Romantic Language

 Each relationship with have it's own. There is no universal language of love. After forty years of marriage  I still thrill to our own personal endearments and cringe when a generic happens to pass his lips. Our private names are just for us and not used within the hearing of others. Pillow talk remains, just that; either a postprandial prelude to bed or a post coital tete a tete.

Personal experience has not been a help to me in my quest to compile a list of endearments for a work project and  perusing the Internet has convinced me that creativity is in it's death throes. It seems those who blog think, Angel, Baby, BabyGirl, BabyDoll, Big Boy, Bear, Boo, Bunny,Cutie, Darling, Dear, Dickie, Dickie Bird, Honey, Love, Luv, Sugar, Sunshine, Sweetheart, Sweetie, Sugar tits, Sweet buns, Gorgeous, Handsome, Hon, Honey, Kitten, Love, Pookie, Princess, Pumpkin, Shorty, Sugar are creative and worthy of sharing .

Oh how I despair! 

So it was a great pleasure to stumble upon the following  old blog post. I imagine the  author to now be   romantically involved, not doubt with a poet who appreciates her way with words. Sadly the blog has not been updated since 2011.

http://people.tribe.net/caroleeena/blog/1d46fdc3-0bfc-45ae-854a-49df838a0323

So what about you ? Pressed for words of love  how would you  address your beloved?

Pretty Dress

I'm looking for a pretty dress. It shouldn't be a difficult thing to find,but it is.

Another Year

Today I AM older and still no wiser. In fact just this last little while I feel less sure of myself , not in a dotty oldster sort of way but questioning what I  have always held to be true, those basic beliefs about who I am and what I know. I have questioned my view of past happenings and assumptions that have shaped my life. I always thought that old folks were rigid in their thoughts and beliefs-either I'm not there yet  or this is one of my realizations.

This year has been remarkable, probably one of the most significant of my life. I have repeatedly  been present at the most powerful of moments  one can ever experience. I have witnessed the first breath  of  nine new lives.The spark of energy that ignites in the room when a child is born is palpable. It charges the room and reflects in the faces of everyone there. I feel it in my being. I could never have imagined the gift I would be given when I first chose to be a birth companion three years ago. I only saw what I could give not what I would receive. I am so thankful to the families that choose me to accompany them on their journey.

In this year, my youngest son has left home. He was late to leave and truly I had begun to see him as always living here . I could not imagine life without him living with us, but not living with us; here but separate. It's been over 6 months now and I miss him, but I don't . We talk and text from time to time and I try to turn off the worry switch. When those thoughts begin to rise, I try not to let them settle on me. I remind myself of how capable he is and remember back to when I was that age and it helps to quell the concerns. I have let him go and with his departure the responsibility that I have held onto, or so I tell myself and truly it is better every week he is on his own.

My elder son is away-way away. He has left his job and is travelling in Southeast Asia. I have been very proud of him. He has had a very responsible position and a strong successful career. I am even prouder of him for giving it all up and allowing himself to be the man he needs to be. His travel is not open ended. He will return at the end of the year. He is often in danger, his life is frequently imperiled and yet I am little more than anxious when he hasn't called for a few weeks. Even the call to say he was recovering from dengue fever did little to my calm. I look forward to his return and the new adventure he will undertake as a husband and my new role as a mother- in- law.


I can't reflect on my relationship too long or too deeply. We dance around each other politely and relish in the space between us physically and emotionally but then we become very close and it's almost as if the 35 years of parenthood never happened and we are sweet lovers, once again.

It's been quite a year, this 60th year of my life. I look forward to the unfolding future.

Adrift; mind, blogs and bottles

I'm ever so busy doing what I do, and even more so,  NOT doing what I do. When I am out and about topics and ideas pop into my mind and then Poof- like a puff of smoke from a prop gun -> gone or I have conversations with myself and promise to do a little research when time allows and then like a puff of smoke from a prop gun -> gone! Perhaps this an adjunct to the other tortures of  being in my 60's.

 I hate it when I surf the blogs out there and people apologize for their absence and the apologies are  a year or more old- detritus,  just like the plastic left behind  by people who won't clean up after themselves. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100819141915.htm

and THAT reminded me of one of my bug-a-boos, plastic bottles! For the most part I speak of plastic water bottles but it applies to other plastic bottles as well,

It has been an exceptionally long hot spell of summer weather here in Ontario with virtually no rain until last week. Hot, hot , hot  make no mistake about that! Perhaps on another summer the  frequent  thunder showers might have swept the trash down the gutters  where perhaps the diligent homeowners, and tenants, have picked up the droppings  outside their homes and secreted the empties into the  blue bins. This year hovever is isn't possible to walk a block without finding an abandoned water bottle  tossed to the roadside crushed and empty leaching their toxic componants into the  waterstream. Run off goes into the river, untreated, and at the other end of the system we take drinking water - treated for bacterial and key contaminants back out of the river. It is the same river !

 Now I have a thing against bottled water. I think it is the basic right of every individual in a  wealthy  country such as our own to have access to free clean drinking water. It is what we strive to help to provide to developing countries around the world.  It is a manufactured need to have people buying bottled water
( slated to reach 65.9 billion dollars world wide in 2012) and I object to  the cost of processing those bottles that are thoughtfully recycled and I resent the cost of cleaning up  after those that do not recycle . On line sources vary in presenting the facts about the percentage of bottles recycled from the Council of Canadians 50% to the 70% cited elsewhere. I have a personal memory of reading somewhere that in my community which has a high compliance with curbside recycling only 35% of plastic water bottles are recycled though I have no time right now to track down the source. This whole scenario of bottled water  plays out wrong on so many levels.

  When we recycle the bottles,  IF we recycle the bottles,  there is the cost - monetary and ecologically to do so  and if the bottles are recycled, is it done locally or shipped overseas for processing?  and if it is shipped overseas for processing (using more resources) is it done responsibly there? OR just dumped in  a third world country to  contaminate their  soil or burned to contaminate both soil and air?

 And what of those that are not recycled and end up in the land fills here - leaching  contaminants into the local water table, filling  what is often scarce agricultural land with residue that takes decades to degrade  and those are the ones disposed of what of those on the pathways, trails, tracks and roadsides left to degrade at their own pace creating hazards for wildlife and birds and creating breeding grounds for  mosquitoes?

My meandering mind only takes this one direction for now but  I have tried from time to time to create a flow chart going the other direction from the store countertop to the source  and I simply can't the implications are simply too widespread the steps to great. Not so with tap water it's all pretty straight forward. So  my final thought is - Really  are you that thirsty ? Can you not wait  until you can turn on the tap and get yourself a glass of fresh water? it's the right thing to do.

Other thoughts on bottled water:

http://www.insidethebottle.org/Bottled_Water_Industry.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2006/12/21/bottle-study.html

 AND just imagine what the money going to  bottled water could be used for . .  

Summer Sunset.

The sky tonight looks like a watercolour with a pink wash over it . A little too bright in some spots, barely there in others. Positively exquisite. It was a lovely weekend

Fairies

Earlier this week I stood idly  waiting for a bus at a riverside stop. My mind wandered. The sun was warm, the sky clear blue, and then with a sudden breeze clouds of fluff dancing around me.

Fairies! my delighted inner child exclaimed as blizzard like, I was engulfed in mists of fluff.

Dandelion (1967)