A Roll in the Universe

So, as usual, I am Mercurial and go up and down more than a rollercoaster. After a great day yesterday—which I realize now may have taken more out of me than I thought, with all that talking to the psychologist—I ended up grumpy today. Total raincloud-right-over-my-head grumpy. Grumpy At the end of the day, a co-worker caught up with me and I admitted I was frustrated, annoyed, and feeling grouchy. Whereupon she gave me a proper, squishy, ribcage-melding bear hug. In fact, such a good and helpful hug we both started to tear up. Now, that is some serious hugging! And yes, it did chase the proverbial raincloud away. PS: My favorite dwarf was Grumpy because I related best to him. Still do. PPS: WordPress is rolling out a new blog editor called Gutenberg and it's, uhm, well, at times raincloud-inducing. :-D

The final day of being lyrically challenged (in more ways than one), thanks to one of my inspirations for blogging, Paula at Light Motifs . If you're feeling inspired, please do your own challenge and let me know about it! And now for the third song with lyrics I not only paid attention to, but also bothered to learn by heart. But that came later, because when this song first played on the radio back in 1979, it made me cry. Every. Single. Time. This is one song that is on the short list as a song you may play at my funeral (the other songs are mostly happy disco tunes so bring dancing shoes). It is "The Rose" by Bette Midler. Teen years are intense years, and the evening I saw the movie "The Rose" has moments that I will never forget. I had two friends at the time (I always end up in a trio of two girls and a guy; I'm on my third such grouping), Ann and Grant (hi, Ann!), and we went to see "The Rose". I drove us to the movie theater in my littl...

My comfort zone: Sitting on a bus on a rainy day I don't like ever talking about what goes on deep inside of me. A few close friends may find out, but not co-workers or you, my reader. But the truth is, I've gotten a taste of what it is like to be struggling with something psychological. And I've decided to let you in on that. I have a busy mind, and a strong sense of responsibility or duty. That sort of thing easily leads to stress because I've lost the ability to say "no" without guilt. So anxiety has been creeping up on me for almost two years. It's mostly work, but that means that anything bad happening outside of work becomes harder than it needs to be because I have nothing extra to give. I canceled a trip to Czechia this summer. Prague, home of the astrolabe clock tower, is a city I've wanted to see for years. But it went back on my bucket list due to being so utterly stressed out I couldn't even think about packing without crying. I...

It is Day 2 of the song lyric challenge that Paula at Light Motifs has lobbed at me. With friends like that, et cetera. So I mentioned yesterday that I'm not really aware of what people are singing because not enough enunciation. (By the way, I was double-checking that I had the right word, and discovered it's not spelled "annunciation", which is a totally different thing . Heh.) There was a time when being proud of America and happily waving the flag and feeling all kinds of good was the norm, rather than either a rarity or something that now makes you throw up in your mouth a little (take your pick). Point is, things have changed since the 1970's. But at the time, even if we got pretty beaten up during that decade, too, with resigning presidents, falling Saigons, soaring gas prices and waiting hostages, we still had reason to like ourselves and the rest of the world sort of usually liked us, too. And there was always the Muppets to give one a bit of repriev...

I have been challenged by Paula at Light Motifs to do three days of song lyrics. I thank Paula for making me update my blog (no, really, I needed this) but I have no one else who is actively blogging to pass the challenge on to. That doesn't matter. I don't do anything that reminds me of chain letters, anyway. :-D I rarely listen to lyrics because I rarely catch what they're singing, anyway. But some songs had a singer with good enunciation, and even good lyrics, and so I became aware of the words. A favorite band of mine from the 70's is Little River Band, originally from Australia. I still listen to their 70's stuff (because I don't know if they did 80's or even 00's stuff), and some songs put me right back in California. They had that mellow, west-coast soft-rock sound. And good lyrics. Several of their songs tell good stories, dealing a punch here, a good tug on the heart there. LRB became a part of the tapestry of my life in late 70's Cal...

So, I'm busy downloading old photos from my Flickr account because Flickr is being sold and I'm tired of dealing with various TOS. 'Sides, I'm paying for Dropbox. And digging through the old stuff, here's one from 15 years ago: The weekend I was a professional astrologer. Giving an astrological reading at the Bergen New Age Fair (Alternativmessen) 2003 First of all: Dig the Mac laptop! The toilet lid, as Norwegian Mac afficiendos called it. Heh. I still have the striped knitted cardigan behind me. Handknitted by a dear no-longer-with-us friend who picked quality wool and did quality work. I shared the booth with the blonde Tarot reader in the corner. Haven't stayed in touch. If you dig into the links to earlier pages, you'll find where I wrote about the weekend I spent at the New Age Fair 2003 in Bergen and some other astrology stuff. I never stuck with it. It turns out I don't find people all that interesting. Let me rephrase: I like helping and ...

I could give you all kinds of astrological reasons for why my flow suddenly choked, but suffice to say that the communication planet Mercury is slowing down to turn around and right itself on Sunday. Until then, I shall amuse myself—and hopefully you, too—by wondering about the "false friends" language has. Things that look related or alike, but do not mean the same thing. Take "glimmer" for example. A word that means faint or wavering, especially of light. The dying beams of your flashlight are glimmering. Then there's the Norwegian word "glimmer", which means brilliant or excellent or brightly shining and flickering. Both the English and the Norwegian word have made the rounds but started with German. At what point did the English version come to mean faint rather than bright? Anyway, if someone tells you you're glimmery or something like that in Scandinavia, beam brightly and steadily with pleasure. The Daily Prompt: Glimmer

"Gate" is one of those words that linguists call "false friends". The word looks alike in two different languages but does not have the same meaning. So a movable barrier in a fence in English is a street in Norwegian (pronounced as GAH-teh).  I'm bilingual, equally comfortable with my mother tongue English, and with Norwegian. I learned Norwegian at age 8 so I speak it without an accent. Being bilingual does not mean translating stuff on the fly. Both languages exist with their respective glossaries, grammar, idioms and sentence structure. On occasion my brain will glitch and try to speak Norwegian using English sentence structures, which leads to some awkward phrasing and some fumbling around as I try to correct myself. The reverse only happens if I'm trying to translate Norwegian into English on the fly. Somewhat more frequently, my brain will toss in an English word while I'm speaking Norwegian or vice-versa. I have yet to refer to a street as a ...

Lygra As Eddie and I carefully set our feet down between sheep droppings, we caught a whiff of fresh manure. Instantly, I was transported back to my childhood in Norway, spent in the country with a potato field in front of the house, a couple of steers grazing in a pasture next to the carport, and my uncle's sheep passing by our house on their way to and from their barn. With nice weather, there’s customers and house painting at Feste My friend and co-worker Eddie decided to take a drive out to Seim and Lygra and wanted to know if I'd like to join him. Our goal was to deliver a life preserver our company hands out for free. For both of us this was a nostalgic trip. Eddie family name comes from a tiny island on the fjord that passes by Feste, and the way there was the way my family drive through to get to the family farm in Mundal (not the one off an arm of the Sognefjorden but an unnamed valley in the municipality of Lindås north of Bergen). We drove on narrow, win...

When I was a child, I hated autumn. I saw no colors, only leaden skies, naked ground and continuous rain. And the ugliest thing ever was to see the green fern leaves turning brown. Ferns are often called snake grass ("ormegras") here in Norway, and are seen as similar to seaweed: A creepy plant that hides in shadow, and hides things in shadow (supposedly), and wraps around your legs as you try to move between them. I never had the loathing my Norwegian friends had, but I liked ferns only when they were lush and green. I hated how they looked when they started to turn into a brown-spotted mess in fall. As an adult I have come to see and appreciate this time of year in a completely different way, and now autumn is my favorite season. I see the colors changing, I feel the air get crisper and easier to breathe, I enjoy seeing the stars return with the darker evenings, and I know now that the gray, soggy part is just November. Recently, I made a new discovery about fall. ...

This is basically a list, a gratitude list. Because in the midst of nearly feeling overwhelmed by everything going on in September , I have discovered something: People helping me. The tradesman doing the tiling, also closed off the door to my bedroom and left the bedroom side looking very nice The same tradesman also washed the lobby floor in my building for me, unasked, to get rid of the concrete dust A couple of good friends lent me a key to their house, and let me come and go when I didn't have a toilet at home The reflexologist I'm now seeing for my frozen shoulder, is giving me appointments outside her regular office hours, I've discovered I'm ahead on my self-study course in insurance so I don't have to worry about keeping up Another friend reminded me that I'm allowed to get all excited about my own creativity and seeing it come to life. I'd forgotten that grown-ups are allowed to jump up and down with joy. (See pic.) And somebody helped ...

You can go find your copy of James Brown belting out "I feel good" if you want. My version is more low-key and without the groovy dance moves, but I do feel good. I like to thank ho'oponopono for that. So I'm going to talk about it again. I broke my own heart this past December. I visited my mother in Nevada and we had no fights, no snark, no desire to avoid each other. Decades of being dysfunctional were over. At one point, we sat at her dining room table, talking about my screwed up great-grandmother who managed to ruin three generations of daughters. Mom and I were now talking about how each of us had found a path that led us to healing and forgiveness, and that we now, finally, were the first mother-daughter pair that got along and had no issues. And it suddenly hit me that that is exactly what we had done: We reversed the habits of a dysfunctional family legacy. We grabbed each other's hand and said triumphantly, "We made it!" The love that had alw...

So I got my own domain something like four years ago, and the stuff I have here is still in limbo. It's like moving house: Taking everything I have in the old home, and trying to make it fit and function in the new one. Some things look fine, some don't fit, some have no purpose in the new place. And some things end up in new configurations that bring new joy and discovery. I'm hoping very much for that last. I have this website/blog*, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and now Flickr (because I discovered I'd better have an extra back-up of my photos). In trying to post something everywhere, I'm feeling scattered. I like short tweets. I like instantly posting a photo. But I also like having complete control over my own stuff and waxing on about it, offering far more than 140 characters at a time and why not a handful photos, too? The one thing that bugs me the most is Facebook. It's like a bar that you hate, but all your friends love it so that's where you...

A struggling friend reminded me of a situation I was in the autumn after my dear grandma died. Re-reading that gave me a surprise: I'd forgotten how down I was then. I remember crying during the meeting with my bosses, but I don't remember taking sick days and waking up angry every day. But yes, it all ended up well, better than expected, and yesterday, as I told a potential boss about my strengths and weaknesses during a job interview, I could honestly say I didn't lose my cool with customers or co-workers any more. "I have no reason to be angry at work," I said. Sweet. Today, I woke up feeling pretty good, and I mused on the messages in the book I am currently re-reading (here is a description of my first read ), and my praying to the Holy Spirit yesterday, and that the interview went swimmingly—personality test and all—and it hit me: I didn't second-guess myself after it was over. I usually find some fault with how I interact with people after the fa...

Ever since I discovered the ho'oponopono practice of forgiveness and healing about 3 years ago , I have used it, pursued it, and experienced healings big and small. I have taught it to a few friends. To my delight, they have embraced it and discovered for themselves the instant peace that comes with cleaning (as using ho'oponopono is called; you are cleaning your subconscious of unhelpful beliefs). My friend Alice showed me this picture she took from her hotel window in London: Every morning, I started my day by looking out that window. ILY, ILY, ILY. It was a beautiful way to start the morning. Every day, I felt the embrace of the city and I'd like to think that the city felt my ILYs. We certainly had nothing but pleasant interactions with people (and in fact, a few times, we had people offer unsolicited help!). I responded to her with this: The ho'oponopono "trick" of repeating to yourself "I love you" when in a negative situation really...

Unlike what other people I know experienced, 2012 was a laid-back year for me. I entered the new one, ready for action. Today, I got a taste of what might be in store: I've been asked to stand for election to my co-op's steering committee, an office that is for two years at a time. Right away, I think about Saturn transitting Scorpio during that time frame - in my house of community, groups and friends. I won't know for sure, one way or the other, until later this spring, but the fact that I've gotten this sort of attention tells me I'm no longer at rest; I'm on the move again. In other news, I've finally become an adult. I'm finally starting to understand this business of taking care of home and stomach on a regular basis. At the age of 52, I'm cooking every day for myself (or reheating leftovers from an earlier meal), and my home is fairly tidy (next step: get it fairly clean). I even try to dress like a grown-up, trying to class up my usual swea...

It's New Year's Eve 2012. I'm in jeans and a wool sweater, not in my high heels and sparkly top. My plans for a productive day and a party for one have been sidetracked. I feel lazy and low-key. And thoughtful. My neighbors are not being low-key; they've been shooting fireworks sporadically all evening. I sit here wondering if I should look out my window and see the colors and sparks. Nah. I'll wait till midnight. The neighbors will be bringing out the really fancy stuff then. *** I usually prepare a meditation of sorts for myself, but not this year. I don't desire anything. Is this lethargy or peace? It's definitely new. Maybe I just got so engaged in the end of the world December 21 2012 (in a very fun way) that I've already had my end of the year focus. 2012 has been the most low-key year I've had in years. I haven't fussed with anything. I haven't had any drama whatsoever. What new and unusual I have experienced has gon...

My high school teacher told us students that we may not have anything to vote for, but we always have something to vote against. That statement has often been the only reason I have bothered to vote. In the US it is easy to find who or what to vote against. Most questions there are yes/no: The Democrat candidate? Yes/no. A yes means the Republican candidate gets a “no”. I definitely voted against Jimmy Carter in 1980, and against Sarah Palin in 2008. I have no vested interest in the candidates who got my “yes” since all presidents annoy me (they just do), and since I know that politics – and the presidency – tend to be like farming: Hard to do without producing a pile of manure. Now, the US does have more than two political parties and they often offer presidential candidates, but due to changes in how the presidential debates are held, you never hear from them. In Norway, as with most European countries, there are several political parties. Norway ha...

Yesterday all flags were flown at half-mast in Norway, in honor of all those who lost their lives Friday July 22 2011 . I offer my own condolences to all those who have lost loved ones, and to Norway itself. It's been an intense week. I have learned that those of us who actually turned off the TV and distracted ourselves with something totally different did the right thing. It has been non-stop in the media and now I find myself praying that my daily newspaper will have a normal cover tomorrow. For the seventh day running I have been treated to a single photograph with one large title covering the whole front below the masthead, all related to the horrible, unbelievable events of July 22. I’m looking forward to some photo and blurb above the fold, the usual sidebar and something below the fold including the ads, which I never read. Norway's holding up pretty good. People are always better than their reputation: Humanity tends toward good, not bad, though it sometimes tak...