Sunday, February 27, 2011

Shop til you drop

Shopping for wedding dresses -- so many choices, so little time. It's an estrogen-charged environment. Brides to be from 23 to 53 try on this dress and that to the oohs and ahs of staff and passersby. It's not like a men's shop, where stuff is rented and brought back after the wedding. Here you get a princess dress you can keep for a lifetime. And women shop differently than men. Men like to shop on the run, grab whatever they need quickly and get out of there before they get short of oxygen. Women like to look at things from every angle, get a feel for the aura, feel the fabric, move around, get comfortable, see the emotional reaction of whoever is in the same area code. The problem seems to be finding something that is "perfect" in an imperfect world. Every day we move 24 hours closer to 9-10-11. Decisions must be made. Deadlines loom. Stress builds. Our job is to just be prepared, take the good with the bad, have fun and enjoy the adventure.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

It's in the cards

Love at long distance means giving the post office lots of business. The postmaster and I are on a first name basis, and at this point I may soon get Customer of the Month honors. Despite all the cards I send Teri, I am blown away by the ones she send me. Their messages are incredibly well thought out, chosen with care, absolutely meaningful. Just goes to show men and women shop for cards in a whole different manner. Men tend to shop at a run, grabbing whatever they see, hoping the card doesn't say Happy Bar Mitzvah or Celebrate Gay Pride, not that there's anything wrong with that. Women tend to linger. They try out the cards for effect, sometimes fanning themselves with the card to see if it has the right aura. What I give in quantity, Teri makes up for in quality. Love, in part, is in the cards.

Falling stars

One of my favorite things to do, on those evenings when Teri and I are apart, is to turn out all the lights in the Mountain Cabin, go out and sit in the hot tub and scan the heavens for falling stars. If I see one, I make a wish. What I wish for is a secret. Of course, we all want a love that is enduring. We want financial prosperity, or at least enough money to keep the lights on and spinach on the table. We want good health and friends that care. We want to make a difference in the world, or at least in our small part of it, doing what we do best, whether that is writing, design or just being a good example and living by the golden rule. Watching for falling stars, I think about all these things, and a lot more. Without a lot of light competition, the stars pop out with clarity, or at least as much as one can get with 53-year-old eyes and bifocals. It's humbling to think what a small part of the universe the earth is, and what a small place on earth we inhabit. It's a great adventure, one full of wishes, and wishes realized.

Happy birthday, Oregon!

One of the cool things about Valentine's Day is that it coincides with Oregon's birthday. This year the state will be 152 years old. Not quite as old as granite, but you get the idea. Teri and my relationship is much younger. This Valentine's Day we celebrate one year of being engaged, and what a year it has been. The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl. I did back to back 100-mile bicycle rides (century rides) over the Blue Mountains. Teri started on a huge quilt, and I continued my Younger Next Year program. We celebrated the birth of a new great-niece, Piper Joy, and began getting our act together for the Wedding of the Century, 9-10-11. Mainly we just lived one day at a time living well, laughing often and loving gobz.