Clumsy Day

I think it's going to be a clumsy day. I can tell by the feel of my feet as they move across the carpet and how my hands grasp the coffee cup. I tumbled my coffee over onto the floor this morning. It wasn't a long ways down; it got the couch first. "Jesus Christ!" I bumbled. My mother used to say that a lot. I don't say it often, but I wasn't in the mood to drop an F-bomb. I went calmly to the sink. I was just settling in with my keyboard, too, but had to stop to clean up my clumsy mess. I'm still enjoying my cup of coffee and am ready to brew another pot in the mini Mr. Coffee.

It started raining again. I felt it in my bones. Usually the pressure is first felt in my teeth and then it reaches my head: A human barometer. I know there are others out there. It's a strange thing.

Thanks to Nancy Brady's (Nan's) blog about postcrossing I have discovered this wonderful site that allows you to send and receive postcards from around the world. She previously wrote a blog about her discovery of postcrossing, but it wasn't until her blog, "Postcrossing and Irony" that my curiosity and memory was awakened, taking me to my youth when I used to have a couple of short-lived pen pals. Postcrossing, is not a pen pal site, but I like postcards and I know I won't be able to travel the world, so this is my little way to do that. So far I've sent a little over a handful and have received post cards from Germany, Russia, Taiwan and Norway.

Nan sums up the experience quite well here: http://redroom.com/member/nancybrady/blog/postcrossing

Read all about postcrossing at their website: http://www.postcrossing.com/

Today I will place postcards in the mail to Germany, Ukraine, Russia, and Republic of Belarus.

I stepped away to refill my coffee and the little round milk lid flipped into the coffee cup. It truly is going to be a bumbling, fumbling Thursday!

I've been reading The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. It's the story about a mother and son who start a "book club." Knowing that her life is coming to and end, they make the most of it by sharing their love of reading. I'm almost half-way through the book. I love reading books about books.

On a personal level, this book is offering me a missing perspective about my mother's experience with chemo-therapy. As a child, I went with her to many doctor's appointments and I saw her pain, but she also had a way of deflecting it, of acting out in anger to those around her. This book offers me a glimmer of something–my mother was a private person and she didn't discuss the details of her illness with us. I remember sitting in the doctor's office when she found out she had breast cancer. The doctor looked at me and then to her to ask if she wanted me to sit in when he explained to her about her illness and the prognosis. She left me sitting there. I knew this was something terrible. So many doctor's visits. So many other things. Even today, when I visit my uncle, he tells me my mother didn't tell anybody anything.

This book somehow connects me to my mother's experience, even though the cancer is different. It provides a little more closure and understanding of what she was going through, that my young self, all those years ago, couldn't completely comprehend.