Life in progress

Tag Archives: memories


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Just Jot It January 11th – Effortless

I think about all the things I used to do effortlessly when I was younger and I wonder that I can’t anymore. I know you young ‘uns out there are saying, “We don’t want to hear about all your aches and pains, ya old coot!” I know. I remember thinking it myself. I also thought I’d never get to this stage. But here I am.

Gone are the days when I didn’t have to struggle to get up off a hardwood floor after sitting on it for ten minutes. Gone is the ability to sleep through the night without waking up with a sore hip; the ability to read things on the tv without glasses, and the ability to do the splits…

There’s a message in some of this for you kids out there. The message is, don’t stop. If you can do the splits now, or touch your toes without bending your knees, or run half a mile, or multiply large numbers in your head, keep it up! It’s when we stop because we no longer need to do it that we lose it. Age has little to do with some of the things I find difficult.

But you know what? It’s not all that bad. There are things I CAN do now that I couldn’t do before. Like write a story or a blog post, or even a novel and put it out there for the world to see without caring what anyone thinks. Or like effortlessly sing all the low notes that used to hurt my throat to even try. Hell, I can even sing in front of people now. It used to be that I wouldn’t sing in a house when I was on my own, unless I was singing to something playing on the stereo.

It’s not all bad, getting older. Then again. I’m not THAT old.

This “Effortless” prompt is brought to you by Dan Antion at No Facilities. If you don’t already follow him, please check out his blog!

JJJ 2016

To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 11th post here!


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Just Jot It January 4th – Dachshund

Yes, my prompt for today is “Dachshund.” It’s the most challenging prompt so far – it may just end up being THE most challenging prompt for me. Thanks, Bee. 😉

I’ve lived with a few different breeds of dog in my life – my first dog was a black lab. We had him for only half a year because my parents kept saying he was “too big for the house.” As a five year old I could never figure out what that meant. The dog was much smaller than the house.

So the next time we got a dog it was a black miniature poodle. We named her Cindy. Cindy had seven pups – I wanted to keep them all but my parents would only let me keep one. Perhaps seven (or eight with Cindy) was equal to the size of the lab and would be “too big for the house.” Who knows?

My mom still had Cindy and the pup (her name was Gigi, because what else do you call a poodle?) when I moved out. I got married to my first husband and the first thing we did when we moved in together was bought George from the pound. Guess what kind of dog George was? Yes, a Saint Bernard. He was a fantastic dog. So well trained, he even knew sign language – we could make him lay down past shouting distance. Strangely enough, I never thought he was “too big for the house.”

George was the last dog I owned until I got Winston, just two weeks ago. He’s a beagle mix – the vet thinks he may have some basset hound in him. He’ll be ten weeks old tomorrow; even though he’s just a puppy he has quite the character already. The cats think he’s “too big for the house,” but we humans think he’s just right.

So what does this all have to do with Dachshunds? Only that I’ve never owned one.

The “Dachshund” prompt is brought to you by The Bee at Just Fooling Around With Bee. Please check out her blog!

JJJ 2016

To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 4th post here!


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Just Jot It January 3rd – Frozen

There are certain things that will always be frozen in time. Moments we remember, though they may change for the better or worse in our minds, that remain static. Like the birth of a child; finding it impossible to forget the joy but the pain of childbirth becomes distant, as something we women dissociate from, transforming it into a story to be related many times as a comparison to every other kind of pain. Or like the size of a place we frequented as a child – our elementary school gymnasium, or a traveling fair’s ride that seemed massive until we revisit it as an adult.

In the interest of keeping things real, I’ve always found journals to be most helpful. As I go through this blog in the next few days and weeks for the purpose of writing a post on my 2015 year in review I’m sure I’ll find that my frozen shoulder was much worse than I remember, and that my summer was unbearably hot (it’s hard not to want such a thing when you’re freezing to death in January, no matter how miserably humid it was).

I’m trying to think of a moment in my past other than the two examples above that might not have been as big or wonderful, or as unhappy or painful as I remember it, but of course, in my mind it’s all exactly as I now imagine it was.

What is your moment?

The “Frozen” prompt is brought to you by Helen Espinosa at This Thing Called Life One Word At A Time. If you don’t already follow her, please check out her blog!

JJJ 2016

To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 3rd post here!


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Musical Memories

Music.

Have you ever heard a song on the radio that you haven’t heard in years, but that you once knew so well you could sing in your sleep? It’s fascinating to me the process in which a song like that comes back to me, note by note, lyric by lyric. I find myself singing along and remembering AS I SING. Whenever that happens, I can’t help but smile to myself at the sensation of knowing as I go.

The songs I remember from my childhood are the ones my parents listened to. I, at the time, was too young to discover anything for myself. This was before I had even been to a Disney movie, and it was long before home videos.

My mother and her best friend used to listen to Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck (who I’ve actually seen in concert as an adult and discovered he has an absolutely amazing voice, much to my surprise), and my dad listened to Chet Atkins. He loved the guitar.

What are your earliest memories of music? Are they memories of your own favorites, or someone else’s?


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What Do You Say To A Naked Lady?

Memories. They go back, if we’re lucky, to our early childhood. I remember waking up in the summer to hear my dad mowing the grass, or heading out to play golf. I remember playing with Barbies – I had this really cool miniature floor lamp that plugged in to a battery. I’d set up a living room in the 18″x18″x18″ cupboard in my parents’ coffee table for my dolls and turn on the light and close the door. Now that was exciting for about 30 seconds.

One of my earliest memories of television though, apart from the show “Laugh-In,” is a trailer for a movie, called What Do You Say To A Naked Lady? Thanks to Youtube, I can revisit that disturbing memory.

Allow me to share it with you:

What’s your earliest memory, disturbing or otherwise?