valeriesbookofme

 “Do you like this one?” He showed her his latest creation, framed in the scrolled gold frame he used for all his works, exchanging one for the other almost daily. She screwed up her face. “No, not as much as the others,” she said carefully. She hated not being effusive about his efforts, knowing how excited he was about each drawing, how these drawings meant so much to him, the only “work” he felt he now produced.  Retirement was so much harder on men her age than on women she reflected. She herself was thankful not to have to go into an office at a set time anymore, wrangle with people, coax and cajole them, attend meetings where nothing was ever decided. Wiggle her feet in uncomfortable “office” shoes, surreptitiously adjust bra straps, straighten skirts.  Now she luxuriated in the morning when she awoke, looking at the time and thinking that she didn’t have to rush anywhere. She woke early out of habit and that, too, was a luxury, looking at the spreading light outside, burro

 Thanksgiving. So thankful for a quiet life right now. Election over, Trump almost gone. COVID still raging but it’s something I have just learned to live with. I escape into books and memories. I have spent a couple of hours reliving October and November 2016, when we decided to up sticks and move to Ireland. Reading the commentary as it happened, I am struck by how sure I was that this was meant to be, because my Irish citizenship came through, because our house on Softwind Drive sold so quickly, because it just seemed that everything was falling into place in October. However, reading about how much work and angst there actually was winding things up in November 2016, arranging for the dog to be flown over, saying goodbye to younger grandkids, I am so glad that today I am sitting in my den/bedroom NOT contemplating any big move. R and I did discuss moving back to Ireland--or somewhere else--a couple of months ago but thankfully, we decided to just let it all go until COVID is over

  I haven't written anything political for a very long time. As a matter of fact, I don't know if I have ever written anything--publicly--about American politics. My friends know I have a lot of opinions though. Between COVID and this presidential election, I have felt myself spiraling down and down over the past few months. COVID is bad enough, hearing so much bad news constantly, wondering if we will ever get back to "normal" again. If I will be able to travel outside of this fairly small bubble I am in. I did manage to get to La Jolla California last weekend and will be blogging about that soon but, even there, masks everywhere. Restaurants severely limited, hotels socially distanced. I enjoyed myself but overlaying the three days was a tinge of sadness for a world that is, currently, so much changed for the worse. And then we have the specter of Donald Trump possibly winning a further four years. I have followed the election cycle with an almost unhealthy ardor. P

 As I write this, forty one years ago, almost to the very minute, I gave birth to my one and only child. As birth stories go, the actual labour was pretty good, about 3 and a half hours. Felt like more than that, but, really, it was only the last hour that was super painful. As I reflect back today, I think it's funny that the person being born is the one who is feted. But the one who gave birth, well, she’s left to her own thoughts and memories. And yet, the person who gave birth is the one who got the greatest gift of all. Forty one years ago. I was living in a room in Teddington, England. The landlady was very kind, took me in when I really didn't have any other place to go. The woman I’d been sharing a flat with had said categorically that she didn’t want a baby in the flat and, actually, didn’t really want a pregnant roommate either. Although she did give me a very nice gift after Laurie was born so perhaps it was all too overwhelming for her. One thing I learned during m

There's a full moon tonight as I walk Mitzi around the neighborhood, as I have done for most of the past almost 9 years. With very few street lights, the neighborhood looks magical at night. Various house lamps twinkling, indoor lamplight spilling out through Arizona doors, the sound of people chatting. On one of the streets, there's a small street party going on, socially distanced of course. Someone is playing a keyboard in their garage and people have brought their lawn chairs.  Another month of this dreadful year has gone, we are edging closer to a hopefully better 2021. In our corner of Arizona, the COVID count continues to be low, almost flat. Elementary schools are open to in-class learning 5 days a week, the high schools are still part in-class, part online but that could change in a couple of weeks if the COVID numbers stay down. I have gone back to substitute teaching. Partly because I feel for the kids, I want to be part of their experience, a positive part. So far I

  I actually wrote the following in April, 2009, on a fitness blog I kept up with for many years. Ironically, I can't really remember why I was feeling so dispirited. Maybe because I was facing a hysterectomy, another move . . . I can't remember. And maybe, in another 10 years, I will read THIS blog and wonder why I felt so dispirited too. I can only hope. Inn of the Sixth Happiness Thursday, April 02, 2009 There's an old movie called Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman. A bit hokey but I always cry at the end. She plays the role of a woman working in a mission in China when the Japanese soldiers invade her area. She has to get 100 orphaned children across the Chinese mountains to another mission where they'll be taken to safety. 100 children of all ages, little food, across mountains crawling with Japanese soldiers.  Not surprisingly, they start to fall behind their schedule. They're following a map and she knows they're going to have a very hard tim

  My Audible book for dog walking this week is "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling. Rosling, who died in 2017, was a statistician/physician, very popular on Ted talks, presented at Davos and to the WHO, etc. But I hadn’t heard of him before. I picked the book up because it was an Audible recommendation and because I feel a kind of responsibility to alternate my escapist fiction/thrillers with non-fiction. Rosling loved stats and, in my listening so far, has talked about how we tend toward negative thinking—something my mindfulness lecturer has also said—but, really, according to statistics from the United Nations, the world is getting better, not worse. He described how, since the 1990s, he has posed several questions to classes and audiences about issues such as life span across the world, extreme poverty, education, etc. He "proved" through his stats that so many of these issues HAD improved worldwide to a much greater degree than his audience had expected.  I admit tha

  I just finished listening to Joan Didion's "Year of Magical Thinking," read by Vanessa Redgrave. It's become my morning ritual these past few months, to listen to an Audible book as I walk Mitzi. It helps motivate me to get out on these early mornings, when it's already getting hot, when part of me would just like to stay in bed all day. As I would think many of we elders ARE doing as somehow society has no call for our participation. As COVID shrinks participation of so many people. But getting out so early in the morning means that I get to witness the beautiful sunrises, the hummingbirds flitting, hawks hunting. And I get to meet briefly with Dick and his basset hound Shaggy, with Jeanie and her mutt Finnegan (some boxer in him but only in his nose, the rest is small), Joanne and her chocolate lab Kia, and Bev and her hound Penny. Lots of brief encounters with wide-ranging discussions about Trump and the state of the U.S. (bad, Dick and I agree), family histo

 Eighteen years ago my daughter got married at Mount Timpanogos in Utah. It was a very, very hot day and because "Timp" was the IN Temple for BYU students that year, the only slot that was available for the sealing--Mormon-speak for the marriage ceremony--was at 5 p.m., when it was still very hot and the temple was mobbed. We were lucky that the photographer managed to get shots without swarms of people around.  The wedding photos show us all lined up for the official photograph in front of the Temple, sweating in our wedding gear, R wearing his weird cowboy shirt and odd tie in a sea of suits with the Mormon standard white shirts and ties. I think I will just share this one, with the four of us, Richard and I a little stunned.  It would have been so nice had we had the wedding in Canada, with friends and family from our own side. Instead, it was in Utah, where neither set of parents lived but which was where the bride and groom wanted it to be. CJ's family, whom we met f

More than halfway through the year, a year that has been so very brutal. The virus, which brought an economic recession, and a president who is completely inadequate to deal with anything that isn't booming good news. Who is so thoroughly untrustworthy that I fear that he will "win" in this November's election. How anyone with any shred of decency could vote for him makes me despair of what we have come to morally and ethically. Some people say that the virus is God's judgement on the world. I don't really think that God works like that. The virus is judgement on a world where money means more than humans, where we have globalized our markets but not our concern for others, where even in the midst of COVID, a billionaire spent an obscene amount of money to launch a rocket to send "civilians" to the space station.  As if that space station has done any good for humanity in all the years it has been orbiting. At almost the very same time that the Sp

Could we have solved world hunger, achieved world peace, if someone, usually unsung and  unheard but with the perspective of truly caring for the world, had felt confident enough to speak publicly? Had been respected enough to be listened to? I was listening to my audiobook, "The Equivalents," this morning as I walked the dog. In the book the author describes a passionate lecture given by Tillie Olsen about how creativity--the act of creating something--takes time, energy, money, education. Something that the poor and so many women (who are disproportionately the poor and enslaved,) don't have. Virginia Woolf argued the same in 1928 in her essay "A Room of One's Own." I think this paragraph sums Woolf's argument up beautifully: "Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time. Indeed if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; v

What do you say about an epidemic that has changed so much of life? I look back to two and a half months ago and at the time it seemed that the virus was like a flu. A bad flu, yes. But was it going to affect our lives? I didn't have a clue about how much.  On March 18th I wrote about how my trip to Ireland had been cancelled and there was a shortage of toilet paper and ground beef in the stores. But we hadn't yet been given the "stay at home" order and many businesses were still open. That changed on March 31st when Governor Ducey said that only essential businesses would be able to stay open. There was some confusion at first as to what an "essential" business was but it eventually came down to groceries, pharmacies, hardware stores and doctor's offices of course. The big hardware stores like Lowes and Home Depot were allowed to remain open which meant that their garden centers could remain open. Something that proved a boon for Richard as he plan

This is a photo of RCAF airman Jack Forrest, taken around 1943-1944. Jack was born in Montreal on April 5, 1921. He would have been 99 years old in a week if World War 2 hadn't intervened. Jack joined up when he was 18, joining the RCAF in Toronto for "general duties." For the next few years he served in various places in Canada and learned to love the skies. He was shipped over to Northern Ireland, to an RAF Base, RAF Archdale, near the border with the Republic of Ireland. He and his fellow crewmen flew Sunderland seaplanes and Catalinas up what was known as "The Donegal Corridor" into the Atlantic, hunting for German submarines that would surface overnight to charge their batteries. They carried depth charges.  (photo courtesy of Chuck Singer, by email) The Donegal Corridor was named such because, during World War 2, the Republic of Ireland was neutral while Northern Ireland, as a part of the UK, was at war. The RAF needed a way to fly wes