Face to Face

So, earlier this week I suddenly realized that last Sunday was my two-year blogiversary, and I was thinking that I really should write something thoughtful, insightful, and profound to mark the occasion. But then Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man and I saw this face on a little tomato. And I found an apple with a mouth and two eyes looking right at me so, of course, I couldn’t resist sharing them both with you.  And really, this (and this from 2007–a favorite) probably gives you a truer sense of who I am than anything else I could write.

Yep, I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. Just yesterday, our local news featured a potato shaped like a duck, and I laughed in delight like a five-year-old. And my friend Clara had this picture on her blog earlier in the summer of a heart-shaped spud, which thrilled me to pieces. And, too, I love those stories you hear of someone who had lost hope and faith but found a reason to believe again when they found, say, a corn flake with the image of Jesus on it or a rock shaped like a cross or a knot in a tree that looks like the Virgin Mary.

I hope I don’t sound deranged when I tell you that I see faces everywhere. In tree trunks, in fence posts, in flower blossoms. And even when the face isn’t readily apparent, all I have to do is add two little googly eyes, and there it is. Yep, it’s true—I could entertain myself for hours with two little googly eyes and a world full of wonders. And even if you’re not so easily entertained as that, I hope these goofy shots will at least make you smile and remember, just for a moment, the pure pleasure and joy of silliness.  

There’s one in every crowd.

Hey, what’s that critter on sitting on the bull thistle?

Egads!  It’s the rare Fuzzy Breasted Spiky Headed Thistle Bird!

It’s not easy being squash. 

Just In Case You Still Remember My Last Post…

Since it’s been nearly two weeks since my last post, you’ve probably all pretty much forgotten what the post was about.  But just in case you do remember and just in case you’re curious about whether or not my shameless exploitation of Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man’s hurt toe actually got me into Blog Log…why, I’m happy to report that…yes…yes, it did.

But the thing is, Brian was a little late with Blog Log this week (apparently he was moving last week), so until today, I thought I had embarrassed myself  for nothing.  In fact, I was just about to publish a post bemoaning my previous post and exposing the egg on my face.  It was going to be titled something like The Folly of Following Fickle and Fleeting Fame.  (You know how I love alliteration) Here’s an excerpt from my unpublished post: 

Yes, it’s true—it seems I humiliated myself and exploited my beloved husband’s injury for naught. It would appear, in fact, since it has been two weeks since the last Blog Log was published, that the Mountain Xpress has decided to discontinue the column. And they apparently made this decision just as I published my post where I all but begged to be in Blog Log again.  So it seems, as usual, that my timing is thoroughly and painfully off.  Which, of course, is nothing new.  I’m always the one who remembers the punchline of a joke long after everyone has walked away; who arrives at the party after all the food is eaten, half the crowd is gone, and the balloons are starting to deflate; and who sends a cheery “Get Well Soon!” card only to find out that the person I sent it to has just passed away.

*Sigh*
 
My, that certainly was a light-hearted little piece, wasn’t it?  However,  I then went on to say:

But, on the bright side, Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man is still employed!  And his completely blackened toe did not wither and fall off!  In fact, it no longer looks gangrenous so I can now see it without flinching. 

Yep, it’s a good day alright when your toe doesn’t fall off!  I mean, I really hate it when that happens.  Bummer.   Yeah, nothing ruins a good day like losing a digit.

Seriously, we are truly grateful that Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man still has a job.  And that his toe didn’t drop off.  He even scored some free vegetable plants for our garden last week when there was a closeout at one of the places he does maintenance, along with some herbs that we can’t identify (but they sure smell good).   And I found the butterfly bushes I’d been wanting at a price I could afford.  Plus,  all the perennials I planted last year have come back this spring, except for the purple verbena.   All that…and I got on Blog Log, too!  Almost too much excitement for one week!  Things are definitely looking up.

So thanks, Brian.  I hope your move went well.  And I sure am glad the Xpress isn’t dropping Blog Log.  I enjoy it, even when I’m not on it.  But I sure do like it when I am. Makes me ridiculously happy.   Quite a thrill to see Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl in print, even if that isn’t really my name.  That would be “Beth.”  With a “B.”  As in beaming.  As in buoyant.  As in bountifully blessed.

Whereas I Shamelessly Exploit My Husband’s Injury To Achieve Only Modest Fame

Tom’s foot with one sad toe (by Benjamin)

Our local alternative weekly newspaper, the  Mountain Xpress, has a feature called Blog Log, where reporter Brian Postelle chooses certain local blogs and a particular post on those blogs to highlight for the week.  My blog’s been chosen several times, and I’ve got to tell you—it makes me inordinately happy.  Perhaps I’m a little silly, but it’s really nice to be recognized, however modest the fame may be.  It is particularly gratifying because, although we have a very active blogging community in the area, I don’t really fit with the general blogging crowd here.  I’m sure they’re all very nice, but they are a hip, savvy, and trendy crowd.  And I…well…I am not.  So I don’t fit in.

Anyway, it’s been a while since Brian mentioned Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl on Blog Log, and it’s got me a little down in the dumps.  The truth is, the only posts of mine he seems to like are the funny posts.  And, well, these days I’m feeling about as funny as fire ants at a picnic.  As funny as a big zit on prom night.  As funny as screen doors on a submarine.  You get the idea. 

Because Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man and I have been a little anxious lately.  Big cuts are being made where he works, and he is still classified as a “temporary” worker.  He is also the most recently hired.  So we’re feeling a mite vulnerable.  Plus, they’ve cut his $12/hour pay and gone way up on our insurance, while our benefits have been sharply reduced.   So we got the poor-boy-beans-for-supper-again blues, and I just don’t feel like being funny.

So here’s where you will see me shamelessly exploit Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man just so I can maybe be in Blog Log again.  You see, Brian Postelle also has a fascination for blogger injury stories.  He said so himself here. And I offer as proof the fact that he featured my post about the time Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man stopped bleeding with a condiment, not one, but two times on Blog Log.   So here I present the sad, sad story of Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man and his tragic toe injury:

Since Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man works as a maintenance man, I worry a right good bit about his safety.  He has a lot of roof leak experience, so he’s the man they turn to when there’s a persistent leak.  So he spends a lot of time on ladders and roofs (I always want to say “rooves.”)   He likes it up there, but it makes me nervous, especially considering our luck for the past twenty years. 

So it finally happened—he got hurt about a month ago.  But it wasn’t falling off a roof.  Nope, so often it’s the little things that trip you up—in this case, an extension cord that he tripped over.  He then, in regaining his balance, managed to somehow come down hard on his toe and sprained it badly.  He came home limping like Grandpappy Amos on The Real McCoys.  (Does anybody else remember that show?)   When he showed me his toe, I got that weird chest-tightening I only get when someone I love hurts themselves.  It was one ugly digit, let me tell you.   Completely black—almost gangrenous looking—like his toe was going to wither and fall off in a matter of days. 

And, unfortunately, he is afraid to take time off from work (See Paragraph 3 above).  So he’s been gimping about for a while now, and while he’s some better (and his toe is unwithered and firmly attached), it still hurts quite a lot.  So, really, I’m not just posting this to get on Blog Log.  Certainly not.  I’d truly be grateful if anybody has some ideas to help a seriously-sprained toe.

But…there is no escaping the fact that I’m shamelessly exploiting my husband’s injury and milking it for all it’s worth just to see my name in print.  I’m kind of like that kid in grade school who was always raising their hand and waving it frantically to be recognized. Desperate, I tell you.  Heck, I’d even resort to excessive flattery to see my name in print. And it’s not even my real name.  That’s the saddest thing. I mean, my name isn’t really Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl, of course.  It’s Beth, with a “B”.  Like Brian, with a “B”.  As in, Brian Postelle, the very fine reporter and creator of the entertaining and delightful Blog Log in that most outstanding and venerable newspaper, the  Mountain Xpress. 

That’s Beth.  With a “B”.  As in blog.  As in bold and brazen. As in Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl. 

Thank You

Words are really inadequate to express how grateful I am for all the loving, thoughtful, insightful comments so many of you made on my last post, but since words are all I got, here goes:  I thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart.   Every single one of your comments touched me and moved me to tears.  I read them over and over and even printed them out so I could take them out and read them on some future terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. 

One thing that struck me as I read them was how so many of you, in commenting on my post about risking my heart, had risked your own in commenting with such honesty and candor.   I am grateful for that and for all the wisdom, love, and compassion shown me in your comments.  And I was humbled by your kind and generous words about my writing.  It’s funny—most times my first reaction when someone says something really nice about me is to think I don’t deserve that!  But I’m trying to learn to accept compliments gracefully.  After all, that’s a part of learning to open your heart, too, I think—to let the light pour in.

And I want to thank my children, too, for their comments and for being who they are.  I have learned so much from them about having a bold spirit and a courageous heart.  They both have such a strong sense of who they are and where they are going—I think I want to be like them when I grow up.  

In my friend Judy’s comment, she mentioned my post on finding a heart in the grass.  I thought those of you that read that post earlier might be happy to know that the heart’s still growing there in our big, imperfect, mongrel-grass yard.    Here is the original picture:

And here is one I took yesterday:

As you can see, there’s a little breach in the heart now, but it’s still largely intact.  The other day, when I saw the breach in the heart, I thought, “Aww, now it’s a broken heart.”  But at least that heart’s still growing.  And now, I think I’d say that little crack is not a break, but an opening.  Because, as my friend Wesley said in her comment, quoting from the words of Leonard Cohen: There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.

Indeed.

“You Are Here to Risk Your Heart”

(Bee leaving glory having tasted its sweetness)

Sometimes, I’m not so sure I was meant to be a blogger.  For one thing, I’m actually rather quiet and not much of a talker, though my sometimes lengthy posts may seem to contradict that.  For another, almost every time I write a post, when it comes time to click the “Publish” button, I get downright queasy, and when I do finally click it, sometimes I feel like throwing up.  Then there are those frequent dreams I’ve had since I started blogging about being in a crowd and looking down and realizing I have no clothes on.

Okay, maybe you don’t feel that way—maybe it’s just me, neurotic, quivering jelly mass of insecurities that I am.  But most times, after I post a piece, I do experience a sort of blogger’s remorse—especially when that post is very personal and revealing.

And so it was last week when I clicked “Publish” on the post, “Wayfaring Strangers.”  Perhaps you read it in the two days it was up.  If you didn’t, let me summarize for you.  Pretty much, I talked about how Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man and I have almost despaired of ever finding a church, a spiritual home where we might fit in because we just feel so unlike the rest of the world—almost as though we are from another planet.  And I talked about how the many difficulties we’d been through made us feel even more that way, so that we sometimes feel broken and sad. Or as Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man puts it: sometimes we feel like God’s Crash Test Dummies. 

So, when I clicked “Publish” on that one, I had something very much like a panic attack.  Pounding heart, nausea, light-headedness, and difficulty breathing.  I almost deleted it then and there.  But I’m trying to learn to trust people again and that means learning to reach out and ask for help and comfort.  So, a deep breath and a little pep talk to myself and out my heart flies into the blogosphere.

Red Smith, a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper columnist once said: “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.”   And, of course, this is particularly true when your writing is personal—when you lay your soul bare for all to see.  It’s difficult and requires a sort of faith that the world will treat it kindly. And, for me it never gets easier.

But I was more anxious than usual about this one.  So a day and a half later, I was grateful for the four comments I’d gotten. But then I looked at my stats, and that was my undoing.  That’s when I saw that 162 people had read that post.  One-hundred and sixty-two people had read that we felt sad and broken and only four had extended a virtual hand.  One-hundred and sixty-two people had read that we often feel alone in this world and one-hundred and fifty-eight seemed to confirm our suspicions.

But this isn’t meant to be a whiny or petulant post about those one-hundred and fifty-eight.  What really distresses me and what I’ve thought about most since was my reaction.  What I felt was shame.   Shame—as though I’d done something wrong in speaking honestly about our pain.  In fact, my sense of shame was so intense as to be intolerable.  So I did the only thing I could think of to do: I deleted my post.

Why did I feel shame?  Why is it so hard to shine a light into the darker places of our spirits?  And when we do shine a light there, why is it so painful?  Why do we hide so much of ourselves away?  Why do we (as Robert Frost wrote in Revelation) “make ourselves a place apart/Behind light words that tease and flout?”

I’m sorry I deleted that post.  I wish I had been bolder.  I wish I could have realized that the only real shame was that I felt shame at being honest.  I wish I had been brave enough to leave that door open to my heart.  I wish I had risked making my heart vulnerable for just a little longer.

I do want to thank those who did comment.  I’m very grateful.  I’ve thought about why more didn’t.  Perhaps, as one friend said, “folks just don’t know how to react when confronted with an emotional post.”   Or perhaps others were like another friend who read my post but wanted some time to think about her response.  I’ve done that before. Whatever the reason, I think what really matters here is that, even though I did delete that post to retreat to a safer place, here I am again opening my heart to the world.  Here I am—saying that there is no shame in showing you my pain.

My friend Wesley sent me a lovely quote that she had found on another blog, Pinwheels.  It’s from Louise Erdich’s The Painted Drum:

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

So, yes—I am broken.  I am hurt.  I have been betrayed.  And, much too often, death has brushed near.  But still, I risk my heart.  And still I love.  And still I feel.  And still I pray that I will always taste the sweetness of even the most bruised of every fallen apple.

A Year Into the Journey

(Socket to Me!  from The  Faces That Launched a Thousand Quips)

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full year since I wrote my first post, A Small Wobbly Step Into  the Blogosphere.   I was quite apprehensive and anxious.  It’s not easy to make yourself so vulnerable.  But here I am, a year later, wobbling along.  I was going to write a post reflecting on what I wrote then and how I feel about blogging now, but I guess I’d like to give that a little more thought.

But, for fun, I thought I’d revisit one of my earlier pieces—one of my favorites, The Faces That Launched A Thousand Quips.   Naturally, it’s from the Silliness category (in case you couldn’t tell from the photo…and the title).   I still remember how much fun I had doing that post, though it took several hours to take all the shots.  Take a look—I’m pretty certain it will make you laugh.

Oddly enough, some of my other favorites fall into the other extreme—the I-think-I-might-be-an-old-cranky-curmudgeon category:  A Friendly Word of Advice to the AARP ,  A Note to the Glib, Gauche Guy in Guccis, and A Passel of Personal Peeves.  I would like to note that the Gauche Guy in Guccis piece was written about men where I used to live–not where I live now.  Why, the other day, at CVS, I even had a fellow with a big ladder in his hands hold the door for me. 

But I’m proudest of the ones I wrote about my son Benjamin’s struggle with autism.  I say his “struggle with autism.”  Really, it was more his struggle with the world and how it so often discounts, dismisses, or rejects those who are different.  I’m proud of these posts because the fact that Benjamin allowed me to post them meant that he was finally moving towards acceptance of his autism and acceptance of who he is.  As I said in the post, Benjamin Raps, he was at last breaking “free of the bondage of believing the ill-conceived and ill-founded opinions of others and learning to see the truth of who he really is.”  If you’d like to read them, click on the Autism category.  I’d be pleased if you did.

Now that I think about it, that was one of the reasons I took my own bold step into the blogosphere.  To break free of my own bondage…of fear, of timidity, of insecurity.   I’d like to be able to say that I’ve become a bold, daring, confident woman.    But I haven’t…yet. 

But even if I haven’t arrived, I’m still out here, stumbling along, looking for grace and striving towards light.  One wobbly step at the time.

So, thanks.  For those of you still walking along with me and for those who have recently joined me—I appreciate you sharing my journey.  I am so grateful for the company. 

Blog Goblins

There seem to be pesky little goblins lurking in my blog today.  First thing this morning, I noticed my blogroll had disappeared overnight.  Then, it reappeared, but this time had my own blog on it!  Everything appears to be back to normal now.  As usual, I have no idea where the goblins came from.   But I hope they’re gone for good.   If you see any further bizarre occurences on my blog, please know I had nothing to do with it.

Bad goblins! Bad!

Of “Evil Scissors” and “Nobler Modes of Life”

[Are these the "evil scissors" you were looking for?  (For more of this, go here.)]

In my last post, I alluded to the search engine terms shown in my statistics that bring people to my blog.  They are great fun to read and are the main reason I look at my stats.  Lord knows, I sure don’t get any pleasure out of that line graph they show where I often see, in one painful glance, the precipitous plunge of my plummeting blog statistics.

But the search engine terms are quite entertaining—sometimes humorous, sometimes happy, sometimes poetic, and sometimes poignant.    And sometimes, they’re real headscratchers.   For example, this one:  “rat collars; I put them on my rat.”  Now this one gives rise to so many questions.  First, which one of my posts did that phrase correspond to?   Do they really put a collar on their rat?  Why?  If so, do they take their rats for a walk?  Are there little rat leashes too?  If they do take them for a walk, what happens when they meet a cat?  Where do you buy rat collars?  Do rats really have a well-defined neck that a collar would work with?   Really, the questions are endless.

In the same “headscratcher” category, we have “evil scissors,” “snake recipes,” “family tree nuts,” and “babies playing poker.”  “Babies playing poker” certainly brings an immediate image to your mind, doesn’t it?  Can’t you just see the babies, with Budweisers in their hands, cigars dangling from their mouths, poker chips piled high, sitting in diapers around a table?

Then there’s the funny and whimsical—“leaf quizzical,” “money spiders,” “bee collision,” and “quiet stupidity.”  One thing’s for sure—I’ll take “quiet stupidity” over “loud stupidity” any day. 

But my favorites are the poetic ones.  “Nobler modes of life.”  “He treasures her like a poem.”  “The forever kind of love.”   What I like imagining are all the wonderful stories behind these searches.  Who are you, sweet man, who treasures your lover like a poem and loves her, no doubt, with the forever kind of love?  A nobler mode of life you live, to be sure.

But there are two that I get on a regular basis that almost bring me to tears.  One of them is “Mama died I miss her” or “Where are you Mama” or just “mama.”  The other is a single word:  “Alone.”  Or sometimes “Lonely.” 

For any of you that find my blog using that phrase, I hope you have found just a little bit of what you’re looking for.   If you are lonely, I hope that, somehow, reading my blog helps by showing you that you are not alone in feeling lonely.  It’s a universal emotion that very few of us escape.  And I hope that reading the kind comments of my blogging friends makes you feel just a little less alone, as it does me,  by helping you see, as I have, that there is goodness and kindness yet to be found in this sad, tired, old world.  And that I, and you, are not alone.  We are not alone.

She Dreams of Falling

 

(Steps on our hike last year at Stone Mountain State Park, North Carolina)

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth, though I do dream most nights about falling.  And, no, I haven’t given up on my blog, though it has been woefully neglected, along with my commenting on all your wonderful blogs.  I am truly sorry.

More immediate and urgent concerns have commanded our attention of late.  The good news is:  We have sold our house and the new owner wants to take possession very, very soon.  The bad news is:  We have sold our house and the new owner wants to take possession very, very soon.

And, as of today, we have nowhere to go.

Until today, we have been looking to buy a home in the place to which we’re moving.  The trouble is, people there apparently haven’t gotten the word that it’s a buyer’s market now.  They all want outrageous amounts of money for their houses and land. And we don’t have that kind of money to spare.  And we’re not that picky—we just want a couple of acres or more in the country where we can see mountains and clouds and stars.  The house doesn’t have to be fancy—a trailer will do. 

Anyway, at this point, we’ve gone from mild anxiety to full-blown panic.  And needless to say, we’re looking for short-term rental—just so we don’t end up sleeping in our U-Haul truck.   Did I mention that we haven’t found work yet? Did I mention that the pain from my slipped rib problem returned, so that I’ve taken to sleeping in a recliner?  Did I mention that my car’s reverse gear suddenly stopped working out of nowhere (at sixty-thousand miles)?  Looks like I’ll be getting a transmission for my fiftieth birthday.  Yay.

And please don’t lecture me on how it would have been prudent to have gotten a job before making a drastic move.  Yes, that’s how it would have happened in an ideal world where eveything works out just as you’ve planned.  Lord knows, we’ve tried.  But nothing yet.  The reality is:  we’ve sold our house and we have to move.  I’m sure we’ll find work in time.  Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man is one hell of a carpenter and a highly skilled handyman besides.  Oh, and he writes poetry.  But not on the job. 

And now you can see why I haven’t been writing.  Not only a lack of time, but a growing lack of my usual cock-eyed optimism and a general crankiness that I didn’t wish to burden my readers with.  But I did want you to know that, Lord willing, I’ll be back—both writing and reading your writing.  So please don’t give up on me or my little blog.  And please, if you’re so inclined, say a little prayer for us.  Sometimes I’m not so sure mine are getting through.

A True Sense of Community

One of the unexpected pleasures of blogging, for me, has been meeting a lot of genuinely nice people in the blogging community.  So nice, in fact, that they have begun to restore my withered faith in humanity.  One of the nicest is my friend and kindred spirit, June, of Spatter.  So I was particularly pleased when June selected me for a Community Blogger Award, an award that celebrates “people who reach out and make the blogger community a better one.”   June herself was chosen for this award, and I am glad.  She deserves it.  Thank you, June for honoring me and for your kind encouragement of my writing efforts.

There are a number of deserving bloggers I’d like to pass this award to—writers who share their lives and bare their souls—so that we all can know that we are not alone in our struggles.   These bloggers’ lives may be different, but one thing they have in common is a sense of honesty and sincerity.  They are not afraid to speak their hearts and minds, to share their successes and failures, and to write of their joys and pain.  They blog straightforwardly, forthrightly, and truthfully.  And, for certain, our world needs all the truth it can get. 

So I’d like to recognize:
 

Wesley of Mountain Mama

CountryDew of Blue Country Magic

Sara of Speaking of Simplicity   

Marion of On The Blackwater            

Shannon of Going Crunchy

Thanks to these bloggers and all the others out there who write the truth of their beings, so that I and others can know we are not alone.