TV and Yard Sales

I really am not a TV Freak. In fact I despise people who live their lives by the TV. I do however have a few shows I love and now we're in the middle of premiere season and so I'm drawn back to the couple of shows I love and also to some I got curious about through the commercials. All in all it will even out to about 5 hours a week during which I will knit and do other things because I can rarely sit still.

I will have a yard sale this weekend. I've gotten it together in the past 4 nights - pricing things, making and posting signs, etc. It's gonna happen finally and I will have a big part of my house back!

But I can't talk more now - I think tonight is the final episode of last year's Grey's again and I need to torture myself by watching Izzie lie in dead Denny Duquette's arms again - I need my weekly small weep to remind me I am, after all, a girl.

"The authorities don't want to stamp him as insane because that makes it impossible to execute him. I think the court deliberately avoided a mental evaluation that would lead to that possibility. " Hisataka Kogi, a psychiatrist hired by the defense for convicted Aum Shinrikyo guru Shoko Asahara. Asahara is said to suffer from delusions, hallucinations, incoherent speech and disorganized behavior. (AP)

A quote from Crisscross News, a Japan Daily news in English. I though at first it was in reference to the US President.

Bold text added by gaga.

I am on a roll.

Tonight's "Presidential" Address

I want to vomit. All day he was stately and appropriate and kept his mouth shut and then he had to go and ruin it all by blowing his own 2" horn on primetime TV at 9 pm. How dare he. How dare he use this day to impose his limp, old, worn out and losing agenda on the very graves of people who had no agenda and only were victims of the same fundamentalism he spouts as hope against the threat. The same agenda that continues to kill our people in Iraq and Afganistan while inflaming not only the terrorists but the rest of the world to hate our country.

"Thank you. God bless you".

Yeah. You too. Asshole.

(Not feeling real Zen tonight)

No End to Projects!

Today I'm working some more on the table. It's already September 9 and if I don't get this thing going big time it won't be in the house in time for the great Christmas Candy making!

I might just be in a position to begin sealing it in the upcoming week if I can keep myself going on it. I want to clean my porch and get my yard sale together before the end of the month.

Zen and the Art of Refinishing Family "Heirlooms"

I am taking a new class on BNU - this time in Zen Miracles. The class just started Tuesday and already I have learned so much and have even had my first zazen sitting, which typically for me, ended with a cat making me laugh!

What I have learned so far is the importance of allowing thoughts to enter my mind and then letting them go - letting go of control over them and not latching on to any one of them and turning them into a worry or anger or obsession or anything else disruptive to the natural flow of thought and being.

This afternoon after work I decided to make a bit more progress on a piece of furniture I inherited in June. This is a wonderful, excellent piece of furniture. It is the picnic-style kitchen table that sat in my paternal grandparent's kitchen for as long as I can remember and before. After my grandparents passed away the table went to my parents' house and very appropriately sat on the front porch. As a young adult I remember summer dinners eaten out there around it. A whole lot of iced tea has been consumed at this table! Because it is a bit heavy it ended up out on the front porch of that house for a few winters, unprotected from the elements, and when it finally made it inside it was banished to the damp basement.

When this albatross was loaded into the back of my truck in June for the drive back to Atlanta I privately wondered what in the hell I had gotten myself into. This bedraggled, bruised icon of my youth was nothing like the fine country kitchen table that lived in my memories. I knew for a fact that this thing could not enter my house until it had been thoroughly refinished. It went directly to my screened front porch as I have no other place for sanding, etc.

I did work on it quite a bit at first, doing the first round of rough sanding within the first 3 weeks. Then it got oppressively hot and I stopped. In the past few days it has cooled off - enough that I have been able to turn off the AC and open the windows, so today I decided to begin the fine sanding.

My goal has been only to sand off the badly weathered finish and preserve the history of the table, not to make it look new, and I think I have done this successfully. Scratches and marks from my father's childhood remain, and that is the way I wanted it. As I work thoughts enter and leave my mind about the history of this fine, simple piece of furniture. I think of my grandmother in her kitchen, preparing this shrimp/rice/black olive dinner - what was that called? We didn't have the best of relationships but I believe this was resolved before she died. At least it was for me. I think of my grandfather, who told wonderful stories and the more he told them the better they got. After Gran died Grandaddy would latch onto one food and eat it until he was sick and tired of it and then latch onto another. As I sand I see the pecan twirls and strawberry shortcake that sat on the table waiting to be consumed in his latest food kick. I remember the medications that sat there on a tray, and the small TV. I imagine my father and his sister and brother sitting there for supper as children and my memories take me back to all the stories I heard while growing up - stories like when Aunt Kitty would have a date and Dad and David would "rig" the front yard rope swing so when the date inevitably sat to swing he would fall on his ass! I remember sitting with Grandaddy on a trip while I was in graduate school and when it was time for me to get back on the road he would put a $20 bill in my hand and tell me it was to ensure that I got closer to my Dad than I was to him before I needed money again!

It is literally impossible for me to put a minute of work into this project without my mind meandering through my past. It is what it is. I breathe the fine sawdust of the sanding process and relive my childhood. I want to complete this project and have this wonderful table and benches in my own country kitchen and yet I want to continue working on it forever, just to have these moments of memories.

Truly this is a Zen project.

Katie Couric and George Meegan

Tonight was the big night! Katie - the first solo woman to anchor the evening news. It's been about 15 years since I last watched the CBS evening news but I went back tonight. Bad eye makeup - totally. Far too dramatic for her fresh clean look. And she was obviously a bit nervous at first but got into it by the end and was a joy! At the end she said she needed help coming up with a catchy sign off and you could submit ideas at CBS.com so I logged own with my idea - "Thanks for watching America. I'm Katie Couric, stickin' it to the man!"

Honestly I am still nursing this jet lag thing. I know that sounds ridiculous after a week back but it's true. Air travel is such a convenient miracle but when you fly so far it depletes every bit of energy. No matter how early or late I make myself go to bed I wake up at 3 am. This too shall pass. I joke that I get jet lag flying from Atlanta to Pittsburgh (same time zone for those who don't know) but it's true. Despite the convenience the human body was not designed to traverse so far so quickly. I far prefer train travel. Unfortunately Amtrak doesn't go to Tokyo.

Which brings me to my second topic of the night.

Several posts back I posted the link to a google movie called Kintaro Walks Japan - the account of a young man who in 2004 spent 5 months walking from the southernmost tip to the northernmost tip of Japan. He made the most beautiful documentary of the trip and you can see the whole thing for free on Google Video. And then go to his own website and buy your own copy for CHEAP! Support this guy! He did this because he was trying to impress his girlfriend and his girlfriend's father just happens to hold 8 world's records for walking. From 1977 through 1983 this man, George Meegan, walked the entire Western hemisphere! 19,019 miles and over 3 million steps over 7 years. He started at the southernmost point in South America and spent 7 years walking to Alaska! I ordered and have just finished reading his book - The Longest Walk - and it is fascinating and moving and I am just living every day in awe of such an achievement. His sheer exuberance for life and complete love of the human race has inspired me beyond belief. We should all surround ourselves with people like this. A reminder of why we should never sit on our asses and become complacent, not even for a minute. Highly recommend the Kintaro movie and highly recommend George's book. Both will remind you of the resilience and sheer excellence of the human spirit that dares to imagine what if.

Love, Actually

This is one of my favorite movies. Oddly enough Dad has now adopted it as his favorite Christmas movie. I had seen it several times and last Christmas he had a formal screening Christmas Eve in honor of the holiday. I knew it was going to happen and kind of dreaded it because I tend to shed tears from the opening. But I held it together and only got sobby during the carolers/cue card scene (Dad did too - I heard him).

Watched it again tonight. This is a movie well worth seeing. Romantic and sentimental but a good reminder of what is important in life. Good to watch it alone where I can cry openly and with abandon without feeling like a silly jerk!

Would you please pass the kleenex?