Arnica Cream is Jesus In Lotion Form-Lee Hamby

  I write down everything I like, and the above title was at the top of my recent list.
  Clever, witty, people surround me, nourish me and I thank you.
  I like to end my month in review, of what I have heard or read, maybe seen.
      I just saw a bluebird, and this morning watching The Hall of Fame inductees, Lenny Kravitz did a tribute number to Prince with a choir!! Perfect end of a dismal, ill April.
      I wish I could tell you I was feeling great, but not bad is pretty great in my book. Doctor told me my hip was "shot". I told him, that maybe he could come up with a different word, that purely made me feel worse. Be careful with words, they can be game changers.
     I promised I would tell you about my friends book, Hallelujah Anyway by Anne LaMott. She writes about finding mercy, in her unique style, her words, her truth.
     Here are a few of her words.
                    1. We stumble across what we needed to find. Or even better, it finds us.
                    2. We're so often rattled by lingering effects of trauma and fear ( love rattled and lingering. And fear is such a beast.)
                    3. So why today it is absolutely all I can do to extend mercy to myself for wanting to nip an annoying relatives heel like a river rat.
                    4.Show me a drawer in which to stuff my merciful nature ( I need a drawer)
                     5. God created us to have company and to be God's loving eyes and hands on earth
                    6. (yes I know the about number is off) Sometimes heaven is just a new pair of glasses.
                    7. fetuses to marinate in embryonic sacs of our mothers anxiety
                    8. We became serenely attached, or anxiously attached, or unable to attach.
                    9.Teachers, like food, come in many forms.
                   10.old age is hard, hard, hard. And then we become dependent.
                   11. Truth is always a paradox
                   12. We dance with a limp
                   13.Those of us who have gotten sober, all began as the man in the ditch
                   14. who was it that said that to get into heaven, you needed a letter of recommendation
                         from the poor ( now that is powerful)
                   15."You're too anxious for me to deal with." He knows where the cracks in my
                          turtle shell are.
                   16. People say that expectations are resentments under construction
   I have highlighted the entire book, I can not tell you all.
                    17. Mother Theresa cradling strangers at dawn is very romantic, but in life, ( you can just imagine what she said)                  
                    18.a baby feels and smells like God.
  I think I am done, you know that is not true.
  Another book that I will finish today, written by Amy Krouse Rosanthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life is wonderful, she writes like I think. Scattered and Joyful.
One Book that I cannot recommend, Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders. I do not know what this book is about, ( it has been on the best seller list for a good spell), I have picked it up, reread, put it down several times. I have never in all my years of reading, read a book written like this. I cannot explain it. After each person or ghost speaks, it refers to the book that it came from. Like a research paper. I have almost finished it, because I just can't believe I have stayed with it. I have no clue, anything about this book. I know Lincolns son Willie died, and maybe this is purgatory. I just have nothing. It baffled me, and continues too. Maybe you will be curious and just look at it. My last nerve, was left on the last page.
        I think that is about it, two good, one bad read in April. I consider that wonderful.
        May will bring me Shattered about Hilliary Clinton's fall from grace. A book called Sunshine State because I can never read enough about crazy in Florida!! I have Blood at the Root to read also.
A few dozen more on the Kindle, just to make me feel comfortable. I like to have something to read, all day, everyday.
        I will paint all summer, so get ready to hear those stories. Summer for sure is Jesus!