No Awake Zone...

I hate standard time.
The morning light jars me awake
around 5:30, which might be okay
if I was 12 and had a paper route …

So, trying to fall asleep again is like
trying to teach an alligator to roll over.
The birds are awake early, chirping
full trottle, and the pool pump next door
is droning a few feet from our bedroom window.

Give me back my enjoyable evening
light, when I could sit at the dining
room table during dinner and look out
at the woods, illuminated with the
glowing colors of the setting sun:
Trees fringed with lavender and gold...

Now, while I cook dinner, the windows
are dark, and my eyes are getting droopy.
It feels like 10:00.
Looking ahead to six months of progressing
darkness puts me in hibernation mode… zzzz

Small Gifts...

I love the beach as a place to walk, swim, read, and scavenge for shells.
After a storm, there are numerous tidal pools, each filled with mounds of shells.
Each shell is as distinctively different in shape and size.

Coquina shells have open, small butterfly-wing shapes, in purple, rose and golden hues.
Olives are beautifully designed, smooth as silk.
'Paul Newman's Eyes', what we call the small, round,
eye-shaped orb with a bluish spot in the center.
Spider conchs have flared, spider-leg extensions along the shell's length.

The first summer of living in Naples, my daughter and I had 'sheller's' back, the term used to describe all the hunched-over shell collectors.
Between us, we may have collected 500 shells, many of them now assorted and containerized.
I like using them as models for watercolor painting.

I never tire of the beach: watching the gentle waves tumble new shells along the water's edge, or catching an evening sunset with billowing clouds.
The deep footprints left from people strolling the beach are soon washed away by lapping waves.
Another day will come and a new day of discovery awaits.

Some Enchanted Evening

Marriage is like a thrill ride at Disney World.
You enter it with happiness, a degree of fear, and with great expectations.
What lies ahead is reality of the ride.

Living on a shoestring many years ago, I planned our wedding, managing to spend a total of $300.00—dress, flowers,and a prime rib dinner for 28 close friends and family.
Today's couples spend, on the average, $20,000 for the wedding of their dreams.

Despite the romance a marriage conveys—much the result of Hollywood movies, television, magazines and advertising, one soon realizes, upon entering the institution of marriage, that it's a fine meal of sorts.
It needs spices, sauce, sugar, and some time to bubble and simmer.
Keep romance revved up.
Be ingenious—write your spouse a poem or a love letter, surprise her/him with candy, a card you've made..a long kiss.

As for everyday life, I have to say my husband kicks in with housework, especially the vacuuming. What a guy..I don't expect it. It's a romantic gesture, I guess.
Tom's a man of schedules. Everything, including eating is at a specific time.
Me, I'm spontaneous and flexible as a stick of gum.
Want to go to lunch or a movie at 4:00, I'm there!

We are polar opposites, but the main ingredients to our thirty-seven years together have been love, compromise, and respect.
Each of us contribute personality attributes and qualities to the marriage.
Some are quirky, that goes without saying.

Yes, marriage is the reality that you do find cereal crumbs in your shorts, or an edge of toothpaste stuck to the corner of your mouth..