Yes. World weariness. I suppose that’s as good a description as any. I’ve read various blogs (here on 3FC; not “foreign” blogs) - blogs written by people I admire; people that I would be proud to call “friend” (and often do); people who cause me to think, to sometimes laugh, to grieve, and sometimes to feel a rather painful empathy - just as I know they/you do when you read some of my meanderings, which, is of course, the stuff that bonds us together. And, some of you have recently written blogs that I want very much to comment on/respond to, but right now, right here where my head is currently at, I find myself feeling a gross sort of impotence; an inability to say the right thing, to accurately represent my feelings on this glowing screen that I’m typing into. I feel capable of little more than inanity - of foolish cliches, of jaded reiterations of useless rhetoric. In the overall scheme of things, I wonder how much of what we do really matters. And yet, alarmingly, the consequences of our choices seem to behave like the the ever-widening rings that emanate out from a stone skimmed into a lake….

My son paid a surprise visit *home* (although, by now, I suppose his *home* is actually in California) this past weekend. And he DID manage to surprise me totally, considering that I’ll be visiting HIM next week, he’ll be here for Christmas, and I never, EVER expected to see him beforehand. Turns out his girlfriend’s sister was turning 21, and they flew up just for the weekend, and to take her “clubbing” in New York City Friday night. They were back on Saturday night, and we all congregated at DD2’s house, where I foolishly played my son-in-law’s “Wiii” game - bowling, actually, which is very interactive, and requires that you actually go through the physical motions, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it. Turns out that I was really, really GOOD at it, beat EVERYONE at it, and so continued taking on new challengers until @ 2:00 AM when DH practically had to drag me into the car and home. I think I pulled a muscle in the back of my left leg, and my right arm is so sore I can barely raise it to brush my hair. THEN we had the whole lot of them for dinner on Sunday, and I made Chicken Cordon Bleu (stuffed with spinach, cheese and ham - so, sort of a cordon-bleu-florentine, I guess). I, personally, battered twelve (count ‘em - 12) unsuspecting chicken breasts into submission (actually a good way to relieve frustration) and created a seasoned bread crumb topping using Fiber One cereal that had been pulverized in the blender. A very pretty meal served with baked sweet potatoes, steamed asparagus, cranberry sauce and high-fiber cranberry-pecan bread.  So lovely. And so over and done with.

Everybody has eaten, has discussed “Zeitgeist” (and other philosophical questions) into the wee hours, and all have, alas, scattered back to their homes, their lives, their jobs and their varied interests.

I was heartened to once again observe how very much my children love and care for each other - how delighted they are to spend time together, and how efficiently and easily they work everything out between them - travel plans, schedules, celebrations of this, that, or the other thing, holidays, and so on and so forth.

Now, mind you, they DO include me in everything, and confide in me to a large (although obviously not to a TOTAL) degree, and I don’t feel at all unwanted by them, but I have to admit to feeling a trifle unneeded.

And old. I have been feeling the rapid passage of time lately, and thinking quite a bit about life, death, and the meaning of it all.

It started, I think, when my sister was up visiting and brought those pictures she’d found in my mother’s things after she (my mother) died - pictures we had never seen of our maternal grandmother as a young woman; very Gibson-girlish, with the teeny corsetted waist and all. And a few pictures taken after she married my grandfather  - separate pictures of my mother as a baby being held by each of them, and then a few taken with mother and both of her parents. I never knew my grandmother at all - she died long before I was born; and I only knew my paternal grandfather as a very old man when I was a very young child - I believe he died when I was around three.

What struck me, I suppose, was the way whole lives are lived and then forgotten. Nobody remembers how these ancestors of ours lived, what they thought and believed, what they liked or disliked - what problems or challenges they may have had. Nothing. Nobody is alive today who remembers them.

Oh yes, of course I’m being overly morbid (Mercury is, after all, still in retrograde for a few more days!) but I really and truly have been a bit consumed with thoughts of my kids going on with their lives after I’m gone….and glad, as I said, that they are so connected and loving with each other. But, I also have realized very fully and comprehensively, that there will be many events in their lives that I won’t be around for….and presumably, although not neccessarily, won’t know about. My mother and I weren’t close at all - nothing like my kids and I - but it still seems strange to me sometimes that when she died, I was still married to my ex, and my now-husband hadn’t even appeared on the horizon. What if one of my girls ends up divorced after, say, 20 years of marriage, and has a whole new life that I know nothing whatsoever about? What if another grandchild comes along whom I will never meet? And it’s inevitable that to some of my offspring’s offspring, I will be nothing more than an old photograph gathering dust at the bottom of a box somewhere - and, of course, with our current technology, there will probably be pictures, and a few videos of me hidden in the deep and dark depths of somebody’s computer.

And all of that, is, of course, just life. The eternal cycle of birth and life and death and birth and life and death….

So, considering that I have so little knowledge of my mother’s family - just a few bits and pieces - and a few old photographs; and although my father’s family has yielded up some fairly extensive geneaological info all the way back to England in the early 16th century, I have NO photos of any of them beyond my father’ s mother when she was in her late seventies - Nothing of her as a young woman - I have decided to put together a kind of autobiographical book with all the old ancestral pictures from my mother’s side, the information I have on my father’s family, and then information about who I am, what my life has been like, what I think and believe, and my opinions on a variety of things in life. Pictures, too, of course. In this way, I’m thinking that some future great or great-great grandchild who is curious about his or her (somehow I see it as a “her”) family history will be less frustrated and stymied than I have been.

So that’s my latest project. We’ll see what happens.

Since life moves along all too quickly, leaving little behind but the dusty crumbs and empty shells of our existence, perhaps writing an honest account will at least be of passing interest to a future someone. It occurs to me that those who stand out in history for the good or evil that they have done are still largely unknown to us as human beings.

In my current state of  mind, I haven’t been counting WW points or calories, and haven’t been exercising the way I was before. I am contenting myself with not gaining, as opposed to actively losing anymore weight right now. I seem to have succeeded in making a lifestyle change of sorts, because I am still eating high fiber, and relatively low calorie foods, which I seem to enjoy. I DID eat a white chocolate bar in celebration of Ann-girl’s birthday. <G>

I am continuing to read the posts to my “old” thread on 3FC, although its lack of any real “pith” never fails to disappoint me.

I find that I check first now on the blogs, looking for Ruby Jean, Ann-girl, Soclose, Lyn and Iniya (spelled wrong, I know) - and the “getaway” blog - and then, almost as an afterthought, check the thread to see who has said “Hello to everybody, and how are you?”  (Fine, fine, fine and fine. Sigh.) I KNOW. I expect too much. I have always expected too much.

Hmmm. I hate MY job, too. Oh, I REALLY do. Some day I will really have to talk about how this huge international “service” organization exists primarily to “serve” itself. Ugh.

Happy Hallowe’en, or to those who practice the old ways, Blessed Samhain.

Z