Endless Summer Creations

If "If I were an older man and met a younger woman I would have just wanted to be her friend I wouldn't have wanted to ruin her life" a haze of shock confusion and hurt descended upon her had it all been a mistake when they first met he even told her she should dance with the younger guys and because she didn't her life was ruined? if she danced with him night after night if his kindness washed over her in healing waves if he told her she wasn't crazy if he told her there was nothing wrong with her if she knew he would never leave her side if he called her out for being the jackass she was when she talked about giving up throwing all her dreams away believing the lies if he fulfilled every last vow if he should have been long gone but never quit her if he could always crack her up if that wacky humor still lived on through the Parkinson's if she knew the disease might take his body but never touch his love that none other could ever match if that's a rui

Last year I read an article by the New York Times  about former Biggest Loser contestants who gained back most, if not all of the weight they had lost on the popular show.  The article paints a pretty dismal picture for those of us who want to lose weight and keep it off.  To me, the upshot of the article is that overweight people will always gain it back on account of their defective metabolisms. That conclusion is unacceptable to me, however.  And I have my work cut out for me as a result.  At my heaviest I ballooned to 212 pounds.  I had gone through some very traumatic times and I dealt with it by eating.  I didn't think I deserved the good things I used to have.  Not even running.  I didn't even think I deserved to run another marathon. It wasn't until I began the process of truly forgiving myself that I was able to believe I deserved those good things again, and in turn begin to lose weight.  Losing weight was a process which took a long time.  But losing w

By Joseph Jacobs John Dickson Batten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Shelley and I were friends almost immediately.  However her father did not like me.  The only reason I can imagine is that my family was too poor for him and that he did not consider me fit to be around his daughter.  Despite how her father felt about me, the moments when he was away at work as a lawyer, and when Shelley and I were together were the thrill of my life.  We did everything for fun, it seemed like there was nothing we couldn't do, no fun that we couldn't have.    Her house was an entire wonderland within itself.  An enormous granite-walled mansion, there were four floors of enchanting adventure for us.  The first floor held a kitchen where we made all kinds of goodies, an adjacent playroom where we played house, Barbie, watched "It's A Living," "Silver Spoons," "Small Wonder," "Dukes of Hazzard," "Laverne & Shirley," two mag

the air is brisker as I walk from the dorm with the rooster weathervane on top it's time for dinner; students swarm through quadruple doors smells of mashed potatoes and chicken drift through the halls what table awaits me down below? will Christine make my head hurt with laughter? afterwards, the gaiety continues in her room draped with Egyptian tapestries as she serves spiced teas and biscotti and Joni Mitchell hoots sweetly from the cheap tapedeck later, men join the women to seek Christine's wisdom she beckons them into her romantic visions in which lovers sacrifice their souls for the glory of those brief moments in the dark within this mysterious haven, I find myself emerge amid the satirical banter and uproarious laughter where everyone is suddenly sensuous and desirable and where faded roses always yield to the softness of new petals

Each day we drove on to these stepping stones on our trip home back across the nation saw places too big to fathom desert which stretched on forever, unchanged for centuries occasional border patrol checkpoints along the highway vast skies over dry mountains then eventually the sand gave way to green the waters drew close again we heard 2013 arrive from our San Antonio room by the next night we walked the streets of the French Quarter observing the spoils of the night before lingered over a meal of Big Easy favorites the promised land was within our reach now we would tarry there until the next chapter began but the highways have never stretched away so vast, free and wild since

Los Angeles a mystical land I'd heard of mostly in song film poetry then that one day we were there gazing through the rain at the vast expanse of city far below stretching away for miles what is LA but a surreal place fashioned of dreams? As the streetwalker in Pretty Woman proclaims "Everyone who comes to Hollywood has a dream What's your dream?" Indeed Dream to walk the red carpet or the red light district So much about LA I could not see as I looked down from atop the hill surrounded by a theater of mountains yet as I took in the sand, desert, neighborhoods and mountains so unfamiliar to me stories of LA floated through my head similar to the Florida I know yet beyond comparison in so many ways Laurel Canyon a community of 1960s hippie love the juxtaposition between crudity, violence and death the drive-by shootings of Compton and South Central to the renaissances of art blooming in Venice Beach and the bastions of style throughout the city the opulence of Rodeo

Right now my son and I are reading Pax by Sara Pennypacker.  The chapter we read last night got me to thinking, how the character Vola says she didn't remember one single true thing about herself after she had left the military, after going to war and then coming out as a civilian. Has that ever happened to you?  Where you just lost yourself, forgotten when your core values are?  I have.  I've been in the military too but that's not where mine were really waylaid.  That didn't come until much later. Whenever I feel like I've forgotten what my core values are, I think back to my 16-year old self first.  After that would be my college self, where I began to come into my own and make choices as an adult for the first time.  I'm then refreshed as to my core truths, when I am my honest self - some of which are: 1) If you can't count on family and know they will always have your back, that's not a family. 2) So-called "love" which la

he was just a simple Hoosier growing up amid the cornfields where everything made sense he loved the family cats and dogs in one picture he's looking down at his sweet dog while the others, unsmiling face the camera he would play ball all day sometimes Uncle Boob gave him his first fishing pole he'd sometimes leave a line floating while he went to church later he would discover golf read the whole Bible he didn't miss the snow when they came to Florida his life was simple a room full of books job on the golf course people lived and died there for the love of their game two weeks vacation every year when he'd do another golf and fish adventure then I came along never the woman he deserved watched his mom wished I could be like her beauty and kindness personified she did her duty to God her mind was to leave us before her body as it would be with her son never perfect but so full of love never to die in the middle of h

People will tell you where they've gone They'll tell you where to go But till you get there yourself you never really know – Joni Mitchell, “Amelia” Long before the unemployment and economy crisis began, I never saw job security as a sure thing.  Maybe that’s because I began my legal career as a temp.  I grew accustomed to floating around, constantly experiencing different personalities and environments.  I somehow never entered a job envisioning it as my home for the next twenty or thirty years.  As a result of my rather nomadic career-style, I have had the benefit of learning from many different people.  My working life began when I was about eleven.  I would mow our huge lawn and my dad would then give me $30.00 for an hour of riding lessons.  I also worked down at the local food Co-op to earn “work credit” to earn discounts off grocery purchases, as any customer could do.  The work credit could then be sold to others and this proved to be another source of r

Today anyone who suffers from mental illness probably knows the pain and loneliness of being shunned and ostracized, as if they were condemned to wear permanent scarlet letters, only this time the letters being “C” for crazy, “F” for freak, “P” for psycho, and so on.  Often, these patients feel as though they must keep their illnesses secret, for if the world discovers they will be condemned to a lesser status, seen as weak, unworthy, as losers in the race of the survival of the fittest. But we are losing our privacy more and more by the day, including our right to have certain information stay secret.  This is especially true with mental illness, with the ever present link between mental disorders and gun violence.  It is entirely appropriate that if someone wants to buy a gun, their mental health should be under scrutiny.  But if someone’s mental illness becomes public, they are inevitably subjected to humiliation and rejection. Part of the problem about our society’s attitude

As Hannibal Lecter intoned to Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs , we begin to covet “by coveting what we see every day.”  And our culture makes it very easy and fashionable for us to covet violence.  Violence has long been a popular centerpiece in everyday entertainment, particularly in movies and video games.  After the tragedies at Sandy Hook Elementary, violence in entertainment was under the microscope once more.  In the midst of the shock and grief, we searched for answers about how something so horrible could happen, how anyone could possibly gun down 20 first-graders and 6 of their teachers?  And the celebration of violence in popular culture was largely blamed.  But the blame is really a two-way street.  Yes, violence will always be for sale.  But the level of demand is up to the consumers.  If violence, hatred and anger were not such popular forms of entertainment, perhaps their ability to manifest in real life tragedies would not be all too real.  Anger is a v

Or an A-ha! moment as Oprah would say.  And I have my beautiful son to thank for it.  I have been stuck on a project that's very close to my heart but nothing seemed to coming out the way I wanted to say it.  But my son has now, through the strength of his love, given me a breakthrough idea.  I cannot wait to take it for a ride!

Of all the times Angel had ever been hurt in her life, this was the hardest.  She had never known a loss to compare to this.  What would Granny say?  She’d been gone now going on eleven years.  Angel still had a place in the family as Granny left it.  Angel was on her way to see Granny in her last days but was two days too late.  Angel was to be there on Mother’s Day Sunday.  Granny died that Friday. Angel had walked into a house filled with a strange stillness.  The flowers she had ordered for Granny were sitting there on the coffee table.  Why was everyone trying to act normal in front of her?  “You can cry, Angel,” her mother had said. Pricilla had been there at Granny’s deathbed and laid her in her favorite dress.  And now Pricilla was saying to Angel, “I asked Granny to give us a sign if she was with us, to be in the wind.  And Angel, the wind has not stopped blowing!” Angel looked at the branches covered in new May buds swaying vigorously.  The newly-planted saplings tha

By KUHT [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons Every now and then, someone comes along who is truly beyond compare in what they give to our world.  Even in our corporate society’s ravenous quest for more money, the qualities and accomplishments of some things or people are so singular that they have not yet been duplicated.  This is certainly true in the case of Fred Rogers, better known to the world as Mister Rogers. Millions of kids in my generation grew up with Mister Rogers.  Even though most of us only knew him through a TV screen, his incredible love for us surged right through that barrier.  As he constantly told all children, “You are special,” “There is no one else in the whole world exactly like you.”  He seemed to understand all of our feelings and let us know that it was okay to feel what we felt, even if it was fear, anger, shyness – anything at all.  That was just part of kids being themselves. And interestingly, though Mister Rogers has now been gone for 14 years, n