a home song

I find it interesting that this evening, for the second time in as many springs, I'm relieved to learn that I have not been "selected" for a professional opportunity. Both might have offered additional financial security--a position more immune from budget cuts or a second income to bolster rainy day accounts. But, even in this unsettling economy and with retirement on the not-too-distant horizon, I'm loving where I am. Maybe I reach out for those other possibilities just to ensure that I don't become complacent, lose my edge? Or maybe this is my Everest: I reach out because the opportunity is there?

Whatever the reason, both rejections gifted me back precious summer weeks I would have lost to work. And today, after two glorious afternoon hours puttering in my wilderness but wannabe well-groomed yard, I was especially grateful that I had not traded my summer for financial security before realizing, once again, how much this annual tussle with nature is an inherent part of who I am.

64. Happy 11th anniversary, home of mine! Looks like we'll be spending much of our sweet slow summer days together again after all :-)

I'm smiling. Are you?

love u infinity plus one

63.

the local March birthdays trio

the Facebook experiment . . .

Like blogger, it's taken a while for Facebook to "take" with me. I joined last summer after my cautious oldest out-of-state child said she'd set up a Facebook page for professional reasons. I thought it would be a way for me to connect with her and with out-of-touch professional colleagues. Several in a cohort that is soon to disband had their own Facebook pages. With my daughter, they became my first "friends."

Connecting on Facebook with colleagues at work has been a different story--perhaps because ours is a professional where one misstep in cyberspace today may easily translate into loss of livelihood--position and credentials--tomorrow. But, after two years of blogging on a site easily googled, I figured I wasn't a misstep candidate so . . .

I invited my other daughter to join. She was the natural anyway--and truly uses the tool for what it does best, connecting with old friends before they've grown so old they've forgotten you or grown wary of risk-taking, of stepping out into the unknown. My son--well, he still hasn't mastered sending/responding to personal emails, so I haven't bugged him . . . yet. But it's interesting to note that, in the meantime, I've connected to all my brother's and sister's children :-)

Which brings me to another point--sister and brothers who also don't have Facebook accounts . . .

In the meantime, I've amassed oodles of Flair, joined a group from my mother's hometown across the Atlantic, and begun taking tiny risks--like quizzes (I should have been a detective [aren't I?] and settled down in Italy [close enough to that across-the-Atlantic hometown]). I support my college basketball team (my classmates also aren't on Facebook but the more recent residents of my former dorm are). I dabble in the trivia of what I'm thinking at any given moment--and truly enjoying being more in the know about the lives of those I have so little-face-to-face contact with.

Facebook keeps us close when time and space and the demands of our separate lives would ordinarily dictate otherwise.

The one drawback? Just not the right venue for longer thinking, reflecting. Which is why I'll keep right on blogging :-)