Sheila in Wonderland

Today, somehow, I was quite sure it was Tuesday for much of the day. I know I wrote the correct date on more than one check, but the date meant little to me, and it was Tuesday in my mind.

Only in the grocery store, as I was thinking about supper plans for the evenings remaining in the week, did I begin to get suspicious and realize that things weren't adding up when I thought back over the earlier part of the day, yesterday, and the day before that! I called Drazen just to be sure, and learned that my doubts were valid. Today was, and still is, Wednesday.

Of course being out of the routine of the past 4.5 years is certainly part of the reason such confusion might occur. But I suspect it also has to do with the fact that I took a walk in the park. And it's the same park I wrote about earlier having forsythia blooming a couple of weeks ago:




And today, that same park was covered in snow, and even had icy spots here and there:







I'm quite sure that the park cast a spell on me. The quiet stillness of the snow, the beauty of it, and that oddness of having ice and snow after forsythia had bloomed, combined with the way it took me back to childhood walks in snowy woods, all combined to remove me somewhat from the realm of calendar watching and careful time keeping. For a little while there, it just didn't matter what order things were happening in.

I'm good at finding creative ways to keep from admitting I'm absent-minded. :-)

And these are, tah-dah, the first photos I've put on my blog taken on my cellphone. I have so many stored on the phone that I've never known how to access, I'm thinking-- now that I know how to get to them--I may just do a cellphone series in the near future.

Do you see what I see?

I was struck by the design of it; in fact, it struck me as beautiful, so I ran and got the camera.


It's clearer here,



though I was also fascinated by the steam covering my lens and the way it affected my visibility so quickly.



We are surrounded by so much we take for granted, are we not?



They tasted good, too.

Endings and Beginnings

Yesterday was our hoped-for official last day at work. My co-worker Ben managed to make it so, but I've still got some things to do that require the input of our manager, who has been out of town for the inauguration. So I'll be going back to the office at least one more time, but for the most part, it's over.

This is a card I had up on my door for most of the time we were at our old building. There, I had a collage of such cards with sayings on my door. When we moved into the new, more sophisticated building, it just didn't seem appropriate to tape things all over the slick wooden door, so I didn't. Except for this one. I didn't know then that we were going to be laid off, but there were forebodings, so even though I put it up for the sake of my clients (who are generally dealing with losses of some sort), perhaps I knew I also needed the reminder.

At any rate, I'm sore from moving lots of books yesterday. I knew there were a lot of books, but they seem like more in boxes than they did on bookshelves.

I'm also a little sore, admittedly, about the whole thing. It's hard to leave a place with no official "thank you" or "good-bye" or anything. It was made harder by the fact that the very evening we were packing up and moving out, the medical providers were having a meeting/dinner in the room right across the hall. So it meant we were walking through their buffet waiting line, back and forth to our cars. And then they left the door open all evening, so each time we took a box or bag of things out, we could see some of them and knew they could see us. Awkward, to say the least. And I'll leave it at saying the least, rather than saying the most I could.

The main effect of this for me was that I felt a bit cheated. The thoughts and feelings provoked by being so obviously excluded crowded out all the thoughts and feelings I had imagined I would have in the moment of packing up my office. You know, the memories, the images of clients I saw for longer periods of time, the thankfulness for the time and experiences, the comaraderie experienced with certain staff members, the little lump I expected to rise in my throat at some point.

There was none of that. Just trying to deal with the awkwardness of carrying those boxes out, hungry, with the aroma of chicken and potatoes and green beans and warm bread in the air, and that open door a continual reminder of the lack of comaraderie between us and the powers that be.

On the other hand, in a way it made it much easier to be leaving. I will say that. It's not that I think the doctors and nurses didn't care that we were leaving. My guess is that they didn't know what to say, felt uncomfortable. The way some people are at funerals. (And some, I'm sure, didn't even know who we were, though most did.) For whatever reasons, it wasn't deemed important to say goodbye to us, and that made it easier for me to say goodbye to the place. Even though I'm not quite finished, it felt very much like The End.

And another story is just beginning. And I'm eager to see how it is going to go.


(I have a feeling I'll get to see more sunrises now, like this one out my home office window last week.)

Who cross the ocean

They change their skies, but not their soul, who cross the ocean.

I've read that in various translations, but that's the first way I ever heard it, and it stuck.

Today I was talking with my neighbor across the street and had a strange moment. She had given us a wonderful cake she made as a holiday gift. So today I (finally) returned her plate and took her a Pandoro as a gift. (I checked; they're good through mid-February.) I mentioned that I used to love them when I lived in Italy, and had found these here unexpectedly at the store....

"You lived in Italy?" she asked. I could tell this came as a surprise to her. Which came as a surprise to me, because with this neighbor I have this sense of a deeper level of friendship. Not because we talk very often, and we've never done more than stand or sit on her porch and talk. But the talk has gone pretty deep, and she strikes me as a deep woman.

And it was strange to realize that she didn't even know that I've lived in Italy. I've lived under different skies, but my soul is just my soul. I guess there's nothing about me that says "lived overseas." She may think, as many do, that I met Drazen here, that he came to America like so many foreigners, not realizing that had I not gone there, he might not have come here.

Anyway, she said she'd always thought she'd like to go to Italy, and she imagined herself sitting in a gondola, with a gondoliere singing over her.

And I wish so much I could make that happen for this dear woman. If I ever see a way to do it, I think I will. I just don't see it now!

So, some photos from my last visit to Venice....

It was a rainy, rainy deluge of a day, so all my pictures are dark. I chose these because of how spots of color break up the darkness. Well, the first not so much. But you can actually see the rain falling there. Then the yellow flowers, then the yellow paint on the wall. Little bits of sunshine on a rainy day.

Random Thoughts

I saw the moon tonight over Superlo grocery store and am thinking how the moon really does look super when she is low in the sky....

And it just struck me that "super" comes from the word meaning "above," so Superlo is somewhat oxymoronic if you take it etymologically literally....

I saw forsythia blooming on Wednesday, and daffodils coming up today, which concerns me, because it's very, very early. We've had so many ups and downs with the temperatures!

We went for a walk in the Botanic Garden today and spoke to a little blonde boy who was playing near a small pond. His immediate response was, "Do you have a GPS?" When we said no, he said, "It's too bad. You shoulda buyed one," and went on to tell us that his dad's GPS was helping him find dew cats. I asked what a dew cat was, and he led us to a small black plastic box near the edge of the wooden bridge. He opened it excitedly and showed us what it contained--a few small plastic toys, a paper (which looked perhaps like a map?) in a plastic bag, a pencil....He showed us how his dad and he hid it under the bridge. He told us how the GPS would help you find dew cats anywhere! In Japan, Australia, anywhere!

As we walked on we encountered the dad, who said the Japan bit (all he'd heard) was a stretch. A bit later I realized that the boy must have been thinking of ducats and had been on a treasure hunt with his dad. It was wonderful to witness such imagination (on the part of both father and son) and to meet a child so trusting and eager to share his excitement and his hidden treasure with perfect strangers. I wish all young people could do that.

"Lessemployment" looms ever nearer. I can't call it unemployment, because I will continue with my piano students, no matter what. I've had interesting possibilities come up here and there and am still waiting to hear from my chief hoped-for possibility.

Perhaps the most interesting thing has been having a call from a new piano student's parent, who got my name from the music store where I shop. It turns out they live right next door to a former student of mine, and this father is a surgeon at Drazen's clinic. But he knew none of that, just got my name from the music store. It almost feels as if invisible forces were at work! This is a city of thousands of people, after all, and I am not the only piano teacher in this zip code, I know for a fact.

Finally, reflecting on Lucy's comment about my shoe photo from the previous post, I was looking at it and thinking, "What does this say about me?" And realized that the shoes are lined up on one of the wool rugs from Grandmother's house, a rug that was part of my life for sure by age 4 (I remember those rugs from that age and have also seen photos), and probably from the time before I wore shoes.

And I wonder if only English majors think about such things and the symbolism of it all. I have no standing in this world without the foundation that I came from, the people who gave me a place to stand....My shoes alone can't take me anywhere that someone else didn't make possible.

And now you know why people write poetry. Because such thoughts about the moon and grocery stores, or shoes and rugs, just sound a bit odd when you say it in non-poetic form!

Christmas Twelfth Night

Thankfully, when Christmas ends, there is Epiphany to look forward to....I have the hardest time taking down the decorations, which I must go and do now.

I got brave and bought another rosemary "treecic" and have manged to keep it alive thus far. It was wonderful today snipping little "branches" and using them in some potatoes. I think if I ever have an office with windows, I may try growing one to use during that afternoon, afterlunch time, when I get so sleepy. That pungent scent might just make a difference in the quality of service my clients get from me at the 2:00 and 3:00 appointments!


An unexpected Christmas gift was Drazen's decision to have me line up all my shoes so he could clean and polish them. (This is the lineup before the work began.)


A candle from Grandmother's table, and a beautiful box of biscotti with the Florentine stationery pattern, purchased during our adventures in Texas. I never knew I could love orange as much as I do in this square foot of life.


I think this looks so nice, I may just leave it up until winter is over....


Card that arrived today from Fric and Lidija in Slovenija. I love it.


And love the stamps, too! Not to mention the people who live in Slovenske Konjice and somehow manage to remember their faraway friends.

Happy New Year, Buon Anno, and Sretna Nova Godina, to all my friends who read this here (and for the most part never comment!) I hope your 2009 has had as lovely a start as ours and that we will all grow in loving all of God's creation this year, "the whole and every grain of sand in it."

Addendum: I just realized that likely no one reading this, except those bilingual in English/Croatian, which would mean a grand sum of two regular readers, will have any idea what a "treecic" is. It's not a word. It's "tree" with the Croatian diminutive suffix added...something like a "tree-ette," I guess.

Christmas Seventh Day

Here are the pansies, those cold-defying, hope-inspiring cheerer-uppers. This photo was taken after two overnight freezes, in which they shriveled up and looked quite pitiful--and then came to life again with a warmer day. Our weather has been extremely variable lately. One morning when I checked, it was 31 degrees, with an expected high of 59, which it did reach by afternoon.

Maybe the weather has affected us.

We leave tomorrow for a rather impromptu trip to the Dallas area, to visit friends, and possibly on to Abilene.

In a way it feels like a bigger trip than flying to Europe does! We've been to Europe several times since the last time we went to Texas, so Texas seems farther away.

If we can finally be making this long-promised trip to Texas, then anything is possible.

Happy New Year!

Christmas from Our House to Yours

As you can see, my blog supports the traditional twelve days of Christmas. As does my house decor, which will be up until January 6. Here's a little tour....Six photos for the sixth day....


The cotton boll on the left is from a field on the way to Grandmother's house. The roses in the photo behind it are some she gave me many years ago when we had been to visit. The photo on the right is us at Zadar a couple of years ago.


The tiny tree has been with us since our first Christmas in America, fourteen years ago. One of my favorite ornaments is the clay cutout with the white ribbon, made by our friend Andreja in Croatia.


"Glory to God in the highest!" He's really singing with gusto. This is from the presepio...how do we say it...creche?....given to us by our friends Karen and Rich, made by a sculptor friend of theirs. Maybe I can do some more photos of it for another post. This guy is about two inches high.


A Santa container that belonged to Grandmother, which I remember being there when I was a child. To me this was the real face of Santa Claus. I don't recall ever "believing in Santa Claus," but I remember thinking this is what he ought to look like if he did exist in the way the tales told.


Front wooden door.


Front outer door.


Merry Christmas!

Christmas Gift

Look what my sweet husband gave me for Christmas!

Here is the Andy Warhol version:



And here is a more palatable version:



It is a bracelet (I think that much is obvious) that I found months and months ago and showed to him. And he remembered. Or maybe he got it way back then, I don't know because I haven't asked. But he remembered and gave it to me. And I just love it.

And I just love him, too.

(You can't quite tell, but it has the entire first part of the "prayer of St. Francis," a slightly abridged version, inscribed on it. And it is in the form of a Mobius/Moebius strip, which means there are not two "sides" to the circle, it continues continually, a symbol of infinity. I first learned about this form from Parker Palmer when he spoke at Rhodes College a few years ago, about community....anyway, it's a special gift, for many reasons.)

Christmas Clouds

On Christmas Day, I spent a few hours in the kitchen making my most-authentic-I-have-ever-found, i.e., most-closely-resembling-what-I've-eaten-in-Florence, recipe for lasagne pasticciate. It takes between three and four hours, and, no, that doesn't include making your own pasta. I don't do it often, but it had been a very long time since I made it, so that's what we took to my parent's house for Christmas dinner with family. Along with a crostata di mele, something like apple pie, but not so sweet, and the crust is unlike any pie crust I've had here.

We left around 3, which meant we were driving into the sun.

And the road to Searcy does not have many trees along much of it. It's those huge fields, which I wrote about last Christmas, when I witnessed the angels in the form of geese ascending and descending....

So, that meant I was wearing two pair of sunglasses for much of the trip. (I have very sensitive eyes, perhaps fodder for a post unto itself.) Here I was trying to get a picture of that, though I'm not sure you can tell, unless perhaps you enlarge and look very closely, but I don't know that it's worth the effort if you're willing to just take my word for it.


But once the sun eased a little closer to the horizon, I was able to remove the outer pair of glasses, and eventually the other pair as well.

And it was really quite lovely. These photos are taken through the window, of course, but I think they turned out pretty well. Perhaps someday I'll learn to use Photoshop or something, but for now I enjoy taking my best shot and letting it be. I think that's actually a combination of wanting things to stay simple, and also being lazy....

You can see some of the wide fields here, and mostly the clouds, which made me feel I was witnessing an impressionistic artist at work. It made me wish we could listen to Respighi's "Clouds" while we were driving, but, alas, it was not to be found. (I don't think we even have a copy in the house.)