Perle Champion

sometimes in the evenings when
everything is still
with nothing but the sound of
wind in trees, and the call of birds is
faint and far away,
ideal thoughts fill my mind
pipe dreams of many things
of love and life and
wondering
where I’m bound.
flights of fancy tickle
my brain
spin me around with never
a sound
in their coming and only
a trace in my memory when
they’re gone.

© Perle Champion

Monday and I have nowhere to be. I work a 4-day week and it begins on Tuesday. I usually get up at 5a.m. anyway, but this morning I languished until daylight broke through my windows. 

The landlord calls this the sunroom, I call it the best of all possible bedrooms. 7 windows 3 facing south, 4 west so the room is sunny all day. 

This is the way to start the day.

My Dell laptop of 8 years caught a bug yesterday, and I left him in the capable hands of Elizabeth at Office Depot. I’m hoping she can retrieve my docs & pix. She’s hopeful, but no promises.

Either way, it’s time for a new computer. Crossing my fingers and asking all to send some good vibes my way.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.  – Fran Lebowitz

But there’s a little of each in all of us, and I assure you many of those great, average and small people speak of their ideas and things over a glass of wine or two and pause to talk about the quality of that glass as well.

Also, it is not people who are great or average or small but the way we are in the world.  We can speak of ideas, but speaking isn’t doing; we can speak of things but know nothing about them; we can speak of wine as a pseudo-connoisseur or a true lover of the of the beverage in all high or low variations.

Rowling as Dumbledore said it best, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Call it Winter Solstice, Yule, darkest night or just plain December 22, but the day after, the days began to grow in length minute by minute.  That almost imperceptible lengthening of days is suddenly so obvious.  It is with indescribable pleasure that I walked out the door of my office building this evening to day instead of night just in time to bear witness to the most glorious sunset.

Next up, Imbolc (February 2) considered a traditional time for rededication and pledges for the coming year.  I made my pledges, née resolutions as usual on darkest night with candles lit, sipping iced champagne in a Baccarat  flute, and Blackmore’s Night streaming on Pandora.

Realizing that the reason most resolutions fail is because we try to change too many things at once, I began with just one on January 1 (post a blog a day).  I’ll add 2 new things on February 1 or Imbolc eve (sending out one query per day Monday – Friday, and drawing or painting one new thing on Saturday).

Each month, I’ll start one new thing and each day I’ll be grateful for the lengthening days to hold each new thing.

ENVY:  wanting what somebody else has: the resentful or unhappy feeling of wanting somebody else’s success, good fortune, qualities, or possessions transitive verb…

Envy.  It’s a natural reaction to another’s success, beauty or apparent ease in the world.  But is it deadly?  Or is the deadly part how we act on it.

Truth is, envy can be a good thing, if you leave out the resentment part.  The object of your envy has succeeded, and if it’s the kind of success you want in your life, decide what you need to do to accomplish similar success.

Bless it and you’ll be blessed, curse it and you curse yourself – it’s an old adage, which proves itself daily in our lives.  I don’t consider envy a deadly sin.  As with most things in our world, it is not the thing that is deadly, but how we use it.

From 5:05 until 6:30 this evening I and a number of my fellow-travelers enjoyed food, music and drinks courtesy of Club Bacchus and BankCorpSouth at one of Operation New Birmingham’s famous 5:05 meet and mingles.

The club is sparkling, and the dance floor on the second level took me back to my dancing days, complete with disco ball.  I finished up the evening, sipping, and chatting at a window table occasionally gazing out the window at 11^th street’s lights twinkling below and Vulcan shining just beyond on the mountain.

Listening to the singer on the bandstand, playing his acoustic guitar play to an inattentive audience, gave me pause.  I’m accustomed to people paying attention to me – good or bad, but never ignored.  I stopped mid-sentence and started a round of applause as he finished his last song. 

I like this place.  They allow smoking on the second floor which opens late for dancing,  my smokin’ (literally & figuratively) brother will love that, but no smoking in the pub on the first level.

Check  Club  Bacchus out if you get a chance.  I know I’ll be back.

Pisces here with Sagittarius ascending (water & fire) unless I use the Chinese zodiac. 

Many websites determine a person’s Chinese horoscope animal sign by the Chinese New Year’s day or birth year which doesn’t tell the whole story.  A true Chinese horoscope puts more import on the month and day of your birth.

Born on February 23, 1949, my Chinese horoscope declares, “Perle is a Tiger (birth month) born in the year of the Ox on the day of the Green Monkey.”  I like the sound of that.  I mean who wants to be a plain old Ox?. 

In that same horoscope I had cast a few years back, I found a chart for my luck level.  Seems that from age 62 to 72 my luck should be at its peak – ‘make it so’, oh ‘make it so‘.

Some Sunday mornings just call for pancakes – not those ordinary non-nutritive, white flour, sugary things.  It called for my own special recipe.  Alas, my recipe box, which I never got around to committing to computer, went the way of so many things in the fire.

But the thing is, if you’re a real cook, you don’t always need a recipe.  Years of cooking gives you a feel for food and its many combinations.  Some things are just instinctual.

I poured leftover buttermilk from last week’s soda bread into the blender and tossed in some old fashioned oats to soften, sliced in a half banana, sprinkled some cinnamon, and a dribble of blackstrap molasses and hit speed two to blend.  Beat a few eggs in a bowl and poured in the mixture from the blender.

Next, I added 2 tbs or ground flax, 1tsp of baking powder, ½ tsp of baking soda (essential if you use soda) to more or less a cup of whole-wheat flour, and mixed it into the liquid mixture.  I adjusted with a bit more buttermilk to get it just right.

The iron pan had been heating all the time, and when I added the smear of bacon drippings, the aroma of bacon set my mouth to watering.  I poured the thick pancake mixture and formed it to about a 5-inch circle (toaster size, so I can freeze extras for later quick healthy breakfasts).

I ate the first one hot off the griddle smeared with butter, as I poured the next one to cook.  When the last one cooked, I smeared it with butter, poured a bit of real maple syrup (grade B – it’s the most nutritive) and savored every bite with my steaming cup of spicy coffee.

The remaining 4 pancakes, I let cook before putting them into a Ziploc bag and into the freezer for another day.