As the week begins...Reading, Receiving and Living the Signs

As the week...How do you read, receive and live the signs that come across your path?

I read on an electronic sign last week: "God gives peace when you are in pieces." This message stayed with me during last week when I first read the message as I sat in traffic. I remembered the message because I openly received it. I lived the words throughout the week by offering a kind word to others and passing the peace of Christ. I had been given that Monday when I read the sign to others in need through a small kindness – even if it was through a smile. Live the Word.

As I drove through the streets of Renton, Washington yesterday, I read the following two signs:

Go and pass the peace this week!

Toby the Dog

I have enjoyed books and movies like:  “A Dog’s Purpose, Rin Tin Tin,” “Lassie,” “Marley & Me” and “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” which is set in Seattle. And a big shout out to Edmonds, Washington author Kizzie Elizabeth Jones and her books:  “How Dachshunds Came to Be: A Tall Tale About a Short Long Dog (Volume 1”  and  “A Tall Tale About a Dachshund and a Pelican: How a Friendship Came to Be (Tall Tales).”

With the darkness and overcast of the Seattle winter, I have left my apartment windows closed until now. I also have left the blinds down because the tenant across the alley, who watches reruns of “The Office,” looks, smiles, gives me two thumbs up and mouths “Good form” as I play the Wii.

I have opened the blinds every evening this week in hopes of Vitamin D reaching me. Instead, I have found a dog, who guards the alley from his owner’s apartment window. I have named him Toby. His inquisitiveness delights me.  He is better than Lassie and hearing, “Timmy fell down the well.”

Last Man NOT Standing

I am sorry that "Last Man Standing" has been cancelled. I am a liberal, who lives in Seattle, and I faithfully watch the show. I like that the show honesty speaks the characters truth and talks openly about church and Christianity - especially family values. Freedom of speech comes in all forms. People are welcomed to speak there truth as long as it is in peace and love.

If ABC is short for the "American" Broadcasting Company, you are not being American at Broadcasting a message that certainly has a place in our world. ABC is living the Company or corporation in their name. Syndication of "Last Man Standing" will add to your bottom line.

I am disgusted with ABC's programming of "Match Game." Then to hear the language of Randall Park from "Fresh off the Boat" used on "Match Game." I have stopped watching Park's sitcom.

I like watching "Blackish" with their messages. I like watching "The Middle." Do you plan cancel "The Middle?" Sometimes we need to live our lives in the middle.

I will miss Mike Baxter and his family on Friday evenings.

Enter the Hall of Mirrors & Honestly Express Yourself

Always be yourself. Express yourself. Have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it. - Bruce Lee

Look n the mirror. What do you see?  A distorted reflection of yourself, masked by the perceptions and expectations of others? Or do you see your true self, shining from the inside out? Spend time in the Hall of Mirrors or look in any mirror, and reflect on Bruce’s words. Take a few deep breaths and meditate on what they mean for your life. Ask yourself how you can now turn that meaning into action.

Better yet, look at the reflection in the mirror and ask, "How can I honestly express myself?"

From a Day in the Life of Bruce Lee: Do you know Bruce? Part 3 at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience

With love for my mother on this Mother's Day

The original movie “Beaches” that opened in December 1988, and I gave my Mom the cassette tape from the film’s soundtrack for Mother’s Day 1989. I wrote a message in her Mother’s Day card about the song, “Wind Beneath My Wings," which was a personal one only between mother and daughter.

The following lyrics resonant with my today:

“I can fly higher than an eagle,

For you are the wind beneath my wings…

Fly, fly, fly away. You let me fly so high…”

And some may find this song a sad one so I encourage you to think of it as a song about mother and child and good parenting. When is it time for a child to leave the nest? Have you allowed your child to fly? My mother did even though it was hard.

I thank my Mom because she has allowed me to fly, make my own mistakes, learn from them, and be my own person.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mary Jane Shaffer!

https://youtu.be/jorJh8DTMVM

Interface

May Day in Seattle. May all interface peacefully.

Interface by Phillip Levine circa 1982 — at Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park, Renton, WA

Dreams Don’t Die (Easily) #1

 I believe that dreams don’t die. Maybe we bury them due to life’s busyness or maybe it is financial. Maybe some of us are stuck. I have found myself stuck in a rut with my wheels spinning. I have discarded many dreams along the road side, not as speed bumps to slow me down but as garbage for a crew in orange jumpsuits to pick up.

I read the comics in The Seattle Times every day. I usually read Luann, Betty, and Between Friends to name a few. I was drawn to Crankshaft on Monday, April 24, 2017. The comic did not focus on Crankshaft. The focus was on Crankshaft’s next door neighbor, Lillian McKenzie. I read all week. It concluded on Saturday, April 29, 2017 with the following: 

Please see these links: http://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2017-04-26

http://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2017-04-27

http://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2017-04-28 for my highlights from Crankshaft this week.

Last evening, I noticed a familiar figure down the block. It was Karin, who is a business owner and entrepreneur with a heart for others. We talked and talked and talked as we walked to her car. The last thing mentioned was about me writing a book.

I contemplated writing a book as I walked home. I made my way home and walked through my apartment door. The thought was still with me. I had readied for bed. The thought was still with me. I lit a candle, and I sat down and stared into the flame. I reflected.

I first met Cathy Walker, who was a close childhood friend and Edgewood Park neighbor, in Miss Hammer’s third grade at Washington Center Elementary School. I shared with Cathy that I wanted to be an author in the fifth grade. (I also wanted to attend clown school but I wasn’t sure about how to drive the car.)

I shared with my Aunt Judy and Cousin Amy that I begun writing this book last summer.  Here is the working Preface:

Preface

“Even then, more than a year earlier, there were neurons in her head, not far from her ears, that were being strangled to death, too quietly for her to hear them. Some would argue that things were going so insidiously wrong that the neurons themselves initiated events that would lead to their own destruction. Whether it was molecular murder or cellular suicide, they were unable to warn her of what was happening before they died.   From Still Alice by Lisa Genova.

I was shopping on a rainy Seattle evening at my local Quality Food Center. My usual path after making my purchases was to stop by the magazine rack and thumb through the Star magazine. I read my horoscope because my Grandma Ruby Kirby would buy the weekly Star tabloid to me in junior high and in high school.

One this particular evening, I read the horoscope and smiled. I then took pause at the book rack as one cover caught my eye. It was Still Alice by Lisa Genova.  An endorsement by USA Today was on the cover: A poignant portrait of Alzheimer’s…Not a book you will forget.

Maybe I do want to forget. I work in a continuing care retirement community and spend time with residents, who have dementia, but mostly my Grandma has dementia. Do I want to pick up a fictional book about my nonfictional work and life? I watch residents daily in the decline that could not be stopped no matter how their families looked for that pill...a photograph that possibly would jog a memory…that memory game.  Nor could my Grandma’s decline be slowed.

I picked up the book, and I read the words beginning with Even then…and ending with…they were unable to warn her of what was happening before they died. I closed the book. I made one more purchase before leaving the QFC. I read Still Alice in two evenings.

Look through my eyes...is not Still Alice. It is the story of my Grandma. Even though many of the stories are true, it is a fictional story. I wondered what she remembered when she could no longer verbalize her thoughts. I am filling in Grandma’s thoughts. I am giving her words. Maybe the words were her own. Or maybe out of my hope she had thoughts and words that brought her peace and a quality of life that I will never understand. I will always remember the laughter and love.”

I have written and rewritten the manuscript 5-times. Once the candle burned out and the room became dark, I understood why Look Through my Eyes never seemed right. I wrote it to try to please others, not from my authentic self and how I experienced my Grandma through my memories.

I believe this dream is not suppose to die (yet). One more try to keep the dream alive.