Last night I began to read Helen Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life.  It was so inspiring to read about her realization of things that have words.  She must have been so very brilliant.  I can't imagine life without sight let alone not be able to hear either.  It must have been to her advantage to have already experienced both of these senses.

One thing I did read last night truly made me contemplative.  She writes in Chapter 20, that she was envious of the other students around her who could read an entire book in one setting, when it took her days to read and comprehend, and then to write notes about what she had read.  She had to make notes so her teachers would know that she truly read and understood what she read.

She writes, "For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is not royal road to the summit, I must zigzag, it in my own way.  I slip back many times, I fail, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better; I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory."

Isn't this so true in each of our lives, whether we are handicapped or not?  To appreciate what we have done, what we have and to live the happiness with that victory fully.

In my life, taking on a blog was a big decision for me.  I have had a writer's block for several years and have not been able to sit down and write short stories, poems or songs.  And yet I find myself, sitting down to this little arena every day and my hands just fly with the thoughts going through my mind.  And it is a victory for me.  If no one reads my blog, I am still victorious. (For myself.)

And on those days when nothing comes to my typing fingers, I pull up something from the past and share that.  Another victory for me.

Another small victory for me -- I grew a cabbage as big as my head.

Go forth and claim small victories each day.

ODE TO A TATTOO

I once had a child who took my breath away.

Everything was new and exciting because of her.

Behind every corner awaited a new adventure.

The clouds were cartoons and epic novels.

The water was full of hope and of the ages.

Her smile made my heart younger, and her cry,

 took my soul to new depths of unhappiness

I gave that child wings and told her to fly and she did just that.

And with every beat of her wings as she flew from me,

 my eyes became more wrinkled and could no longer see

 as a young person sees.

I cried for her to return to me, knowing she could not,

Because the soul grows old and cannot renew itself.

Whereas, her young soul must be as it was meant to be.

Far from mine.

Today, I decided I would share a poem with you.  It began with thoughts of one child and turned into thoughts of the other.  I have always held the belief from The Prophet by Kalil Gibran where he says something to the effect that your children don't belong to you.  I feel they are simple with us to housebreak the best we can manage and then send them out into the world to make a difference.  To come into the world and go out of it, leaving it better because you were there.  Life's purpose via Smother.

Go forth and prosper.

Me and the two I housebroke and gave wings to.  I think I did a pretty good job.

Lol loo.  Smother

I have always had problems going to sleep.  When I do get there I like to stay asleep.  The older I get the more I have to get up in the middle of the night to go urinate.  Then sometimes when I get back to bed the insomnia hits me again.

I think about the stupid things I have done in my life and the things I am ashamed of having done.  This morning while I was sitting Zazen (see other older blog, I forget the date, just read my blog or look it up on line) I decided that I was going to make a journal.  Every bad thing in my life I was going to write into that journal.  And when I get to the point that I can't remember anything else to write, I am going to bury that journal in my garden.  No, maybe I should burn it.  First I am going to jump up and down on it, and then I'll decided what to do about it.

Really, I should not allow it to remain intact.  It should perish.  Maybe I will research how to best destroy all the negative consequences in your life.  There is probably something on line.

I began the journal this morning.  I wrote about when I was a child of perhaps nine or ten years of age, I pushed my little neighbor, Billy L., down in the road for calling me a "sissy".  I was such a tomboy and that was the worst insult I could imagine.  They had just farmer paved our street and so it was sticky and gooey with tar and little bitty gravels and cinders.  I remember his knees were soiled and battered.  They were bloody and black.  He probably wore those ebony scars for many years.

I have surfed Billy L.'s name trying to find him to apologize.  I found one with the same name but he said it wasn't him.  He had a sister named Gloria.  Wrong Billy L.

So this incident is one of the worst things I have done in my life.  I can't just forgive my self and go on.  I must continue to chastise myself every time I think of this episode.  Maybe I should rent one of those airplanes that write in the sky and have him write, "Please forgive me Billy L.".

Another bad but not so drastic mistake I made.  I had this most excellent photo of me and this wonderful statue at the Milwaukee Art Museum.  I tried to crop it so it was a closer look and I screwed it up and got another photo on top of my right arm.  I loved this photo of me. Addi returned to the museum once and took her own photo of her and the statue.  I was jealous.  I must return to this museum.  (My hips look more like the statue now anyhow.)

Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the beauty of the world.  The magnificence of a flower in bloom, the magic of the beauty of a new born baby’s toes, the overwhelming significance of watching a beautiful sunset.  And I cry!  I cry because it can’t last.  I cry because in the moment the beauty is gone and I’m left with the world as it is.

Life as a peon!  Trying to do my job with obstacles that my coworkers laugh at.  Have you noticed that everyone seems to believe that their problems are the most important ones in the world at any given minute?  Hatred in the world is tragic.  Hatred among each other.  Jealousy and paranoia of losing our job and ending up in the welfare line.

So I capture those beautiful moments and bottle them within my mind.  And when I am down and when another mother kills her children and herself because of the ugliness of the world, I remember that new blooming iris and those baby toes and sunsets in Jamaica and outside my own front door.   I wallow in them and hold them close to cocoon myself from the ugliness that I know exists and will always exist.  But I pray that my sunsets and rainbows will persevere and that beauty and goodness will prevail.

I was reminiscing about selling our house when I was a teenager.  My mom had fell in the basement and broken her leg a year earlier.  She had to crawl up the stairs to the kitchen phone to call for help.  No one was at home but herself.  My dad got so upset that he decided that we were selling the house and moving to, of all things, a trailer.

Mother, Daddy and I began to scout the trailer parks in the area looking for a place to move to and a trailer to purchase.  We were all actually excited about the deal.  The plan was to have a big auction and sell all our possessions and to sell the house.

The house was in pretty good shape as Daddy was a fixer-upper.  He had remodeled the basement into a family room complete with a fake fireplace.  Years before we had taken bricks from an old firehouse that was torn down and Daddy built us a garage.  One car with a huge workshop at the back and storage and a lovely porch where we used to sit and play guitars and sing or rotisserie a chicken or two for Sunday dinner.

The appointed day came and our house was emptied of all the possessions we were putting out for sale at the auction.  People came from all over to buy our stuff.  They also broke our stuff.  The bedroom suits were set out and people used them as their couch.  So many sat on them that they broke them down and so we didn’t get quite as much for those as we had expected.  (Whatever happened to if you break it, you buy it?)

When it came time for Daddy’s tractor to be sold, I went to my old bedroom which was farthest away from the back of the house.  I went into the closet and cried my eyes out.  Daddy loved his tractor.  We had a huge garden in our back yard.  In fact, most of the back yard was a garden.  Daddy bought the tractor to make it easier for us to maintain the garden.  He also plowed garden plots for people in the area to make a little extra money.  He washed the damn tractor and painted it a bright red.  He was so very proud of his tractor.  And now he was selling it.  It just broke my heart.

Bad photo, yes, but it all I have.

I didn’t want to move and especially to a trailer park.  Dear God!  Trailer trash here we come.  We moved into our new Hollywood trailer which my parents and people around us insisted was a mobile home.

At our home I was the youngest child and therefore had my choice of the two extra bedrooms.  I choose both of them.  I kept my stuff in one and slept in the other one.  It was a big adjustment getting used to my new bedroom which was about 8’ by 8’.  I had a built in chest of drawers and cabinets under my closet for storage.

I lived in that mobile home for several years.  In my first year at college my friend, Pat, and I moved into an apartment near our college and so I got away from it for a while.  My parents insisted that I come home every weekend and so I took a job at a local restaurant and worked there on weekends.  You might wonder why I wanted to get away from my “home”.  I could not go into my bedroom and read, for cripes sake.  They thought I was mad at them.  So I had to sit in the living room or at the dining room table and read and do my homework for school.  There was just not room for privacy.

Quite a few years later when my sister retired, she moved into a mobile home just around the corner from my parents.  When I visited I usually stayed with my aunt at her farm.  She had an apartment in her garage and we stayed there.  We also had all of our family Thanksgivings and Christmases in that garage.  There was much more room to party than a mobile home.

I don’t believe I have ever admitted to anyone that I had lived in a trailer.  It’s not like it was a piece of garbage but there is still that stigma of trailer trash around me.

My hatred of mobile homes is still with me.  Although being retired I do dream of downsizing from our huge house to a smaller place.  I don’t want to clean much anymore and this house is a lot to maintain.

“I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”  Thank you Jimmy Buffet.  My thoughts exactly.

 Now, my dear readers, you know another of my little secrets.

I am having a day when I really don't want to do anything except go back to bed.  The problem therein lies that my tailbone is aching and I don't want to sit or lie on it.  Just sitting here at the computer is aggravating.

I broke my tailbone off when the girls were still little.  It had snowed more in Ohio that I had ever seen before in my thirty some years of life.  Addi put on her snowsuit and I rode her piggyback style and went down the street to see if there was any traffic flowing.  We lived on a cul-de-sac and didn't have much traffic at all.  On my way to the end of the street I hit an icy spot and fell.  Not wanting to kill the child on my back, I fell weird while trying to protect her.  I fell right on my stupid tailbone.

We made it back to the house (she walked this time) and I thought it was a bit sore but not broken or anything.  A few days later we decided to go sledding  Our friends went with us. They had two boys about my girls' ages.  Our friends had brought a rubber inner tube from an old tire.  It looked like a blast and so I grabbed Jess and I laid face down on the inner tube and the hubster put Jess on my back.  Big mistake!

The ride was a pretty exciting one until we hit the first bump.  Jess flew up and landed right on my tail bone.  The pain was intense, let me tell you.  I don't remember much of the doctor visit and x-rays.  My tail bone had broken off and was floating around down there.  I believe I had about six months of sitting on a donut and I loved my donut.  Grandma had one and loaned it to me.  It was pretty embarrassing carrying the thing around but I didn't care.  Pain was pain and whatever it took to get beyond it, I did.

So I have this terribly embarrassing problem with the little indentation where my tail bone is. I acquire an accumulation of butt debris there and have to scrub it occasionally to get rid of the crud. TMI.  I know.  Why has no one ever brought this problem up to Dr. Oz?

I was soaking in the bathtub a couple of days ago and scrubbing my crud out and I guess I scrubbed entirely too hard.  My tail bone has been bothering me ever since.  And so, my readers, you know my most guarded secret now.

No I'm not posting a picture of this.

The culprits who helped to break my tailbone.  I still love them very much.

A couple of months ago my computer was sabotaged.  My homepage browser was taken over by Ask.com.  I didn't know where or how or when it came, but it came with a vengeance.  I closed it out and turned to Google for the answer but nothing really came back to indicate what was going on.  I noticed my girlfriend was using Ask.com and wondered why.  Perhaps she had been sabotaged also.

Every time I opened my computer I seethed with anger.  I was so upset with the computer  geek that had done this to me.  I went into my control panel and deleted anything with ask in the title.  I made sure that Google was listed as my homepage when opening up my computer.

I rebooted the computer and when I turned it on what to my amazed eyes should appear? You guessed it -- Ask.com.  I typed in some rather bad words into the Ask.com.  Think FOAD (see blog of January 10, 2015).  Ask.com made some suggestions for me.  Suggest this?

I finally went to the hubster who is more computer savvy than myself.  He suggested the control panel thing that I had already done.

I questioned Google as to how to get rid of Ask.com.  I asked Ask.com (repeat that three times in a row) how to get rid of them.  By then each time I opened my computer and had to close Ask.com, there was a domino effect on my brain and ire.  I was beyond seething.  I was truly pissed at the geek who had "gotten one over on me".

I turned to my back-up source.  The Dalai lama son-in-law who began investigating Ask.com. It took him a little while but he found the magical tool in the cloud that got rid of Ask.com from my life.  I made him fudge.

I cannot tell you how relieved I was to open my computer and see my old familiar Google with it innovative artwork (have you submitted one yet?) and my email icon right there ready for me to click.

This morning I opened my computer to it's need of a Java update.  I clicked on the next button and the I agree which I never read, just click on (hey, it's how I was taught) and got more interested in my email and the enchanting notes from so many admirers.  Out of the corner of my eye, I spy with my little eye--Ask.com.

I immediately shut down my computer.  No forewarning, no start menu, etc...  I just shut it off.  I deep breathed for a minute or so, got up and went to get my red grapefruit breakfast and with another deep breath I turned the computer back on.  My girlfriends' photo was there to welcome me.

Aren't they lovely and don't you love my halo?  (Daddy Maxwell's in Port Washington, WI.  Try the pie and fish tacos.)

I held my breath as I clicked the Google Chrome button .  My old friend, Google, was there to welcome me.  Java update be damned!

The worse thing is not that I resented that I had to close Ask.com every time I turned on my computer.  The worse thing was that I was NEVER going to use it no matter what because of what had happened to me.  The mere fact that some little nerd computer geek whore of a son of a gun had written this in to take all the old ladies like myself, who depend on their computer NOT for surfing the Internet for naked male bodies, but to store all of the fabulous stories we have been writing for most of our lives, had set me on the edge of collapse.  Even if it was the greatest invention since the tampon (my opinion over sliced bread) I was never going to use Ask.com.  In fact, I am shouting to the stars and Facebook to beware of Ask.com.

Now I don't know what will happen with my computer if I don't update Java but I certainly am not going to encourage them and I warn all of my readers (all three of you, thanks Lorraine, Pat and Jess) to beware of updates.  And for the Jesus, Mohammad and the Buddha's sake, read the thing before you click NEXT...