Ozark Oddments: October 2005

Saturday, October 29, 2005

"I can't figure out....

...how one woman can make such an incredible mess," announces my long-suffering husband upon viewing the kitchen at the end of the day. Me either. Martha Stewart I ain't. The kitchen is small, I'm a klutz and, well... seeing is believing.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Numbers

At our son's first birthday (on or about when this picture was taken), I was 28 times as old as he was. Now, he is 28 and I am 56 (happy birthday to me) and for the next few months, I will only be 2 times old as he is. This strikes me as very odd. The difference between our ages has not changed, but the mathematical relationship has changed somehow. And on this day, the anniversary of my birth, my body definitely feels 56 years old, and I look 56 years old (I am looking more and more like my sainted mother as each day passes) but I am often startled when I pass a mirror and see myself, because inside, I don't feel at all like that middle-aged woman staring back at me. In fact, I still feel very much like the 28-year-old standing in the picture holding a squirming baby.

Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

+++

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

+++

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

+++

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

+++

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"