Marsh maze  

Savannah Flowers 

Let the rain fall down and wash away my ...allergies?

It rained yesterday.

This in itself, is not necessarily noteworthy, except to me.

You see, when you live in Savannah, Georgia you are subjected once a year to an overwhelming cloud of yellow pollen dust that literally buries you and anything else in it’s wake alive. Houses, cars, patio furniture, even your children will be covered in the offending tree sperm for several weeks, while the flora and fauna put on a spectacular display of flowers! Although dazzling in it’s own right, if you’re an allergy sufferer, this will also be the month of pure hell you’ve read about in horror novels!

I’m not a big fan of the rain, but I do know that everything has its purpose in life. Yesterday, the rain was particularly welcoming to me as I watched the downpour from the shelter of my own hermitically sealed home. I could see the cleansing affect it was having on the neighborhood as it washed away the pollen… swirling yellow rivers of water flowing freely into the gutters, taking with it all the misery the powder evokes.

Once the rain stops, there is a brief moment when I can open my windows without the fear of poisoning my home. Fresh air can permeate inside, if only for a brief respite and I can breathe freely, sort of, for the next ten minutes.

It’s important to remember to quickly close everything back up though, or risk the yellow dust entering through the windows, only to ruin the interior of your home. Curtains will be destroyed forever if exposed to yellow pollen dust, as will everything it comes in contact.

My posts will be fewer, and make less sense the coming weeks, as I medicate with antihistamines. I tend to develop the personality of a rock, while under the influence of Benadryl and as far as I’m aware….rocks have little of interest to talk about.

I’ll post a picture of Savannah and her flowers.

Bathe in her beauty,
and know that I will return
once the dust settles.

Some Details

Back in my younger days, I used to date a few guys who had motorcycles.
On beautiful days, when the weather was good, we would load up on to a motorcycle and ride the country roads of North Atlanta, up in the mountains. I loved it!

Many years later, the thrill of riding never eluded me, and I ended up buying a motorcycle last summer. I was convinced me that while riding on the back might be fun, there was nothing like the experience of riding solo. I was right. I would venture to say that I looked at, and sat on a million different bikes, before I found a good deal on a used Vulcan 500 that was being sold by a woman rider who wanted to upgrade to a bigger bike. Her husband was the owner of a motorcycle shop, so the Vulcan was in pristine condition, and absolutely felt perfect for me!
With an impulse reaction,
I bought it!

Impulses, (or brief moments of insanity as I like to call them), override any sensible conscious thought patterns I might conceive and tend to make me do crazy things like…well…
buy a motorcycle for instance.

Case in point: I know it’s crazy…. I can’t decide on the blue shirt or the red shirt when I’m getting dressed in the morning….but a motorcycle?…

“Oh yes I’ll take it please. Does it come in purple”?

After riding the Vulcan for a summer, I couldn’t help but notice how heavy it was.

Let me reiterate.

After I dropped it two times in the garage, once at a stop sign, and once at River Street, without being able to even budge the darn thing back to an upright position, …

I couldn’t help but notice how heavy it was!

Four times my weight at least, and impossible to budge if it wasn’t in motion. I’m just not that big, and I felt like the bike was over powering me.

It’s a miracle the bike wasn’t broken into smithereens, but it survived every time, and when I sold it to another woman rider the following winter….it still looked great!

Spring is here, and now I’ve got the fever again.
This time another perfect deal presented itself on ebay that I couldn’t refuse.
A used bike from a female rider, also in pristine condition.

I made my bid, and left it up to fate if I would win.

Seems I’m the proud owner of a Honda Nighthawk 250 now. It’s a much smaller bike, with a much lighter curb weight and a seat height that is more accommodating of my long legs. I think it will have more of the same feel like the street legal dirt bikes we rode In Costa Rica, and those…. were a lot of fun!

I’ll take a picture of it once it’s been repainted some other color than it's current red.

Now I’ve got to get ready for work!
Have a great day!

Could it be mid life already?

I’ve lost my mind.
This I know for three reasons.

1. I’m watching the movie “Spice World”.
2. I seem to know them all by name.

And the number 3 reason, ladies and gentleman, why I know I’ve lost my mind?

I just bought another motorcycle.

I’ll write more when I come to.

One theory...

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a woman and a mother in today’s society. Partly because I experience both on a daily basis, but more so because I have noticed many other Mommie’s writing on their blogs about their own struggles with juggling parenting, work, health, weight, sexual desire and maintaining a healthy marital relationship.

I could discuss all the thoughts I’ve had regarding the conflicting emotions we face… but I found someone who’s already discussed one theory better than I could have. So I’ve just decided to post some of her excerpts instead.

Judith Warner, Author of “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety” delves into the very core of how women, in their late 20’s to early 40’s juggle the contradictory messages we’ve been brought up believing regarding motherhood and “having it all”.

(Now’s your opportunity to exit if this topic doesn’t interest you. Otherwise,…you might want to read on, and let me know what you think).

Without further ado:

“Back in the days when I was a Good Mommy, I tried to do everything right. I breast-fed and co-slept, and responded to each and every cry with anxious alacrity. I awoke with my daughter at 6:30 AM and, eschewing TV, curled up on the couch with a stack of books that I could recite in my sleep. I did this, in fact, many times, jerking myself back awake as the clock rounded 6:45 and the words of Curious George started to merge with my dreams.
Was I crazy? No—I was a committed mother, eager to do right by my child and well-versed in the child care teachings of the day. I was proud of the fact that I could get in three full hours of high-intensity parenting before I left for work; prouder still that, when I came home in the evening, I could count on at least three more similarly intense hours to follow. It didn't matter that, in my day job as a stringer for this magazine, I was often falling asleep at my desk. Nor that I'd lost the ability to write a coherent sentence. My brain might have been fried, but my baby's was thriving.


Once my daughters began school, I was surrounded, it seemed, by women who had surrendered their better selves—and their sanity—to motherhood and appeared to be sleep-walking through life in a state of quiet panic. Some of the mothers appeared to have lost nearly all sense of themselves as adult women. They dressed in kids' clothes—overall shorts and go-anywhere sandals. They ate kids' foods. They were so depleted by the affection and care they lavished upon their small children that they had no energy left, not just for sex, but for feeling like a sexual being. "That part of my life is completely dead," a working mother of two told me. "I don't even miss it. It feels like it belongs to another life. Like I was another person."
Why do so many otherwise competent and self-aware women lose themselves when they become mothers? Why do so many of us feel so out of control? And—the biggest question of all—why has this generation of mothers, arguably the most liberated and privileged group of women America has ever seen, driven themselves crazy in the quest for perfect mommy-dom?

I think of "us" as the first post-baby boom generation, girls born between 1958 and the early 1970s, who came of age politically in the Carter, Reagan and Bush I years. We are, in many ways, a blessed group. Most of the major battles of the women's movement were fought—and won—in our early childhood. Unlike the baby boomers before us, who protested and marched and shouted their way from college into adulthood, we were a strikingly apolitical group, way more caught up in our own self-perfection as we came of age, than in working to create a more perfect world. Good daughters of the Reagan Revolution, we disdained social activism and cultivated our own gardens with a kind of muscle-bound, tightly wound, über-achieving, all-encompassing, never-failing self-control that passed, in the 1980s, for female empowerment.

We saw ourselves as winners. We'd been bred, from the earliest age, for competition. Our schools had given us co-ed gym and wood-working shop, and had told us never to let the boys drown out our voices in class. Often enough, we'd done better than they had in school. Even in science and math. And our passage into adulthood was marked by growing numbers of women in the professions. We believed that we could climb as high as we wanted to go, and would grow into the adults we dreamed we could be. Other outcomes—like the chance that children wouldn't quite fit into this picture—never even entered our minds. Why should they have? Back then, when our sense of our potential as women was being formed, there was a general feeling of optimism
Work and motherhood could be balanced. It was all a question of intelligent "juggling."

But something happened then, as the 1990s advanced, and the Girls Who Could Have Done Anything grew up into women who found, as the millennium turned, that they couldn't quite ... get it together, or get beyond the stuck feeling that had somehow lodged in their minds.

Life happened. We became mothers. And found, when we set out to "balance" our lives—and in particular to balance some semblance of the girls and women we had been against the mothers we'd become—that there was no way to make this most basic of "balancing acts" work. Life was hard. It was stressful. It was expensive. Jobs—and children—were demanding. And the ambitious form of motherhood most of us wanted to practice was utterly incompatible with any kind of outside work, or friendship, or life, Most of us in this generation grew up believing that we had fantastic, unlimited, freedom of choice. Yet as mothers many women face "choices" on the order of: You can continue to pursue your professional dreams at the cost of abandoning your children to long hours of inadequate child care. Or: You can stay at home with your baby and live in a state of virtual, crazy-making isolation because you can't afford a nanny, because there is no such thing as part-time day care, and because your husband doesn't come home until 8:30 at night.

These are choices that don't feel like choices at all. They are the harsh realities of family life in a culture that has no structures in place to allow women —and men— to balance work and child-rearing. They've been bred to be independent and self-sufficient. To rely on their own initiative and "personal responsibility."
Instead of blaming society, moms today tend to blame themselves. They say they've chosen poorly. And so they take on the Herculean task of being absolutely everything to their children, simply because no one else is doing anything at all to help them. Because if they don't perform magical acts of perfect Mommy ministrations, their kids might fall through the cracks and end up as losers in our hard-driving winner-take-all society.

Women today mother in the excessive, control-freakish way that they do in part because they are psychologically conditioned to do so. But they also do it because, to a large extent, they have to. Because they are unsupported, because their children are not taken care of, in any meaningful way, by society at large. Because there is right now no widespread feeling of social responsibility—for children, for families, for anyone, really...and so they must take everything onto themselves. And because they can't, humanly, take everything onto themselves, they simply go nuts."


This is one idea. What do you think?

Making the trap! 

The note 

Method to the Madness

I was just too pooped yesterday evening to write about our St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans. Spending the whole day walking in the cold can do that to a person I suppose.

I woke up and got my son ready to be in the big parade downtown. My dearest friend and her husband’s family have a One Stop Wireless store with a float for the parade and everyone was invited to ride. We “greened up” then proceeded to cover every inch of it with coats and blankets because the weather, in traditional St. Patty’s style, was simply not going to cooperate! After an absolutely beautiful weekend…the temperature dropped into the 40’s then started to rain! Yay! It was very wet and cold, but didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirit!

After the parade we went out for some lunch, and ended up at the Shriner’s lodge to relax and unwind after the day’s events. We made it home in time for a dinner of Corned beef sandwiches, and crashed into bed from exhaustion.
Just for the record:
1. We did not consume the first drop of alcohol…no green beer…nothing.
2. We paid our respect to the many Irish families that live in Savannah and celebrate each year with this parade.
3. Yes, I decorated my dinner table with green shamrocks and St. Patrick’s day plates and
4. no…I don’t feel bad for commercializing a religious holiday.

I suppose I should elaborate and say that I tend to decorate for EVERY holiday, because I just find it more pleasant than being a bah humbug-ger and doing nothing. When I was a kid, my mother always decorated her home for the corresponding holiday, albeit there were fewer of them it seems back then, but never the less I think it made for wonderful memories that I still enjoy today.

I decorate for Christmas, I give my kids Valentines, and we dress up in nice clothes to go to Easter egg hunts each spring.

St. Patrick’s Day is such a huge holiday here in Savannah that I found it no problem to jump on the bandwagon for this occasion either. I used the opportunity to talk about Ireland, it’s history, some of their old traditions and superstitions, the kids looked for it on the map, we discussed, we learned ….and of course, I used it as another opportunity to create a family memory.

Exhibit A: The Leprechaun trap!
The kids create an elaborate trap out of a shoebox decorated with all of the things they think a little leprechaun would like. Shiny gold, green paper, stickers, rainbows ect.
Then it’s propped it up and baited it with the some Lucky Charms cereal. The kids go to bed giddy with the excitement at the possibility of catching a leprechaun and POLITELY asking him to SHARE his gold. The next morning, they awake to a trap that although had been triggered, did not manage to catch the little fella. He does, however, leave a trail of green confetti, a few gold coins, and a note to the kids telling them how clever the trap was and better “luck” next year! In all of his excitement, the leprechaun lost his little hat, and the kids were thrilled to find it!

Call me commercial… and tell me I’m ruining the sanctity of the world’s holidays by succumbing to the marketing ploys of corporate America if you will…but I choose to look at it differently.

I’ll find any opportunity I can to create family moments and memories, while teaching my children something at the same time, in a fun way that catches their attention.

As with everything in life…it’s all about balance.

Making sure to teach the history and values that go along with the silly celebrations, seems far more productive than leaving children to interpret this big confusing world on their own.
But that’s just me.

Now I’m off to go find the Easter decorations in the garage!

The Trap 

Even Santa is Irish today! 

The float 

My father and I 

Me and My Vulcan 

I’m getting the fever again.

With the weather the way it has been these last few days…sunshine, fresh crisp air, it’s obvious that Spring is in the making and I can just hear that familiar tune of the open road resonating from the metal and chrome.

Get your Motor running…
head out on the highway….
Looking for adventure…

It was a beautiful weekend and there were a million bikers out enjoying the moment. Wind blowing through their hair, sensations of leather against their skin, the exhilarating sensations from the vibrations of the engines.
wait…
what was I talking about again?
Oh yes.
The indescribable feeling of being out on the open road on a motorcycle.

I sold my motorcycle last summer and for a while I didn’t think about it much. It’s too cold and windy during the winter, so riding is put on the back burner anyways. But the minute the temperature reaches the 70’s and 80’s, the bikers come out of the woodwork. You see them everywhere, riding in groups, or you’ll pass the occasional lone rider out enjoying a solitary afternoon.

Here in Savannah, we have a great pizza place called Vinnie’s and it’s the local gathering place for bikers out on a Sunday ride. Everyone sits outside café style, and the unmistakable sound of Harley’s intermingled with various other models make for a most spectacular entertainment. There’s a waiting list to get a table but no one seems to mind because there are rows of gleaming motorcycles lined up for everyone to admire.

Now don’t get me wrong and mistake me for a rough and tough biker babe.
I’m a novice,
and a chicken shit to boot!
You won’t find me actually riding around the roads in anything less than full black leather attire, black boots, leather gloves, and a full face helmet because I want every inch of my skin covered. Oh…and about that hair blowing in the wind thing?
I put mine up in a ponytail and bind the tail in a leather hair wrap preventing it from flailing about and becoming a tangled mess.

I’m inclined to say that if you met me, you’d never peg me for someone who rides. But I do…and I love it!
In a…safe…responsible…uh, controlled, sort of way.

And let’s talk about how heavy motorcycles are can we? With a curb weight that’s about 4 times my own weight, it can get kind of tricky trying to hold it up while not in motion. Motion is a good thing… you’re moving, gravity helps to hold you upright. It’s a scientific wonder. Just try to move one around in a garage though, when you need to get it out of the way of the car door without dropping it on it’s side? Not that I ever dropped my bike or anything like that..(ahem) oopsie!


I’ve been looking again at bikes and maybe I’ll be an owner once again. It’s a thought.
I’m contemplating,
but you know me and decisions. –sigh-

S 

hmmmmm.....

I don’t have a darn thing to write about today.
Nothing of interest to any other living soul as far as I can tell, unless of course you’re just particularly fond of hearing about all the paperwork I did this afternoon, or this great barking cough I’ve still got going on.

Not interested?
I didn’t think so.

I’ll just post something hokey today instead.

Behold:

Speedy the Hamster

Please don’t let the excitement of it all prevent you from saying hello and telling me how cute our little rat is.

Speedy 

In the Name of Research

Stop by Bitchitude and answer her brief questionaire to help her with a school research assignment. (It's important to help our sistah's who have returned to college) She needs 100 respondents and it only takes a second. Thank you!!!

Turbo Taxing

……. Add the additional investment income, minus the losses, carry the one, plus the charitable contributions, deduct the kid………

I’m Turbo Taxing.
Need caffeine.
And obviously more deductions.
Isn‘t this fun?

……..ignore the rental real estate royalties, partnerships, S corporations, and trusts, (cancel the vacation plans), add child support and alimony income…(falls out of seat laughing) …what child support or alimony income? Never saw it before?…erase that,.... divide by the self insurance deduction…thank goodness I didn’t take an early withdraw penalty……

And...Enter.

Whew, it seems I don’t owe any more taxes this year! In fact, I get a whopping $85 back!
Woohoo!
Dinner’s on me tonight kids!
Where’we going?

It's Electric...(boogie woogie woogie)!

So I was locked inside the house right?
But wait…don’t you mean locked out of the house Suzanne?

No..no... I mean in the house.

You see, we lost power this morning because the wind blew too hard.

Island living can have it’s advantages, but the above ground placement of electrical power lines is not one of them. Power companies are restricted from burying the cables in the ground for obvious reasons of rising tidal waters and circling sharks, so instead they camouflage the cables by intermingling them between the beautiful moss draped oak trees. While out of the imminent danger of flood waters, they are alternatively at the mercy of gusting coastal winds and flailing tree branches.

…And blowing winds we had a plenty this morning.

Electricity… we did not.

So there I was trapped inside the house, unable to open the electric garage door that houses my minivan. Coincidentally enough the front door was securely dead bolted with a key, that inconveniently seemed to be missing as well…
along with the electricity.

I suppose I could have climbed out of a window, but not having any particular place to be at the moment, didn’t seem an appealing option.

Luckily the power returned around lunch.

I still don’t have to be anywhere until 3:00, as I'm home sick with a respiratory infection again,...coughing up what appears to be nuclear waste mixed with lung tissue,

but it’s nice to know I can get out if I have to!

Top o' the morning to ya!

It's been quiet on my part lately. Mostly because I've been contemplating a multitude of subjects, and found it entirely too tedious to choose just one to write about.
So I didn't.
Choose that is.
Or write.
I just debated them all inside my own mind until a proper conclusion had been achieved, or not... and called it good.
My other excuse is that my laptop is kerflunk, thus eliminating the mobile convenience of writing while multi tasking around the house. I find being bound to this desktop far too inconvenient, and I am more likely to burn dinner if I blog in any other room besides the kitchen.

It's a beautiful sunny Sunday. The windows are open and a heavenly breeze periodically lifts the curtains at intermittent intervals allowing the fresh air to saturate the room.
I love to open the windows when the weather is like this...crisp, dry, and in the upper 70's. The staleness of the past drifts out allowing for the newness of spring to energize the atmosphere. It brings with it a promise of something good to come.
Good vibrations.
Good Chi.

Savannah is gearing up for it's yearly St. Patrick's Day Celebration, and the tourist wander the streets enjoying the scenery and the hype. The population doubles every March as more than 200,000 visitors pack the streets of our fair city for
St. Patrick's Day “Savannah Style”. In a few more weeks the flowers will bloom and the water in every fountain will flow emerald green, dyed during a ceremony that dates back one hundred years. As the big day nears, green becomes the color of choice and you'll find it in the clothing, the food and yes, even the beer. Dogs will sport green hair, cars will display green flags, and tourist will stagger while Savannah celebrates her Irish heritage.

If you've never experienced a St. Patrick's Day in Savannah, you should at least read about it once out of curiosity. Here's a sample

In the meantime, I'll be spending the rest of this evening doing my taxes.
May the Luck of the Irish be with me.

NO!

NO!
N-
O-
NO!
No, No, No!
Which part of NO do you not understand?
The “N”
or the “O”?
NO!

(shhh don't interrupt me... I'm practicing something I apparently have a hard time saying!)

NO!
Absolutely not!
Don't even ask!
NO
NO
NOOO!
Nope.

(How am I doing?)

While I openly admit that making decisions is a weakness of mine.... Saying NO is just as difficult. Unfortunately, this is negatively compounded by the frequent urge to “give” or “help” out others who are struggling with some sort of personal crisis.

While being a “giver” in itself is not a bad thing, possibly even considered a noble trait by some, it adversely comes with a down side, illustrated in this simple statement.

The number of “takers” increases exponentially to the level of weakness, or inability to say “no” exhibited by the part of the “giver”.

That is to say that if you are considered a giver...at any given moment there will be a line of people outside of your home, wanting something from your life. Someone who uses you for their own personal gain whether it be by borrowing money, seeking shelter, or by the consumption of resources. The worse part is that these “takers” do so without the first sign of conscious, or remorse for their behavior, choosing instead to continually ask, borrow and consume.

I realize that everyone, at some point or another, can find themselves down on their luck and in need of a helping hand. I think it's our duty to help them, as fellow human beings. What I'm talking about in this instance though is something a bit more chronic. The person who habitually needs because they find it easier to use others than to fend for themselves. The lingering house guest, the perpetual borrower, the incessant individual who seems to consume with no remorse. And yet I can't seem to find the strength to say no, when it becomes too much, or out of balance. When the situation seems to drain the life force from my person.

I can only hope that in the meantime, God will look down onto me in a favorably manner... and that when I arrive at the pearly gates of Heaven, (bankrupt and drained) She will wipe my worried brow and welcome me inside for the most awesome cup of hot chocolate,
topped with whipped cream,
on the house...
of course.

Are you a giver or a taker? Have you ever been taken advantage of... or felt used.??