I finished off the mini-indie concert tour last week with a show by Blitzen Trapper. I love this band on CD, and they are even better live. They put on another regular Rock Show, and the crowd went wild. One of the things I love most about them is the flexibility and variety of their music, from raging guitar to sweet serenades.
Raging guitar……..
Sweet serenades……
So good.
After the show I headed to The Big City to take care of a few pre-residency To Do’s, scope out the new apartment, and drop some things off.
And it’s been…..Let’s just say……An adventure.
Having lived in very sparsely populated area for the last decade-plus, I was not exactly prepared for the traffic. I think I’m going to adapt pretty quickly though. On the way out to The Big City I had to pull over at one particularly bad point (I’m calling it The Corridor of Madness, directly south of a Huge City, where 55 mph apparently, roughly translates to 110 mph) and hyperventilate into an Arby’s bag for 10 minutes before I could continue. On the way back, after I’d taken a wrong turn right into The Huge City, almost jumped a curb (second time in one day, awesome), and skipped a toll, I just laughed (fine, somewhat hysterically). But, no signs or symptoms of an imminent syncopal episode at all the second time through. Definite progress.
I am currently sitting in a hotel room in a random Super 8 in some Middle States town (I didn’t see the name, just a sign for a Super 8 and a Starbucks. Sold.) just a few hours from home.
Home.
Not for much longer. I’m struggling with how pleasantly surprised I am with The Big City, soon to be my new home, and how heart broken I can’t help but feel at the prospect of leaving my old home, and the family I made for myself there. Not much I can do about it. So, I’m going to stop thinking about it for the moment.
Instead, I’m thinking about some time I took to, literally, stop and smell the roses last week in a friend’s garden.
Before I visited my friend and their garden, I stopped to get them some beautiful lavender roses I espied in a florist shop on the way. I chatted with the enthusiastic florist as they wrapped up the flowers, and told her I was getting the flowers just because. Just because my friend is so sweet, and loves flowers, and deserves to get them often. Just because. The florist loved this and told me a story about preparing funeral flowers one day. The customer arrived to pick the flowers up, and told the florist they wished they’d bought their loved one more flowers when they were alive. Just because. And that it should be a lesson to us all.
Indeed.
The florist then asked if I liked to garden, and I replied with an emphatic ‘No.’ Like cooking, I much prefer to just enjoy the end result. When I officially moved out of the shack last week, I left with never having turned the stove on. Not once. In two years. (Okay, this may have been in large part because it was a gas stove, I had no idea how to light it, and was afraid I’d blow myself up.) But, I choose to go ahead and err on the side of being proud of that. Stuff like cooking and gardening is right up there with scrubbing the toilet for me. Messy, tedious chores. Nothing I personally wish to do in my rare, spare time.
But, as I said, I do love to relish the results of someone else’s labors, by savoring a good meal, or wandering a gorgeous garden. Taking time to smell the roses. And to take a few pictures of them while I’m at it.
Naturally.
Nurse, MD 