June 24, 2005
-
FRIDAY FIVEAppetizer – What time do you usually wake up each day? If you could choose your wake-up time, when would it be?
4 a.m. Actually, it would stay the same on work days because it means I get out of work early enough in the day to have a reasonable amount of time for My Life. On other days, 6 a.m. would be better. However, when you have pets, they get used to a certain time for breakfast and make your life miserable if you don’t get up and feed them. I do wish I could ever get 8 hours of sleep a night.
Soup – When was the last time you bought groceries? What store did you go to? Name 3 things you purchased.
Unfortunately, I tend to hit the grocery store for something or other almost every other day. I used to try to do the main shopping on Friday when I regularly had my grandchildren on Saturdays. That has changed. So let’s see. Yesterday I stopped in on the way home from work and bought Horizon Organic Low Fat Milk Vitamins A & D added, Nestle Crunch Ice Cream Bars Reduced Fat Vanilla No sugar added, and a tiny plastic tin of seafood salad from the grocery deli. How pallid is that! Oh, and it was QFC.
Salad – How many books have you read so far this year? Which was your favorite and why?
Well, I didn’t count but I can think of 7. My favorites were the autobiograhical efforts of Dylan and Fonda. Agewise we’re peers so listening to their stories is kind of like reinforcing my own. Except they traveled in very rarified circles, celebrities were their intimate friends and enemies, and of course they both were drowning in talent. Realized talent. It was a first-time blab for both and well worth the wait.
Main Course – What is something you consider to be very elegant? In particular, what about that item/place/person conjures up the feeling of elegance?
Oh brother, when I think of elegance I think of grace, I think of rich people with fine clothes and swan necks, and I think what starving person would even care what elegance was? I also think of swans themselves. What would THEY care? Can you be poor and elegant? Chaplin’s little clown comes to mind in his suit and top hat. I guess elegance is just not on my top 10 of important life values.
Dessert – Who taught you how to drive?
This is back in the dim prehistorical mists of my life, but I think I took a class at school and probably my dad. I failed the driving test the first time because I didn’t stop for a pedestrian who stepped off the sidewalk in the middle of the block. Ok, it was a small town.
Deep Thought: “They were a proud people. In fact, some said they were too proud. If you asked them why they were so proud, they’d just laugh and say, “We’re not even going to answer that.”
Today I am grateful for: Sculpture
Guess the Movie: “I’m 36 years old, I love my family, I love baseball and I’m about to become a farmer. But until I heard the voice, I’d never done a crazy thing in my whole life.” Answer: Field of Dreams, 1989.
Winner: thenarrator.
Bringing Troops Home a Nonpartisan Idea
by John Nichols
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, was the first member of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation to sign on as a co-sponsor of a new bipartisan proposal to bring the troops home from Iraq. On Tuesday, Moore added her name to “Withdrawal of United States Armed Forces From Iraq Resolution of 2005 – Homeward Bound” legislation, which was introduced last week and is likely to become the primary vehicle for expression of anti-war sentiment in Congress. (Rest of article here.)
Comments (14)
Field of Dreams.
Home run!
1. I’m up all night, but my best sleep is often from just daybreak, say, 5:30 or 6 right now, to maybe 7, or if I’m lucky 7:30. If I knew how to sleep I’d get up just before dawn each day, have coffee with the sunrise, then write for two or three hours in that cool early light.
2. I grocery shop too often, early training in cities of small, walk-to markets. So, Wednesday (?) Steaks for dinner. Milk for the kid. Asparagaus. from Meijer, the ultra-superstore of Michigan and vicinity.
3. Ten? No, more. Lots of obscure Irish stuff (fiction and non-fiction) Most recent good book? Sorry I Worried You by Gary Fincke, last year’s Flannery O’Conner Award Book for short fiction. I usually have four books going at once. One on computer. One audio in the car. One audio at work. One audio at home.
4. Elegance? I think of prose without any unnecessary words, of black and white photography that captures the depth of a face, of the Seagram’s Building in Manhattan, of an empty beach at sunset, of chants sung in ancient cathedrals. I think elegance is grace. And grace is rare and wonderful.
5. My dad, my older sister. We had no drivers’ ed. I just learned on an ancient manual transmission Dodge, panicked that I wouldn’t pop the clutch fast enough at lights at the top of my neighborhood’s hills. Then I went through high-speed-pursuit-training later, with different instructors – another story.
great friday 5. The drumbeat to bring troops home will only grow…
i too sleep at dawn, but my best thinking, writing has always been from midnight until dawn, a remnant of the years in school and then grad school, when with the boys safely sleeping, i was temporarily free.
thank you very much for your comment and sub. you are always welcome.
peace,
lily
Sometimes my husband has to be at work at 5:00 am and then I have to get up around 4:00. Even after weeks or months of doing this, I still feel like I’m getting up in the middle of the night, and I am always sleep deprived. Normally I get up at 5:30, and it is a completely different experience.
Before you next buy Nestle’s Crunch, please go to stolenchildhoods.org and read about Nestle’s connection to child labor, and the conditions under which the children work. If it bothers you, you might want to let them know that you have been a customer of theirs, but that you want them to rethink their position on child labor.
I think you can be poor and elegant, if you want to. Consider the lilies of the field. Or, as you say, swans.
I love the ‘tents’! Started thinking of the song, ‘Rock the Casbah’ (sp)-lol! I love all of your writing, but especially love the Friday Five. I’m with Ira and Lily. More awake after midnight, then go go bed at dawn. Some of the sunrises have been so beautiful.
Stocking up on groceries is my thing, then I only need incidentals through the month. I like to shop alone and take my time. When my daughter comes along, she tires picking out things we don’t need and usually end up in some kind of argument-lol!
Sure hope this weekend has been a great one for you! Have I missed pictures of your flowers here? Take care.
4 A.M. is my favorite time of the day. Everything is so quiet, so peaceful. I am very happy at this time.
- Rain.
RYC: Thank you! I can’t edit pictures at the moment (my xanga is on strike or something) but I was able to remove the offending image, and that solved the size issue.
Thanks for the sweet comment about my blog and Erik’s blog. Sometimes when I think about my choice to be a stay at home mom I think I’ve become a rather boring person. But in the end I really do love my life with my little family. We’re not perfect. That’s the wonderful thing about Xanga is that you can edit your life!
Well, my kitty has a lot of say so about the time that I get up. Today it was 5:45am which would be fine if I could ever manage to go to bed at a decent hour.
That Erik he sure is something. I’m a really fortunate mom to have him and my other son David. Total opposites –makes life very interesting.
Been trying to comment for a couple of days now. What’s stopped me is a combo of SLOW COMPUTER and CRAZY BUSY SCHEDULE. Guess what, it’s time for work already. Have to pick up some Humulin N for Scrappy on the way. The ice is in the ice chest and I’m ready to go. Leaving for Texas in the morning.
I wanted to thank you for leaving me such a nice message. It is such a wonderful thing when a complete stranger can offer you kindness.
Thank you so much!!
i would get up early with the birds too. that is if i was a morning person.
Dear Lionne,
I’ve been getting up at 4 a.m. for almost 15 years. I’m usually the first one in the building at work, but I get off at 3 p.m. and I’m usually in bed by 9 p.m. I sometimes get up at 4 a.m. on weekends too.
I eat at restaurants, so only use the grocery store for essentials. Haven’t read an actual “book” in about three years. Don’t think about “elegance” much, and I failed driver training in high school, because it was too soon after my first car wreck in which I broke my jaw, and I took a supplemental course with a driving school after my junior year.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool