Right about there is that tickle in my throat. Excuse me, I have this nagging cough. And when I breathe, I have this slight rattle in my chest. Sometimes my eyes water a lot. And then I sneeze so forceful that it seems as if my whole body shuts off for an instant. And I've coughed and sneezed so much my whole body aches when I cough and sneeze again.
The last week or so will not make the highlight reel of my life. Granted, I’ve felt worse before but this little spell has been frustrating. Allergies and a cold have teamed up to drag me down and I can’t quite seem to get back to the feeling-better place I was before. I do feel better now but the cough still resides and the occasional sneeze makes me sigh as if I’m asking for relief from above.
No doubt the medicine has helped but I’m not a medicine freak. I’ve always been a bit weary of things that alter reactions chemically. I mean I have enough problems dealing with things with a clear mind. I know though that these meds are prescribed to get me back to where I need to be so I read the instructions on the bottles and follow them to the letter. And wait. And hope. And pray. And while patience is a virtue, patience runs thin when I feel like I should be past this place already.
And for now the tickle in the throat and the nagging cough and the slight rattle in my chest and the watery eyes and the sneeze still reside. The sick symptoms are fading some and my strength is returning slowly. But still…
While this week has been a bump in the road, I feel foolish when I think of those who deal with real sickness day in, day out, compared with my temporary cough. I feel self-centered when I think of those who struggle with real pain, real weakness, real physical limitations or watch those they love deal with those things constantly when I will probably be over what I have now in a few more days.
It makes me think the real sickness I have is that I am spoiled. I take things for granted, especially the measure of health I do have. I am selfish and no over-the-counter or prescribed medicine can take that out of my heart. And it’s something that’s harder to get rid of than a nagging cough.
2.27.2009
2.11.2009
It’s About More
Candy hearts, red hots, Hallmark cards, candlelight, romantic music, a bouquet of flowers. These things will make you and your loved one happy, so we are told. It is Valentine’s Day.
Maybe because we are so plugged-in in so many different places, times like Valentine’s Day just seem to be overwhelming. Radio ads, TV ads, internet ads, newspaper ads all beg us to buy into this occasion.
We. Must. Do. What. They. Tell. Us. Or. We. Don’t. Love. Someone. The. Way. We. Should.
So, we play along and buy the candy, the locket, the roses, the dinner. And those aren’t necessarily bad things to do. And, of course, they may actually help things.
But love, love that matters, is about more than a time to buy a gift.
After all, February 15 comes after February 14. Then, where are the ads for the teddy bears and chocolates and keepsakes? Love is about more than just being told we need to act on a feeling at a certain time.
It’s about commitment. It’s about listening. It’s about words unspoken. It’s about words that need to be heard. It’s about the time you spend. It's about a touch. It's about a look. It’s about forgiveness. It’s about hurting together. It’s about healing together. It’s about sharing the good times. It’s about growing old with each other.
Love is about more than a thing you can hold in your hand today and forget tomorrow.
It’s about forever.
Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours. I hope your day is about more than just giving and receiving a gift.
Jennifer, thanks for sharing forever with me.
Maybe because we are so plugged-in in so many different places, times like Valentine’s Day just seem to be overwhelming. Radio ads, TV ads, internet ads, newspaper ads all beg us to buy into this occasion.
We. Must. Do. What. They. Tell. Us. Or. We. Don’t. Love. Someone. The. Way. We. Should.
So, we play along and buy the candy, the locket, the roses, the dinner. And those aren’t necessarily bad things to do. And, of course, they may actually help things.
But love, love that matters, is about more than a time to buy a gift.
After all, February 15 comes after February 14. Then, where are the ads for the teddy bears and chocolates and keepsakes? Love is about more than just being told we need to act on a feeling at a certain time.
It’s about commitment. It’s about listening. It’s about words unspoken. It’s about words that need to be heard. It’s about the time you spend. It's about a touch. It's about a look. It’s about forgiveness. It’s about hurting together. It’s about healing together. It’s about sharing the good times. It’s about growing old with each other.
Love is about more than a thing you can hold in your hand today and forget tomorrow.
It’s about forever.
Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours. I hope your day is about more than just giving and receiving a gift.
Jennifer, thanks for sharing forever with me.
2.06.2009
Hair, Long Beautiful Hair
Growing up in the 1970s I wanted to be cool. Cool meant having hair longer than what my Mom and Dad wanted me to have. After all, all the TV shows we watched then had kids with hair down to their shoulders. Why couldn’t that be me? My reasoning then: if my hair reached my shoulders then all the cool kids would look at me, see my shoulder length hair, realize I am as cool as they are and then we would all be friends. My reality then: we all lived in a small town in the South and all knew each other anyway so there was really no coolness to be determined.
The closest I ever came to having the long hair I so wanted was letting the front end of my hair fall over my eyes. This was no small feat considering I had a cowlick on the right side of my head. To the uninitiated, a cowlick is a strand of hair that just doesn’t belong. With a cowlick your hair is all growing in the same direction except for one strand of hair that grows uncontrollably in some other direction. So, my hair rebellion boiled down to a short time when my front locks were just long enough to barely creep over my right eye. This made my Mom reply, “Get that hair out of your eyes”. After enough of that, there usually was a trip to the barber.
Small towns are great to look back on and reminisce. Everybody knew everybody else. No one locked their doors. Neighbors helped neighbors. Andy Taylor was the sheriff, Barney Fife, the deputy. Well, okay, it was something like that. One thing every small town had was a barber shop. There was a pole outside the door with a twirling red, white and blue contraption that I suppose was the international symbol of barbering. You saw that and you knew you could walk in and get a haircut and shave.
Barber shops have mostly disappeared from our lives. There are still a few of them around. Now most men get their hair cut in a salon or style shop. Gone are the days of walking into a barber shop, realizing you are the eighth in line in a two chair shop, so you sit down in an uncomfortable old chair and pick through Field and Stream, Hot Rod and a number of other magazines and wait your turn. While waiting, you become part of the flow of the conversation whether you actually verbally participate or not. If you don’t verbally participate you follow the banter anyway since there is no way to avoid it. You hear fishing stories, hunting stories, in-law stories, car stories, bad jokes, dirty jokes and jokes you laugh at but can’t remember well enough to tell to others later and lots of talk about farming and the weather.
I had an uncle who did some barbering. I often went to him in my younger days to get a haircut. I recall visiting his house where he had a barber chair in the living room. I have often thought how great that would be to have a barber chair in your living room so you could watch the big game or just to sit in as it was cranked as tall as possible and then to simply spin around and around. Somehow, I don’t think Jennifer will go for such a plan.
Now when I was younger, I didn’t like going to the barber shop. I mean it meant the short-circuiting of any potential coolness. Once there, there was usually a waiting period before the actual haircut. The waiting, of course, made the eventuality of losing my locks even more unbearable. How many times did I sit in a barber shop just hoping for a massive gas leak on the street outside or a tornado or some other disaster which would stop the shearing that was soon to take place? Or why couldn’t my Dad just look directly into my one eye un-obscured by hair and think, ‘you know, son, you’ve got a cool look going there, maybe you don’t need a haircut today.’
Disasters never struck and my Dad never backed down from following through on my need to get a haircut. Since Dad was along for the cut, I usually didn’t have to worry much about the conversation the barber wanted since he was usually talking to my Dad. That was fine by me as it usually let me quietly sulk at the loss of my hair.
Over time, I tried parting my hair on the right side, then back to the left side and even for several years straight down the middle. But long ago I gave up wanting to look cool, and for that matter, trying to be cool. So, I gave up on my hair looking anything other than what it became and what it is now, a wad of hair that grows just so long then begins to curl at the end and then needs to be cut. In the summer it is hot. In the winter it may crowd my ears and collar and irritate me. I know when these moments come; it is time for a haircut.
There are barber shops around here but I tend to choose to visit a chain store specializing in all the latest cuts. I do this because they can make this whole process quick. I can enter the shop and be out within ten minutes on a good day freeing me up to do other things. I have been known to pull into a style shop parking lot, see a full waiting room, and anticipate an hour wait and drive away to return another day or to drive off to another style shop not so crowded.
No matter the change of venue, barber shop or style shop or salon, I pretty much remain the same as I have for years as it relates to getting a haircut. Sit me in the chair, throw a wrap around my clothes and get to cutting. As a barber, stylist or whatever, you may be a brilliant conversationalist, but I’m not here for conversation, I’m here to get a haircut. You probably don’t really want to know what I do for a living or how my day has really gone. I just want you to cut my hair. By the way, I don’t know a number 3 haircut from a number 0 haircut. I just want it short. I don’t care if you use clippers, a straight razor or electric shears; I want it short with a place somewhere on the left side of the top of my head to part it. My hair isn’t very long compared with others, so this shouldn’t take long. Get my do did, get it done quickly, I’ll pay you and even leave you a tip. Oh, and you may note, I still have a cowlick, so please cut around it. I have to keep this hair out of my eyes.
The closest I ever came to having the long hair I so wanted was letting the front end of my hair fall over my eyes. This was no small feat considering I had a cowlick on the right side of my head. To the uninitiated, a cowlick is a strand of hair that just doesn’t belong. With a cowlick your hair is all growing in the same direction except for one strand of hair that grows uncontrollably in some other direction. So, my hair rebellion boiled down to a short time when my front locks were just long enough to barely creep over my right eye. This made my Mom reply, “Get that hair out of your eyes”. After enough of that, there usually was a trip to the barber.
Small towns are great to look back on and reminisce. Everybody knew everybody else. No one locked their doors. Neighbors helped neighbors. Andy Taylor was the sheriff, Barney Fife, the deputy. Well, okay, it was something like that. One thing every small town had was a barber shop. There was a pole outside the door with a twirling red, white and blue contraption that I suppose was the international symbol of barbering. You saw that and you knew you could walk in and get a haircut and shave.
Barber shops have mostly disappeared from our lives. There are still a few of them around. Now most men get their hair cut in a salon or style shop. Gone are the days of walking into a barber shop, realizing you are the eighth in line in a two chair shop, so you sit down in an uncomfortable old chair and pick through Field and Stream, Hot Rod and a number of other magazines and wait your turn. While waiting, you become part of the flow of the conversation whether you actually verbally participate or not. If you don’t verbally participate you follow the banter anyway since there is no way to avoid it. You hear fishing stories, hunting stories, in-law stories, car stories, bad jokes, dirty jokes and jokes you laugh at but can’t remember well enough to tell to others later and lots of talk about farming and the weather.
I had an uncle who did some barbering. I often went to him in my younger days to get a haircut. I recall visiting his house where he had a barber chair in the living room. I have often thought how great that would be to have a barber chair in your living room so you could watch the big game or just to sit in as it was cranked as tall as possible and then to simply spin around and around. Somehow, I don’t think Jennifer will go for such a plan.
Now when I was younger, I didn’t like going to the barber shop. I mean it meant the short-circuiting of any potential coolness. Once there, there was usually a waiting period before the actual haircut. The waiting, of course, made the eventuality of losing my locks even more unbearable. How many times did I sit in a barber shop just hoping for a massive gas leak on the street outside or a tornado or some other disaster which would stop the shearing that was soon to take place? Or why couldn’t my Dad just look directly into my one eye un-obscured by hair and think, ‘you know, son, you’ve got a cool look going there, maybe you don’t need a haircut today.’
Disasters never struck and my Dad never backed down from following through on my need to get a haircut. Since Dad was along for the cut, I usually didn’t have to worry much about the conversation the barber wanted since he was usually talking to my Dad. That was fine by me as it usually let me quietly sulk at the loss of my hair.
Over time, I tried parting my hair on the right side, then back to the left side and even for several years straight down the middle. But long ago I gave up wanting to look cool, and for that matter, trying to be cool. So, I gave up on my hair looking anything other than what it became and what it is now, a wad of hair that grows just so long then begins to curl at the end and then needs to be cut. In the summer it is hot. In the winter it may crowd my ears and collar and irritate me. I know when these moments come; it is time for a haircut.
There are barber shops around here but I tend to choose to visit a chain store specializing in all the latest cuts. I do this because they can make this whole process quick. I can enter the shop and be out within ten minutes on a good day freeing me up to do other things. I have been known to pull into a style shop parking lot, see a full waiting room, and anticipate an hour wait and drive away to return another day or to drive off to another style shop not so crowded.
No matter the change of venue, barber shop or style shop or salon, I pretty much remain the same as I have for years as it relates to getting a haircut. Sit me in the chair, throw a wrap around my clothes and get to cutting. As a barber, stylist or whatever, you may be a brilliant conversationalist, but I’m not here for conversation, I’m here to get a haircut. You probably don’t really want to know what I do for a living or how my day has really gone. I just want you to cut my hair. By the way, I don’t know a number 3 haircut from a number 0 haircut. I just want it short. I don’t care if you use clippers, a straight razor or electric shears; I want it short with a place somewhere on the left side of the top of my head to part it. My hair isn’t very long compared with others, so this shouldn’t take long. Get my do did, get it done quickly, I’ll pay you and even leave you a tip. Oh, and you may note, I still have a cowlick, so please cut around it. I have to keep this hair out of my eyes.
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