Healthy Berries are Good Food for Health (Photo credit: epSos.de)

The other day, while driving, I saw a young woman reading while driving.

She had a paper, the real kind made from trees, holding it up with her two hands, behind the steering wheel, also directing the steering wheel with the bottom of her palms, up in the air. A true Palm Pilot. (Had to say it.)

She endangered herself and other people. I stayed out of her way.

Nearly everybody’s out there. Drive defense.

Also today, among other things, I saw berries, not the edible kind, but bright red and dark blue berries, in all the greenery outside. Some berries, especially red ones, are dangerous (even deadly) to eat, I’ve heard. So we have to be careful with foods too, knowing what’s good for food and what’s not.

Still, nature’s inedible berries are pretty to look at, clustered in their attractive asymmetry, never seeming too busy.

It’s good to be just busy enough.

I hope you have a great day! And hope to see you Thursday:)

(The other day, I bought some raspberry jam, for English muffins or PB & J sandwich fold-overs. The Smucker company makes all kinds of jams and jellies, without seeds, if we’d like).

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An artificial fiber optic Christmas tree (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An atmosphere can change, suddenly warmer and brighter. I’m sitting here at the warm and light-filled Cleveland State Community College library, which is open until 4:30 p.m. each day this week. Then Friday, like college libraries do, the CSCC library will close for the holidays.

So, since I don’t have Internet access at home, here I am at another library. Lord willing, I’ll be traveling from one computer to the next, during Christmas break, which sometimes seems too long.

I felt so blue this morning, again, the Christmas blues, but worse, because of so much tragic news, and now another family episode, splintering, hurting, wondering how to adjust, how to accept, how to get this knot out of my stomach, because of more strife and division and heartbreak.

I mention the late great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon a lot here, because he seems to have understood so much of real life. One time, Spurgeon wrote that he was feeling low, then a friend wrote back to Spurgeon, about how much it meant to him to learn that even the great preacher felt sad too sometimes.

Spurgeon suffered from sporadic depressions, described in the book “Bright Days, Dark Nights: With Charles Spurgeon in Triumph Over Emotional Pain” by Elizabeth Skoglund.

The artificial Christmas tree looks pretty here, and peaceful, with shiny garland and green branches with, among other colors, lavender and green Christmas ornaments that don’t really shine, but glow, brushed light.

Today, I mailed Christmas cards to my children, with gold seals. It made me happy. It lifted some of the weight off my heart, to think of my children and send them cards. Children do that. You carry your children in your heart forever, no matter what. They glow from there, forever, luminous. Children change everything, for the better. I’m so glad they were born.

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Water drop, green (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The other day I drove by a rich person’s private pond. There’s a warning sign there, not to park beside the pond.

The pond is so pretty, with green water and the wind blew a little that day, rippling the water. It was living water.

But there are private drives with warning signs on both sides of the pond, besides the other sign. You can’t park anywhere there to watch nature.

It felt wistful, not being able to sit in peace and watch nature. It was like looking and yearning, instead of looking and learning.

Not long after that, I read an article from the Los Angeles Times, by writer Melissa Healy, about recent findings, published in the Public Library of Science One (PloS One) journal.

The study shows that my son’s fetal DNA may be embedded in my brain, from my pregnancy with him—as well as embedded in his sister’s brain, from my pregnancy with her, 11 years later. It’s too amazing, too wonderful, isn’t it, the way people can be connected like that, through nature, and over time and space?

When I’ve connected with nature the most, it’s been because of my children. The stars really did shine brighter against the black cool night when my son and his friends played music outside and I was able to be there. Even now, when there are crescent moons, I think of my daughter. When she was a little girl, she called crescent moons “banana moons,” because of their shape.

These are favorite memories, gold and silver memories, which make me very rich.

For 50 cents on another day, I found a book from 1974 called “The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher” by Lewis Thomas. On Page 1, Thomas writes that humans are “embedded in nature.”

The earth, he said, is Alive, “the only exuberant thing,” viewed from the distance of the moon. “It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.”

So that long ago, someone understood and wrote about our gold and silver memories, embedded there, waiting to spiral out, then back again, through all eternity…one generation to the next. 

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Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, New Mexico, United States of America. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Would you believe somebody sent me some unexpected money yesterday, enough to buy a bottle of Emeraude, which said on the back it’s from Paris and is timeless and romantic.

It made me feel good to get that surprise, because I had yearned for perfume yesterday and it’s like God noticed and cared and wanted me to have the fragrance.

But still, something was off this morning. Making coffee didn’t help like it usually does and nothing felt right or on time. So I went to the nutrition center and it was annoying there too. Let’s not go into it. We got lunch served.

Let’s just skip over all about the unsettled day today.

We have to work at waiting on God and resting in God, Who makes homes for the lonely. God can break us out of the just-me jail. It’s in the Psalms.

For now, it’s just me out here, trying to wait and trying to work and trying to get centered.

The beat goes on. I’ve heard annoying things will turn into priceless pearls someday, if we let them. If we liked it, it wouldn’t work, would it?

They say only real pearls feel scratchy on your teeth.

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Lebanese hummus, garnished with whole chickpeas, on a Yemeni serving dish (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I got home from the center today feeling low. But I had to get ready for the rest of the day and change out of my bleach clothes.

Bleach clothes are the old clothes that don’t matter if I get bleach on them. Maybe I’ll buy some colorful scrubs, so any bleach incidents just blend in.

We have to use a little pure bleach in the rinse water and then a bleach solution to spray the tables down, because we have to be sure within an inch of our lives that we’ve exterminated as many germs as humanly possible, with bleach’s toxic help. I do not like bleach.

Even if you spill just a little bleach on your clothes, it’s good-bye outfit. My blue capris have permanent little bleach spots because a few drops of bleach solution splashed during cleaning.

Today I bought some hummus and pretzels in a container as a snack, to go with sweet iced tea from Dari-Kreme. I like hummus a lot.

Two other things made me happy today and that was finding a purple Henley shirt on sale at Kmart and also some Suave men’s hair paste, which is cheaper than the women’s hair paste, and hopefully softer.

Maybe the new hair paste won’t feel so much like glue. Glue and paste are just too much sometimes. Less is more. (Except for hummus!)

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English: A tie dyed lace tank. Photo taken by User:Gezi and explicitly released under GFLD by ThaiDye Artists. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s hot again here in the Southern United States. It’s not as hot as it was, but it’s hot enough to confuse your clothes. This morning, I must have changed clothes three times, trying to get comfortable.

The repetitively unpredictable weather patterns in the South are hard to live with and can drive just about anybody nutty and swirly, like those autumn leaves swirling down at the same time the roses are blooming and wilting and the yellow butterflies are dancing around all crazy-like, but also pretty.

It sure can get frustrating. Just a week or so ago, we were enjoying autumn with its cool breezes and friendly sunshine and clear moonlight. But it didn’t last. Summer changed her mind, which is the pattern here in the South.

Let’s not get used to any leveled-out weather here in Tennessee, or anywhere else in the South. Just when we think we are free and clear, here comes summer again, carrying that torch for us.

This blazin’ heat makes you want to wear tank tops here in September and maybe thumb your nose at people and then just get somewhere cool.

The guy at the desk stared at my apologetic tank top, but it’s really trying to be a happy shirt, fit for the weather. When (and if) it gets cold enough, I’ll switch to turtlenecks and sweaters and jackets and long sleeves and V-necks. But right now, the heat presses down and makes us wear tank tops, trying to be comfortable.

A young woman with her hands full kicked the automatic door open with her foot today. What did I tell you? It’s the heat. Time for a happy shirt.

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Monsooned Malabar (Photo credit: ritchielee)

Conversation hums all around. A barista moves briskly. Customers relax in a neighborhood blend of friends and flavors.

I’m at the recently-opened Lasaters Coffee & Tea (http://www.lasaterscoffee.com) in the Cleveland-Bradley County Public Library, Cleveland, Tennessee.

This shop shines. Think wood, black leather, low lighting. The aroma of coffee. See thick shiny cups fired in earth tones. Listen while tall thermal tumblers speak strawberry red and lime green, blazing blue and subtle silver.

Look up and see the French Press coffee contraption you know your daughter would love for Christmas. Think of her favorite color and say that one. Imagine your son warming his hands over a campfire after unpacking your exquisite gift of India Monsooned Malabar.

Consider your friend and yourself too. Ponder the small possibilities and sheer delights of caramel mocha; toasted marshmallow latte; gourmet hot chocolate; blended spice chai; custom fruit smoothies and iced white chocolate mocha. Or  maybe it’s black iced black tea or Rooibos with a roast beef and Provolone sandwich. Maybe the Southwest grilled chicken wrap or the turkey and Swiss rosemary bread panini.

A customer orders the turkey and Swiss, encouraging the baristo to include the buttery flavor when he grills the sandwich. With joy, that customer anticipates the melted marvel.

A man wearing Lasaters classic black slacks and shirt explains how refreshment and community often happen over a cup of coffee.  He turns to help another friend.  In shades of sunrise and sunset, shop lights glow.

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