Posted in Throwback Thursday, Neal’s Post from the Past

Neal’s Post from the Past: “Solitude & the Absent Smile”

Here’s a rather messily photographed past post from back in 2014. I may still have had a flip phone. I’m loath to change.

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Yes I admit it, I’m an optimist. Pollyanna’s a very good buddy. We take tap dancing together.

What I actually mean is I’m USUALLY a somewhat cheery person. But not always. A while back, I underwent a fairly unpleasant medical procedure. (I’m a big baby when it comes to anything that hurts at a .5 or higher on a 1-10 pain level.)

Here I am in the waiting room, reading about blogging:

Finally I was called back to the eerily quiet and humanly empty procedure room where I had to wait in nervous solitude for quite a while. The doctor was running way behind.

I got bored pretty quickly and started playing with the IPhone’s … reverse camera capability. Doesn’t that sound better than saying I took a bunch of selfies?

I looked at these terrible pictures, grimaced at their muted and otherworldly haziness, realized I wasn’t smiling–and started to delete them.

Then it hit me.

“Get real, Neal. It’s okay not to smile. It’s okay to be muted and hazy … and to be by yourself for a while. Being out of focus doesn’t mean being out of life.”

Posted in Robert and …

“Robert and …” #2

A blog category of pics I’ve taken of Hubby Robert and … well, just about anything.

Robert and my Father

Robert cutting my 95-year-old father’s hair at the Canton (Ga) Nursing and Rehabilitation Center
And a year or so later at the Georgia War Veterans Nursing Hone in Augusta
Posted in Throwback Thursday, Post from the Past

Neal’s Post from the Past: “Sometimes I Get What I Deserve”

Here’s an old post from way back in 2014 (when I was still late middle-age).

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So today I ate lunch at Savannah’s hip Green Truck Neighborhood Pub on Habersham Street.

Here’s how the story went down.

As some of you know, I no longer bring meat into the house–it’s all vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds there.  But I occasionally indulge while eating out.  And for some some reason, today I had an all-too-powerful-to-ignore-or-resist hankering for a hunk of grilled meat.  So I pulled up to the Green Truck, belly-ed up to the bar to avoid the table wait and ordered the  Green Truck Classic Burger, described in their menu as “plain and simple as an old truck: lettuce, tomato, onion and our soon-to-be-famous house-made pickle.”  (I added cheddar.)

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Yum.  No, double yum!

I kept furtively looking around to see if any of my vegetarian friends might have followed me inside.  I was nervously poised to slam my meaty plate in front of one of the folks on either side of me at the bar.

Anyway, I savored every moment, every bite.  (Do Not Tell Anyone About This!  It’s Just Between You And Me.)

Well, when I finished, (and be forewarned, the rest of the story is probably TMI, so stop right now, if you like, and you will still have my burger story), I went to the non-gender-specific bathroom–I’m so 2014– before waddling back to the car.

There was the coolest retro sink inside.

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And the typical cabinet.

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But for some reason I glanced at the cabinet again …

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… and thought, “I wonder what’s in that little cabinet?  And if the contents are also non-gender-specific?”

(P.S. When inviting me to birthday or Avon parties, put some of those plastic child resistant lock things on your cabinets.  I’ve never been able to figure them out.)

So, of course I reached up and opened the cabinet door.  Wouldn’t you?  No?!  (I also opened a door in a huge hallway in the Biltmore House in Asheville some years back, and a piercing alarm went off, terribly embarrassing my family and friends.  Me?  When things like that happen, I just try to go to my Happy Place inside and block out externals.  There might have been an “Alarm Will Sound” notice on the door, I can’t remember, but really, how often would the Biltmores have changed the batteries?)

Lo and behold, an alarm of sorts also went off when I opened the cabinet door inside the Green Truck’s non-gender-specific bathroom.  Here’s what was scrawled on the inside of the door:

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I walked out of the bathroom beet red.

(P.S. II:  I was so taken aback by the message that I completely forgot to see what was inside the cabinet.  If someone wouldn’t mind, would you rush over to the Green Truck, pretend to have to use the bathroom, and snap a pic or two of the inside of that cabinet so I can go to sleep tonight?  Thank you.)

Posted in Change

“Robert and …” #1

A new blog category starting today.: pics I’ve taken of Hubby Robert and … well, just about anything.

Robert and a Waterfall

Robert, with a dash of visible frustration, in front of Toccoa Falls (on the campus of Toccoa Falls College), attempting to explain to me how to take his picture.
Posted in Encouragement

Sometimes

Last evening, Robert and I headed over to Big Bon Pizza in the hip Starland District of Savannah. (Being so hip myself, I like going to hip locations. As long as my right hip cooperates.) After voraciously enjoying their WONDERFUL hot-outta-the-brick-oven pizza …

… the Universe spoke to me as I waddled past Big Bon Bodega/Big Bon Pizza’s sandwich board:

An enlightening message I most definitely need to heed much more often!

(Even with the comma issue. 😩 Retired English professor.)

Here’s my mental activity as I continued waddling to the car:

Now isn’t that better?

Wait a second! Halt the waddling! Did I really just proofread and edit THE UNIVERSE?!

Posted in Growing Older, Humor

How to Photograph a Septuagenarian

Now that youth is a far distant memory, and I’m just a couple of months away from turning … from turning … from turning … 70, I’d like to instruct anybody who ever points a camera (well, phone—does anybody use a camera any more ?) in my direction. Here are 10 foolproof suggestions.

1. Take my picture in the snow.

2. Have me get on a giant bed.

3. Let me hold my unicorn.

4. Have me stand on a bridge over troubled waters.

5. Incorporate mirrors.

6. Have me sit in a house with one window.

7. Make the best of focus.

8. Have me sit far away from the paparazzi.

9. Let me hold my big bird.

And 10. Push me in the pool.

There you go. No close-ups. Simple and easy.

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Okay, I’m joking. I love my age and where I am in life.

Posted in Life and Death

The October Rose: Sorta Sad, Sorta Not, but More Sorta Sad than Sorta Not

Morning walking in Savannah’s Forsyth Park the other day led us, almost Alice-in-Wonderland-ishly, into the little old, hidden-away, walled and overgrown Fragrant Garden. I knew it was there, having walked by the usually locked entrance hundreds of times. But I had forgotten it.

I was pleasantly surprised to see from just inside the gate how many roses were still in bloom. Dozens of bursts of color. Isn’t Halloween nearly here? And the bushes were standing so beautifully tall! Proud, regal.

I was taken aback at my sudden jolt of happiness. And I thought of what my buddy Anne (you know, of Green Gables) told me one time: “Neal, I’m so glad we live in a world where there are Octobers.” What a perceptive young lady.

But (and just for the record, if you think about it, whenever someone says “but,” the words that follow are often not the most uplifting) my Fragrant World smelled a little less joyful as I realized that the bushes were so very tall because they had not been pruned nor tenderly cared for. And looking more closely, I saw that most of the blooms were beginning to lose petals, droop a bit and some were even whispering an elegantly tortured “goodbye.”

Fall has forever been my favorite season. Autumn isn’t so childishly young as spring, doesn’t exude summer’s arrogance, thinking itself so very hot. And fall doesn’t give you the icy stares and cold shoulders of winter. Fall is gorgeously colorful and aroma-therapeutically delicious.

But fall is also, of course, the season that recognizes, even blatantly exposes, her mortality as those leaves drift earthward, and annuals lose their colors and die, while the last rose of summer falls from her heights to the untilled soul in the Fragrant Garden.

Sad but a part of the universal cycle.

Celtic Woman expresses the sentiment beautifully in their rendition of Irish poet Thomas Moore’s 1805 poem, “The Last Rose of Summer.”

Posted in Encouragement, Uncategorized

Hi and Hello & A Joyful Sunday Night!

Hello. Neal Saye here. Long time, no see. I’m not sure if anyone is still out there, but I have decided to blog a bit more.

It’s getting late on a Sunday evening (and the Braves are losing at the moment), so here is the gist of what’s on my heart tonight: what we say to ourselves on an ongoing basis is very important.

Yesterday morning, Robert and I did our more-often-than-not Saturday morning foray over to Big Bon Bodega (incredible bagel breakfast sandwiches) here in Savannah.

Boldly greeting us at the entry was Truthful Instruction:

A loving goodnight to you all! “See” you soon.

Neal