Category Archives: humor

More Than Words

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I’m a bad blogger, guys. The world is full of people shooting words at each other. Sharpening them as weapons to hurl through the online nonexistent air of the Internet. Bending them to fit their needs. Shaping them into typeset gravitas delivered in newspapers and magazines to doors shut tight against other ideas.

 Writers like to think we’re part of the solution, but when we can’t find words that soothe, heal, or maybe just provide a good escape for a bit of time, perhaps we dry up.

Out here in the woods of The Blue House, the place friends loan me to get away from the Net and all the rest, the woods are vibrant with color. Oranges melting to browns, greens growing into reds so vivid you think there might be apples on a tree.

Old roads, made from older wagon tracks, lead to abandoned homesteads and barns that look as though they would fall over with one push of a wolf’s paw. Never mind all the huffing and puffing; just breathe, and walk. Look around and soak in some peace and quiet.

Soak it in so maybe it can translate into friendly, quiet, thoughtful words to send out. I hope I can share the savoring with you, because in the end isn’t that what such things are for? When we fill up we can pour out.

Either way, living in the moment, enjoying the leaves and the silence, is a thing to be savored. So that’s why the blog post is small this week, and I hope you are savoring things of your own. Perhaps you’re at a beach where earth, air, and water share conjoined contentment. Family time with changing leaves and thresholds, the first powdery snows of Northern climes, covering tracks and crevices.

Wherever you are, soak it in and have a great weekend.

Iron Grey Ponytails Flying

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It’s been a hellacious week, so Nora had to drag me to weekend exercise class. This month it was called KICKIT and I anticipated some BS about women’s empowerment and a few knee twinges.

Marshall, our instructor, came around and showed me where to stand for best balance, and how to pivot in a tennis shoe. He started the music, and off we went.

I had the time of my life.

Two minutes in, we all smelled bad, and some of us were yelling names at the bags. He showed us how to punch harder, protect our faces, use the whole foot, and some other fun stuff.

And as he showed us the culminating exercise of the first half of class–throwing one-two punches followed by “the groin kick”–Pretty Woman started playing. The five of us, grey ponytails flying, came alive. We slammed our hands into the bags, we threw our whole bodies into the high knee that didn’t so much tap the bag as take out an aggressor, and all I can say is I never felt so feminine in my life.

Mid-class, Marshall had us take a break, drink water, walk around. Just stay loose. I leaned against the window of the exercise studio, which looks down onto a basketball court. Little girls, maybe 8 years old, were donning knee pads and picking out balls. They all had ponies like ours, theirs with sparkly bows rather than iron grey streaks. Their instructor, wearing a tight hot pink warmup jacket, blew a whistle, and from O to 60 the girls started in. Dribbling and yelling and throwing their bodies in the air like fearless warriors. Some of them came down hard, jumped up, and threw themselves in the air again.

You go, girls. Do it for all of us. We’re counting on you.

Marshall called us back to order, showed us a few more moves, and congratulated me on a particularly well-placed kick. The fact that I was screaming a name at the time, he suggested, was not essential but if it made me feel more empowered, go for it. At the end of the class, one of the women apologized for letting an f-bomb fly, and we began a spirited discussion of the many ways the f-word could be used in appropriate contexts.

I’ll be going again next week.

This is not us. I just like the picture.