just say no to prompts

For today's prompt I was going to choose "top 5 pet peeves," but the fact is that I am often a seething ball of peevishness (especially when I'm driving), it's all too easy to bitch about it online, and frankly I'm a little exhausted with my own whining. Instead, I thought I'd post about my top 5 non-human unpeeves ... or whatever the opposite of a peeve is.

Who WOULDN'T be cheered up by that face? 

1. Mammals - I adore almost all mammals, though I will say that bunnies, dogs and cats top the list. I can get pretty darn excited about moose, cattle, and marine mammals too (although bats can suck it and really shouldn't be mammals at all). Domestic mammals are cute or loving or entertaining as they choose. Bunnies are also super low maintenance, as long as you don't mind a few escape poo pellets and making sure your power cables are out of reach. I'm not an unqualified animal lover, but many nights I'd be as happy to go home to a golden lab as I would a golden chardonnay.

2. Banking technology - ATMs, to begin with, but also online banking, depositing cheques with your smart phone, automatic deposits and automatic bill payments. I can't even imagine all the time we used to waste in bank line-ups and filling out those ridiculous forms and arranging to be at a bank between 9 am and 3 pm to access our own money. Not all technology makes life easier, but banking technology ... that stuff is my jam.

3. Farmer's markets - I love that somebody took the time to carefully grown that gorgeous bunch of carrots or to make that glistening jar of jam from blackberries in their back 40. I am not going to go risk life and limb to pick blackberries, and I am certainly not going to clean, measure, mix, boil and jar mountains of the deadly bastards. But I will eat the heck out of that deep purple goodness. And throw me that pretty mixed posy of flowers while you're at it.

4. Air travel - It doesn't matter if I'm going on a month-long vacation to an exciting new destination or taking a domestic flight for work. I love air travel. I love the small annoyances of check-in and never quite getting the seats I want. I love the feeling of superiority when someone ahead of me at security doesn't know what the hell they're doing*. I love peering out the window as we lift off and I pray for clear skies to see the land below as we journey. Air travel is miraculous. I hope I never get complacent about it.

5. Music - I know there's nothing unique about loving music, but the making of and listening to music is almost always an up for me. I miss singing. I miss my piano (which is currently in storage and I play it a maximum of once a year when it's not), I miss going out dancing, I miss listening to my friends and talented strangers make music live. Music is magical - I need more of it.

^NB: People who don't know what they are doing at airport security are a pet peeve. It's only the feeling of superiority I enjoy. 

a letter to my ex

When I first read this prompt, I thought "dear lord, which one?" When I speak of exes I generally mean one of two people - my ex-husband or my most recent ex. Those conversations are either the mummified remains of an ancient thank you for the two best gifts I've received or too soon. 

Only one other "ex" is someone I still refer to - often here, in glimpsing and side-long ways - but never by that moniker. His former status is subsumed in his current roles as my Jiminy Cricket, my confidante, my champion. He is the voice I call to mind when I forget who I am. He taught me what it looks like when love waits its turn; then when I was ready he taught me what it is to love freely, passionately, and compassionately. He taught me the joy of sex.  He taught me the joy of "you never know." He taught me that you can be fully for someone without owning that someone. There is nothing to write to him, because there is nothing I need to say to him that I haven't already said. The space between us is vast, but clean, and crossable in a heartbeat. He is in his own category that cannot be contained in a prefix.  

There are, of course, other kinds of exes. Ex-bosses, as Shiney pointed out, though that gets problematic in its own right. I've had many bosses who taught, lead, believed, coached, cajoled, trusted, and helped me to grow. They know who they are, they know what they did, and they are still in my life. The one who isn't, well, I don't think he could understand or care about anything I have to say, just as anything but an unqualified "sorry" from him is of no interest to me. 

So, this prompt has done its job in that this post now exists. But a letter to my ex? Why? The ones who need it will never see it, and the ones who will see it know all there is to say. 

5 ways to win my heart

My dearly beloved bestie is doing a blog challenge right now and since I have been feeling desperately disconnected from her, and haven't written regularly in forever, and have the worst case of chronic FOMO in a way that only a youngest child can have it, I thought I'd join in. Of course, as has been the case for 46 years, I'm running a little behind her. Here's my day 1.

5 Ways to Win My Heart:

1. Listen - listen for what I mean to say however inelegantly or haltingly I say it. Listen with your whole heart. Listen like my words are water on your parched soul. Listen like my life depends on it - maybe it does. Listen.
2. Make my sons laugh - it's my favourite sound.
3. Take me on adventures.
4. Believe in me and my rambunctious dreams that just won't die.
5. Bacon

XO

i didn't know

I didn't know,
as I wake smiling from a dream
in which a one-time lover long since a loved-one returns,
a dream which failed to thrive in life -
still dancing in the never-was of night.
Or in the waking dream in which my daughter,
for reasons we'll never know,
never became a mother
never suffered heartbreak
never made her brother laugh
never had her first breath
was one of my first lost loves.

I didn't know,
holding so tightly to love that it squeezed out of my fingers,
or holding so loosely that it wandered away.
Learning that love is a flighty thing. Not I, but love.
That the many things we label as love are anything but.
Learning that unless it birthed you or you birthed it,
Love is not to be trusted.

I didn't know
that I would have to worry about the same for you.
That a term of endearment would be replaced
with a phrase of longevity.
That the sandpaper of familiarity
would dull the shine of our
ever-young intimacy.
That what had always been might not always be.