Fly Jelly

When my children were small, I took some liberties with fact in order to make life more fun. Well fun for me anyway. One of those liberties involved the creation of a substance I named, Fly Jelly. Now fly jelly is a lovely substance, it is silvery gray with green and purple and black irridescent glimmers in it. It is rare and expensive because it takes thousands of flies. Each must be caught and quick frozen, NOT SQUASHED) When the required quanity is obtained you carefully cook them down in a syrup of melted sugar, after hours of cooking on the very lowest heat and stirring in the very gentlest manner, the jelly is poured into jelly jars and carefully sealed. Now there is no need to use sterile jars (no one would actually eat the stuff after all). It glimmers in the sunlight, tiny wings and eye fragments gleaming and glittering in the thick silvery jell. Uhmm...Lovely.

Death, Sunshine and Lumps

Yesterday I listened to an interview with a writer. The first line of his new book is: If you knew you only had ten minutes left to live, how would you spend them? (I may have the exact wording on that wrong) At that precise moment the sun had broken through the clouds and was dancing on the hood of my car. The trees were as green as they had ever been. The sky that perfect blue of a perfect spring day. I thought, I want to do this. I want to just look at the world.

That was yesterday. This morning my business partner and dearest friend told me she had a lump. She is at the doctor's office right now. Another friend told me an hour ago that the kidney cancer he has been fighting has spread to his spine and that it is not a matter of if anymore, just when.

It seems that death is much with me. Since my father died a few years ago it seems that someone I love is always ending. I know it is this way for everyone who loves, unless they are first. Somehow the universal, timeless fact of death does not make it any easier. The fact that all before me have died, does not make the prospect less bitter. More of my line lies in the ground then stands above it. Yet I do not wish to join them anytime soon. Even more, I do not want anyone else I love to go into that dark night.

Hair Stuff

I decided to cut my hair. Not too short, not too long, gentle layers, not that frumpy 40 something look you see in every grocery store. I even had a photo. No problem said my barber of thirty years.

Big problem. Nowhere close to photo. Way too short to do anything with. Far to horrid to wait out. I cried like a baby. I cried like a small child whose cat just got run over. I would not leave the house without a hat. Even the spouse, usually supportive, said it was really really bad. I looked much older, frumpy and silly all at the same time. Of course, the swollen red eyes didn't help. Some of it stuck up or sideways, some laid in sad clumps. There was a spot that was almost bare.

I went to another stylest. A young stylest at a young salon. She looked at my hair. She commiserated with me, then she fixed it. So, now it is short. Much shorter then I orignally wanted. I love it!

I learned from this that I have not grown as much as a person as I had hoped. The bad hair devestated me. I sort of observed myself being childish and overeacting, I knew my emotions were way out of porportion. It is after all, hair. Hopefully, there was some angst over other things I feel somewhat powerless about (Bush, war, gas, starvation etc.) mixed in the tears. But probably not.