Thirteen Slices of Thursday
1. Have I mentioned that I have a stalker? He’s someone from high school that I didn’t know existed back then. His obsession with me (and one of my girlfriends) is mostly inactive now, although on my birthday last week a family member reported that someone they know saw him and he knew it was my birthday and made a comment about it!
2. One year I got a real butterfly for my birthday. Joe had picked a bouquet of wild flowers and it just attached itself and stayed for days.
3. Last year I got a double rainbow for my birthday and this year I got, among other things, a wooden 13 in a birthday card. 
4. Sometimes I feel like we are all just candles in the wind. It’s hard to believe we have lost five loved community members in just the last six months, none from old age and most very sudden.
5. Rio, who died unexpectedly on Saturday, had many talents, including as an artist, singer, photographer and pumpkin carver. She, who was the artist relations representative at Floydfest and who I wrote about HERE, was always encouraging of my writing. Number 6 is a poem she told me she especially liked, which she used in one of her handmade calendars that she made for friends years ago.
6. I’m a mandala in your eye / a sunflower dancing / on a black scrying mirror / where the sun and moon / are lovers.
7. The soundtrack today is THIS song by Zach Sobiech. Zach was diagnosed with terminal cancer and wrote the song, which became and internet sensation and spawned a celebrity version, to say goodbye to his family and friends. He died Monday.
8. Sometimes I feel like that lady on the red couch in that migraine medication ad.
9. As someone who deals with a variety of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I can do everything anyone else can. It just takes me longer and I have to rest in between each activity. I stay home a lot, but when I do go out somewhere, I like to know where the exits and couches are.
10. I think of writing poetry as cheap therapy. Sometime I write it while lying on the couch, as if it were a therapy session because, for me, writing poetry is a form of self-analysis where I get to be both doctor and patient. ~ More at “What Would Freud Do?” HERE.
11. How come I only just now figured out that Floyd’s Black Water Loft Coffee House was named because coffee makes water black?
12. I take being called “the fun grandmother” at my grandson Bryce’s recent 5th birthday party as a high compliment.
13. Most of this was written under the influence of cake.
_______________Thirteen Thursday
May 23rd, 2013 10:01 am
Sorry to hear about your friend…60…so young still! RIP, Rio.
I am also “the fun grandmother” 🙂 The other grandmother hardly ever sees the kids…too busy, has a headache, etc. Sad.
May 23rd, 2013 12:12 pm
I feel like people are dropping like Fly’s….! So many losses in a shorter and shorter space of time.
Reading your blog for all these years—-it seems to me you are out and about, a lot!!! And good for you! Pacing yourself must be quite a challenge with your CFS. But I think you do fantastically—-You participate in ALL of your wonderful town’s many many creative activities—I mean, we wouldn’t even know about them if it weren’t for you.
In fact, there have been times I have marveled at your ability to rise above your CFS and do as much as you do, out in the world. I applaud you Colleen!!
May 23rd, 2013 1:14 pm
Wow, that’s a long term stalker. None of my stalkers ever lasted beyond a year.
May 23rd, 2013 2:37 pm
Oh, I like how you decorated your cake.
http://otherworlddiner.blogspot.com/2013/05/inspired-by-beginnings-thirteen-things.html
May 23rd, 2013 2:38 pm
yes, all these deaths get a person feeling mortal without the birthdays piling on too. still, better than the other option as they say. at grandma’s funeral her old friend was chipper, and said, it feels kind of wrong but every funeral proves I’m on the top side of dirt.
distances are hard to hold. I wonder about 2 people I call stalker doodles, each a dozen years in. what’s normal attachment or normal continuity? are we all public figures to everyone we’ve ever met?
every May 31st I know it is a friend’s birthday because for some reason her mother and mine decided we were besties and drilled me on her bd as a kid. it doesn’t unstick even if it was more than 25 years since we last spoke.
you’re in good company for down-time needs. “For every 3 hours I spend with company I must spend 8 hours alone.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 23rd, 2013 3:21 pm
Funny…humor along with tragedy. That is you completely. Pass a fork, I love birthday cake.
May 23rd, 2013 4:00 pm
You’re so lucky to get butterflies and rainbows on your birthday. I usually get a blizzard for mine–and I don’t mean the Dairy Queen frozen treat. 😉
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May 23rd, 2013 5:40 pm
Kudo’s to being the fun grandmother. Definitely high praise indeed. I love the song, Clouds. Thanks for sharing. Happy T13!
May 23rd, 2013 10:06 pm
I am psyched that you froze some of your cake for me!
I really love what THE OLD LADY IN THE HILLS wrote about you and I totally agree!
May 24th, 2013 4:00 am
i read about Zach on your blog last week and was inspired by him.. then i read that he is no more – was deeply saddened to hear this.. thought of you at that time..
May 24th, 2013 5:50 am
I like the wooden 13, but of course I’d say that.
May 24th, 2013 6:21 am
You did a wonderful job on a sugar high. 🙂