The Extremes

Just a week ago yesterday on September 5th I was one of more than a hundred people crammed into a room at Panini's in Westlake, with too much auditory stimulation and too much visual stimulation.

This morning everything is quiet around the house and Eric is off to make soup and stew again.  So I guess we're talking about the extremes here -- the extremes in life. 

Everyone has had this experience.  At a seaside vacation, there is that amazing ebb and flow of the water, the sound of the waves, the sun reflecting off the water, the enormity of the size of the body of water.  And then all of the sudden you are back at your own house again and it seems like everything must have been a dream.  Or maybe you attend a football game and the stadium is filled and there are cheers and oohs and aaahs and boos coming from the crowd.  It is especially amazing at night with the stadium lights turning everything below into something not quite real.  And then soon, you are back home again.

Probably the only thing I miss at my house is water.  My little fake pond out front doesn't really do it.  The ponds that basically surround this property are just about unreachable in summer due to the growth, the poison ivy, and especially the briars.  I can see one of them during the late fall and winter and even into spring.  The largest one of them is located far beyond the front of the house.  When the leaves are off the trees and the sun is shining, sometimes you can get a glimpse of the water.

But we need quiet, even as much as we try to avoid it.  We need time to process everything that happens to us.  I'm always amazed at the nuns who choose to live in a cloister, as do the Sisters at Sancta Clara on 44th Street NE in Canton.  There are rules in most cloistered monasteries about talking during the day because the monks or nuns agree to forbid it.  Their lives are to be given to God and God alone.  For that reason, most people are not cut out for it. 

The quiet will be coming to an end shortly, because I'm going to the eye doctor to get the temporary plugs put in.  This will tell us if the permanent plugs will help with the dry eye I've been having.  And then maybe, just maybe I'll be able to get back to wearing my contact lenses again.  It would be great.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend and do something fun.  I hate to think of winter, but we all know it is coming, and maybe the memories of the beautiful fall will help tide us over until spring breaks through yet again.  What do you think?

Take care, all of the readers of this blog.

Karen