EmmyLou Harris is so beautiful and incredibly talented to boot! My mom has very dark hair and went gray in her early 30's and dyed it for awhile, then gave up. She was silver/gray for awhile, but as she got older, she went white. My dad's hair is about the same color as mine, light brown with red highlights. His went white white when he was in his late 50s/early 60s. For some time now, the very front crown of my hair has been white (though people sometimes say it is blond. It isn't always terribly noticeable in pictures, depending on lighting, but it is very noticeable in person. My dad's oldest sister has the exact same coloration in her hair that I do and her hair finally went all gray/white when she was in her early 70s. So, I can look at her for what mine will look like, but white around my face and silvery gray for the rest, apparently. I'm just waiting it out, but I have never been a hair dyer so what I have is all natural.
Me 52, H53 Bomb drop 9/29/2014 Divorce from XH final 12/17/2014 Marriage #2 12/31/2019 5 adult (step)daughters (3 from XH's first marriage, 2 from current H's previous relationships) 6 grandkids
Nice article on Thich Nhat Hanh's book about How to Love, just google "How to Love: Legendary Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Mastering the Art of “Interbeing”"
As much as I sometimes complain about my ex (largely stirred up by the ways he is failing our children) I do relate to this article in that I see my ex as the wounded child he is, and his narcissism as the unhealthy result of his poor inner sense of self. I feel more sorry for him than anything.
I've also found, in my post-divorce dating life, that it is easier to love people that I am with if I don't have expectations of them. The less I need someone in my life, the easier it is to accept the people that come into my dating life for who and what they are. I don't fret over that Love Avoidant guy who wouldn't become my long term partner even though we really had chemistry - I accept him as a friend now who was a bright spot in my life when I needed it, and who gave me what he had to give.
I think that is a really healthy way of looking at things KML. I read a book called “Happiness is a Serious Problem” a few years ago and it was all about how we set ourselves up to be miserable by having too high expectations…of ourselves and especially of others. The author wasn’t advocating for no expectations…just that by lowering expectations, we set ourselves up to be pleasantly surprised as opposed to bitterly disappointed. Makes sense. Why would we ever want to make our happiness so dependent on factors we cannot control?
Finally finished my closet and bedroom - save for carting out one last bag of trash and a final dusting and vacuuming. Nice walk this morning with my old friend SG from these boards, then made brunch with my eldest son who lives with me. Quick downstairs cleanup between watching episodes of Boba Fett with him. My youngest son is coming down to visit this afternoon with his girlfriend and to pick up his Xmas presents finally.
I’m really on a roll with decluttering. Kitchen cabinets next weekend, then the garage. I’ll never be a minimalist, but right now I’m a reductionist. I try to keep Swedish death cleaning in mind, and minimize the amount of useless stuff my kids would have to go through in the event of my untimely demise.
Just having purged my clothes closet in the beginning of the pandemic had a big effect on reducing what I bought since. Seeing how I have plenty already, and enjoying the cleared out space, makes me loathe to clutter it up again. Since I did that two years ago, I have bought exactly one pair of shoes (running shoes to replace a worn out pair) and two pairs each of exercise shorts and leggings (because they were a screaming deal at Costco and had pockets for my cell phone. I got rid of a larger amount of workout clothes that weren’t as nice or didn’t fit as well .
Less is more! I knew this, but after my divorce, I moved into a larger house with lots of storage space so it wasn’t really on my mind. Now it is again.
I’ve often wondered why the Spanish Flu pandemic wasn’t better represented in the arts. I mean, there are almost no books or movies about it. It’s barely taught in school. For such a major event, it always seemed forgotten.
Now I know why. People today are SO anxious to jump the gun and declare this pandemic over before it is. No way are they going to want to watch a movie or read a book about it in the next twenty years. They just want it to be in the rear view mirror. We will probably see the roaring twenties all over again.
I hope the universal coronavirus vaccine that the military is working on eventually comes to fruition. That is a huge animal reservoir of Covid in deer (80% infected in some places); luckily they don’t seem to be affected by it. But that means 1) it can be spread to other wildlife that ARE more susceptible to it, like big cats and 2) the virus has lots of opportunity to mutate in the deer population and then come back to us as a very different variant.
I do hope for a quieter spring and summer, so long as the natural immunity the unvaccinated got from Omicron lasts. There are early reports to suggest that natural immunity after a mild Omicron case in the unvaccinated may not be that great, though. Hoping that when my planned trip to Hawaii in October comes that we will at least be in a lull.
