Loose Leaf Notes

– The following 2018 review was done by excerpting the first line or few in one post from each month last year. You can click on the name of the month for a full accounting.

January – I finally found a use for our plastic spinner sled that has no brakes or steering. It’s great for transporting snowman body parts.

February – You can’t know when you’re young that some choices are made only once, that lived moments recalled can’t live up to their originals. They’re like copies of copies of copies with details that blur over time, with pages that slip out of order.

March – I got disorientated after viewing the surreal art with double images, optical illusions and symbolism at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. With names like Exploding Raphaelesque Head, The Hallucinogenic Toreador, Portrait of My Dead Brother and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, I’m not surprised that by the time we ordered some Spanish cuisine at the museum café, I was sure that the menu was printed upside down when it wasn’t.

April – Six days after my laparoscopic surgery, I put on my bra for the first time. Three days later, I wore lipstick.

May – Yesterday, I spent the day with a cardinal named Clark Gable. You know I’ve been staying home too long when I start naming the birds at the feeder. I’ve been calling the finches “the golden girls” even though I know the yellow ones are males.

June – What a life I lead. One day I played Scrabble with a friend, the next I swam at the pool, and the next I got an acupuncture treatment. Even when I go to work, it’s to cover a concert.

July– “Let the rumpus start” kept going through my head when the family arrived to FloydfestWILD on Saturday. We made ourselves at home at the Oasis, the mid-field art installation, designed as “an oasis in the middle of the wild” where wild things can go to relax. We recognized other Wild Things there. It takes one to know one.

August -The whole reason for putting the Cinque Terre on my bucket list was that years ago I read Shirley Maclaine’s book about hiking the Camino and entertained the idea of making that month-long pilgrimage someday. The reality is, I don’t have the stamina to pull something like that off. The idea of taking shorter hikes in-between the colorful villages of The Cinque Terre after eating Italian food sounded so doable, and I liked the idea of swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.

September – My son Josh and Emily’s marriage over the weekend was the Woodstock of weddings. There was a flag procession, readings that made people cry, love professed, poetry, music, storytelling and more. A garland of marigolds from Emily’s flower farm was draped along the wedding platform that Josh built… Held at Josh’s woodfire pottery compound in Marshall NC, there was an elaborate flower archway, a flower portal and flower girls everywhere… Boots or barefoot, costumes or casual, some ate in the elegant dining tent, but most sat with food on the grass while Beatles music filled the air.

October – When Joe and I were recently at the new brew pub in town, Buffalo Mountain Brewery, I joked that drinking beer at the pub was going to be my new “practice.” Really, it gets me out of homebody recluse mode and helps to lighten me up. I love good craft beer, even though I usually can only handle a half pint. The whole pub lifestyle brings out the Irish (the best) in me, so much so that my new ambition is to become a pub regular. Scrabble anyone?

November – My grandson Liam (8) and I are getting so good at Monopoly that I had to buy more house pieces on Amazon.

December – A bonfire, a high tea and a slime making workshop are all on my calendar this month. I bought a calendar with pictures of Monet’s Garden when Joe and I were in Paris in August, but just now noticed it’s all in French with only French holidays marked down.

_______2017 Rear View Review is HERE.