Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all --
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

I'm still alive...and not in prison. ;) mwhaha! ;)

This message brought to you today by: My Tendency for Bizarre and Cryptic Messages, Inc. ;)

Seriously, this question deserves a much better answer, but NCIS is on, and I need to go and watch. ;)

All the time! I don't have, nor do I particularly understand the stigma associated with eating alone in public. I have no problem at all with enjoying a nice afternoon lunch with a good book in a quiet restaurant on my day off. I also eat with friends, but there are times when I would actually prefer to eat by myself in a place wherein I have not had to make the food nor do I have to clean up after it. :)

I have noticed though that the waitstaff seem to believe that I am lonely and am desperately in need of company...leading to them being overly attentive and attempting to make small talk between drink refills. I am pleasant, because I understand why they seem to believe that I need company, and the more astute members of the staff are generally pretty quick to realize that I am happy on my own and leave me to it...But again, it's that stigma that comes from eating alone, going to a movie alone, doing many things by oneself that is only once again illustrated by the "pity" (for lack of a better word) of those around me. I am happy by myself, I really, truly am, and I just don't understand this need that other people have to either constantly, or a great deal of the time to be with other people. *shrug* I just don't get it. :) There are times when company is sought and enjoyed and even cherished, but the relationship between alone and company is at best 70/30. I just don't get it. :)

Ramble over... :)

This may be the worst one I've had...no, wait, the woman who whined to me for ten minutes in the drive-through because the doctor had prescribed her a med that was: capsules too big for her to swallow, tablets that she couldn't chew because they taste bad, and liquid she couldn't take because of acid reflux (??)...and her insistance that we call her doctor and have him prescribe "something else!" I guess she wanted an IV. Antibiotics don't come in suppository form. (there was nothing wrong with this woman other than not wanting to take the antibiotic her doctor prescribed.)

Yesterday, I had a customer call into the pharmacy, and her question was:
"how do I disconnect from the system?"

*several seconds of furiously thinking silence, sure that I have heard her question wrong*

"You mean, how do you disconnect from the phone line?"

"Yes."

"You just hang up the phone."

"Oh, okay."

*near hysterical snickering*

Yes, I was actually asked yesterday by someone about how to disconnect a phone call.

There are days when I love my job... ;)

definitely the puppy bowl. :)

Death by Treadmill...is NOT a good way to die. ;)

That is all. :)

I found an old journal today, one that was given to me when I was about eight or nine I think. I was cleaning out my closet in preparation of actually putting clothes *into* it, rather than on chairs or hooks or my bed or on top of the laundry hamper, or my favorite, in the dirty clothes or even better, in the dryer! Yes...I know. I'm bad. I'm a single adult female who lives like a bachelor...I don't iron either. I feel that if I can't manage to get ready for work in fifteen minutes, I'm taking far too much time. Mornings are for sleeping until the last possible moment, not for ironing or finding socks that match or bothering to do much with my hair...;) Anyway, I finally got around to cleaning out that closet, and low and behold therein lie (lay? I'm never sure...) the first journal anybody ever gave me. Now, as I'm sure anyone who knows my blogging history is well aware...I'm absolutely *terrible* about keeping track of things like that, much less actually writing in them. So, this particular novel runs from about second grade through being roughly fifteen years old, and there's still half the pages (or more) left to fill up. ;)

( con't )

Eight years today. Seven anniversaries, seven days that I have marked on a calendar and thought of you. Wished and wondered and hoped...and wanted you back more than I can ever say. I remember your voice, your laughter, your arms and your slippers. I remember your creaky office chair and your mugs full of badges and seed nuts. I remember your map made of papier mache, the mountains and valleys all done in relief. Your stories and your wisdom, and all the things I never got to say. Eight years and still the world seems a poorer place without you.

"All to myself I think of you.
Think of the things we used to do.
Think of the things we used to say.
Think of each happy yesterday.
Sometimes I sigh, sometimes I smile.
But I keep each olden, golden while
all to myself. "

~ Author Unknown

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]


We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.


Merry Christmas, and God Bless you and yours throughout the season and the year to come.

Auch! Fall...and all it's many, many, did I mention the many?, demands on my limited time has struck once more...and it's been over two months since I was last able to scrape out a bit of time for LJ! So much fiction and posts and various and sundry stuff I've missed, again, Auch! ;) Though, I will say that the fiction backlog alone is going to be a real pleasure to comb through. ;)

Well, I desperately need to make a photo update post, so instead of rambling on interminably here, I'm going to wait until Wednesday and our weekly farm trip to take said pictures and post them up. :) Photos make far more interesting reading. ;)

Until then, I'm not dead, just crazy busy. ;)

There is something to be said about the old adage that you can never really appreciate something until it has been taken from you. Never truly loved until it has been lost in an earthly forever.

The saying is indicative of the human tendency to take those and that which we love for granted, that over time and through familiarity we never fully understand how much we cherish and will miss what we have today. But that’s not entirely true. Not completely. Because sometimes you do know what you have, you understand and value and adore it more than life itself...and you live every day thinking that you are so very, very lucky...But with that knowledge comes fear. Fear that it will end. That time will pass by and life will move onward and that someday this thing, this life, this presence that sometimes leaves you so incredibly grateful that it almost physically hurts...will be gone. And there will be no return on this earthly plane. And that fear tarnishes every moment, every happy time, every occasion that you spend with them from that dawning understanding onward. It is a knowledge that there can be no return from. Once you have come to understand just what it is exactly that you stand to lose, you can never forget that space between, those moments wherein you were sure that the world had stopped turning and that life was never going to resume again.

The old question of what would you do if you knew the time and moment of your death? How would you live your life in the meantime? Knowing would be torture, would destroy the naïve innocence that somehow makes life all the sweeter, all the more wonderful, all the brighter...The answer would be that you would not live a life, but instead would face an existence merely counting years and months and days and moments until the time would finally come and it would be over. Never playing the game, simply waiting for the clock to run out. The same sentiment is true of those we know we will lose, the unfailing certainty that for all the light and laughter and love, the end will be fraught with pain and loss and suffering that even time cannot fully heal. There is a part of you that is almost grateful for this understanding, this second chance. This opportunity to value and know of what you have and how much your life has been enriched for their place within it. But there is another part, a portion of your mind and soul that almost wishes you never had to lose that innocence, never had to understand...because once something is known, it can never be unknown, a stain that forever tinges every relationship and all the time that you have been granted. A double edged sword that seems to slice directly to the center, allowing nothing but the most precarious balance between the silver lining of the here-and-now, and the storms to come.

There is a singular and somehow special significance to love after death, or in fear of it. Just as rarity and singularity create a sense of value and worth, the knowledge of what will inevitably come sweetens, brightens with a bittersweet longing every moment that falls between. Just as a child pulled from the path of a quick moving vehicle, as a beloved pet pulled from death by medical technology, as a chance to say goodbye to someone you have adored since childhood...all of these moments create a sense of relief, of gratitude, a mental sigh of a close call averted...somehow this knowledge of what you have and how much you stand to lose feels so often the same. And in the end the gratitude outweighs the fear, overpowers the gnawing doubt, overshadows the eventual loss and darkness -- and the biggest question remains. If you had it to do all over again, would you live a life devoid of these precious things? At what point does the beauty of things still present and the loving memory of those long past tip the balance into the black, mark the scale forever onward onto the path of inclusion and love at least for a time; counterweight to fear, doubt, anxiety and pain that marks the faintest edges of the days and will be that final moment when all debts are called due. And so you choose instead the path of rock and resistance and struggle, but the one with the highest reward because of the precious amount to be lost.

I cannot imagine a life without them...Without the memory of fleeting light the darkness would be boundless and unlivable. But the tinge is still present, always there, lurking just beyond the edges, waiting. There are some things that I wish I never had to learn...

7/3/08