The End, the Beginning...

The End is also the Beginning....

In less than a week I will turn sixty. Wow!

Mentally it doesn't compute. I look in the mirror and still see my 18 year old self...I know,  I know. 100% delusional.   I pretty much feel 18.  Certainly no more than 30.

                        

18.                     almost 60. 

(Carlos looks embarrassed to be in the middle....)

And my list will not be completed. Some might see that as a failure.  I see it as an opportunity to continue learning and doing.

Twelve items on the list weren't done at all. Two have been worked on. One is scheduled. I've done a couple of extras.  When I made the list I could not imagine the turns my life would take in the coming years. I made the list while living outside the fourth largest city in the United States. I'm finishing up the list living in a tiny rural area in Colorado two hours from anything.  Number 20: MOVE!! was put on there as a lark. Mostly I was thinking move houses. Not move cities. Or states.

So those 12 items will be moved to Project 90x90. Maybe. I may rethink a couple of them.

And  until I get that 90x90 website up and running, I thought I would share a few things I've learned in the last three years.
Or maybe the last 60 years.

1) Food is love.
Maybe I've seen too many chef/restaurant movies or maybe I have just finally figured out that food is not just food.  Good food feeds your body. Junk food junks up your body.   I still have my fast food cravings (Chick Fil A anyone? Jack in the Box tacos?) and I am looking forward to Tex Mex but I know that the healthy stuff makes me feel better.
Beyond the actual health benefits of eating real food and healthy food, though, I have learned the joy  in making a meal and sharing it with others. In being the guest at someone else's table. In sharing my banana bread with some grateful young men. In making cookies to give away as thanks.
Food is love.

Food. Feed your body. Feed your soul.

(image from the movie: Burnt)

(And if you want to see a good movie with gorgeous food and gorgeous Bradley Cooper, go see Burnt. )

2) Change is good.
Really.
It can be uncomfortable. Scary. Even unwanted.
But every time you have to face a fear, make a change, deal with the world changing around you, well, you grow. You learn something new. Brain cells connect . Maybe your heart expands a bit. Your eyes widen.   Learning new stuff is cool. And good for you. Even if you think you didn't want to learn anything new, you just wanted to stay in your little shell. Change. It's good.

Make your brain happy.

Embrace change.

(image: here)

3) Friends are the Bomb.Dot.Com.
Honest. My friends are awesome. They have come through for me so many times and in so many ways. I try to be a good friend back. Some days I'm awesome, some days I fall really short. I'm whiney. I complain way too much.  I think it is my way of working through stuff.  But O! My friends have been such great sounding boards. I have some super smart friends. I learn stuff new from them all the time.
Friends are family you get to choose.  Make some. Nourish your relationships.

From this...

to this. 

I'm happy to say I have friendships 

that have almost crossed this time span. 

(I say "almost" because I'm not that old yet.)

4) Money is Power and Freedom      and
5) Work is dignity.
Money. Love it. Hate it. Worship it. Never enough, is there?
But here is what I know. A little money in a secret stash is important.  If you have your own money, no one can tell you what to do with it. That is empowering and freeing. I've been trying to impart this bit of wisdom to my girls. And especially to the boy.
Number Five goes along with Number Four because the most common way to get money is to work for it. And working gives you purpose and structure. A feeling of accomplishment. O! And a paycheck. So Four brings us to Five and Five brings us to Four.
I love a full circle.

Like I said, 

change is good.

Sooo...I'm signing off this website at the end of December.  And what posting I do between now and then will be even more random than it has been, if that is possible. I have a birthday, a friend's son's wedding and a 1000 mile move all scheduled in the next ten days. And then comes Christmas which I am woefully unprepared for.  Belle will be arriving in Colorado from Florida with a friend boy in tow.  They will help get Bunny back to Texas. A quick check last night resulted in a resounding "No" when I asked if there was a Christmas tree awaiting me in Texas.
Basically my life for the rest of the month will be herding kittens through Jell-o. Can't wait.

Join me in the New Year here:   PROJECT 90x90

Brains

Brains. Love 'em. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I just love brains. Love how they work, how different they are and how the same thing can be perceived so differently by two different people.

Wishing my brain was synesthetic, but its not.

But it can do lots of things like draw and write and Hallelujah! I do have common sense so I'm not totally complaining.

I love smart people. Not just book smart but everyday smart and specialized smart and people that have just one interest that they know a whole whole bunch about.

I don't have much patience with stupid.

And stupid doesn't necessarily mean no book smarts. I've met a few book smart people that couldn't find their way out of a paper bag.

With three kids I've gotten to experience three totally different brains. When I was pregnant with the third I kept saying I didn't care if it was a boy or a girl- truthfully I didn't want to know. (Thanks, Amy, for spoiling that surprise!) But mostly I was curious about who would we get. Personality. Brains.

Probably one of my most favorite pics of this kid.

Even with the giant diamond in his ear.

The first kid, the Big Guy, is a musical whiz. He can play anything by ear. He learned how to read music but he doesn't. In that respect he's just like my brother, Paul. Paul could sing and play anything,  a trait that I was always totally jealous of. I can't carry a tune in a basket. Zero musical talent. None. Big Guy got it all.
But Big Guy can't do math. He learns it, then it just goes...I can't tell you how many math classes he repeated in high school but it was a lot. One semester of algebra was repeated three or four times. He was privately tutored twice a week for math from the time he was in fourth grade until he graduated from high school. Year round. I thought music was supposed to help kids with math? Not in his case.

First time surfing, got up right away.

Same with snowboarding, skate boarding, etc, etc. 

Natural athlete.

Then came Belle. A mover and shaker from four months. Literally. Set her on the floor at four months plus one day and turned my back. She rolled from one room to another. And never stopped after that. Belle didn't crawl, she rolled. Then at 8 months she walked. At 8 months and one week, she ran. She could climb anything. We had to nail the dressers to the walls. She had gross motor skills AND fine motor skills from the get-go. At one year old I could put her in her car seat, drive thirty minutes and she would still be in the seat, but her shoes would be unlaced and then re-laced in an entertaining if not exactly correct order. Every sport came easy to her from bikes to horses to surfboards and soccer.

Belle could recite the entire Golden Book of Cinderella at the age of 3. Word for word. That book has about 30 pages, it's not a board book. But Belle struggled with letter sounds. I knew she wasn't reading but it took her teachers a bit to realize it. She could "fake read" so well.  Belle is dyslexic. And I cannot tell you how many times she has amazed me with her logic and ability to see the same situation that I see in an entirely different way. It's like she comes with the ability to see something from the back rather than head on like the rest of us.  She still memorizes like a champ. It's a really handy quality. She's a great waitress because of it.

Bunny can bake. That's a math and chemistry thing.

Once she told me she was going to make crepes. 

I warned her that people tried for years to perfect making crepes, plus we didn't have a crepe pan.

No problem. 

She followed the recipe and they were easily some of the best I'd ever had.

Last we had Bunny, that third kid. At first I didn't really notice in the chaos of three kids and moving  from one house to another, that she was talking in full sentences at 11 months. She could sing the alphabet song all the way through, correctly, about the same time. At 3 she taught herself to read. From about 6 to 8 she played a game where she could look at a word and tell me if it had an odd or even number of letters in it, faster than I could count the letters myself. Big words. "Neighborhood". We would see words on a sign  and she would shout "Even" before I could even finish reading it out loud. She might not have known how to spell the word but she could certainly tell me how many letters it had. And she was NEVER wrong. She eventually tested out as Gifted and Talented in math and science.
BUT!! "Left" and "right" are concepts that still challenge. (Although, thankfully not so much since she has started driving.) And if it wasn't for her sister, she would have been dead a million times because she could NOT remember to look before crossing the street or to not walk in the middle of the road.

Could these three kids have been any different? Totally different brains. Totally different thought processes.

Challenges but also compensations.

And then I was talking to a friend of mine whose mother has Alzheimer's. What an awful awful disease, slowly robbing victims of their memories, their mobility, their lives.

Her mom has been diagnosed for quite a few years now and had gotten to the point where she was pretty much immobilized. The home had her in a wheelchair. She didn't walk.

Last fall she had a few seizures.

Seizures are uncontrolled electrical impulses in the brain.   And guess what?

Now her mom is dancing. And walking.

Really.

Proof.

                  

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Isn't that amazing???

Brains. A never ending source of wonder.