Elsie's Notes from New England - THEMission edition

Endorphins are wondrous things. They make you happy. More importantly, they make you feel happier than you did before they started pumping through your blood. Case in point: Today has been a little wacky for me, and my routine has been seriously disrupted. Normally this is not a problem for me. I like mixing things up. I used to live by a pretty rigid schedule, but I discovered it made me a cranky mom, so I let go of some of my OCD and learned to chill out just a little. I worked someone else's desk this morning, which was relaxing and quiet, with little work to do. I occupied myself by reading news articles online. That doesn't look as embarrassing when the Big Boss walks by as my Facebook page does, so, y'know . . . However, I didn't have my music playing. On my computer at my own desk I have a nice mix of music -- classical, jazz, contemporary, just a little bit of pop and some gentle old-time rock and roll. I always turn the volume down just a little ...

So, I'm just wondering, do you guys ever feel stupid? I mean really, mortified-to-think-that-I-ever-said-or-did-that stupid? I would love to permanently delete some memories from my soft and gray-matter hard drive but, try as I might, all I can manage to do is bury them for awhile. Then they work their way back to the surface like those nasty rocks and old nails that crop up every year in my vegetable garden -- the same garden that I raked and smoothed and cleared so carefully last year from all the rocks and nails caught in the clumps of soil. I fear that neither my garden nor my memory will ever be free of these unwanted, useless bits of rubbish. I'm tempted to share some of these events with you here. Somehow it feels like if I "confess" them and acknowledge how rude/thoughtless/careless/selfish/stupid I was, it will somehow exonerate me and lay the beasts to rest for once and for all. Reason and the remnants of self-respect, however, are taking the uppe...

I wrote this piece a year ago, on September 2, 2009. The weather this fall has been non-descript and a little disappointing, so I thought I would post what inspired me last year instead. I grew up in Missouri. Summertime there is oppressively hot, humid, and miserably bug-infested, especially back in 1970something when the 13 year cicadas and 7 year cicadas converged in the noisiest summer I can remember. Have you ever seen a cicada, aka locust? Red bulgy eyes, nasty legs and wings, and they shed their exoskeleton . . . . ewwwww, pardon me while I go dry heave in my wastebasket . . . Anyway, about the time that school started, it would start to cool down. A little. Our schools had little-to-no air-conditioning back in the stone age, so we sweltered at school just like we had been doing at home, except with more clothes on. Can you hear me melting? Somewhere around Halloween time, fall would have really arrived, making Halloween costumes a tricky thing -- do I want to look cool in...