Shelf Life

By Dale Angel

My shelf life is expiring.

Some are able to extend the life of a product by serving up the stuff in a pretty dish. No one really knows how outdated it may be in that pretty container…like some people who show up looking almost new.

It gives me comfort. Then…I looked into the image of me as I passed the security camera and I realized my container is so…colorless. I don’t serve up well. I saw a dumpling or a flat sauce with no flavor, so blah. Blue and white is passé.

When your house looks deteriorated and unsalable, the first tools are paint brushes and color. Add a hammer to pound a few nails to hold it up awhile longer.

That may be why some mark themselves with graffiti to serve themselves up in current trendy candy dishes that will be so outdated as soon as someone gets poisoned by the dye. Can the government recall all that…art?  Every other person I see is decorated.

The shelf life of our medical industry is being affected.

Animal doctors are causing a decrease in wages of medical doctors.  The graffiti dealers are out doing the Golfers economy. You notice these things when you see so many golf courses in the for sale ads.

Judge Judy’s shelf life has been extended by the skills of her physical landscaping surgeon, sushi lunches, and a new hairdo.

I live in modern day Rome. We have replaced the lions with an oblong ball. The mayhem is less visible until the player gets older. Then his brains are missing, replaced by money–a more attractive display dish.

There was a conversation recently. She said ”After I get my new breast implants, I think I’ll get tattooed suspenders.” These words came from within my own household. You can almost see a more refined attitude on this subject.

The Food industry has added shelf life to tomatoes that can sit on my counter for weeks and still look beautiful, and Twinkies never expire.

One more saying coming from my house: ”I don’t want those GMO Harlots in my garden with my Organic Virgins.” Does Organic mean a longer shelf life?

dale

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D Words

By Dale Angel

Dismantle or throw the clutter away, you can’t carry it with you

As I ….Dismantle my life…and the things that I carried with me…like colds… everyone gets the D disease. Eventually, it comes with old age. Like measles, its effects are harder on some, more than others.

I’m remembering the Hyacinth bulbs that bloomed in this vase on cold winter mornings.  The kitchen was filled with the scent of a whole flower garden. I hope someone will love it.

This spray bottle with orange water was used by a great granddaughter to spray on the Camellia bush, to entice butterflies. I’ll advertise this as a Grandmother necessity

With this cup, I watched beautiful mornings slashed with pinks and orange and yellow with touches of lavender blue. It held my tea. I won’t take it with me.

What insensitive thoughts I have! I have already Divested….oh! Another D word!  I can’t lift my go bag in case of disaster. I’ll have to pull a wagon behind me if I keep any more personals. My life lived is so heavy, I have no choice but take it with me. It may diminish if I’m fleeing for my life…difficulty at the moment is all one can carry….right? At the end of a thousand years, my head and heart won’t be adding crisis after crisis ….Oh my! Three more D’s. I think my pencil is in charge

Symptoms often visit late in life, include

Defenseless, Dependency, Devalue, Diminish, Disrespect, Distance Disability Disadvantage Disapproval Discard Discourteous Discredit Discriminate Distance Desperation Depression Despondency Desertion Disengage Disinterest Detached Disregard Disunited …Divorce Doubt Dementia… Death

I had to throw the dictionary across the room

There must have a better collection of D words, more comforting?  Let’s see what I can find.

Divisions Dominating Doomed Dread Dragons Downhearted Driven Drowned Drunk Dungeon Dumb Dung…  These words are multiplying as I sit here. Where can I go….How did I get here?

 Let’s move on to something more cheerful.

Keep in mind how we would handle being bag ladies, I’m going as a Deposed Queen. Oh! There’s another D word

We have to find a place or invent one mostly in our minds and leave the D’s home.  The world does recognize one needs to be emotionally nourished.  Not just a Detached interest…….. Oh! Dear another D word.

Am I doing you in with my prattle?  I blame it on my pencil.

You can sit and cry until the cows come home and no one can understand; they for the most part are crying themselves. We need to help them. It is healthier to get mad. It gives one power, even if mad is run on emotional power.

Remember my neighbor Mrs. McKenna? They put her away in an old farm house somewhere in Texas. She walked and I think crawled for half a day before she found a road. Everyone drives pickups there, they helped her get to a Greyhound Bus, and she showed up at my door one day.  Mad is a useful tool. She was nearly 100 and could still use her power…MAD POWER…tools. Off Quart Hill the little road is called her name.

She made her own clothes, using only Taffeta fabric. You could hear her swish and keep time as she walked. It sounded soft and musical, the iridescent colors created rainbows moving with each step. Her sons were executives with Pendleton Wool.

dale

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Food Issues

By Dale Angel

Eating out is a perilous activity when health issues are at stake.  You know this, but there are times when you have no choice except eat by yourself in isolation and stay home …or swallow your sensibleness and go along for the social ambiance.

Try not to unbalance the high fun by asking questions about the food order and be done with it. The gluey gravy that everyone is raving about is good discipline to not offer your personal opinion. You swallow and go to the bacon, half cooked. There’s only one piece, that’s good, as you chew the fat. You decide how to interpret this…while thinking, you realize it has sunk into your stomach and has been invited to join the dam building project that is lining up in your arteries. The 911 area.

Smile, there are interesting conversations going while I wrestle with food issues no one is interested shut up…. so you cover up the leaking toast and pour more fat loaded cream into the coffee.  Either I have to stop drinking coffee or do cream. I haven’t learned to do coffee black.

The large order of muffins arrived and the one dumped into your plate has enough sugar to bring on an insulin attack. It taste good as it rushes to the area where the stop-and-go system flags it down and directs the sugar to the pancreas that goes into overdrive and pumps the extra into pools to be used later after you have gone to bed to attack you with a game called indigestion. You always lose this game, yet continue to play. It must be an addiction.

Wash it all down with coffee that sends the euphoric caffeine to settle all this by going to your mental system and puts a damper on your self-centered issues and kills any sensibleness.

I had a great time but my raging conscience is feeling betrayed. I know better. Why can’t I do better? It must be peer pressure, why do I yield knowing this is a game of chance with the odds against me?

It occurs to me I may have disrespect for gamblers….. Is this any different?

dale

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I have the pleasure to announce the return of Fridays with Dale!

Welcome back, Dale. We missed you!

I’m the Enemy

By Dale Angel

Sitting in my wheelchair looking out the windows thru mostly closed curtains, I move my leg to relieve pain. I’m exhausted inside myself. I feel the tears of frustration fall as I see another day looming and I am paralyzed with fear and uncertainty. I’ve have added to these feelings.

I have become too heavy emotionally and physically for others to carry. I’m visiting the other end of seventy…no, it’s eighty…and I feel lost. Where do I belong?

I have to get out of this prison I’ve been confined to for months, mostly inside my head. Standing on my good foot I push open the curtains and let light come in, open the door to let air in, and sit trying to figure out the rest of my life.

This is war! …….I’m the enemy.

I wheel chair to the bathroom and see the folding bench sitting inside the tub. It was still wet from my feeble attempts to shower. I roll over to it and carefully fold it. Water spills all over me.  I head for the back landing outside the kitchen door dragging it. There’s barely enough room for both on the porch.  I unfold the bench and try to figure out how to get down the steps. I don’t even know for sure what I’m up to until I set the shower bench on the step, slide onto it, and stand up on my good leg, slide it down to the next step, pulling the wheelchair behind me. It went into a fit and rolled down the steps end over end. I have another step to master and then I’m at the bottom! While sitting on the wobbly bench I set the chair up on its wheels and slide over in it.

I grab my purse and roll for the car. I can get inside, but I need the chair. It took more effort than I had to lift, push, and physically shove it in the back seat on one leg. Anger gives me extra strength. When I start the motor and back out of the driveway, I am a new being. I was dangerously euphoric, my breath came in short puffs my head was buzzing at all the possibilities.

Now what to do? I start to shake with fear. I was a loose cannon.  My heart was pounding, and I shook at the potential of what I had just done. This was power!  I tell myself be sensible, be sensible, I wanted to fling and scream….cast an all.

This is the beginning of the rest of my life. what will I do with it?  It seemed gracious gratefulness was a first step I need to contemplate…don’t I?

Coffee is something I can do. I drive thru and order a Latte, a big one! Sitting in the car along the banks of the river sipping my coffee……I think and think and think. I made a list of where I find myself, my feeble options. I decided on acceptance, this is a little bump in the road of life…… I can do this.

 Pursue contentment most of all feed the spirit because that’s where all joy or depression generates. Cry, but after a while it’s tiring. Work on what I can do, quit mourning over life’s inevitable losses.

I asked for the furniture to be removed out of my living room and for the sewing machine to be set up. There’s a new grand baby coming. It doesn’t need anything, but I do; I need a reason to make a gift.  I placed all the music I could lay my hands on at my fingertips.  Several bird feeders are wonderful entertainment. The order of barrels and potting soil for my mini-garden arrives. I tell myself: cultivate a life…build…walk on old bridges. The structure needs shoring up… you have the material already, called life’s experiences.

Most of my companions are on medicine to help them cope with life. I may be tomorrow, but today, I am able to sing.  Listening to music… is a better description

If a lifetime has gone by, start today working on contentment. You will need that mind set to live without meds. Happiness is home made. Life is challenging and even with all the props, they may fail. Personal interest is a divine gift, use it in either yourself, or who passes by. Your curious intellect is from our maker. Don’t waste it.

I ate my crops, a cup of peas, from the two plants from my barrel garden and tomatoes. Well, only two lived.  Next year, I will do better. The wheelchair and the walker still live with me, we tolerate each other. There are no curtains to block out the light or fear to paralyze me, my spirit has climbed out of that place of darkness. How grateful I am even though damaged…. only on the outside…….. inside… a great healing has taken place.

The enemy has been vanquished.

dale

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