With the help of the cats, I emerge on Friday, Oct, 4, 2013

Good Morning Smile Warriors and welcome to Friday, Day of  Freya, October 4, 2013.

Are you ready to spread smiles?

Don't know who to credit but this might
speed my morning routine up!

Each of us begins our day in a different way. When I was young I used to awaken without an hour of yawns. I know, I was strange. Most of you awaken and stumble to the coffee pot where your elixir of life awaits you. It is sitting there all hot and ready to wind its way down to your tummy and into your blood stream where with luck, it will manage to awaken you brain enough to allow you to get dressed.

I answer to a high power. In fact, the high power wakes me up. Their names are Napoleon and Ningee.

Napoleon is at a cat age that he likes to sleep in a bit. Then he wants to do the cat stretch and some purring fueled by human strokes and kisses and a snuggle or two.

Have you ever noticed a cat never gets up without stretching first? They also never seem to have the aches and pains we do.

Ningee on the other hand is an addict and her drug of choice is Temptations cat treats. She can manage about 12 hours between doses most days. Her chirping will increase to a crescendo and she begins kneading me in earnest while standing on my side. If I don't manage to start moving there is a real chance of losing a kidney or gall bladder.

By that time, Napoleon has decided he could use another 18 hours and is actively trying to get me to sleep in but Ningee is frantically trying to push me toward where I hide the cat treats. This creates an interesting conundrum in getting out of bed, a real push/pull effect. Eventually I get upright and it takes more time with every year. Fortunately, the cats slow down with age, too.

From there, cats well treated, I have the routine of washing the night's dishes that accumulate while I sleep and then making a pot of coffee. My hands have gotten to where it takes several tries at grinding as I can't hold the button down for the complete time. Then the coffee filter and finally the water. You see, I live in South Florida, home of the enormous roach we call a Palmetto bug. They are capable of flattening themselves almost as thin as a sheet of paper. That means you can't keep them out of the house or the coffee machine. Nothing quite runs your day like setting the coffee pot up at night and when you get home in the evening discovering your flavor from the morning was boiled roach when you go to do dishes.

So I fix everything fresh in the morning under the careful eagle eye direction of Lady Jayne of the Gray. Should there be an errant Palmetto Bug, she has a morning treat. My cats are all ex-feral cats. They are killers. But what she really waits for is me to spill the water I am filling the coffee pot with as that she licks off the counter. She has a water bowl filled with clean filtered water but it seems to taste better after it bounces off the top of the coffee maker and pools on the counter.

Then I return to the bedroom to write this blog with a huge stein of fresh water, no chemicals, nicely iced. You thought I was going to extoll the virtues of coffee. I have learned as you get older, you dehydrate over night really badly. Coffee dehydrates you. One of the first symptoms of dehydration is your mucus membranes dry out and hence you have the dreaded: dry eyes. The only way to combat that is to stay hydrated or buy really expensive eye drops which have who know what in them. I find a huge stein of water just as effective and my brain fog clears faster. Then I will creep into the kitchen and usually find my pot as been raided, not by the cats, but by George.

I often think the first thing they did on his last job was hook him to an IV of coffee. When we first married and he drank cokes, he used to make fun of my coffee addiction in the morning. He has with retirement learned to grind and make an excellent pot of coffee and he can smell one from half a mile away. He will drink anything related to coffee. I with almost 60 years experience, yes my mother gave me coffee at a really early age because back then they knew it was a laxative and I was impossible to wake up, prefer my coffee Cuban. That is more of a roast and blend than a technique though as years go by, it is harder and harder to get a real cup of Cuban coffee properly made. Armando, at the Witches Garden, makes the best if you can wheedle one out of him. They don't sell coffee. By my teens, the morning cup of java was a necessity to getting to school. My boyfriend who used to pick me up quickly learned to check with my mother as to whether I had finished my coffee as I was known to draw blood without it.

By an hour later, coffee is being swilled, the Furry 7 have begun their rotation as Mommy cannot be left alone for some reason known only to cats and I have almost finished my blog of the day and am ready for Email, Facebook and Farmville all with the help of my furry crew as I chow down on my blood pressure pill: the organic banana.

So, although I live an isolated life by choice, you shall go forth and brighten the life of another human being most likely after your coffee as I don't trust you to do it before. I may emerge from my cave later but probably not as I need nothing in the realm of necessities and as you get older, going out and looking around has lost its appeal.

Thursday through the porch window

Ah Smile Warriors, we are on the other side of that hill and sliding toward the weekend on Thursday, October 3^rd, 2013. Everyone raise both arms and go: Wheeeeeeeeeee. It's all down hill from here.

The cats have gotten used to my routine of writing as soon as I get up. Ningee and Napoleon no longer pester me as they know there will be treats when I get to the end and save. Unfortunately their place has been taken by Ice. He is not as aggressive as they are and tends to lay on my knee and watch the letters appear on the screen. I am not fooled. It is just a matter of time before he decides to kill the cursor as that is the way of cats. They are natural born killers.

As such, most people think I am nuts. Humans are naturally selfish creatures that are totally self centered. We only have to look at our ancestors to see those people are wrong. There are very, very few lone mammals. Even the Lion lives in a pride or community. The cheetah is a loner and there aren't many cheetahs. Civilization is not built by a lone person. By simple definition, it takes more than one. That is the actual point at which all the depressive ideas of Ayn Rand and the rest of them fall apart. We are greater as a whole than as an individual. Ghandi would have been a nice guy but if no one had agreed with him and emmulated him, that is all he would have been. The thing is, great leaders never seek followers. People just congregate around them. 'A great leader is one, whom when the task is finished, the people say, “We did this ourselves.”'

This is what happens when you smile and lift someone's mood. They think they did it themselves but the actual exchange of positive energy is what does it and the person is lifted out of their morass. They then, totally by accident, do it another person and soon everyone is happy.

Remember the line, “If mother's not happy, no one is.”? Even the cats are unhappy and moody if I am. Then there is the party and don't invite that person because they are a real “buzz kill”. It used to be someone else would say to invite them and see if we can't get them cheered up. That was often the reason for the party in the first place. A party was when someone knew how to bake a cake from scratch and a real party was if it was chocolate! Where did this pizza thing come from that takes an entire aisle of freezers in the mega grocery? Now it has a new definition as someone who may force you to take responsibility for acts you don't want to own up to like beating some poor homeless person down on their luck.

Everyone tells you to create your own world of abundance and you'll get the best mate, house, car, watch, whatever.... All that doesn't manifest out of thin air. It has to exist my friends. Someone, somewhere has to have that house, car, mate, whatever you want and be willing to part with it. Ooops, that is not what the people selling that dirty little secret want you to know. What if they don't want to give you any part of what they have? The easiest solution is to create a pie in the sky you can never reach, that your basic logic says, “no way” but your heart says maybe. Hope is the real buzz kill, because it knows it doesn't stand a chance, but it keeps you working and working and striving and most importantly, not looking at what is around you, not enjoying your life.

If you read that carefully, you understand what I am trying to do. I am trying to bring you into the here and now, not some rose colored utopia where some invisible idea you have been fed as the ideal is guiding your actions toward a reward in a future in which you don't exist. You are guiding your actions. You are smiling. You are making the world a better place by your actions.

My Grandma hated two times of the day, dawn and dusk, when the veil between worlds is the thinnest. It is also the time most people die. Dawn was the busiest in a world that had begun for her before the Civil War. It was all work and no enjoying the sunrise. It started before light when the rooster signaled the coming sunrise in a barn and kitchen gathering the morning meal and there was no microwave or electric stove just an old worn out coal burner. Coal stoves burn dirty and it was a nasty affair. Dawn was not fun. Then came Dusk and the dying day. Dusk was when you paid for the bargains of the day. Workers were paid by the day in hard money or trade. There was no waiting. Your reward was immediate. Without reliable lighting, everything began to come to a stop and it was time to clean up the day's mess of living.

In her later years, she came to enjoy dusk as she would always take to her bed. Her bed was at the window joining front porch where a huge swing sat. It may not have been that huge but I was small. Everyone would gather on the front porch as the meal was over and through the window, she would engage us without leaving her bed and routine established over a 8 decades. We could all discuss the past, our heritage and things that happened. It was one great gossip fest all the women participated in. The men had their own on the back porch or in the barn or garage. All ages were welcome and you learned not from a history book but from the people who lived it. You were cheered up, taken down a few pegs and taught the reality of the world. You did this and that happened. Ideas were bounced around, picked apart and put back together again. There was a lot of laughter and a few solemn moments as those no longer there were remembered. As I grew old I was more accepted into the men's group than the women's because I was the new breed, the working woman. There was no fanfare, no glass ceiling just a maybe we ought to ask Janice 'cause she does that now. I joined my cousins, all of which were male. I remember the day my cousin said, “You're really beautiful.” I must have looked at him like he had grown another head. He hastily added, “but you're cool.”

Yes, it was another world but one you can learn a lot from because if we didn't work together, everyone in the community failed. We were still mostly farmers, getting our food from relatives in exchange for other goods they needed. My cousin's husband managed a grocery and got a good discount. We got flour and sugar and the nuts and the most desired item of all time: oranges. They got bacon and fresh veggies and canned veggies.

The first time I saw an orange tree laden with ripe oranges just sitting there for the picking, I knew all the religions were wrong because I had found heaven. Then I found kumquats and bananas and began to worship Mother Earth in all her bounty. Yes, I am now a tropical Druid with little connection to apple tree. I don't even remember them or how they hold fruit. Ask me about papayas instead. I have evolved and you will, too. However one thing will always remain the same: the power of a smile.

Go forth and SMILE!

In a World Gone Mean, a Smile is Gold

Good morning Smile Warriors!

It is Wednesday, Oct 2, 2013 and so far the world has not ended. The day is young!

Go forth and SMILE! They are really going to wonder what you have been up to. Remember, it's hump day and the weekend is in sight. Your 5 day work week, for those of you who still have that, was brought to you by a Union and people who died, yes died, to organize so their numbers could defeat a monied stranglehold on their lives.

This morning I was looking for a pair of gold earring as my ear lobs are still sore and gold really is the best metal. I react to steel, even the surgical variety. I could go buy a pair. I have enough left in the budget as Yule is coming up and it is just the two of us but I knew I must have a pair somewhere and I am Scottish or cheap depending on how you view us.

Finally at the bottom of a jewelry box full of good jewelry I might as well sell at my age, I found a pair of REAL cameo 18k gold earrings. Every piece has a memory that is a chunk of your life. That's why it is so hard for those my age to part with the STUFF they have accumulated. This STUFF is like a rosary. Touch a piece of it and a part of your life plays out in your mind.

I had just turned 16 which was a big thing. I could date. I could stay up past Here's Johnny though I never liked the man. But most important of all the concessions to growing up was that I could get my ears pierced. I know today most kids have multiple holes in their bodies and a few tattoos by sixteen but in my world and that age, it was a big thing. You see, only Catholic girls and Latino girls, which were usually one in the same thing, pierced their ears. The rest of us were stuck with painful clip on earring or the way more expensive screw backs. The year was 1967 and the hoop was all the rage. Yes I was the perfect age in the perfect era and a nerd. So after much arguing between the parental units, I was taken to the doctor.

Every woman in that generation will tell you one thing and one story. Never let a doctor pierce your ears and if you do, one hole will always be higher than the other one. I was no exception and I was about to discover I may have inherited my father's perfect ears but I inherited my mother's ear lobs and that was going to bring me a world of hurt. The doctor had insisted on a pair of gold earrings and my father had bought me a small little gold dot, the smaller the better in his world. My ear was numbed with an ice cube which means it wasn't and a he used a long hypodermic needle to do the job. I bled like a stuck pig, the pain was excruciating and I almost passed out. That was only the first ear and I was warned if I passed out, I was only getting one ear done. The doctor didn't want to pierce my ears. I left with pain and both ears pierced and scant instructions.

By day two, the ears were bright red and in a moment of self preservation, I scuttled across the street to the Catholic mom with two little girls with pierced ears. She agreed to take care of my ears as she had been a practical nurse before quitting to take care of her brood. I quickly learned the doctor's instructions were all wrong. We spent almost a week cleaning, disinfecting and putting antibiotic cream on my ears, taking the earrings out and putting them back in with me laying on the couch in case I passed out, when finally she called my mother over and delivered the news. My ear lobs were so thick, the earrings were pinching them and that was causing them to not heal. I needed a pair of earring with longer posts.

Daddy was not happy, but he gathered me up in the old station wagon with the wood panels on the outside. Yes, they used real wood on station wagons and they made SUV's look like tiny boats. Off we went to Mayor's Jewelry Store. Forget the one on TV with the J. If you could afford to walk into Mayor's you were either rich or having a live changing moment. Years later, my engagement ring would come from Mayor's. The man carefully checked every pair of earrings in the store. No one asked if they were real gold or not because Mayor's carried nothing else. Nope, not a smidgen of silver contaminated their store back then. Finally, he found one pair of earrings with longer posts than all the others because they were made in Italy and were genuine cameos. Forget your pearls. Forget your diamonds. I was in love. My father determined we would have to come back in a couple of days when he got paid. Actually, he was estimating what he was going to have to sell to buy these earrings and whatever it was, the next afternoon I had the earrings in a tiny box. The woman put them in my ears after a mind numbing disinfecting of my bright red lobs. A week later, my ears were healed but the earrings remained in my ears for six months before I was allowed to try cheap metal. I never really had another problem until this week.

So here I sit, my ear recovering from an infection wearing the same earrings to keep the raw parts clean and healing. The Universe is circular. All things return to the starting point. Unbidden the thought comes to mind; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It is a line from Christian funerals but it makes no sense.

It never occurred to me it makes no sense until this moment. Their Bible says Adam was made from mud, not ashes or dust. Shouldn't it be mud to mud? I mean, cremation was against their views so where did the ashes come from and as to dust...well, they probably looked under my bed for that one. But we are made of the ashes of dead stars and dust of the cosmos! To know that, you had to have scientific knowledge that did not include the god of Abraham; a knowledge much, much older than any god....makes you wonder......Did our very old ancestors that came before any of this nonsense was created to enslave us with guilt and punishment sneak a few truths into places no one would bother to look, like a funeral rite?

Well, your job is to insert a smile, a laugh and some good will into the world today. So take heart, you have the easier job. Although it only takes a moment, it will be engraved on someone's heart for years to come as every time they touch that piece of STUFF, they will remember the stranger who made them feel special in a world gone mean.