UK Soon!

I’m clubbing  tonite, if listening to club music radio show and shaking my hips to Prince music and ‘We are family’, (hey Monday is Motown Monday!) counts, and of course it does. A warm bed and my Shakespeare book and the mojo working is waaaaaay closer to any clubbin in south dakota.

We walked to town this afternoon to have a coffee with Ellie, and a saxophone man was doing a version of,”where or when..”, so of course I stood there and sang for him as he played,” the smile you were smiling you were smiling then, but I  don’t know where or when…some things that happen for the first time, seem to be happening again…” so of course party poopers Russ and Csaba  wanted to cross on the green light, but I did need the money, I am getting low, and I would have stood there with the slightest encouragement and sang along in American accent to his British sax.  what a dream day it would have been..but I had no idea where we were headed to meet Ellie, so I left my fate and crossed on green sad but true.

The holiday decorations are up over the narrow lanes and it got dark early and it was so beautiful. I felt the Christmas in the city elf in me come back after all those years..she is still asleep in me, how cool is that?

I could have sang my socks off as Cheryl Cole says on X Factor. My first occupational dream as a young girl was to be a baseball announcer, then a first baseman on the White Sox, then a back up dancer for the Supremes, but I didn’t realize that dream, yet! I would go dance the second somebody asked me.

Russ got us cups of coffee with two handles, like Alice  in Wonderland would swim in if it were the teacup. It was so much fun. It poured rain later on, but thru the holiday lights it was still magical and I hated for it to end. They told me I could walk home, but I was getting not so magically cold and wet so the bus looked pretty magical at that moment.

Alright Matt, here is another going to the bookstore when we didn’t have a Borders in town yet story. Mind you, it was  364 miles on way!!!

Brookie  and I had plans to head out Saturday early in morning and trade off sleeping and driving. We waved goodbye to Russ at the house and told him we would see him tomorrow.

Trouble was that when I got off  work Friday at midnite at the psych unit, Brooke was nowhere to be  found, so I didn’t sleep if at all. At some point I found a note that she had,’gone camping”.  So who can sleep when I think plans are already a mess and she thinks all is going to go like clockwork.

She evidently got home early enough for us to start out, and it was pouring rain kinda Saturday morning, like one would really be way better off in bed with the covers over one’s head.

Brooke and I were the Bicker sisters.  We would have round and round bickering and once while we talked long distance to Russ in England, we argued about how we didn’t argue, until Russ told us we were arguing.

We  would always end up laughing and teasing each other, and Brookie said,”listen, you’re a  B, I’m a B, let’s just deal with it.”

So her way of dealing with it was to say she was fine and got enough sleep to make the trip, and before we were 3 blocks  off, in front of Wendy’s for anybody who knows where we live, she had reclined the  seat and said she was going to sleep now…

I just happened to mention that since she had gone camping and I wasn’t sure if she remembered the plan and trip at all, that I hadn’t’ slept much and we had 6 hours to go and we were both tired. So kept her seat reclined and I drove in the cold cold rain.

It was grey, almost beige day, and pretty awful, each mile was getting longer and longer, we really weren’t groovin down the road in any sense of the world, Car Talk  on NPR  just seemed incredibly irritable  and annoying.

We didn’t even get to Wall, 50 miles away,and really the next town, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I took an exit, I-90 ended to a total stop at that exit and pointed into a cornfield. I parked the car and told Brooke I really needed to sleep too, I was  incredibly tired.

So we had to give up the goat and actually agree on something-we were going home. Our big fun weekend lasted 50 miles. We  bedraggled ourselves back home. Russ was surprised to see us at 1pm Saturday early afternoon, “I thought you guys were going to be gone until tomorrow.” Then we both went to get some sleep.

THE END //so that was one of our adventures of going to the nearest bookstore which just happened to be  365 miles away in Sioux Falls.

Club music on radio is now Michael Jackson singing,’Wanna be startin’ something’, we used to rollerskate  to this when the kids were little, and I would chaperon at the rink, and Thriller  had come out and I would get really going on Billy Jean, and also David Byrne’s.’Burning down the House’. it is a wonderful I didn’t kill myself skating into a concrete block wall of that roller rink on Deadwood Avenue. We sure had fun.

Think of all the years of not dancing that I still have to make up for when I move here! scary, but I know I can do it. yee ha.

Results are back in morning post that just arrived, on my IELTS test from 2 weeks ago-(International English Language Testing System)-

I passed, mug shot from train station passport photo machine @ 5am and all….

Now we can proceed with Registration for Nursing License. hurray, brilliant, blimey right on!

they just are starting their show, and played Spirit in the sky, and are asking for requests, ha, does this bring back memories? suggesting songs about birds or clouds. Oy! don’t get me started. how fun…….

a beautiful beautiful easy easy slow Saturday morning.

Kids playing outside the windows with their British accents how nice to ease into life here. The radio is yakking away with yummy political  opinions, how intelligent and interesting it all is.

Hearing from US friends on the phone, and sitting in my bedroom with computer so Russ and Csaba can have some quiet time in the flat..I can deal with this.

The windows are not rattling so the wind isn’t up yet and another walk on the sea later is always in the cards.Good Morning as all wake up, good morning California.

living here these past few weeks has been heaven. Finally tonite I made a plan with my son to go plan at the Pub what was actually happening with my future here, and we walked along a gorgeous sea when it was dark and misty already. What could be more beautiful?

I thank all my friends here pulling for me, Simon, John, Fig and Mark, Richard and Matt, and my angels at home Phil, Jet, Nicki, Debbie, Vonna, Zuke, Lori, Phil and  Darcy. Thanks for your emails and your love, you are wonderful angels.

I am going to read my Shakespeare book now Chef Csaba made tiramisu and Brussell sprouts, garlic herb cream cheese, almonds and red onions, toasted carrot and parsley, sour cream and cheddar cheese. Csaba is amazing. He tries to put ginger in food for me because I love it.

When I started meditating at Northwestern in 1969, they said the comfort of meditation was the ‘mother is at home’ feeling you would always have. Sleeping here peacefully is the same feeling, I am at Russell’s home and all is well.

a beautiful farewell sunset from a beautiful week. the sea is amazing everytime, as it was in Chicago. Nature always does it own’s thing and man cannot hold a candle to it, altho some clueless places still bulldoze beauty for strip malls and useless roads.(hello rapid city). That is one of the top reasons I am leaving there, senseless commercialization at costs of beauty gone forever.

the movie night with John and new friends that I kinda knew anyway last night was a fine dinner and then Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter. 1945 British movie, black and white, mostly taking place in train stations, lots of outgoing trains and steam/smoke in the frame of the picture. What a perfect evening, what a town can be with friends and family here.

My amazing friend Tim Henderson, who is one of my job/character references and a Vice President at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology,( he was the facility overseer of the radio station) has written that the radio station is taking on a schedule after Christmas and I can do my show again. Which of course I will do as long as I can stay there.

There are ads in the paper today for nurses doing the kind of job I am looking for. That is probably why that sunset looked so great as I took a walk and thought about life. I moved totally to a new life from Chicago to a cattle ranch in South Dakota, thinking it would be like moving to the Ponderosa. It was kinda different, to say the least, but it was the life to have my two wonderful Brooke Melody and Russell and now Grandson Louis, so now I can go on with my life and move here..

The radio music is so great here, Beatles just sang, Please please me. That sends out a hello to my brother Bruce who adores music and the Beatles and manages with love to offer those songs to me when the subject comes up.

a wonderful Friday to go to the coffeeshop and walk in the rain.

an all time high of 29 people reading this blog yesterday.

Who can you be? this is like when I did my radio show at the University for all those years and never knew who listened, but people would recognize my voice at the Farmers Market and say hello.

Anyway, my Cousin Melinda has already offered to include me in their Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, dark meat, and I told her to include me in their prayer that I am thankful for  good gravy at Thanksgiving. my other list of blessings will be a long one, and will inspire more coffee and rain thoughts at Spinelli’s today.

the contact me page had stopped working. Above is my email address. thanks to all and Bless you Sarah.

what a gorgeous sunny day it is here!

I walked to Russ’s office and remembered something I heard on my iPod Zencasts last night. I think they were talking about living not to cause harm to others.

I want to say right now that this is not an attempt for me to sound righteous or like I have ever thought of this point before. I learned long ago in high school that it was a better life to jump off the pedestal and get B grades than stay on the pedestal and be above things. Jump!

So Gil Fronsdal, the Zen teacher was saying that he knew a person who never crossed the street at light unless it flashed that it was okay to walk. His reasoning was that perhaps a child in a car was watching, his words were that you do not know who is watching, and that maybe this child would later think it was okay to cross when the signs said not to, and harm would come to that child by that experience. It would have been educational for him to go on with this wisdom line of thinking, but that was all that was said.