I miss the swooping intensity of pure joy,

Like a hawk soaring above the treetops.

I miss seeing the world glitter and sparkle,

Like a dragonfly darting in the sun.

I miss the therapy of laughter,

Warming me like peach brandy.

When did I stop living life

And begin observing it through a dirty window?

When did existing in quiet comfort

Become preferable to dreams and adventures?

When did I become too sleepy

To enjoy hawks and dragonflies and peach brandy?

When will I wake up and live again?

Winter has not loosened its grip on Michigan yet. We were teased with spring-like weather in February, only for March to come roaring in like a lion. The crocuses bloomed, only to be covered in nine inches of snow. The robins returned, only to have to shelter from freezing rain and ice. The sun that shone in February is hidden behind the customary Michigan winter gloom. The usual winter gloom that settles deep inside me has been exacerbated this year by the absence of my husband. I do fine by myself for the most part, but day after day of no human contact takes its toll after a while. This weekend I’m going to a movie with my daughter and attending a geocaching event with my friends Val and Mark. That should help me get through another week. Soon I will head south to hug my mom and enjoy a dose of Arkansas spring. Maybe then the world will start to glitter again.

This gloomy winter stream of consciousness used the following prompts from the Winter Scavenger Hunt:

2. Use the words: hawk, therapy, window, peach, comfort

3. Include a dragonfly

If I were to tell you I’ve never been good at parallel parking, I would be lying. I’m excellent at it; I even enjoy it. My dad taught me how to parallel park and I’ve always done it exactly the way he instructed.

1. Pull up to the car parked in front of the empty space so that your passenger side front window is even with the parked car’s driver side front window. Look into the parked car and imagine that the driver is sitting behind the wheel and you are making eye contact with him. You are now in the perfect position to parallel park.
2. Put your vehicle in reverse, turn your steering wheel all the way to the right and ease your foot off the brake, backing very slowly around the back end of the parked car.
3. As the back of your vehicle navigates around the back of the parked vehicle, turn the steering wheel all the way to the left, still going very slowly, gradually straightening as you back into position parallel to the curb.
4. Be sure to leave enough space between your vehicle and the one in front of you so you will have room to maneuver if somebody parks behind you and pulls all the way up to your bumper.
5. Don’t forget to curb your wheels.

Five easy steps, and once you get the hang of it, it’s fun! The problem is not that I’m bad at parallel parking, but that there seems to be a couple of generations of drivers after me who never learned the “one car length for every ten miles an hour” rule of driving. They stick to your bumper like glue, no matter how fast or slow you drive, and when you pull up to the car in front of the empty parking space and look over to see if you’re lined up correctly, they’re stopped three inches behind you wondering what the heck you’re doing and why you stopped, but not going around you. And even if they did go around you, there’s a whole line of tailgaters behind them anyway, so you may as well just skip the parallel parking, drive around to the parking lot in the back of the building and park the boring way.

This parallel parking tutorial has been brought to you by the Winter Scavenger Hunt prompt #24. Use the phrase “I’ve never been good at parallel parking”

I’ve always been jealous of people who are born with a gift and the drive and resources to pursue it; people who have known their purpose in life from their first breath. I’m pretty sure most people are more like me. I’ve found passions over the years. In my youth, I wanted to be a concert pianist. I began taking piano lessons at the age of four and continued through high school. It was somewhere in those high school years that I began to realize my small hands would never be able to play works by many of the great male composers who apparently had hands the size of skillets. Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Chopin… I could play some Chopin and those were mostly my favorite pieces to play, but it was a sad day when I realized I could never play his Grand Polonaise for my dad. I think he bought the music for me when I was still in elementary school, in anticipation of the day he could listen to a live performance of his favorite piece of music in his own living room.

Once that dream died, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I followed the path of so many women of my era; graduate from high school, get a minimum wage job, meet Mr. Right, get married, become a mom, a room mother, a Girl Scout leader, a Sunday School teacher, pick up a few part time jobs over the years, and never have the energy to think that there might be a purpose beyond being a wife and keeping a little person who seemed determined to die spectacularly alive to adulthood.

So, here I sit, mission accomplished, staring at the number 60 on the far horizon and getting closer, and no skills or ambitions driving me to a greater purpose. Just getting up and facing day after pointless day and wishing I was better at being me.

I never became a butterfly.

I’ve spent my life feeling like a lowly caterpillar,

Or, on a good day, retreating into my cocoon.

I wish I could grow my wings

And fly.

This introspection was brought on by the Winter Scavenger Hunt prompt #16 – Include the life cycle of an insect.

It’s been a while since I posted one of my highly edited life updates. As Krysten said the other day, “Mom, you’re a really private person.” Yep. I’ve never bared my soul online and I don’t intend to start now. The prospect of sharing the most intimate details of my life online sends my anxiety level into the stratosphere. I keep the really personal stuff safely locked away, but I have no problem sharing the trivia on the fringe of my life.

So, what have I been up to? Well, I went geocaching with murisopsis and Old Dog Sparky last weekend, when the temperature was a cozy 50 degrees or so. We spent the last couple of hours before sundown tramping through a nature preserve, on trails that wound through woods, meadows and a fen. The caches were all within reach while standing on the path, so we didn’t even have to beat back briars and thorns to claim our five finds – two of them FTFs (First To Find).

The weather had a fit of spite after that weekend and it’s been cold enough to freeze your biscuits since then. Normally, this oscillating between winter and spring weather would have me in a petulant mood, but we got off pretty easy this winter, so I’m putting up with the hopefully last gasp of cold weather with more than my usual equanimity. I will admit to some jealousy as I scrolled through the photos my sister-in-law Iris posted on Facebook of her trip home to Malta this past week, but I certainly don’t begrudge her the gorgeous weather, scenery and Mediterranean cuisine of her home. Our blooming of crocuses and return of the robins felt a bit anticlimactic, though.

I found my missing sunglasses. I always buy glasses with the magnetic, clip-on sunglasses and I’m always losing the sunglasses. We had been under our usual Michigan winter gloom for so long, I couldn’t even remember the last time I wore them, but they weren’t in their case in my purse, or in the sunglasses holder in my van. I looked in every possible place they could be and didn’t find them. After a couple of weeks, I finally ordered a new pair and of course the day after they arrived, I found the original pair in a place I’d searched two or three times. So now I have a pair I carry in my purse, and a backup pair I keep in the van, and hopefully two pairs will last me until my next new pair of glasses in two or three years. My personal record is three pairs of sunglasses, but I found the second pair about a year after getting the third pair.

I also lost a bunch of stored documents and photos. I had it all on a flash drive, but I can’t get it to open. I’m not sure whether the problem is with my laptop, or the flash drive, but I have a feeling all those files are gone. I’m trying not to think about that too much.

I bought a pink bra. Yeah, that’s kind of personal, but it’s not like I’m going to show it to you. I had just been wishing that the brand and style I like had more color choices, particularly pink and black, and the next time I was at a store that carries that brand and style, there were pink ones. You’d think black would be standard in any brand, style and size, but you’d be wrong. I think my brand offers black in every other style besides the one I like. I’ll just have to keep making do with gray and navy blue.

I finally used my Christmas gift card for Amazon.com to buy a new pair of sneakers. They’re expensive sneakers if I buy them at the shoe store, but I found a pair on amazon for a substantially lower price, applied my gift card and only had to pay $32 more. And while I was thinking about shoes, I went to Walmart.com and ordered a couple of pairs of Earth Spirit sandals. They’re cheap, but comfy even for my problem feet. So I’m set for summer, shoe-wise.

Now I just need to clean out my closet and get rid of a bunch of shoes I don’t wear anymore so I’ll have room for all those new shoes. I was thinking about doing that today, but I got distracted by the bookcase in the living room that holds all our DVDs. I had them sorted into storage cubes by genre; not one of my better ideas. After a couple of years of pulling out every cube trying to figure out whether White Christmas was with the musicals or the holiday movies (just to use one random example), today I emptied all eight cubes and sorted all our movies into mostly alphabetical order. All the Marvel movies are in the “A” bin for “Avengers,” all the James Bond movies are in the “J” bin for “James Bond,” and all the Star Wars and Stark Trek movies are in a bin of their own. Other than that, it’s alphabetical.

So there you have a brief and mostly non-personal update and I managed to knock off a few more prompts from the Winter Scavenger Hunt while I was at it. Prompts used in this post are:

12. Use the words: biscuits, beat, choices, pink
17. Use the words: trivia, sunglasses, stratosphere, petulant
21. Use the words: cozy, lock, spite, iris
22. Discuss a closet
26. Use the words: prospect, scroll, fringe, glasses, flash
27. Discuss a distraction

Nuptial smiles beaming

From a tarnished silver frame,

Love was young and easy,

And life was but a game.

They were young and handsome,

Their future filled with hope,

But now those dusty smiles

Are tinged with faint reproach.

For Mendelssohn’s glad music

Which made their spirits surge,

Has o’er the years transformed

Into a Chopin dirge.

Curiosity killed the cat

(Although we don’t know how),

But lack of curiosity

Has killed the wedding vow.

Time has murdered beauty,

As well as smiles and youth,

While hope and love were done in

By an overdose of truth.

This poem was brought to you by the Winter Scavenger Hunt using the following prompts.

4. Discuss something in a frame.

9. Mention a famous composer.

10. Write about love.

13. Write about death.

15. Use the phrase, "Curiosity killed the cat."

“I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.” – Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4

If you’ve ever wanted to know how evil takes root, the answer is in that quote from Hamlet. When people in power whip up fear and then offer solutions for the greater good that strip away freedoms and turn back progress, good people will accept this as the price of national security and personal safety. I’ve never been a news junkie, but every morning I check the headlines online, or turn on the TV to CNN or MSNBC to see what fresh horrors have occurred since the last time I checked.

This morning, it was a story about Muhammed Ali, Jr. being detained on re-entry to the U.S. from Jamaica, where he’d given a speech at a Black History Month event. Just to be clear, this is a man who was born in the U.S. to U.S. citizens and was traveling on a U.S. passport. He was held for several hours due to his name and asked repeatedly about his religion. So much for the “not a travel ban” that is “not about religion.” I’m sure Mr. Ali is feeling refreshed after the unscheduled pause in his travels, and is grateful to immigration officials who are only looking out for his safety and security.

Yesterday’s damage report was about a whole planeload of travelers on a domestic flight (originating and terminating within the U.S.) who were not allowed to deplane until they produced ID for customs officials. So now, it would seem, we are not allowed to travel within the borders of our own country without producing papers. But it’s for the greater good.

I don’t bleed blue or red, politically speaking. If you prick my finger with a needle, my blood will be red. If you poke me with a campaign sign, you never know what color I’ll bleed. I’ve never voted a straight party ticket, but choose by individual merit and, when all else appears equal, try to keep my ballot balanced. If a school board appears to lean too heavily liberal, I’ll vote for a conservative (and vice versa) in order to encourage alternate points of view and reasoned debate. In a landscape of elephants and donkeys, I’m more of an aardvark. In the current political climate, my conservative leanings which were dominant for most of my life, have been withering like a leper’s extremities and my liberal leanings have been growing stronger every day.

With the possible exception of George Washington, every political candidate from every political party ever formed in the U.S. has spouted a golden cascade of promises in the heat of a campaign that they never had any intention of keeping. The difference in the past twenty years has been that technology allows anybody with access to the internet to keep track of those promises. They are no longer empty words, quickly forgotten, but empty words easily stored for future reference that come back to haunt the victor. “Lock her up!” became “Hey, this private email server is easier and more convenient.” “Drain the swamp!” became stocking the swamp with exotic fish, resulting in a billionaire Secretary of Education who wants to do away with free school lunches for underprivileged children. I can’t quite figure out how that is for the greater good, but it must be, because taking food from the mouths of hungry children is about as evil as it gets.

This rare political post is sponsored by the Winter Scavenger Hunt, using the following prompts:

1.    Use the phrase "stronger every day"

5.    Use the word: technology

6.    Use the words: heat, merit, blue and aardvark

7.    Include the phrase “if you’ve ever wanted”

8.    Use the words: poke, cascade, pause and gold

14.  Discuss religion

19.  Include a quote from Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet”

20.  Include a disease

25.  Include a broken promise

Joyouswind and I left The 'Duh on Saturday morning and drove to Cleveland, Ohio to meet Bookmark61 for some family time and the exchanging of Valentine gifts. We actually stayed in Independence, Ohio and had the good fortune to be in a hotel that was near a very large Cinemark theater. On Saturday night, we went to the theater and settled ourselves in leather recliners to watch the Lego Batman movie. It was a funny movie and very nice to be able to watch it with my feet up after driving for several hours.

On Sunday morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed to the historic district of Cleveland for some geocaching in Lake View Cemetery. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. We found two geocaches before the fog and mist began to turn into wind and rain. We might have found more caches if we hadn't been so distracted by the cemetery. It was a mix of somber beauty, historic tragedy, and human quirkiness. Plus a large cement dam. I've never come across a dam in a cemetery before!

Once the rain became too heavy to enjoy our surroundings, we headed to downtown and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That post will come later. For now, here is a glimpse of Lake View Cemetery.

We entered through the Euclid Gate and the first thing we saw was this memorial to a terrible tragedy - the Collinwood School fire of 1908.

Although the school was of a common design for the time, it was a deadly fire trap. When fire broke out (the cause was never determined), it quickly engulfed the building due to a chimney effect. There were only two exits and one was blocked by flames. The other became a bottleneck, trapping and killing about half the students in the school, along with two teachers. A rescuer also died that day. The death toll was 172 children and 3 adults. It took less than an hour for the fire to gut the school.

There is a lot of statuary in the cemetery. I am hoping to go back on a nice summer day and spend some time with my camera among the angels, saints, children, and animal statues. Here is a small sampling.

June Louise

June Louise is sitting across a small lake from Wade Chapel, which boasts Tiffany stained glass windows.

Here's a close-up of one of the chapel windows.

On the other end of the spectrum, a razorback hog stands in front of a bench stating, "All creatures drink joy from the breasts of nature."

An almost life-size stylized lion marks the grave of Dr. Mark Anthony Smith, a medical professor and Alzheimer's researcher at Case Western Reserve University.

A cat sleeps on a bench.

Monument to a guitar player... and possible a Cleveland Browns fan.

An avenging angel crushes evildoers watched by an adorable puppy. This was weird.

There was a wide variety of headstones.

These cylindrical stones appeared to be popular from about the 1880s to the 1920s.

Eliot Ness's ashes were scattered on the small lake. His memorial stone is relatively simple.

And on the other extreme, the stone marking the grave of Alan Freed is large and flamboyant. Here is the back of it.

And here is the glorious front side.

This is such a small sampling of the mortuary art in this beautiful cemetery. We also stopped at the memorial to President James Garfield. I will post photos of that separately.

I try to keep track of the books I read throughout the year. After I read a book, I write its title in the back of my current journal and add a rating of 1-5 stars. I have 30 books listed that I read last year, although I'm pretty sure I forgot to write down a few while I was on all those road trips. Of the 30 I listed, only a few got ratings of 4 or more stars. Here are the books I enjoyed reading the most in 2016:

• Walt Disney: An American Original (four stars)
• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (four stars)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (five stars)
• Washington's Secret Six (four stars)

That's it - only four books that I classified as "great reads." Most books fell in the 2.5-3.5, "good reads" range. A couple were "okay reads," and one was "not worth finishing."

I'm starting out 2017 with several "great reads." I've finished Hidden Figures and am in various stages of reading The Fifty Year Mission (about the development and growth of Star Trek), The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher, and three or four other books. I don't have my current journal downstairs with me to remind myself. I have many books stacked on my headboard and downloaded on my Kindle. This is the year I will finally read On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and if I ever get caught up on the books I've never read before, I will re-read the Mrs. Pollifax series. It's going to be a great year for escaping into good books!

What are the best books you've read recently?

I do this thing when I see a movie at the theater; I save the ticket stub and write a review on it. I have to be succinct with such a limited space, so I keep it at six words or less. Often, the reviews for the best and worst movies will consist of only one word.

Before I list the movies I saw last year and the ticket stub reviews, I want to point out that for me, books and movies are mostly an escape and I prefer comedies and action flicks over more serious fare, so don't look here for short reviews of deep movies.

Here we go... I think I've got them in chronological order.

• Hail, Caesar! - "Weird but funny.
• Star Wars VII - The Force Awakens - "Better the 2nd time."
• Eddie the Eagle - "Enjoyable fluff."
• Zootopia - "Funny - especially the sloths."
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 - "Meh - forgettable."
• The Jungle Book - "Fun & nostalgic."
• The Jungle Book - "Still good. Love Baloo."
• Captain America 3: Civil War - "Good - too much conflict."
• Finding Dory - "Heartwarming."
• Ghostbusters - "Funny - especially Kate McKinnon."
• The BFG - "Sweetly, darkly, weirdly good."
• Legend of Tarzan - "Enjoyable."
• Sully - "Interesting - a bit boring."
• Doctor Strange - "Good movie - like Batman Begins."
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - "Good in a weird way."
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - "Magical."
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - "Fantastic!"
• Rogue One - "Excellent and sad."

I think if I had to choose a favorite movie, it would be a tie between Fantastic Beasts and Zootopia, although Doctor Strange would be right up there vying for the top spot, too.

As a bonus, I also saw four live stage productions this year. I didn't write ticket stub reviews for them, but I enjoyed them all.

• Calendar Girls
• Laughing Stock
• Morning's At Seven
• Wicked

Wicked was my favorite. Morning's At Seven was my second favorite, due as much to the theater and the set as to the story and the acting. Beth and I saw it at the Purple Rose Theater and the set spilled down to the very feet of the audience in the horseshoe shaped auditorium, with grass, flowers, trees and tree stumps making up the backyards of the two houses on stage. It was stunning and there were times Beth and I, in our front row seats, could have reached out and touched the actors.

There you have it. What were your favorite movies of 2016?

I'm behind on my traditional 2016 wrap-up posts. I'll start with a few of my favorite photos I took throughout the year. I always have a hard time picking favorites. Whenever someone asks me my favorite color, favorite song, favorite book, favorite movie... I either avoid answering or say the first thing that comes to mind. It's no different with photos. My "2o16 Favorites" photo file has dozens of photos in it. I narrowed it down to 24, then 17, and then because I'm a little OCD, I cut two more. So here are the 15 photos that are my favorite tonight; tomorrow I may have chosen differently. These are in no particular order.

1. Waldo in Waterloo

That's Waterloo, New Jersey where we attended a geocaching event called Haunted Village. This beautiful old house is in the process of restoration.

2. Creek Crossing

This is how murisopsis and Sparky crossed a creek that ran across the path at GeoWoodstock. Waldo and I took off our shoes and waded across. The water was cold, but it was a 90 degree day and it felt wonderful to cool our sweaty feet in melted snow from the mountains.

3. Garden of the Gods

Such a beautiful place!

4. Mother & Daughter

In the past few years, I've mostly refrained from posting photos of my mom because I'm pretty sure she wouldn't like most of them if her mind was not confused by Alzheimer's. This one was taken on a good day, though, when her hair had been recently cut and permed and she was in a happy mood. I love this shot of Mom and my older sister sharing a tender moment.

5. Fisherman

I sneaked this shot of a fisherman in Roubidoux Creek last May as I was passing through Missouri and stopped to explore Roubidoux Spring - the source of Roubidoux Creek. It's such a peaceful moment.

6. Defiant Squirrel

This one is from February. I took the photo through the kitchen window, but he was staring straight at me, daring me to come out and try to shoo him away from the bird feeder. The lines on the pole are so we can look out the window and see how much snow has fallen. There are three inches between each line, and a thicker line every twelve inches. We've had snow up to the third thick line before. Sigh.

7. Dapper Dog

Joyouswind's dog, Jack, had just been groomed and was sporting a brand new collar and bow tie. We were on the bluff to watch the sunset over Lake Michigan. As I recall, Jack was muddy by the time we left.

8. Cedar Apple Rust

This was not the final stage of the fungus, but it's my favorite photo of the series I took documenting the stages from gall to waxy orange "tentacles."

9. Sunrise on Washington Island

This was taken from the backyard of my cousin's cottage on Washington Island, Wisconsin in September. A little slice of heaven.

10. Elk Resting

Taken in July at Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a lucky shot out the window as we drove past.

11. Shutting Down GeoWoodstock

Sparky, murisopsis, Waldo and I were among the very last attendees to leave. That's Waldo's and my van in the background, and murisopsis and Sparky's rental car parked behind it. You might assume from this photo that we had fun. You would be right.

12. Afterglow

We watched the sun sink into the lake and the sky turn brilliant shades of red and gold as the last sliver of sun slipped below the horizon.

13. I Spy With My Little Eye

I think this one was taken in April. We were hiking and geocaching on the Van Buren Trail, enjoying the early signs of spring, including lots of bullfrogs watching us from the creek beside the trail.

14 & 15. Lighthouses at Sunset

I couldn't decide between these two, so I included them both. Taken from Tiscornia Beach sometime over the summer. I'm always happy when I catch at least one of the lights shining.

Hopefully, sometime in the next week or so I'll get around to reviewing my favorite books and movies of the past year.