Studly and Daddy did. 

Now, I’m not a golfer. I’m the furthest thing from a golfer anyone could possibly imagine. But I grew up watching the great golfers on television with my dad, and Arnold Palmer almost seemed like a member of the family. So much so that when he walked up beside me as I sat in the lower stands on the tenth hole at Bay Hill and took a banana from a bowl near the tee box that I just smiled and nodded and he smiled and winked back before teeing off.

It wasn’t until later that it hit me I’d been in the presence of greatness. In retrospect I wish I’d said something witty or golfy, but maybe, just maybe he thought to himself, “That was one cool chick. I should have offered her part of my banana.” We will never know. 

Count Me Out

I won’t be watching the presidential debate tonight. Living in the eastern time zone means that the event won’t begin until 9 p.m. I’ll be in bed and hopefully engrossed in book seven of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series by then.

It’s not that I don’t care about the debate. Quite the opposite. I care so much that I fear I’ll throw up when Trump resorts to his de rigueur raft of lies. I care so much that I know I’d never be able to fall asleep once the debate ends. So I’ve set up a recording and I’ll watch sometime tomorrow afternoon. 

In the meantime I’ll be praying that Hillary shows what she’s made of:  Her grit and determination. Her capacity for compassion and concern for the underserved. Her immense intelligence and extraordinary political savviness. 

I’ll also pray that those who are undecided will recognize that there is really only one legitimate choice in this election. Hillary Rodham Clinton. I’m with her. 

Dolly, Jolene, and Pentatonix: At Long Last, Love

I absolutely hated the song Jolene when it was released in 1974. I mimicked Dolly’s voice, bleating out, rather than belting out, the lyrics about a woman in danger of losing her man to the much lovelier Jolene. And what kind of crazy, made up name was Jolene anyway? (My apologies to all the actual women I now know who bear that moniker.)

But the tune slowly grew on me over the decades. While I didn’t actually like the song, I didn’t despise it anymore either. If the strains of Jolene began playing on a country oldies station I didn’t automatically switch to an alternate channel. 

And now there’s this lovely acapella version of the song featuring Dolly Parton and Pentatonix. Pardon me while I sing along.

http://youtu.be/oYCoyUxY2HY

Peace, people!