Rhythm In The Rain

  It is raining in Atlanta on this first day of January 2013. A steady pulse of liquid, washing the last year away.
This past year, my first as a retired person, has been without a rhythm. No schedule or pattern to any day, to some heaven, to me an adjustment. I have loved each day. Looked at each minute of the day, in a different way. A different tempo even to my thought process. For sure, a new turn in the road, with added stop lights and curves!!! You see I also turned sixty, another big swing in the journey. Much to do about nothing, or manic time to reflect and think!!!  I think I shall look at this passage, like I have the others, with curiosity and the passion of my youth!! Why change now??

 As the lids to Christmas boxes were closed, and another holiday was packed away, I thought about  what I did not write about in December. ( Guess I should think more about run-on sentences?? Never) ( In my world this is just compound/complex/etc.....) Like the books that I have read. You did not think the bustling season would hamper my reading time. Reading is my fix! my Prozac, my booze, reading is my Person!!!(Greys Anatomy shout out!)( OK, I take Prozac but reading is my increased dose!) ( and..I have an Apple-tini but reading is my second drink!) Reading is ALMOST my Christian Grey, but now that is a big stretch and I do mean BIG with a whip!!!
Paris: A Love Story by Kati Marton, a different kind of book for me. She was married to Peter Jennings and Richard Holbrooke. She has lead a charmed and heartbroken life, intrigue for me. She was married to larger than life men, who died young.
Some quotes from this book are:
          Grief distorts everything-time included.
          Like a human snowplow, I surge against the flow
          She had the look of someone who just assumed nothing bad would ever happen to her.
          In Paris you smile only when you have something to smile about. Sorrow and pain are deemed part of life.
          The past should not imprison you

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe, a spectacular book, one to read again. A book to pass on to others. I don't know how to tell you about it? The mother is dying and her son decides to have a book club with just the two of them, in her last years. That would not grab me, but that is all I can think of to say. Its special what we do with our time on this earth, is probably a better way to describe this book, but to be honest that does not do it justice. It is not sad, it is filled with joy. Yes maybe that is the word I was looking for, a book about Joy. We all need to read this, right?
Here are a few pearls from this book of joy:
           Its much easier to follow your bliss when your rent is paid.
           Attacking her desk, her way of cleaning
           There are some genies that, once let out of their bottle, cant be put back in
           Mom had always taught us to examine our decisions by reversibility
           I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me
           there is an etiquette of illness
          Hospitals are interruption factories
          Secrets, she felt, rarely explained or excused anything in real life
I could go on and on, but this brief blog is getting heavy!
I also read Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon if mental health is your thing. I loved it, and now am reading his second book on depression, The Noonday Demon.

Its a new year, and its still raining. The only thing I know for sure, is this day will be grand, its up to me.
Now if I can just find my sun-light machine, this gray sky is killing me!!! Happy New Year!!