the sage connection

I am a noodler

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I am a noodler. For those who may not be familiar with this term, it simply means “one who noodles”.

Noodling is also another name for daydreaming or spacing cadet, and it can be annoying, if not hazardous.  For example, one night after a long workday, I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. I needed light bulbs. While there I picked up a few other items and headed home.

As I was putting things away, I realized I didn’t see the light bulbs. I knew I bought them so I went back to my car thinking perhaps they had slipped out of the bag. No light bulbs.

At this point, I decided I must have left them in the grocery cart. I also decided I was too tired to go back to the store so I went back in the house and hopped into bed.

The next morning, I opened the refrigerator to get the cream for my coffee… and there were the light bulbs.

Not the first time something like this had happened and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I have spent much of my life looking for my glasses while wearing them or my keys which were in my hand. My evil children found this behavior hilarious – so they would quietly watch my frenzied search without saying the word - noodling.

It is also well known that I hate formal exercising. But I do enjoy walking and taking in the surrounding sights. I love to see door treatments, especially at holiday time. But most of all I like to look for their yard art for new ideas.

During my travels around Olympian neighborhoods and even on some private trails, I have found some amazing yard art – bathtubs filled with flowering plants, faces on trees, fairy gardens, and one of my all-time favorites, an upright door with window panes, overgrown with climbing vines. Not to mention trees that grow down instead of up.

I would share the locations of some of these treasures but since I am noodling while walking, I have no idea where I was when I found them.

My neighborhood is on a private road and has 11 homes, most of which have acreage.  One of my neighbors is an herbalist and has planted herbs along her trails. We have a creek that runs behind our property and there is a log laying across it at one point. I can see kids walking this log as clearly as if they were doing now.

Another one of the neighborhood trails leads into the woods to an old abandoned truck completely overgrown with greenery.

Happily, in our neighborhood, we share these trails regardless of whose property lines we cross.

At holiday time we normally gather at someone’s home for a potluck. We have all ages so Halloween is celebrated with trick or treaters in costumes and yards are decorated accordingly.

This year was different, of course, because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. So we met a few times during the past year at the fork in our road, each safely distanced on our respective corners, and raised a glass to better days.

These days most of my noodling is done in my own backyard, so to speak. And I have yet to find a better place to do it.

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