just ponderin'

… on signs and flamingos, but mostly signs

June 19, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

It all started with a pink, plastic bird – one of those ones with funky metal sticks for legs, so you can stand them in your dirt. Now. I am totally cool if you love these plastic birds in your yard. I have actually been known to point and smile at them in other folks’ yards. And I totally supported Mac’s high school senior project where she and her partner ‘pinked’ yards with oodles of flamingos for charity (okay… you […]

Categories: family, Feel good stuff, freakin' things, joy, just ponderin', memories, musings, Old Yankee Man • Tags: humor, joy, just ponderin', musings, old yankee man, secrets to happiness

… on touching dreams

June 15, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

So… you know we moved to Maine. Well… I know I know I moved to Maine. No… it’s not the boxes still unpacked in my bedroom (I’m ignoring them, hoping they will go away. But they are not. Dicks.) And no… it’s not because I can smell that heady mixture of salt and pine and spruce. Nope. It’s not because I can hear – right now in fact – the bubbubbub of a lobster boat’s diesel engine as its crew drops their […]

Categories: aspiring maine-iacs, Granny, joy, just ponderin', Maine, musings, Nearly Perfect Husband, secrets to happiness, the maine thing, unique observation • Tags: humor, joy, just ponderin', maine, musings, secrets to happiness

… on landslides and new landscapes

June 3, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

There’s this song that’s been following me around for about a year, maybe a little more. Creepily showing up at the oddest times, sometimes with grating frequency. The Dixie Chicks sort of revived it a few years back, and had either a yellow malleable or grayish white noncorroding ductile metallic element song. It went gold or platinum… I’m just messing with you because I’m cranky because I’m still waiting for the coffee maker to beep. Oh! There it goes. Hang on […]

Categories: aspiring maine-iacs, Feel good stuff, home, joy, just ponderin', Maine, musings, the maine thing, Uncategorized • Tags: joy, just ponderin', maine, musings, photography, secrets to happiness

… on tucking in a house

May 31, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

It occurred to me yesterday, alone in the house I have mockingly referred to as ‘The Disposable Shack’… After the family packed itself into two cars, with two dogs and a pile of The Stuff… And after the movers finished up and drove down the driveway and away with more of The Stuff… It occurred to me, as I was going through the house, sweeping and gathering the minimal Stuff that remained (some quite cleverly hidden), that it was a little […]

Categories: aspiring maine-iacs, family, Feel good stuff, home, just ponderin', musings, Uncategorized, unique observation • Tags: joy, just ponderin', moving, musings, photography, prose

… on delayed processing

May 25, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

Get coffee… or wine, then sit down. I’m just sayin’. There are jumbles everywhere in my life right now. Jumbles of books… or chords… or books and chords. Jumbles of pots and pans, mixed with folders and stacks of my ever shifting collection of greeting cards, some in plastic so they all slide off of each other toward some other pile, making an even more diverse Jumble. Which is also called a Politically Correct Jumble. I realized last night, talking […]

Categories: aspiring maine-iacs, just ponderin', musings, Uncategorized, unique observation, warning: irreverence • Tags: comedic writing, comedy, everyday life, humor, just ponderin', musings

… on drop offs (and drop outs) and pick ups

May 20, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

I’m not sure if that magnet, which sits above Gronk’s* gas tank filler upper door, is about Marshal Dillon Dingle, or about me. I suppose it’s about him, literally (yep, he flunked his first time through), and me more figuratively – but only because I never actually attended something called ‘obedience school’. Being a rather irreverent participator in life, however, it fits perfectly. Which is probably why I am currently in the middle of the selling-closing-moving of either a house […]

Categories: aspiring maine-iacs, family, Feel good stuff, joy, just ponderin', musings, my perfect cherubs, road trip, unique observation • Tags: everyday life, humor, joy, just ponderin', musings, secrets to happiness

… on nicknames lived up to

May 11, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

The Disposable Shack. Disposed. Well, not quite. But now I am thinking it was so unfair to refer to this wonderful home as the Disposable Shack for so long. It all began… well, actually I don’t remember how it all began. I think it was as we were making the decision that The Inn – our Maine house that was once (in the early 1900s – really an inn, but is not really an inn anymore… anyway, I think it […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: empty nest, everyday life, family, home, joy, just ponderin', musings, secrets to happiness, selling the family home

… on making sense of self

May 5, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

So… there’s this dress. I can’t tell you much about it because it’s a secret. Not being a member of the Wedding Tradeworkers Union, I had no idea what to expect when we shopped for a wedding dress. Turns out, you can find one you like and then they make it just for you! (I know, I know, other people might know this when they are born – like some sort of bridal genetic memory or something, but it’s all […]

Categories: family, Feel good stuff, joy, just ponderin', memories, musings, my perfect cherubs, Uncategorized, unique observation • Tags: humor, joy, just ponderin', musings, photography, secrets to happiness, wedding

… on every man for himself

April 28, 2017 by Lisa Dingle

That is not a rat. It’s Tony Soprano, a made man on Southport Island. Tony is, in fact, a mink. An American one. I know, I know, based on his name and inferred occupation you thought he was Italian. Common mistake. And also racist. But this is not about Tony Soprano not being a rat. This is about an actual rat. One I never got a photo of for reasons that will become clear to you as I tell you a […]

Categories: family, just ponderin', musings, my perfect cherubs, zombies • Tags: comedic writing, comedy, everyday life, family, humor, just ponderin', musings, New Orleans, NoLA, rats, zombies

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