Spring Fever

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Coming East
First Landing State Park

First Landing State Park

Cypress swamp

Spring will not officially arrive for forty days, but yesterday I had spring fever. The temperature reached an unseasonably 70 degrees, so my husband and I went hiking in First Landing State Park.

We picnicked under loblolly pines and live oaks then headed for the trails. We chose one called Long Creek. Meandering uphill and down through cypress, pines, oaks and elms, it brought us to a stretch that hugged an inlet. Sunlight gleamed on the water; boaters trawled slowly through the no-wake zone. The sun was so warm, we removed our light jackets and tied them around our waists.

After an hour, we came to an intersection of trails and had to make a decision. We could continue on Long Creek, or we could take one of the other trails and head back toward the park entrance where we had left our car. The weather was too beautiful to end our excursion so quickly.  I chose to continue the Long Creek trail.

There is a reason it is called Long Creek.  After another half our with no end in sight, I wished we had taken one of the shorter routes. Finally, we came to another trail divide.  We took a route that would lead us back to our car. Still, we had quite a distance to go. A family came up behind us. The dad was pulling a cart with a toddler inside.

“I’ll give you fifty bucks if you give me a ride back to my car.”

I must not have sounded desperate enough because the father chuckled and kept going. I wouldn’t have left poor George anyway. He had the keys.

I can’t end this post without including a picture my Boston son sent me last night. He took it from the steps of his apartment. Such a contrast!image

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If the Shoe Fits…

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Coming East

Today is our 43rd anniversary.  I gave my husband the usual sappy, sweet card, but when I opened the one he gave me, instead of the kind that makes me cry, I got one that made me roar with laughter.

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When I finally stopped laughing, hubby said, “Isn’t that so like us?”

“Us?” I asked, incredulously.  “You mean it is so like you!”

We were sitting at the breakfast table, drinking our coffee and reading the morning paper as we do every morning. I looked through the stack of sections he had placed in front of me.

“Where’s The Daily Break?” I asked. That’s the section with the comics, about the only section I read. George always pulls it out for me and puts it in front of me.  Not today. I looked through all the sections he had given me, but no Daily Break. I looked accusingly at the sections in front of him.”

“”Where’s my section?”

He  stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

I again looked at the stack he had given me.  There on top was The Daily Break.

Big grin on his smug face. “As I said before, that card is so like us.”

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Attention, Please!

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Coming East

My daughter is a very busy mom to three children.  I know it’s hard for her to find time to communicate, but I hadn’t heard from her in awhile, so I sent her this survey to get her attention:

Dear Mrs. Wilson,

You have been selected to take part in an official government survey on the relationships between mothers and daughters in the U.S. Your cooperation would be greatly appreciated. In doing so, you will avoid any unpleasantness which might ensue as a result of your having ignored a government directive. Please answer as honestly as possible.

1. Do you have a mother? If no, then thank you for your time. You have completed this survey. If yes, proceed to question 2.

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being “I don’t give a rat’s ass” and 10 being “I wish she would move in tomorrow and do all the cooking and cleaning for me,” how much do you love your mother? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3. How often do you speak to your mother?
a. As little as I can get away with without being disinherited.
b. Once a month. Usually the month is November.
c. Once a week if I forget to pick up without looking at caller ID.

4. How do you show your mother you love her?
a. I’m supposed to actually show her?
b. I didn’t ask to be born. The ball is in her court.
c. I buy her expensive birthday presents. She likes J.Jill more than me anyway.
d. I let her come visit me once in awhile and even pick her up at the airport without making her take a cab.

5. If you could have any mother in the world, whom would you choose?
a. Condoleezza Rice. I enjoy discussing world diplomacy and public policy.
b. My Aunt Kathy. She is smart and sweet and never sarcastic.
c. I’d keep my own. Yeah, she’s sarcastic, but I don’t have the energy to train a new one.

Thank you for your time and for saving your country money. Drone strikes are expensive.

Sincerely,

U.S. Administration for Children and Families

I received a text in response:  “The answer to #5 is definitely Aunt Kathy.”

Clearly, that was not the attention I was looking for.

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Overage Driving

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Coming East

I was nearly late for my meeting yesterday morning because I got behind an elderly woman driver.  I’m patient with older drivers—other than muttering under my breath— because someday I’m going to be one of them.  I was muttering a lot yesterday.

Elderly drivers tend to be overly cautious.  This particular woman was driving ten miles under the speed limit of 45 mph.  I could have passed her, but I’m always worried someone might be in my blind spot.  Yes, I know my new car has blind spot detection—I get a flashing warning on my side view mirror if someone is in my blindspot—but what if it isn’t working when I decide to pass?  Besides, I was going to be taking a right turn in eight miles, so I needed to be in that right lane anyway.

It would probably have been faster if I had taken the highway, but I don’t like to merge.  Besides, people drive crazy fast on the highway. So I took the main drag with all the traffic lights.  I hit every single one of them, thanks to that old woman.

Going home after the meeting was so much quicker since I wasn’t behind an overly cautious elderly driver. My way home is a longer distance than the way I come, though, because I like to take just right turns , if possible.  The only bit of unpleasantness on my return trip was when someone beeped at me when I was stopped at a red light.  The law says you may turn right on red.  You don’t have to.

Anyway, just wanted to put my two cents in about being patient with elderly drivers.  As I said, someday I will be one of them.

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Snow Days

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Coming East

“You can sleep in today.  It’s a snow day.”  Those are the sweetest words a kid can hear.  We heard them at least once or twice a winter when we were growing up in Connecticut.  It had to be a humdinger of a snowstorm for school to be cancelled.  Otherwise, we would have had snow days once every couple of weeks.  Fortunately—or unfortunately for us kids—Connecticut had plenty of snow removal equipment, so snow days were a rare treat.

SCAN0943We’d snuggle deeper into the covers and listen to the wind howl.  After a breakfast of hot cream of wheat, we’d spend twenty minutes getting ready to brave the outside.  We donned snow pants, hooded  parkas, boots and idiot mittens and head outside to build a snow fort.  We stayed out so long our eyeballs froze.  We’d come in for lunch—a steaming bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches—and head outside again.  At bedtime we prayed that we’d have a second day of the same.  No such luck.

When I was an adult and we moved to San Antonio, my children didn’t get to experience snow days.  Obviously.  Except once.  We had a freak snow storm that left us with thirteen inches of snow for one day before it melted.  San Antonio has no snow removal equipment, so we had a snow day.  The kids played outside in their cowboy boots.  Who owned snow boots in San Antonio?SCAN0945

And now we live in Virginia Beach, as south as you can get in Virginia before you get to North Carolina.  Snow is not an impossibility, but it is highly unlikely.  A huge snow storm is now descending on the Northeast.  If it had moved just a tad to the south, we’d be having a snow day tomorrow.  My husband would love to hear those words:  You don’t have to go to work today.  It’s a snow day.” I keep hoping and wishing that it still could happen.  We wouldn’t need too much, just an inch or two.  Virginia Beach has very little in the way of snow removal equipment.  Obviously.

Meanwhile, my Boston children are giddy with snow-day excitement.  They bought snow saucers in preparation.  We never outgrow the kid in us.

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The Amazing Trader Joe’s Vegetable Juice Diet

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Coming East

As I’ve watched my weight creep higher and higher since this past summer, I finally decided to do something about it after the holidays.  My biggest problem seems to be that I’m always hungry, whether I’m hungry or not.  If there is food in the house, I will find it, and since I’m the one who buys the groceries and puts them away, food is not hard to find.

IMG_0295In order to break the cycle of eating all day long, I decided to drink a glass of Trader Joe’s low-sodium vegetable juice whenever I thought about stuffing my mouth at times other than breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I make healthy meals, so proper meal times are not the problem.  Drinking the juice would fill me up and stave off my food craving.

I weighed myself before I started the TJVJD so I would have a baseline.  The first day was a little rocky, but I was determined.  I did add just a little protein with the juice because I know an all-juice diet is unhealthy and protein is important.  I’m not an idiot.  The tortilla chips were, of course, whole grain, and the refried black beans with melted cheese provided complementary protein.  Do you realize how healthy nachos really are? And the jalapeños added even more vegetables on top of TJ’s juice.

Making it through the first day is always hard. The next day was easier. No nachos this time, but do you realize how good salami and cheese is with Trader Joe’s vegetable juice?  That mid-morning snack got me through until lunch time.  Trail mix and TJ’s juice got me through until dinner.

Day three was even easier, though I have to say that drinking all that vegetable juice can be a little hard on the stomach.  No worries, though.  Trader Joe’s has these delicious ginger cookies.  Ginger is excellent for digestion.  And the fact that these little gems are covered in dark chocolate adds another layer of healthfulness because dark chocolate is full of antioxidants.

I’m really enjoying this diet, but apparently I need to work a little harder at it.  I got on the scale this morning, and I was shocked.  Who knew you could gain so much weight by drinking vegetable juice?  Amazing!

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A Rose by Any Other Name

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Coming East

imageWhen we moved to this neighborhood in Virginia Beach six years ago, I was excited to have so many things within walking distance.  I can walk to the dentist, to the doctor, the library, the drugstore, Dairy Queen—not a good thing—and many shops.   But what I was most excited about was that I could do my grocery shopping without taking the car out of the garage.  We have a wonderful gourmet market about 3/4 of a mile from the house, and Whole Foods is less than a mile away.

Shortly after we moved here, my mother-in-law was cleaning out her basement and found an old grocery cart someone had given her.  It was one of those wire ones with two big wheels in the back and two little wheels in the front.  She didn’t want it and asked if I had any use for it.  My husband was about to say no, but I jumped at the opportunity.  “Absolutely!  I can take it to the market and do my grocery shopping.”

My husband looked at me skeptically.  “You’re really going to push this cart to the store?”  I assured him I was and couldn’t wait to get the cart home.  Where it sat.  And sat.  And sat.  One day my husband was cleaning out the garage and saw the cart hanging on a hook.  “I thought you were going to take this cart to the market.”

“I had all good intentions, but whenever I thought about doing it, I was afraid I was going to look like one of those old women pushing her little cart down the street.  I kept chickening out.”

I saw those old women with their scarves tied around their heads and their thick stockings bagging around their ankles, hanging onto their carts like the carts were walkers.  Now I want to make it perfectly clear that this post is not denigrating old people.  Some of my best friends are old people.  I just don’t want on-lookers to get confused and think I am one of those old people.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was at Whole Foods and saw a cart they were selling.  It was exactly what I needed.  It was made of bright red canvas instead of wires and only had two wheels.  You pull it behind you instead of pushing it.  I could picture young urban professionals using it.  Very hip and modern.  Finally, I would feel good about walking to the market.

Last week I set out on a trip to the market on a crisp Friday morning, pulling my little cart behind me.  It was breezy, so I wrapped my scarf a little tighter around my head.  I walked at a good clip, only stopping to pull my knee socks up a few times because they were pooling around my ankles.  I felt invigorated.  What a great place I lived in!  The last barrier to being nearly independent from my car had been removed.

After I got my groceries, I slowed my pace so I could look in some of the store windows on my way home.  In one window I glanced up and saw reflected in the glass an old woman.  She had a little red Whole Foods cart just like mine.  How wonderful!  It’s catching on!

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The Missing Piece

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Coming East

Don’t you hate it when you focus on what you’re missing rather than on what you have? You work so hard putting the pieces together, making order out of chaos, turning a meaningless mess into something beautiful. Day after day, week after week, you see how far you’ve come, are actually proud of your progress towards your goal, but that one missing piece, the piece that no matter how much you have searched, how much you have pleaded with a higher being, remains illusive, out of your grasp forever. It negates all that you have strived for, all the good work you have done. It makes you realize that some things are out of your grasp, no matter how much you wish they could be different. Then you have to decide whether to throw up your hands and give up, or muster the courage to go bravely on and ignore what is missing and rejoice in what you have achieved.

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I have worked for months on this puzzle and all I have left is the sky. But see that little white spot below the ship on the right? That piece is missing. No, I did not lose it. I have a rule when I do jigsaw puzzles: Never vacuum the floor until a puzzle has been completed. I have looked under furniture and lifted seat cushions. The piece is not there. It never was there. The puzzle company sent me 1,999 pieces of a 2,000-piece puzzle, and I am steamed. I thought of quitting, but I’ve spent so much time on this darn thing. Don’t you hate it when you’re missing a piece? Oh, you thought I was talking about life?

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Romanticising the Weather

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Coming East

(Forgive me, WordPress, for I have sinned.  It has been over a year since I posted last.)

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“I was on the UCONN website today,” my husband said, “and the cover photo was the Wilbur Cross Library in the snow. What a flood of memories that brought back. I could picture you making snow angels.”

My husband and I met at the University of Connecticut forty-five years ago. Though many buildings have been added to the campus and a “downtown” was finally built in the tiny hamlet of Storrs just a couple of years ago, not much has really changed. UCONN is still in an isolated part of the state, in a valley that fills with snow starting in late October.

I remember spring semester my freshman year. (They need to rename that semester because spring doesn’t arrive until a week before school lets out.) I waded knee deep in snow, the hairs in my nose freezing with each breath, to get to an eight-o’clock chemistry class on the other side of campus, next to the cow barns. Pure agony!

But separated by decades and many miles, I, too, look back with nostalgia on those white winters. The quiet. The peace that blanketed the campus with each falling flake. Walking hand-in-hand with my sweetie across the frozen landscape. The whiteness reflected the innocence of our youth.

Living in Virginia Beach now, most of the whiteness we see is the sand on the shore. But once in awhile, the weatherman teases us with the hope of a snowfall. Not the deep, penetrating ones of those long-ago years, but a small one, enough to remind us of a time when a cup of hot chocolate from the machine in the basement of my boyfriend’s dorm was the best tasting thing on earth.

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Listen to Your Body

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Coming East

At yoga class today, I heard my teacher say her oft-repeated mantra: Listen to your body. She cautions us to not push ourselves in ways that make our bodies hurt. Should we feel any strain or discomfort, we need to back off. As she puts it, “Listen to your body when it’s whispering so you don’t have to listen to it scream.”

I started exercising in earnest less than five years ago when I had just turned sixty. I have never been an athlete in any sense of the word. Physical Education was my scariest subject. Give me a frog or a cat to dissect, and I was a happy camper, but send me to P.E. and my heart fluttered and my knees were weak. I was that kid in gym class who covered her face when the ball came towards her. Yeah, that kid. The last person to be picked for any team. It was a real stretch for me to start yoga four and a half years ago.

In class today, one of my classmates came up to me and started talking about how bad her knees are and how hard it is for her to do some of the poses. “I hate what getting old does to my body, don’t you?” I wanted to be a team player (the Old People Team), so I commiserated with her. But in reality, I’m thinking how much I love what getting older has done for my body. I actually feel better now than I’ve felt in a long time. I walk everywhere, I go to the Y three times a week, do yoga twice there and sometimes another time at home, and am contemplating taking Zumba tone (Zumba with weights). Yes, my knees are slightly arthritic and I can’t do squats, I’m not very flexible, though yoga has helped, and I don’t have the range of motion in my shoulders I once had. But as I listen to my body, it’s telling me that I’ve done a good thing for it by joining the YMCA and exercising and being faithful to my yoga practice.

It’s also telling me to get kick-boxing out of my mind.

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