RIP, Etta James...

                                                 When I am silent,

                                            I fall into the place where everything is music...

                                                                         ~~Rumi

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   Another loss in the music world...fly, Etta....you will be missed....

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    Ah...winter has descended on us with a vengeance.  The Irishman and I went to Litchfield for a late lunch and then a matinee.  We ate sushi at the Chinese buffet and then moseyed on over to see We Bought A Zoo with Matt Damon. It was a great movie and full of laughter and tears and beauty--as a movie should be. 

  We came out of the theater to find that an ice storm had happened and we slipped and slid to the car and were (luckily) able to get the doors unlocked. We sat in the parking lot for over half an hour waiting for the windshield to defrost enough so that the Irishman could scrape it.  The 22 mile drive home went at a snails pace...no where could we travel more than 25 mph.  Our road was of course the worst....and that's where I nearly lost control of the car twice sliding into the ditch and me doing everything I could to keep that from happening. (BTW--the Irishman was very impressed with my skill. lol) You know the drill...turning INTO the slide, then turning out of it when it started sliding the other direction. I pulled it down into first gear for the remainder of the road and crawled down the hill and then up the hill into our driveway.  I can't tell you how relieved I was to be home!!!

   It's warmed up to 21 now...and there's no more forecast after midnight tonight. 

    I wound up not going to bed until after 3:30 AM last night/morning.   I didn't get up until 10:30 this morning...but I felt better.  Thanks everyone for your kind remarks yesterday...and I know that I have always been guilty of being a do-er and staying ridiculously busy to avoid things of an emotional/moody nature.  Maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's a bad thing...maybe everybody gets to find their own way of dealing with life on life's terms.  I always kind of operated on the premise that if you go fast enough, the s**t storm can't catch you.  lol

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   I have connected with an old junior high school friend on Facebook. I've thought about her a gazillion times over the years, wondering what she was doing, where she was living...you know--regular stuff. Because I moved away from here and was gone for over thirty years, I have few connections with anyone. One friend from high school, Cathy, hunted me down and we see each other for lunch now and again.  At the end of the 9th grade my parents moved us out to the country and I started a different school district and I never saw my friends Randi or Joan again. Randi is a school teacher (I always thought she would be).  I thought I would be a teacher too, for years. But it never happened.  While she was graduating and going to college, I was running off and living in the Rocky Mountains, and then on to California...having the adventures of a lifetime... But we were girls of the 60's and she and I were a lot alike in the way we thought and looked at the world.  Little hippies in training.  lol   We are emailing and I hope I get the chance to meet up with her someday soon. 

   Life is funny...the way it dips and dives and curls around your feet.  The way the years rush by at a maddening pace and  you don't know where they went or why things happened the way they did and what if?? Always what if??   Sigh....

    Just for today, I am grateful to have lived the life I've had.  I've been places and seen things  and done things that I never would have guessed.  I've known people and I've loved and I've lost and I've loved again.  I've stood at 3 different ocean's shores and been humbled. I've been at the top of the Andes at Macchu Picchu  and been blown AWAY.  I've climbed Diamond Head in Hawaii  and I've sat at the top of Pike's Peak and watched the little hail and lightning coming down around me like a movie.  I've walked through San Francisco China Town and I've been in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County and seen the way the Amish live. I've stood at the southernmost tip of the United States and looked at Cuba. I've driven through Idaho's Hells Canyon on the Snake River and I've visited the Outer Banks on the eastern coast of the Carolinas.  I have snow camped in Yosemite  and been face to face with a grizzly bear. I have seen up close and personal the beautiful waterfalls and Half Dome and all the things that Ansel Adams brought to us through the lens of his camera.  I have been to Canada and I have been to Mexico and  I have played naked and pregnant in a field of wildflowers.  I have helped people learn to read and write, I have sat with friends until the last breath escaped their bodies, and I have helped bring puppies into the world. I have grown my own food and I have learned to survive on almost no money or assistance, and I have danced until the sun came up. I have listened to music that made me cry and I have looked at art that has touched my heart in places I didn't know existed.

  There are a lot of things I could have done differently in my life that would have made for a more...comfortable retirement, more respectable history. lol  But I have lived this life of mine with GUSTO, baby. I have wrung out of it every ounce of pleasure and beauty I could find. And  I don't regret one single minute of it. If I die tomorrow, I can only say thank you--it's been a helluva ride.

  Namaste.