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more stained glass, tennis courts, fall fleur

A woman asked me what I was doing as I stood taking a photo of her stained glass windows, so I told her with a smile, complimenting their beauty. She shrugged as though I were a fool, saying, "They're everywhere! So what?" (My mental response? Not where I come from, lady.)

A complete waste of a day trying to download photos from blackberry to computer (failure) and to get wifi on my blackberry to work only to call my service provider and discover they don't guarantee that using wifi for media, calls, etc. when you 're out of the US won't cost you anyway, in addition to the ten bucks monthly fee they charge for that domestically. They said they'd call me back and didn't. flippin gawpers...

Nice evening yesterday wandering the streets of Outremont after supper of polish beet soup and stuffed cabbage with Fran at the polish deli on St. Viateur, excellent beet soup. I miss having my garden full of beets for sure and this was a real treat. (Friday a trip to the Italian 'hood open market is in the works, then a barbeque party which sounds like fun.) The beet soup followed my fab hair appointment with Magali, Coiffure Mile-End at 23 St. Viateur, who Francoise recommended and wow is she ever talented and tres gentille. I was a new woman the entire rest of the day into this morning... until the flippin gawpers...

All kinds of stuff in the news, none of it good. The World is 'leaking' like a sieve I am completely unsurprised to report. Looks like Facebook is gonna have a major meltdown sooner or later as their files get hacked into and all your personal info goes viral. Saw that one comin, didn't we? Then there's the Wikileaks War Scandal. No surprises there, just shameful coverups as per usual. IAWTYT (pronounced EE-Yah-TIT, kinda like 'yo mama'): the acronym for It's Always Worse Than You Think. The poor, noble Wikileaks website has been so overloaded with hits for days I STILL can't get it to load. And what else.... oh yeah, here's an interesting chart I found. In case you were forgetting how we got into this economic morass we're in and what the prognosis is if we keep up these continued illegal occupations of foreign countries and Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

The Times is putting us on notice: the Vitamin D has leaked out of our lives. They're right of course; Adelle would concur. Have your D level tested lately along with your cholesterol levels? Course not, unless you have health insurance and a decent GP. And what are those odds for the average Jane? So eschew the sunscreen, except on the face, and at least two or three times a week, head outside for a good 10 to 20 minutes in the midday (10 a.m.t o 3 p.m.) sun, plenty of skin exposed and soak it up. A nice walk with shorts and a short sleeved shirt will do it. Or expose more if you can can away with it. The list of diseases you'll avoid by doing so (in addition to healthy habits) is mindbending. Take a supplement as well. It doesn't have to be expensive. A few bucks, five, ten at most. It's a good thing, as Martha sez.

Speaking of rich TV personalities: Oprah is way too fullaherself. She talks too much and doesn't let her guests have their say unless they're headed to some overloaded emotional morass she thinks will make good, weepy press. She used to be kinda ok. Now, she's got that thang. Complete lack of humility, the faux humble thang. I can't believe with all her money and success she's still so insecure, got to go on and on bout how she 'intentions' this and 'feels' that while her guests kinda sit there wondering when it's their turn. Lady needs to shake off all those Leboutins and get what Agatha Christie would call a pair of sensible shoes and take a long walk without a camera followin her. (I'm not a fan but I like to check her out from time to time cause I want my novel on her show someday, like Kaye Gibbons' was.)

REminder: if you haven't put Word of the Day link on your homepage, it's a great way to start the brain cells up every day and you help make the world a better place. So do it today! It's free! What have you got to lose? So much to gain.

A few more sites on privacy protections and finding people in general for free. Sorry, I got those links backwards. You can figure it out. Yes, I know. My heart's just not in it today. Sorry.

Looking up a quote you recall a line of can really break your mental stride, in a good and necessary way. Poetry really forces you to slow down, take care with what you're thinking. A good thing, to ratchet up your awareness level of what's on your own mind. Mindless as we are most of the time. What a way to live! It's something to think about.

I've been thinking a lot about the word "homeless" lately. People ask me where I live. I tell them, "nowhere, everywhere, anywhere, I don't really know now". So I say "I'm homeless" just to see how they respond to that. And around here the usual response has been a sort of cautious humor. Homeless is such a shameful word in the States. It connotes all kinds of failure and disgrace. In France they call the homeless the sans abri -- 'without shelter' (but my mind goes to arbre, which is tree, as in 'no tree to be under' – I am very suggestible in French) which is a gentler, more compassionate term. It implies a harsh world (from which one needs 'shelter') that has somehow failed the sans abri, not they who fail to find shelter. But in America to be homeless is to have failed as a citizen consumer, as a home improving Lowe's devotee (having been one, I can say this), and that's about all there is to it. Ergo you've failed as a patriot. Plenty of war vets are homeless I read. Wonder if that POV includes them despite their service.

So wonder if indeed I am homeless, at least by Robert Frost's definition who said in the gorgeous poem The Death of the Hired Man,

'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.'

I'm not completely sure I really have any place

like that in my life, and that's pretty amazing

after decades, three quarters of my life in fact ,

spent providing such a place for others.

Maybe that's what I'm going to find out.

courage, mon enfant! as my momma would say ... if she spoke French.

...I bet she speaks French in heaven...