No, this blog is not about cats.  I really wanted to call it gee-skwee, but it turns out the term my mother used throughout her life for off-kilter doesn’t exist outside of my memories.  Online I found the term skew-gee so perhaps the flip-flopped version explains a lot about my childhood and how my adult mind now works!  (Sorry, Mom.)

Florida is getting a lot of thunderstorms this summer.  Just a few days ago lightning struck a lovely oak tree just down the street from me.  I didn’t lose any electric equipment as did the neighbors adjacent to the tree, but I found all of the framed artwork on one of my load-bearing walls were gee-skwee.  (Can you tell I’m stubborn?)

Straightening up the frames triggered my looking at some of the other prints and photographs in my house.  What needs to be kept?  What needs to be updated?  I don’t want a home that is frozen in time or obsolete.  I want photos of Rick, his and now my family, my cousins, and my beau – there will always be room for those – but maybe there are other mementos I’d rather set out.

Right now I have photos I took of Florida fauna and of last year’s trip to Cuba.  What if I go to Scotland or Hawaii next year?  Should I keep the Florida and Cuban photos up forever, or should they be replaced with the latest trips?

There are times when I doubt my memories.  I remember something as if it was yesterday – especially if it is a good memory – and other times my recollections feel jumbled.  If I call my beau by a nickname I once used for my late husband, it jars my mind and I feel off-kilter.  If I visit a place where I went with both my parents, and later on with my stepdaughter and her husband — such as Niagara Falls — is my clearest memory of the water from just a few years ago, or decades ago?

This mortal life is catawampus for sure!