Jump me

I live on a great street where the houses lean into each other as though they are trying to share a secret. Once I sneezed in my kitchen, front door open and my daughter playing  across the street shouted ‘bless you’. Ok, it is true I sneeze like a man but still.

September is about catching up and we were on the driveway chatting when another  neighbour drove by  and pulled over to chat. Anything to put off a boring errand.We chatted for 40 mins or so, almost ready to crack the wine open, when  her husband came down the street, rake in hand, asking if she had picked up the leaf bags yet. ‘No but there are tons in my garage’, friend said. At that point wife thought she better skeddadle and went to turn on car and it would not turn over.

Husband emerges from garage to return to task and wife shouts “will you jump me?”

I look for it. I see it. A smile, a twinkle, a spark. And not just between the jumper cables. There it is, very reassuring  especially in spite of the boo boo.

check out poignant and touching stuff recently shared by one of my readers on my other site by clicking here.

if it is not growing, it is dying

Woody Allen, although clearly an odd guy to quote on relationships, famously said “A man marries a woman hoping she will never change, a woman marries a man hoping he will change. She changes, he doesn’t and both are disappointed.” *

This has some truth. For some reason, women need change and things moving all the time, fresh ideas, new hobbies, change at work, change at play. Men seem to be more content with that warm meal, warm body and maybe the odd new toy with wheels.

But to keep things alive, it must be fed, nurtured and cultivated- it is not enough that it is just not dying- because in the end if it is not growing, it is  going in the other direction.

A good friend once said to me “all marriages have good years and bad years” I thought she was so mature. There was nothing whiny about this or even regretful. It just is.

However  a bad year of marriage which is not handled properly cannot be resuscitated. It can never be recovered from, never fixed. The goodness cannot be restored. If things swing too far in one direction, they just can’t come back.

So how do we know when it is not growing?

If it is standing still.

*this does not include all my fabulously  highly evolved male friends, relatives and readers of this blog.

If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.Read about friendship on my other blog by clicking here

home

Home is where you decide it is. That home has a soul and if you don’t believe me drive by the  home a close friend used to live in and no longer does and you will notice the absence of that soul.

Drive by the house you grew up in. It is a little bit like walking by your ex now that they are no longer a part of you. You cannot see their soul, you hardly recognize them and they are not beautiful to you in the way they once were.

An ordinary  home can be made special by the people who live in it, by how they live in it  and who they are when they are there. An extraordinary home can be made  miserable   by the people in it just  as easily.

Some  very special places to live would be almost impossible to be miserable in. Like the disappointment of a nasty person driving a fabulous sports car, I wanted to know that only a fabulous, adventuresome James Bond type lived here. How could a bureaucrat with a lisp live here? How could a guy afraid of the dark  with mommy issues  and a  dozen cats have this address? His home  sits high atop this island in the Pacific, that could only be accessed at low tide, through a tunnel  in the rock he paid over $100,000 20 years ago to dynamite through.

He was my next door neighbour for 3 days this summer and I wanted to borrow some sugar just to see if this man was really as ordinary as everyone says he is. How did his home not make him more interesting?

I live in an ordinary home with an extraordinary soul. With the work being done on it now, I can feel it’s soul being turned on it’s head and it makes me wonder. Where will this new shell take us? Where will we take it?

check out my latest post on my other site called blow and suck. Clever trick to get you to read it. I think it will work.Just click on this