Life at 3 miles an Hour

It’s so interesting to me, if you live life slow enough to pay attention to it, that you can wake up one morning in one part of the country and then literally wake up the next morning in an entirely different experience. I’m back in Seattle, by the beach….again, in the snow….again, with a cold dark fireplace….again, when only yesterday morning I was waking up in a Portland hotel ready to wade through one more day of grad school. A few hours on the road, a few stops to catch up with friends, a few hours of sleep, and just like that I’m waking up to snow. I’ll have to admit that I’m not too disappointed because my pessimistic self thought that we’d not experience snow again this season since buying my SUV last month. It wasn’t enough snow to deal with 4 wheel drive this morning, but I sure felt the confidence that I could have had I wanted to. So here I am, the sun is out on the mountains and the waves are high and crashing over the bulkhead. It has that really cold, if I fell in I...

A new week has managed to manifest itself right on schedule. It seems as if I’m still in the last one. In fact, it seems as if I just blinked and 5 years has gone by. I’m heading today for round two of my grad school marathon week of classes. I’d swear that I just left round one, but according to the calendar that was over three months ago. It is startling how fast time flies when you hadn’t really decided if you’re having fun or not. Maybe it’s the over the hill thing manifesting itself in my life. I hadn’t realized that I was over the hill. Thing used to go slower, or so it seemed, like steadily climbing uphill. In my headphones this morning Bob Dylan is singing to me about being “Like a Rolling Stone” and according to every bit of physics that I’m aware of, they pick up speed on the down side. It all happened in a few blinks. I blinked and my kids were not babies any longer. I blinked and I was living in the Midwest. I blinked and I was back in Syracuse. I blinked and t...

So who said that I’ll never see any more snow once I bought my 4x4? It didn’t take long. Waking up this morning to the little bit of crippling white dusting that unexpectedly came overnight, I said a prayer for those in parts of the country with real weather struggles this morning. After all, I’m still down at the beach, the coffee is hot and wonder of wonders, so is the fireplace. Maybe that body wash I used this morning really does make a difference. It, and by “it” I mean the body wash, is supposed to make a difference in my life. It is supposed to add shimmer, whatever that means. A friend this past weekend said that she noticed a new glow about me. I think she’s full of crap, she just had some insider information from my wife regarding our personal toiletries. ( I’ve always wanted to use that word in a sentence) Anyway, I’m never at a loss for amazement when it comes to advertising claims. If I’m ever at a point in life where I need the advertisers to shore up my self es...

I’m in another crossroads kind of setting this morning. You know the kind….dusty flat fields that you can see for miles around, somewhere in the Midwest undoubtedly, four way intersection of 2 country roads, no sign markings and no one around to ask for directions….like I would anyways. Let me clarify….it’s not like its 7 am Tuesday morning February 3rd, 2009 and I have to turn right, left, or go straight. It’s taken me awhile to get here and there’s no hurry to leave this intersection…it’s just that eventually I will have to leave. I’ll have to step one way or the other. I have thoughts and dreams as to which way I’ll go, so it’s not without any idea, but just as it is with many of these crossroads, they may all look the same, but they are far from it. I don’t have experience with this one. Like Gandalf in the mines of Moria, “I have no memory of this place”. In case you’ve never been at a crossroads, let me tell you that you don’t just wander up to it. You get there in the...