Have a little faith! February 29, 2012
Posted by Barbara in Organic gardens, random thoughts.3 comments
It’s garden time again in Texas. We’ve already planted cool-loving potatoes and onions, spinach, carrots, lettuce and radishes in the soil. The more sensitive herbs, the tomatoes and peppers and watermelons that want to be coddled in warmth until all danger of frost has passed, are just breaking ground in their little pots, safely tucked away in the $20 greenhouse.
Plant too early and you may lose the crop to a freeze. Too late and you limit or lose the growing season. And that is just one of the many hurdles Mother Nature keeps in her play book to challenge those who dare play the game. Farming is one part sweat and sore muscles, one part strategy, one part planning and ten parts faith.
The elevator speech January 19, 2012
Posted by Barbara in Uncategorized.add a comment
“So what are you doing these days?”
The question comes from friends who truly care and from passing acquaintances who are merely being polite.
My mind races around the variety of tasks on my to-do list. Some of them mundane , some personally challenging , some are fairly esoteric (working on a website about the reef aquariums), and a few are fairly normal (planning the year’s vegetable garden.) 
But when the question comes, I never quite seem to have an answer. Especially on those days (most days, to be honest), when I’ve bounced from one end of the spectrum to the other. My feelings at any given moment aren’t quite predictable either. Ask in the evening, when I’m tired, and I can’t really wrap my head around it all and so I have no answer. I need an elevator speech - planned and rehearsed – so I can answer the question.
The challenge is that the laundry list of minutiae doesn’t begin to tell the story that matters, anyway.
‘Til we meet again December 31, 2011
Posted by Barbara in family, marriage.add a comment
She was headed up into the mountains when I first met her. She and her husband had come for a wilderness fishing trip with my parents – a pack trip with horses up into the San Juan mountains to one of our favorite lakes. It was secluded enough that my father once threatened to move on because he saw smoke from another campfire at the far end of the lake a mile or more away. If she was fearful of bears or snakes, or handling a horse on the trail, I never knew it. Her 4 ft 11 5 ft 1 in stature and soft smile may have misled some folk about the steel that lay beneath.
A few years later, I decided in my 20 yr old wisdom that I should leave my parents New Mexico ranch for the big city. I planned to try California, but my father convinced me Houston would be just as exciting. He knew Paul and Sybil would be near to look after me. They were. Paul found me a starter job at his company and Sybil welcomed me to weekends and holidays at their home as though I were one of the family. I thought of her as a southern belle. Her gentle grace and hospitality helped fill that empty place within me that my lust for self-reliance couldn’t quite manage.
She and Paul reared three boys – each of them strong willed and independent – but also equipped with a strong moral compass and a deep kindness that I now know are rooted in her and Paul’s steadfast example. When I fell in love with the youngest of the three, my world was set on a new and wonderfully fulfilling path.
Of course, we had our share of misunderstandings. Having a daughter-in-law is, after all, a unique experience. Over the years, I began to see the childhood that gave her that strength and the mother’s heart that led her and we came to terms with our differences.
She met life’s challenges with grace and intelligence and faith, and that never changed even through the years alzheimer’s disease took its toll. And Paul was there with her for the whole trip – all 69 1/2 of the years they spent together. That all three of their sons shared the effort as they made sure she and Paul were supported and loved up to the very end of her adventure speaks highly of who she was.
She built a real family. I’m grateful to have been a part of it.
May she rest in peace.
Tower Building December 6, 2011
Posted by Barbara in bucket list, game addiction, Positive gaming.add a comment
I’ve been following a blog written by Chris Guillebeau for a while now. He has a beautifully well-written blog, full of insight, inspiration and caring. Today he published a new manifesto, The Tower. It does not disappoint. With his permission, I repost it here. (Just click on the picture below for the PDF version.)
It is very much worth your time.
More even than downing Deathwing.
Better yet, go explore his website. There’s a lot more. All good.
May you build your towers in just the way you want them.
Wishing you well, my friends.
Zen – with urgency December 5, 2011
Posted by Barbara in Authenticity, bucket list.add a comment
A friend laughed with me the other day about my mid-life crisis (her term). She’s noticed that I’m all about canoe trips in the wilderness, writing my novel/book, blogging and making a bucket list.
She’s wrong. It’s much worse than that. And it’s not a recent personality change. I’ve always walked/skipped to a syncopated drummer.
I attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the early 70′s (enough said). Since then, from survival camping to learning to speak Navajo to overhauling industrial turbine engines to my passion for coral reef aquaria – my life choices have always leaned a bit to the road-less-traveled. Somewhere along the line, I detoured into family life and we have 4 amazing sons, who bring their own adventures into my world and to this day keep me motivated and enjoying life. [My sweet husband/best friend isn't a detour. We're traveling this road together all the way.]
But, to be honest, I had settled for a long while, into living inside the box. You know. The ticky-tacky construction Steve Jobs talks about in that 47 sec clip that’s making the rounds. I went to work, and even though I loved and valued what I did, it was long hours and very high stress. It took a toll on my family and my health. A few years ago, a couple of health crises made it perfectly clear: choose to do whatever it takes to live life on my own terms for whatever time I’m given – or settle for rolling inexorably down that broader path.
It is true that I’m somewhere around mid-life – even for an optimist. At the same time, assuming my life choices are healthy, I may have another 40 years I plan to truly enjoy. To build a business or write a novel or hike the Wonderland trail. Hopefully to leave the world a little better in some way.
Thinking of Steve Jobs, if you haven’t listened to his commencement address at Stanford recently, it deserves a replay. In fact, we probably should replay it monthly, anyway, as a reminder.
Or follow Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Non-Conformity. Start with this week’s blog about his new manifesto. He’s no-where near a mid-life crisis. But he understands.
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This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. But what I do today is important because I’m exchanging a day of my life for it.
When tomorrow comes this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place that which I have traded. I want it to be gain not loss, good not evil, success not failure.
I know I shall not regret the price I have paid for it because the future is just a whole string of now’s! ~Lou Holtz
Parents and kids November 29, 2011
Posted by Barbara in Authenticity, family.2 comments
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. ~Gail Lumet Buckley
We had an awesome Thanksgiving. I hope you did, too.
We were blessed with having all our sons (and a couple of really special girlfriends) AND both my parents AND my brother and his sweet wife (one of my very closest friends starting in our high school days) enjoying the Texas hill country. It was a rare treat for us to be all together. Nothing says ‘family’ like the smiles and hugs shared in such magic times.
“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” ~Erma Bombeck
“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” ~Jane Howard
The hero within November 16, 2011
Posted by Barbara in Authenticity, LiveSTRONG.add a comment
“You have to climb a mountain before you can enjoy the view.” ~ via Marc and Angel Hack Life
Sometimes doers of heroic deeds find themselves in a public spotlight, and many times the stardom that follows overshadows the truly heroic effort. We focus attention on the end result to create super-star moments. We remember only the victor’s hands raised in glory. Sadly, this makes it difficult to see the long, persistent struggle that finally resulted in that moment – and that likely continues on a daily basis long after the attention has vanished. And we believe that mere mortals such as ourselves can scarcely hope to attain that victory.
In reality, heroism is deeply ingrained in each of us. It germinates when life hands us the most difficult moments, pushing tenuously through our being like a seedling struggling to break the crust of soil and find the light. And it blossoms as we trudge through the frightening, heart-rending moments to conquer our own pain and fears and find the strength to stand despite it all.
We look at ourselves standing there, covered with dirt, sweat, blood and tears and we don’t see a hero; just a real person doing his best to make it through.
If you’re there right now, know that your inner hero is showing. And the light is giving the rest of us courage to keep on fighting, too.
You are the hero we most need.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” ~ Winston Churchill
The bucket list October 26, 2011
Posted by Barbara in Authenticity, bucket list, LiveSTRONG, random thoughts.add a comment
Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
Life’s good. I have no regrets. I’m active and getting healthier, slowly but surely. So why not just keep on keepin’ on? Why a bucket list?
Because I have things to do. And doing some of them means that my family and friends need to know what’s up so they can come along for the fun, if they want. I’d love that. Some things on this very flexible list are kind of solo activities. But others (like those that entail travel or adventure) would really only be enjoyable with great company.
And I realize, finally, that procrastination is equivalent to failure.
I’ll be changing the list pretty frequently at first, as I think through the difference between things I really feel a drive to do and those that would simply be pleasant side-trips. Making the list public puts me on notice that the time is now.
In fact, now is the only time there is.
It isn’t simple to simplify August 26, 2011
Posted by Barbara in Authenticity, random thoughts.add a comment
One of my recurring New Year’s resolutions is to simplify my life. Simply put, we have too much junk.
I often feel just that way about the ever-present clutter in my world. I’m a world class saver of all potentially useful stuff. Dutiful daughter of survivors of the last Great Depression. No, that does not read: hoarder. My ‘collection’ has value. Sort of.
Every now and then I go on a spree trying to thin out the abundance. I make runs to the local charities with outgrown clothes and still-playable games and unused kitchen gadgets. But the thing I find it hardest to let go of are the books. I’ve had shelves and closets and boxes of books for all age levels and interests. I collected children’s books for my kids until they thought I was trying to start my own library and, I’m proud to say, they all learned to read. I still have most of them. The books, that is. The kids just wouldn’t stay where I put them.
During the summer, I made a real effort to reduce the collection enough that I could leave J with only one bookcase in his bedroom. For some reason, he thought it important to have a desk and a computer. Most of the books we moved out ended up in stacks on my bedroom floor.
I’m working on it. I am.
But I’m quite sure I’ll need my old Navajo language books from my college days again. And if not, well…..they hold so many memories! And so many undelivered dreams. 
And, yes, we really do still grab old National Geo’s to spend an evening with – as though they were old friends who had just been waiting for a turn at our attention. The complete compilation on CD just doesn’t do it for me.
That’s what a 32 year collection looks like.
And it stays.
A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~Cicero
Cycles August 9, 2011
Posted by Barbara in Organic gardens, random thoughts.add a comment
It’s been hot in Texas. Very hot. My car showed 112 degrees the other day. It’s taking a toll on the garden, and only the hardiest of vegetables have endured to this point. When our water supply was interrupted for a couple of days, it spelled the end for almost everything. I was sad to see it go until I realized that the changes I was seeing were not harbingers of the end. Rather they were showing life’s willingness to adapt and continue.
Adapt, you say? The sunflowers are still standing only because the stems are as thick as small tree trunks and will likely stand until we cut them down to plant the next crop. Adapt? Even the heat-loving watermelons have quit blooming, the vines withering almost as I watch.
