tis the season . . .

not too shy . .

this guy didn't mind us getting close.  just not too close.

he needed the exercise anyway.

i need a redo . . .

of my first world problems.

not a good day in black rock, or why some women take ativan.

woke up from a heart pounding, gut wrenching nightmare, mostly so because the 9TS was front and center and waking up was simply reliving the pain of loss again.  i hate those dreams.  i heard kidlet hot footing it around and called her name.  no answer.  so i texted her and she who had been sound asleep . . . thank you, left over dream . . . came up to keep me company.

launched myself and my green bags to publix to do the weekly grocery shopping.  they no longer sell kidlet's favorite bbq sauce.  ok.  they were out of garlic.  how is a store out of garlic. i was getting frustrated, mostly blow back from the dream.

got home and put away the groceries and made myself a ham sandwich heavy on the mayo and something niggled at my brain.  my sliced turkey was MIA.  i search the fridge while kidlet searched the bags.  it was on the receipt but not in the bags.  yes, i know i could call and they would replace it but it was safer for the world if my growing frustration stayed home and took a nap instead.

got up to make a pot of chipotle chicken corn chowder and somehow dropped the pot holder on the burner.  the not so lovely aroma got my attention:

but with fresh corn.

lots of diced chicken.

this was most excellent.

add a miller lite and the world is good again.  oh, and sights like this.  hey there, bear!

 namaste.

it was bound to happen . . .

three quarters of the way through our walk this morning, the heavens opened.  not just a little, but a gusher.  like two drowned rats, we took shelter under a table umbrella after the fact:

who knew how lovely a nice warm bath would feel.

good stuff . . .

yummy yin.

lunch with the hens, mexican style.

battening down the hatches.

working on photoshop.

dinner from chipotle.

new shoes on the doorstep.

poor pip getting herself locked in a room for hours.

new book started.

good stuff.

that and this . . .

mother nature turned off the heat again.  i am so ready to spend the winter in my cozy knock-off mission style recliner in front of the fire.  it's hibernation time.  oh, and while i was rummaging through an old cyber file, i found this floor plan.  i'm in love.  must have.  in my dreams.

kidlet and i ran some errands and then headed west to get some breakfast at cracker barrel.  not normally a favorite but i was in the mood for eggs and hash brown and real live biscuits and they delivered. sweet.

technology is amazing.  i attended a webinar today on autism, specifically aspergers, which is no longer a recognized classification on the dsm.  d standing for dummies.  any who, what made this so interesting was that it was delivered by two men who have aspergers. gives a totally different slant on the subject.

oh, and you know you're in a lovely rut when the guard at the gate house of the neighborhood we haunt for our morning walks, opens his door, looks at his watch and says, "right on time ladies."

life is most excellent.

this is who i want to be when i grow up . . .

les, sent me this a while back and my brain lost it in the shuffle as it is want to do.  of course i love it. please read and enjoy.  please.  trust me.

Gray-Haired Granny? An 85-Year-Old Writer Goes 

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Morning Edition

6:13

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Anne Bernays leaves the Walter Lippmann House after teaching a fiction writing class for Nieman Foundation fellows at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Kayana Szymczak for NPR

For the ongoing series The Changing Lives of Women, Morning Edition is exploring aging. We asked 85-year-old novelist Anne Bernays to reflect on the role of a woman's appearance as she grows older.

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Along about the time I became a great-grandmother I dyed my white hair blue. Not a wussy "blue-rinse" blue, but eye-stabbing, punk-kid blue. At the time, I didn't do any soul-searching. I just thought, What the hell, why not?

I was surprised by how this turn went over; everyone seemed to approve it. Grouchy people smiled at me. An older woman stopped me on the street to shake my hand. I was sort of like the dog who stands up at the piano and plays "Melancholy Baby." (For you young folks, that's a reference to an ancient smutty joke.)

Now, after some introspection, I realize that I was protesting the passage of my own time here, highlighted by the great-grandmother thing. In our peculiar culture, beauty does not, as Keats claimed, equal truth. It equals youth.

While young people sparkle like diamonds, old folks are invisible — except, as I discovered, if you have bright blue hair.

Bernays teaches a fiction writing class to Nieman Foundation fellows at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. It was a writing student who inspired her to try a bold new hair color.

Kayana Szymczak for NPR

I once knew a woman who was so worried that her fiance would find out she was three years older than he, that she hid her yearbooks and continued to lie to him. Pathetic, right? Probably, but it's only an extreme example of our dread of showing our age. Sadly, vanity and its companion, the compulsion to shave years off your age, do not go away as you get older.

Didn't Nora Ephron write a whole book about her neck? Didn't Marlene Dietrich seal herself up in an attic room and refuse to see anyone when she discovered her beauty had deliquesced?

I always looked younger than I actually was — a lucky throw of the genetic dice. But even if you do happen to look your age, why spend your hard-earned money getting sliced and diced, shot in the forehead with embalming fluid and contributing to the cosmetic surgery industry — worth $11 billion last year? Because we're all afraid to show our age.

A photo of Bernays taken by her late husband, Justin Kaplan, in 1957, the day after Bernays gave birth to their first child, a daughter.

Courtesy of Anne Bernays

A few years ago someone asked me if I'd just had a face-lift, and I was thrilled. Hard-headed, realistic I may be, but I'm fundamentally as vain as the next woman. I won't go to the market without first putting on lipstick.

Is this fixation wired into the human female? If so, then we don't have to feel guilty about it. If not, then why do we behave as if our appearance trumps kindness, intelligence, imagination, enthusiasm and humor?

I have no answers. When I was in my 20s, a much older woman told me, "Darling, your feet will be the last thing to go." She was wrong: toenail fungus. As for my hair, it's been thinning for more than 10 years, and there's a largish pink spot on the back of my head. Eyebrows and eyelashes? Gone without a trace.

I was lumpy at 11; at 85 I'm lumpy again. Of course I mind — but not all that much. I consider myself ahead of the game: I can still make the bed, walk around without mechanical assistance and instruct a roomful of students. And I just bought a second jar of hair dye, "Lagoon Blue," and plan to have it in place for the holidays.