somehow i’d like to think of myself as anything but wilty. only i’d know it wasn’t so. i am. wilty. so is he. we are both wilty. not quite the same as the wilty kale we put out next to the garage for the mama bunny and bunbun, but most definitely wilty.
and so, as we drove away, with our cut-in-half halos for the off-trail “ammals” (thank you, jaxon, for this most-adorable non-wilty pronunciation), d said – in his i’m-enlightened-now-and-want-to-share-it voice, “that’s it!! they’d hire us if we weren’t so wilty!!!”
we laughed and he guffawed at his wit and utter sidesplitting jocularity and then we looked at each other – we neeeed to write that down!! so i grabbed my iphone and summoned siri, the great goddess of handless note-taking.
“what would you like it to say?” she politely asked. i answered and she dutifully jotted our note.
and then we looked at it.
uh-huh.
“they’d hire us if we weren’t so wealthy,” she transcribed.
hiLARious.
goddess-schmoddess. siri has her own unique wilty sense of humor.
i wear one contact. in my left eye. though i can actually see distance, it helps me see cleeearly – you know, defines the lines a little bit more, makes all the signs crisp. my right eye – sans contact – sees up close. and somehow, for the most part, my brain figures this out.
so i can usually see. most stuff.
but there are times. and – even with the great squint – the greatest squinty squint – i can’t read. like the ingredients on the bbq sauce at the grocery store or the directions for use on the new cleaning product. or the dang menu. in the tiniest font ever is printed all the potential meals we could ever desire…if only we could read them.
there’s always a pair of readers – the cheap kind that came from the dollar-and-a-quarter-store-that-used-to-be-the-dollar-store (does ANYthing EVER stay the same???). but they could be 1.25s. or maybe 1.5s. and there are fonts out there in the world that require flippin’ 2.5s. i know you can relate.
we have this clay bowl in our sunroom. in it are about thirteen pairs of readers. a baker’s dozen. and we have readers tucked into the side doors of littlebabyscion and big red. and we have readers right outside the kitchen hanging on the same hook as the key basket. and we have readers upstairs on the drafting table in the office. and there are readers – yes, yes – next to the bed.
we went into a newly revamped shop in our town a few days ago. lovely. so many nice products. and the proverbial rounder – the one with all the fancypants readers. they are cute-cute-cute!! i was tempted to try some on. but instead, i passed by. $24.99 was pricier than readers-to-add-to-the-bowl can be for me.
besides, i kind of think menus should come with readers attached. or maybe a magnifying glass. a little less ego-bruising.
there is often a need to step away – these days. for us, that mostly means a hike at the end of the day or a longer hike on the weekends. sometimes it means getting in littlebabyscion and just driving.
we are a little limited by lake michigan – we cannot mosey east from here. but we can mosey north and south and west.
mostly, we go west. a little north or south thrown in for good measure and to shake it all up a bit, but west. east would mean up and over the u.p. or down and around – through gary, indiana – which is no one’s idea of a good mosey. so. west.
it doesn’t take much for us to decide. our days are filled with trying to sort to optimism, to wishing wishes and dreaming dreams. we work on finding ways and places we can contribute all we have learned and worked at in these last decades. sometimes that is easier said than done. and so, there is often a need to step away, yup.
the wander women – amazing and truly inspiring thru-hikers – have a QR code on their youtube channel. when you point your phone camera at it, it brings you to a place where, in multiples of $5, you can express appreciation, channel sisu, buy them a cup of coffee (or multiple cups, for that matter).
it’s been suggested manyatime to us that maybe we should have a QR code. our very own. i know that we are pretty verbose – lotsa words – maybe more words than anyone wants to read, but you can pick and choose, like from those overburdened menus at tgif’s. but they’ve encouraged us, adding very generous words like “we love to read your posts” or “this would be a way we could say thank you for something that touches us”. their thoughts – QR trail magic – we could use it for coffee or maybe a glass of apothic or…if you wish, it could be thought of as gifting us with miles. miles of thru-hiking middle age. and so anytime we just needed to step away – go find zen in the country outaways west from our home – we could use those miles. to keep going and going and going, thanks to you and you and you.
and then, we could maybe – just maybe – stop and get a coffee or a piece of flourless chocolate cake on our way. if coffee and flourless chocolate cake and red silos and gravel roads don’t help, nothing will.
and so, with the pompoms of people we are grateful for, our QR code is born. we’re gonna name himherthem “qrky”.
it is likely the heron’s. we have seen a couple together out there – gliding through the marshland, standing regally by the side of the pond, walking sedately. we hiked past the downy feather, that had likely fallen from where down is hidden beneath the heron’s outer feathers, and i went back, the talcum powder white capturing my attention on the trail. sometimes i pick up feathers – to keep them, beautiful signs of divine and freedom and flight. i left this one on the trail, tucked between the pine and the cone, its texture begging notice.
under the outer layer of my straight hair is an unruly curly layer. the days i do not blow-dry my hair, i am banana-curled, little-orphan-annie-curled, a combo-platter-no-real-sense curled. i personally have found it annoying. most women desire hair which they do not have – a different kind of hair – a different color – a different texture, thickness, bounce, volume. it is the way of this society.
instyle magazine did an entire month of articles on women and their hair. i read the initial article from 2018 and, frankly, found it somewhat entertaining. the most common uniting hair complaint is frizz, which, i must say, i have complained about a time or two. d has trouble understanding frizz as he is a non-frizz-haired guy (incidentally, with better hair than me – which doesn’t seem quite hair-fair). regardless, hair has become a tool of empowering for women, especially in this nation.
according to what i read, we can be flushed with excitement or nervous as all get-out, challenged beyond our perceived limits or drudging our way through the day – but, if our hair looks good, we feel good, no matter.
i wonder if the heron – in its elegant wisdom and intuition – has concerned itself with its feathers. or has it just simply concerned itself with its basic needs, its instinctual movements and rituals, its patterns and place in nature. is it thinking about its frizzy down feathers? i suspect not. compare that with the reported 81% of human women who feel more confident if their hair looks great.
according to the majority of human women – none of the hair products out there reeeeally work. everything promises to de-frizz, de-curl, celebrate the curl, straighten, give volume, grant sheen, untangle, combat thinning, retain moisture, eliminate split ends, make it bounce, make it stay still, give a hairstyle hold. but nope, none of it really works.
if you add perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause to the hair equation, you are faced with a variety pack of even more hair concerns. for me, that means that – despite all my deliberate blowdrying intentions for straightening my hair, the instant a hotter-than-hot hot flash swings by, i am frizzed. drippy hot, frizzed and curled – definitely not a jennifer aniston hair look.
“in order to cool their body temperature, great blue herons will partially extend and droop their wings and open their mouths while fluttering their throat muscles. much like dogs panting, this helps cool their body through evaporation. this behavior is called gular fluttering.”(nps.gov) the innate wisdom of the heron – gular fluttering. who knew?
so…if you see me – curly hair askew sneaking out from under a few straightened hairs trying to hold on to their straight – fluttering my throat muscles (is this synonymous with talking too much in humans???) – you will know i am post-yet-another-hot-flash and am channeling my internal great blue heron. please don’t comment on my hair.
with plates spinning, spinning, spinning – all up in the air at once – women carry on, living in many parallel planes, doing life. i had an email conversation with a young woman yesterday who has a 15 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 year old. she was taking them to school – high school, elementary school, daycare – meeting many distinctly different needs, not to mention her own getting-ready and go-to-work necessities. she wrote that by the time she gets them all where they are supposed to be – first thing in the morning – she is already exhausted. she also wrote that she requires little sleep.
i remember writing albums and talking to retail outlets and concert venues and packing boxes of cds and practicing and doing laundry and reading golden books on the rug and playing barbies or matchbox cars and making grilled cheese sandwiches and grocery shopping and planning birthday parties and holiday shopping and overseeing homework and whipping up paper mache and washing the floor and running children to lessons or soccer or baseball or cross country or ballet and….
d is singularly focused. he pokes fun at me being “circular”. uh-huh. it’s called multi-tasking, my dear.
it would not surprise me in the least to leave him drawing at his drafting table for several hours and to come back to find him still there with little to no awareness that i had left. it must be a guy thing.
“i won the lottery,” i tease him, this artist poised over his work. “the big one. zillions.”
quiet guitar, a little flute, an oboe line weaving in and out.
i know – without a doubt – that they are trying to keep me calm while on hold. having just gotten off the phone with a billing department, it is not a far reach for me to imagine one falling fast asleep during this interminable period of time. the age of technology and customer service have taken a turn to the worse if they are programming music specifically to slow down our rapidly-beating hearts and blood pressure when we call.
from a personal standpoint, were i to be accessing this music – this particular track – through a mindful practice app or a guided imagery site, it would be pretty helpful. but the use of background music on loop – a composer’s nightmare – to soothe my billingbrain is trying.
and then there was this moment i had on hold one day when i called an insurance company. paperwork strewn in front of me, pencil and notebook at the ready, a list of questions in my head, i was ready to take them on. i was instantly put on hold the moment i selected “speak to a representative”.
the music started.
mine.
piano, strings, a cello line weaving in and out…
it did take my mind off the insurance debacle.
instead, i just kept wondering if they were paying royalties.
it’s a no-win. the classic rock-and-a-hard-place. a lose-lose. a pickle. a crunch. a conundrum. a double-bind. a dilemma.
yup. there is no truly right response here for that man.
i have learned to preface things i talk about – for instance, “i just want to tell you this. i want to go on and on. i want to _________ (choose: rant/think/ponder/ruminate) aloud. please do not try to solve this. please just listen.”
but sometimes, yes, indeedy, sometimes i just talk. with no preface. and then, in the way of conversation, especially in the middle of the night pillow-talking, he talks after i talk. and – whammo! – that’s where he makes his mistake.
so…we didn’t go to nearly enough places and i am sort of stuck in buyer’s-remorse, retail-regret, choice-underload.
i, eventually, chose frames – they resemble john denver’s and john lennon’s. a little bit bohemian. a little bit retro.
it had been a long, drawn-out affair. i tried every frame on at the vision center – well, not the really expensive ones because – though we had vision insurance at the time, my portion only covered contact lenses and no back-up glasses. we went to costco and i went up and down the optical wall, trying on, taking off, trying on, taking off. it was exhausting. we went back to the place where i had my eye exam – there would be a discount for buying glasses in addition to contacts.
nearly everyone at the vision center got involved. i had gotten it down to five different frames and – standing in front of the mirror trying them on over and over and over again – finally resorted to asking lovely sarah, the my-age vision assistant. i tried each pair on for her while david watched. we eliminated two frames. one made me look exactly like harry caray, which is not a good look for me. i loved the anderson cooper look, but all those frames were too wide and extended well beyond my face. apparently, i do not have a big face. or – women don’t mind frames that extend into their widest peripheral vision, making their hair stick out. there are many, many, many large frames out there. even bigger than the ones i had in 1985.
i had tried tortoise shell and red, maroon and clear. i had tried hexagonal and cat-eyes, square and rectangular. i had tried my-little-pony and under armour, karen kane and bebe and vera bradley. and now there were these five.
sarah turned to her colleague and asked for her help. the colleague had me try on the three frames – over and over – and then she turned to another colleague and asked for her opinion. the customer who was being served by that vision-center-person piped up. eventually, there was a vote. and everyone in the store voted. the black metal round frames won. i placed an order, laughing, and was relieved it was finally over – the stress of choosing a frame that fit my face – which, i might add, turned out to be a child’s frame. we left.
but i still think about the frame in my mind. also round, but plastic and black and just exactly right – making my forehead look smaller, the indent of my face less indented, the wrinkles around my eyes disappearing, the dark circles lighter, my eyelashes longer and my eyes more expressive.
david picked out his frame in about two minutes. so it was hard for him to understand the hissy fit i had over finding the right frames. a dedicated contact lens wearer, i have never really liked any of the glasses i have owned. i wanted this time to be different. so i tried to explain to him all the parameters the new – perfect – no, no – quixotic – glasses must fall within. purple stuff came out of his exploding head. but my hissy fit helped.
we picked up the finished glasses and, putting them on, they seemed a little blurry. i sighed. i haven’t tried them again. but i will. i’m hoping they will be ok. and i guess i’m still wondering if that truly perfect frame exists out there somewhere.
i can still locate my 1985-ish glasses. they are huge tortoise shell frames – bigger than my face – that sit way above my eyebrows and way down on my cheeks. i have no idea what i was thinking, but i suppose they were all the rage at the time.
well, guess what?
they are again.
giant frames, wide frames, frames that cover all expanse of your visage. yikes!
i look – decidedly – like a bug wearing any of these. like a fly – with big eyes – or an ant or – adding to my list of lookalikes – a meerkat or a spectral tarsier.
these are not good looks for me, i have decided. it didn’t even take pondering. it’s quite obvious.
so, re-using the 1985 glasses doesn’t work. i can’t find my glasses from the mid-90s but i know – i remember distinctly – that those do not sit low enough on my cheeks to cover the sometimes-dark-circles i have inherited from my poppo. somewhere in there i sort of remember a pair of big clear glasses. fortunately, they have gone the way of one of the charities that collects eyeglasses. i, in addition to ordering new lenses, was stuck having to look for a new frame.
but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
mostly, the experience of deciding what kind of lenses – lenses! – you want is complex.
i am a contact lens wearer and only need glasses when my eyes are tired at night and maybe we’re driving and i’m behind the wheel. in that case, i want the lenses that specifically deal with darkness and oncoming headlights and the possibility of rainy wet streets and glare off puddles and asphalt, orange barrels that populate every road in our vicinity and on every highway we choose to travel, equipped with deer-alerting alarms.
so – the anti-dark, anti-glare, anti-highbeam, anti-barrel, anti-deer, anti-sleepy lenses, please.
we’re running out of room. the nightstands to the side of our bed are overly-laden.
if you take away the lamp, the clock, a few pictures and a jelly jar of pens and pencils, it barely leaves room for the water bottle, tissue box, readers, cellphone, flashlight, itty-bitty-booklight, backscratcher, pad-for-the-stuff-you-want-to-remember-but-know-you-will-forget-by-morning, ankle socks and – when we plan ahead – the midnight bananas. if we determine anything else is of absolute necessity inthemiddleofthenight we will have to purchase a new night-table. bigger.
i wonder if aarp has grown-up night-tables on discount.
reverse threading 