Good Morning Starshine

The earth says hello… 

It’s 7:00 am on a Sunday. What the heck am I doing up? It’s the weekend and my chance to sleep a little later. And I blew it.

I am definitely not a morning person. It’s not that I don’t like morning. I just don’t like to get up. There’s no particular reason. There’s just something about early morning and staying under the warm covers that seems to encourage my best sleep. I’m really a night owl, not caring to go to bed early. I’d much rather stay up until midnight or so then sleep in until I wake up. Unfortunately, like most people nowadays, I have to work and work starts in the morning; extremely early in the morning.

Snooooze

After I’m up it’s not so bad. But not immediately. I need time. I’m not one of those cheerful, full of conversation, smiling morning people. I more resemble Oscar, as in the Grouch, not the hotdog. Talk to me and I may answer with a grunt or something unintelligible. I move slowly and long for caffeine. After a cup of coffee or a Coke even, my blood starts to circulate and I slowly wake up and return to civility.

A long time ago when aerobics was the dance exercise of choice, an early morning class was offered. It sounded great because it would work perfectly with my schedule, allowing me to go to class and then come home and get myself and everyone else ready for the day. The first class came and I was ready. I had worn my sweats to bed so I could sleep a little later so I was set when I woke up. I headed out the door with great anticipation. I arrived to see a bunch of Barbies, decked out with full makeup and color coordinated fashionable exercise attire. What the heck? I quickly moved to the back row to find a fellow teacher, a male, in sweats, bleary eyed, messy hair, like me. After I warned him not to look at me and explained what the consequences would be if he uttered one word about my appearance at school, we began the routine. I was immediately a beat behind and if they went left I was going right. I stayed in that class for about a month until, secretly relieved, I realized early morning exercise was not for me.

Aerobics in the early morning is just a blur...

I still wait until the last minute to get up, pressing the snooze button however many times I can get away with it. I get ready and head out the door for the hour long trek to work. Maneuvering the road I’ve witnessed the sun rise many times. In the winter the sky is pitch black when I leave and the sun may or may not be coming up by the end of the drive. In the spring and summer though, it’s lighter when I leave and I see the sun peeking over the horizon the entire trip. The colors are amazing. Oftentimes the moon is on one side of the road while the sun is on the other.

Holding my phone up in the car. Notice the mirror?

Morning is a great time to reflect and plan the day. For some people that is. Me? I’ll stay up and decide what I’ll wear and what I want to do for the next day the night before. I’ll watch re-runs or a movie without interruption or work on a project. I’ll quietly slide into bed beside the morning person I married. When the alarm goes off I’ll squeeze every minute of time I can at daybreak, staying in bed under the covers before I have to get up and face the day.

Early morning singing song… 

I finished the Sassymetrical! I didn’t have enough of the beautiful handspun yarn but I managed to blend in some different skeins I had, pretty well if I do say so myself, and the average person won’t be able to notice. It’s way too hot to wear it right now, but in a couple of months it will be just right. I’m ready for fall already!

Front of Sassymetrical

Back of Sassymetrical

Up close with pin

The first light color is where I started adding different yarn

I haven’t had much time lately but I did finish an easy read mystery. Surprise! There were a lot of giveaway books at the library where our family reunion was held this summer so I picked some up. They are older, but they were free!

“Caught in the Shadows” is about a computer hacker who, while doing her job, stumbles upon some secrets of her own past. It’s full of twists and turns making you wonder about the true identity of the ‘bad guy’ all the way to the end. I’m reading another, “A Window Over the Sink”, and it’s funny and nostalgic but it hasn’t grabbed me yet. I’ll finish it, because that’s just something I do but it may take a while. And I might squeeze in a couple of others in the meantime.

A lot of good it did me to get up at 7:00 except that I was able to catch up on a couple of shows I like that I’d missed and I got to knit some on my ‘secret’ project. But I’m rested, just like I would have been if I’d just stayed in bed. So all is well. Good morning!

Good morning Starshine. 

So happy to be…

People Are Strange

People are strange when you're a stranger... 

I was sitting in a swimming pool in Las Vegas recently, a girl’s trip. It was scorching, around 111 degrees, and the only available shade cost $15.00 an hour. Drinks were available for the mere sum of $14.00 but my friend and I decided it was easiest to just float around in the pool to try to stay cool. There were other people around, some splashing in the water, some soaking up the sun and some shelling out the $15.00 an hour to read a book or nap in the shaded lounge chair.

Cool blue water...

An elderly gentleman was water walking around the pool, stopping at different groups to converse. He meandered over to where my friend and I were reclining and asked if we minded if he stayed to talk a bit. We didn’t and he went into stories about what he had done for a living, what hiols interests were and so on. He asked questions of each of us and we answered to the extent we were comfortable. He had some interesting anecdotes and shared extensively.

View from the top...out our window

Eventually, both of us were losing interest but he continued the now one sided conversation. She exited the pool to sit on the edge and I inched toward the stairs. He stuck to us like glue. It took a while but he finally acknowledged he had lost both our attention and said he was going to lay out in the sun. I happened to glance down about that time and noticed that his toenails were polished black. To each their own, but I thought it was strange.

One of those high dollar umbrellas nobody can afford to use!

There was a family who lived behind us when I was growing up. It was a single parent household and the two kids living there were strange. I’ve said before how my mother made us be nice to the underdog kids, so, because these two, a brother and sister, fit the mold, my sister and I, more so me, because they were closer to my age, were nice. I spoke when they were outside and even walked to school with them occasionally.

Their mother passed away and an older brother and his family moved into their home and they lived together. The boy of the original kids who lived there, whom I thought was the odder of the two, would sometimes leave me little presents. It creeped me out but in the style of my mother, I thanked him and went on.

I proceeded to college in another town and he went into the Navy. I got a letter at school one day. How he obtained my address, I have no idea. He wrote about him being the mouse king of the world of cheese and I could be his queen and rule the kingdom. There were pictures of his ship, his bunk, the bathroom, the ceiling, you know, all the interesting places. I received a few more letters but I blew it off until one day he was lying in the bushes beneath the windows of my dorm, howling. He came inside the lobby to look for me but one of the more athletic in the girl’s dorm stopped him from climbing the stairs.

The campus police were called and the only thing they could do was to tell me to be careful, not to go out alone and watch out for him. Reassuring, to say the least. If he tried to hurt me (and I lived) then they could step in. He eventually went back home and all returned to normal. That is until he thought he was Superman and jumped out of the21st floor of a local hotel. Turns out he couldn’t fly. It was really sad and overall a very strange experience.

I was talking to a close friend recently and asked him if he had any strange people stories to share. He said, “Every one that I know is strange in some special way”. He is so right. I was reminded that it’s the strangeness that makes us each unique. And what is strange to me may be perfectly ordinary to you. There are extreme cases, like my poor neighbor, where it’s an illness instead of just an abnormality. What about the man with the pedicured piggies? Who knows? That might be perfectly acceptable where he comes from. Who am I to judge? Nobody.

When you're strange 

No one remembers your name... 

I wore my vest again this past week and got more compliments so it must not be too strange looking! In fact, I’m contemplating making another. Could I finish before fall? That’s the big question.

I started another project, my first ever top down sweater. It’s called Sassymetrical and I’m using some yarn my good friend Brenda spun. The yarn is beautiful but I’m really scared there won’t be enough. According to the pattern there is but I’m not a little girl and the lady who wrote the pattern is. But since I seem to gravitate towards the same colorways I think I can wing it enough so nobody will notice. Maybe. If not, I’ll chalk it up to experience and try again.

Top down Sassymetrical

Yarn my friend Brenda spun.

 

Wrapping up a great week, well, despite some airline adventure, but it would be strange if that didn’t happen to me, right? Hopefully it’s the start to another good week as well. I got some Chewy Sweet Tarts and some yarn to add to the bottom of my sweater so all is good. And I’ll eat all of the colors of candy except the green cause they are my favorite. Then I can eat them all at once. Is that strange?

The green ones are the best!

When you're strange 

Faces come out of the rain... 

When you're strange...