Three Year Anniversary

“A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”

Richard Bach

I love you Tu

Iowa summer bring it on!

Before living here I had never appreciated the green before so much in my life.

It is as if every year the slate is wiped clean and a new world of possibility blooms....

The search for inspiration

I have been on the hunt lately for hobbies.....quilting is one....then knitting....yoga...and of course I plan to get involved in theater again eventually......but not sure what I want to do in that at the moment...

I am now working a job from home that allows me a flexible schedule so I have time to become more involved in something....just not sure what. I have strong craving lately to get back to my roots. Maybe it's moving to Iowa where there is so much history surrounding me...glorious old buildings from the 1800s, lovely old homes, and just more of an interest in history in general. There are people here who's families have been here since the state was new...I met a woman who has lived in a home her family built in the 1800's. There is something very solid here in that. Miami always seems to be a city in transition. People come and go, buildings go up, down and back up. The Miami of my childhood is long gone. Heck the Miami of 5 years ago is long gone. Things move in lightening speed there...

Growing up in Miami history pretty much dated back to the 1920s ...everyone in Miami these days seem to be from someplace else...if not themselves than maybe a generation or two away. My own love Danny is a first generation Cuban-American. He says moving here to Iowa has gotten be back to my "white people" roots. He said in Miami I was different and here I look like everyone else. lol I must say it did take some getting used too. I have never been around this many pale skinned natural blonds or blue eyes in my life. I had a professor in college who always told me I never seemed like I belonged in Miami.



So just what are my roots? Well on my fathers side we have been here since the Mayflower, no kidding, the actual Mayflower. My grandmother is actually a member of the Mayflower Society and Daughters of the American Revolution. (DAR). On my mothers side... her grandmother was from Germany, her father also goes way back... at least to the Revolution maybe further... so DAR on both sides.

I am a double DAR baby :)

Years ago I played a character in a Tennessee William's play who had a line how she had just come back from a DAR meeting.... I always thought to myself....one day maybe I will actually join.

The day has come... I am finally living someplace where there are three chapters in my back yard...my grandmother sent me all the genealogy information.

So I think finally I will give it a whirl... back to my roots....back home....where I belong...

Either that or I have finally officially become a Williams heroine....

A return

"But I need a place where I can shout and weep. I have to be a Spanish savage at some time of the day. I record here the hysteria life causes in me. The overflow of an undisciplined extravagance. To hell with taste and art, with all contractions and polishings. Here I shout, I dance, I weep, I gnash my teeth, I go mad -- all by myself, in bad English, in chaos. It will keep me sane for the world and for art."

Anais Nin

Here we go........

A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 12 PM CST FRIDAY.

SNOW WILL BEGIN TONIGHT AND CONTINUE INTO FRIDAY MORNING.

SNOW...HEAVY AT TIMES AND POSSIBLY MIXED WITH SLEET...WILL CONTINUE TONIGHT BEFORE ENDING FRIDAY MORNING. SNOWFALL AMOUNTS OF 7 TO 10 INCHES ARE EXPECTED WITH THE STORM. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS WILL BE POSSIBLE. A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. HEAVY AMOUNTS OF SNOW AND SLEET WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY DANGEROUS OR IMPOSSIBLE. TRAVEL ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY AND TAKE A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT.

Some scenes of Iowa Christmas

Some lovely scenes from the Tannenbaum Forest in the Amana Colonies. http://www.amanacolonies.com/

An annual festival, dozens of decorated live Christmas trees fill the 100 year old Festhalle Barn. There is also all the usual shopping, food, and German craftmanship, it was so pretty to see everything decorated for the holidays and a lovely fresh coat of snow.

We went last weekend...even saw Santa ;)

All I ever needed to know

The question: What have I really learned about life since my childhood?

The answer: Nothing.

The fact of the matter is that higher education has not affected life as we live it ( just what we will be making when we finally join the work force). Everything worth knowing we have known since we were five... We learned it in kindergarten.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play Fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life – Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die.

So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm.

Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about three o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.

Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.


-Robert Fulghum