Across the room

False humility is a fact of life that most of us are taught as a matter of course.  I suppose it comes out of that old, “don’t tempt the gods” sort of thing.  It really isn’t such a bad idea most of the time.  Who wants to hang around with someone who is constantly bragging?

But sometimes we do ourselves an injustice by not simply stating the truth.

For me the truth includes the fact that most of my friends are truly wonderful people.  They really care about others and go out of their way to walk the walk.  I’m proud to know them and call them my friend.

Even more than that is the fact that if such good people like me I really must be okay.  Perhaps I should look more at who my friends are than myself, because I seem to be able to see them more clearly than I do me.

Most of us are like that.  Up close we are like microbes under a microscope, all wild cilia and curvy lines, but those people across the room look pretty darn flawless. 

 I am also across the room and being seen by some pretty fine people.

Life is a river, not a puddle

I ordered out today and had dinner delivered!   It is the first time that has happened since 2008!  I haven’t lived anywhere they could, or would, deliver in a long time.  Funny how that made this place feel more like a real home.

I have had company, taken out the trash, done some decorating, lots of cleaning and soon will leave here on my first vacation since moving in. 

I have a new driver’s license with my new address and picture on it and an account at the local video store, which is within walking distance.

Life goes on.  Always life goes on.

But sometimes it goes on better than others and this is one of those times.

Leader of the band

A little girl stands on a street in the heartland.

It is 1953 and she is listening to the municipal band in a small country town on a hot summer’s night.

Her hair is carefully curled around her mother’s fingers and falls down around her face, sticking with sweaty sweetness to her forehead.  Big hazel eyes sparkle with excitement as the band strikes up the first song.

It is a Sousa march and soon the little girl lifts her arms and begins to wave them around.  In her mind she is the conductor, but it isn’t enough to stand there doing that.  She must march too!  Lifting her little feet high she begins marching back and forth, conducting the music and lost in a world no one else can see.

She wears a small two-piece sun suit made out of dotted Swiss material, ruffled arms and bottom fluttering to the beat of the big bass drum.  Every movement is wild and unchecked; there is no sense of embarrassment or even self-consciousness here.  She is totally in the moment.

Measurements

There is an innocence and beauty to childhood that is seldom found anywhere else.  It never occurred to me that my family wouldn’t love me forever.  Honestly, it never crossed my mind.  I knew I might do things that annoyed or upset them, but the thought of them losing their love for me just wasn’t in my repertoire of thoughts.

Of course I understood that the rest of the world couldn’t be counted on like that, but as long as there was the family to come back to it didn’t matter too much what else happened.  I was free to be me.

And then there was a subtle shift.  Suddenly I realized I would never be quite perfect.  I was too tall and all beautiful, adorable women were small.  Small, or short, was the standard by which a woman was first judged.  In my family I would be loved….in spite of the fact that I wasn’t small and petite.

My nicknames changed from angel and punkin, to idget and Ninna.  People began to speak of my intelligence as if it were an either/or thing.  Big and smart, or small and beautiful, it did both sides of the coin a gross injustice.

For the next fifty years I would scan the faces and measurements of all the women I looked up to and somehow the truth always eluded me.  I was blind to the fact that there were beautiful, intelligent, women of all shapes and sizes.  I never understood that.  I thought I was very egalitarian, but under that thin veneer was a flaw in me that nearly ruined my life.

Not until I found myself in a relationship where my body really did not exist were my eyes opened to the fact that I could be exactly who I was, loved, intelligent and beautiful.  All those things in one sentence sound like heaven to me and yet they should be everyone’s birthright.  There may be standard poodles but human beings are so much more than a series of measurements.

How much does a soul weigh?  How tall is beauty?  How does one measure common sense?  What is laughter and love and life worth?  These are the questions that should pull a child into adulthood, not pounds and inches.

Zombie thoughts

Life goes on.  Goals have never really defined my life.  I prefer them in retrospect because then they are a sure thing.

I suppose what I really like are anniversaries, at least the good ones, there are things I don’t want to remember.  What an interesting word remember is!  Putting memories back together, kind of like zombie experiences.

Instead of living in the present I allow the lifeless thoughts of the past to enter my consciousness, eating up the present.

And on that thought, I will move on to more creative writing!

Franklin Park

It’s official!

I awakened to cool breezes and a desire to go walking in the park.  I have decided it is a reluctance to walk the two blocks from here to there that keeps me away.  I am always afraid someone will let their dog out and I will be so vulnerable, so I drive up there now.

That leaves me forty minutes to walk and I notice that I am up past two miles!  I am also starting to notice a few other “regulars.”  There are the two older women who live in one of the big old houses on the west side of the square, the man with the border collie who runs the bed and breakfast on the corner, the man from a prominent hair salon who picks up trash as he walks along and others.

Historical houses line the perimeter with plaques detailing who once lived here and their significance in Illinois history.

But most of all it is the shade and the serenity that calls me here early in the morning before it gets too hot and today was a celebration.

I have lost fifty pounds!  Beginning on Valentine’s Day I started to walk five minutes a day and try to watch what I ate, never dreaming that in four and a half months I might be able to wear regular clothes, hit tennis balls at the park and generally feel pretty good about myself. 

I still have a bunch of little aches and pains, but in general I feel thirty years younger.  What a gift that is!

Making change

I got back from walking about fifteen minutes ago and I am amazed at the change in habits this house has made in me.  I have never been a morning person until I moved here.  Well maybe as a child.

My mother once promised me breakfast in bed if I would stay there until ten o’clock in the morning.  The novelty of that made me do it, but it was an agony!  I remember counting the minutes at the end.

Here I often wake up around six no matter when I go to sleep, but there have been other changes too.  My dreams are filled with scenes from the past in unfamiliar scenarios.  Last night I dreamed the water was rising and we had to take everyone up into our attic.  My father was shaking out dusty old blankets, my daughter was washing tons of silverware, my sons were moving baskets of stuffed animals.  I know the idea must have come from the book I am reading, The Sound And The Fury, where one of the characters talked about the water rising.

It’s hard to believe I am so easily influenced, but I am.  Everything around me touches me.  I tend to notice, but I believe it is like that for most people whether they notice or not.

Part of being human seems to be the ability to adapt and the easier that is, the easier life is.  I don’t want to be a chameleon and fade into the background, but I sure don’t mind going with the flow as long as that flow is crisp and clean and clear.

Grounds for thought

Tea, the great panacea for so many things throughout the ages, still who would have thought it would be the grounds for today’s thot.

I heat the water in my microwave whose settings are almost at eye level here and it occurrs to me that I finally have a place that really fits me.  My sink and counter top are at comfortable levels, the closet rod is nice and high, the windows are nearly eight feet tall.  Only the bathroom has anything small and that is the vanity and medicine cabinet above it.

I am not a giant by anyone’s standards, but I have lived my life in a world designed for tiny women.  I remember my grandmother’s living room where there was a collection of small rectangular footstools to keep tiny feet from dangling off of chairs and sofas.  I remember years of kitchen sinks where my back ached as I crouched doing dishes.  I remember closets where trying to double the rod meant clothes dangling on the floor.

Tall ceilings and high cabinets are great for storage, but everything else in most houses is geared towards the average woman of less than five feet five inches.  It makes me feel tall and awkward. 

This house, this neighborhood, is large and solid.  It makes me feel normal and safe.  Built in a time when homes were meant to be used and lived in, not just serve as a showcase for things; it has a practicality that has been missing in previous homes.

And as I sit here drinking my tea I realize – I am finally in a place scaled for me!

The Bestest

Isn’t it strange how things happen one time that might have happened at any other time – only they didn’t? 

I feel like I have been riding along the edge all my life.  All around me was perfection and beauty and everything I ever wanted, but the jagged edge kept me from being able to really be part of it.

People and events came along and evened out the edge for a bit, but in the end there were just too much for anything to really do away with. 

Living on the edge has a meaning for me that is different than that of a thrill seeker.  Mine was a matter of survival.  A part of me has always seen past what is here.  A vision like a tether that kept me from slipping completely over into despair, but that same part dulled the beauty of perfection too.

I dangled between the dark and the light and no matter how many hands reached out to pull me back I walked the edge, rising and falling along its serrated sections, nothing ever worked for long.

As I settle into this new apartment and new lifestyle I realize that I have distanced myself from this edge.  I am far enough away from it to see it for the first time and I am amazed.  The clarity, the serenity, the simple beauty of living washes over me in ways I have never experienced before.

And I think it is because for the first time no one is pulling me back or hanging onto to me, but I am not alone either.  In that strange way that I cannot really explain there has been a shift, a shift that might not have worked for other people, but one that gives me an amazing amount of security.

Rumi called it The Friend.  I call it The Bestest.

Grace and justice

I went to close the drapes tonight and saw the lights on in the apartment across the street.  My son used to live in that apartment, my son who I have not seen for over twenty months now because he lives so far away. 

I remember moving back to my hometown after my divorce and passing the house where my grandmother lived and the one where my father lived and thinking that it was too late for me to see either one of them again. 

It seems I am often out of step with the world around me.  Time is an inexorable opponent.  It does not change its course for anyone for any reason.  There are so many things that will never be again that if I thought about them for too long I would be mired down.

I seem to have found a second wind.  I don’t know why I am blessed this way, but it is a bittersweet blessing when I pass a mirror, or see my reflection in a window.   I am sometimes shocked at the discrepancy between the way I look and the way I feel, but I suppose one is grace and the other justice.

I would not flip them for anything.

A good move

I was on the courts at seven this morning and in the beginning I was right on!  That ended ten minutes in though and it was a struggle to make thirty minutes.  All I can say is that I was on the court and moving for the entire thirty minutes, but a lot of that was shagging balls!

Yesterday was one of those frustrating days.  I spent all morning waiting for a delivery and when I called to check on it, they had delivered it to the wrong house.  I finally received it and it took the rest of the afternoon to put it together.  I actually put parts of it together several times!  I would like to rewrite their instructions for them beginning with one person can assemble this.

Life is busy here, but things are coming together nicely.  I think it has been a very good move.  Not exactly the way I thought it would be, but better really.

Who can ask for anything more?

Looking good

It is pretty easy to look through my eyes and see who someone is to me.  The art of looking through someone else’s eyes and seeing them as the person they believe they are is much more difficult.

Looking from that point of view helps me know how to treat them, not just politely, or with respect, but with real empathy and understanding.

Sometimes I think I have done that only to discover that all I’ve really done is pull the other person in closer.  Get too close like that and all I can see is an eye, or a nose, or maybe a freckle.  From that angle it could be almost anyone and it becomes easier to treat them the way I need them to be.

The reality of life comes through the filter of hopes and dreams, thoughts and fears.  Somehow those filters are different on every single person.  It’s what makes this world such a fascinating place.

Standing firm

It seems there is an ebb and flow to all things.  Life is never static and any feeling that it is -- is an illusion.  

That doesn’t mean vacillating between two different philosophies, but simply allowing for the give and take necessary to stand firm.

I look to nature for examples of how to live.  The mountains never move.  They stand solid and seemingly implacable as nature slowly erodes them and carries them away.  Wind and water may seem soft and fluid, but they are deceptively strong.  Beaches yield to the forces that constantly flow over their surface and yet they tend to grow.  There are casualties along both ways, but really these only move on to another destination.

I like to think of my life as a beach filled with people and places and possibilities, all of them in constant movement.  Security depends less on maintaining the status quo than on learning to synchronize my habits and thoughts with what is currently happening.

A walk in the park

Walking is good for the body and soul.  It is a time for meditation and contemplation, a time for the body to readjust everything and bring it back into alignment.  I find myself naturally singing little chants in my head once I get into a rhythm.

“Walking into youth, walking into youth.  We shall go a walking, walking into youth.”  Pretty obvious what old hymn that is from and it’s funny because it doesn’t come from my own experience in church, but it speaks to some fundamental part of me and always has.  

I also find myself musing on the old houses here which isn’t surprising since my father used to bring me here on rides to look at these houses.  They are beautiful old ladies whose parlors could tell tales from history that would make today’s rentals rear up with pride.

And speaking of fathers, today I saw a young man walking towards me from about a block away.  He had a huge backpack on, long gray pants cut off at the ankles, an unbuttoned too big plaid shirt and braids all over his head.  He wasn’t very big, but he walked like a hiker, both thumbs hooked in the strap from his backpack that went around his waist.  I suddenly felt very vulnerable.  He didn’t look like a student.  He looked like, well, a hiker in an urban neighborhood and I began to think what I would do if he asked me for help, for a meal, or to take him home and I began to think up excuses to tell him why I couldn’t do that.

He got closer and closer and it was time for the obligatory, “Good morning” everyone shares when they pass here.  I smiled and said, “Good morning.”  He smiled and said, “Hi, Linda.”  He never paused, or broke stride and we both just kept going our separate ways.  I searched my mind frantically trying to remember ever meeting him.  I am not good with names, but I almost never forget a face.  I have no memory of his.

That led me into a train of thought I have had before.  Would I know God if I met him walking on the street?  Not the god within everyone talks about, but the old world, Biblical God of mythical proportions.  Odin, Shiva, Jehovah, the Earth Mother, God the Father. 

Just another walk in the park…

Cleaning up

Today is moving day, the day the movers come to move my big furniture and I am not sorry to be moving, but for some reason I have felt sad since last night.  It is almost a nostalgic sadness and I don’t know if it comes from leaving the old place as much as the memories this new one is resurrecting.

It could just be tiredness.  I am covered in bumps, bruises and cuts from moving furniture and falling on the tennis court.  There is no part of my body that is comfortable to sleep on right now.  I wake before dawn and am asleep shortly after tuck in at night.

The blow up bed is folded and packed away, almost, since I couldn’t quite seem to get it back into its original shape.  I won’t think about that anymore right now.  Tomorrow really is another day!

The woman called about my drapes last night and it is going to cost a little more than I expected, but she is going above and beyond to do what I asked and it wasn’t easy or I would have done it myself.

Now I just need to get over to the apartment and when the movers are finished, clean up and turn in my keys. 

 

Play it again

Well, I went back to that park at noon.  I figured no one plays tennis at noon in June!  I was right!

I hit the first ball in twenty years (my son says I played with them when he was twelve) and it fizzled out, so I hit the next one harder!  It came back and I returned it to the wall.  Only problem was that when it came back the second time I forgot and I ran to return it.

Suddenly I was lurching across the court in an old familiar pose, arm out in front, right leg extended and airborne!  Thank goodness this court was made out of some sort of funky rubbery waffley stuff that made the landing and following skid much better than it might have been on clay or asphalt! 

At the time I was so high on the joy of being able to even try hitting that little ball I just popped right back up and went after my ball which I did get, by the way, but hit over the fence!

I hit a lot over the fence, but little by little some of the moves are coming back.  Sadly my backhand seems really weak and I have no control, but I had enough stamina to have fun.  Now if I’d been playing against an opponent I wouldn’t have hit anything unless he was really being nice, but I never thought I’d be on the court again!

It might be the high point of my summer!

Love tennis

I went to the park to hit a few tennis balls for the very first time in years, but when I got there the courts were not bare so I turned to walk off my fears.

I walked and I walked for forty long minutes but when I got back a new pair had come and they took the one court that I needed.  The wall lay behind them and it stopped most their balls.  These were surely the very last seeded.

I watched as they played, as they ran and they ducked, drank water and bounced balls with flair.  I watched as she watched and he ran madly around while the balls just flew through the air.

I sat and I waited for twenty long minutes and not a single ball was hit back!  I thought they’d give up and go home at last, but their zeal really showed no lack!

I watched and I criticized each little flaw.  My patience was beginning to wane.  How dare they play on when I had dreamed I might dare, to hit a few balls for a change?

The day has gone to the dogs

Second morning and I began by taking a walk in the park.  It was wonderful until right at the end when some man came and turned his dog loose.  I could hear from all the loud clicking of his tongue and chattered endearments that he thought this was a good thing and also something he was proud of.  His “baby” galloped up to several other sets of walkers and I crossed the street and left.  The one thing he doesn’t realize is how terrifying his dog can seem to someone who is afraid of dogs.

It still took me forty minutes so my schedule wasn’t ruined.  I do love dogs, but I also have an irrational fear of those I don’t know.  It has been that way as long as I can remember and it is as big a handicap as any you can imagine.  It was the reason I hated piano lessons as a child.  I had to walk past dogs to get there.  It was what made me late for school one day.  I couldn’t go down a street with a loose dog.  It is just my personal hang up.

Almost anyone can make it possible for me to be brave, even holding the hand of a small child!  Alone I am consumed by terror. 

I wonder where this stuff comes from?

 

A new morning

I moved everything that was movable on Sunday.  At least movable by my daughter and me, the movers come next Saturday to bring the big things like my bed and couch.  We worked like crazy, but I thought we were exercising an extreme amount of common sense, keeping the loads fairly small.  Of course that meant even more trips up and down stairs so it was a grueling day.

Sunday night I couldn’t sleep on my airbed because every part of my body just hurt too much and Monday morning I woke up nauseous and with a back that felt like gremlins had invaded the middle of it.

Still I hung curtains and drapes and put things away.  The place is livable until the furniture comes and the cable man even installed the Internet connection in my bedroom the way I wanted it.  Life is good.  I was down for the night by six thirty and up this morning at six thirty! 

I took my first walk from here at six fifty five and it was wonderful!  The park is only five minutes away.  It is a small park full of old shade trees and gangs of squirrels!  Yes, gangs!  I counted twelve of them frolicking around one tree!  Maybe they are siblings.

Coming home I did my first load of laundry here and went right back down with cleaning supplies to clean off the machines.  How could anyone wash clothes in something so dirty!  Now the clothes are in the dryer and I am writing My Thots.  A new era begins.

Moving on

Another busy day! 

Technology is amazing!  I was able to watch my granddaughter see the birthday gift I sent her and watch her play in it via computer!  Two grammas.  She noticed.  One in person and one on the computer!

Then I went to my other granddaughter’s graduation party and watched her flit around making everyone comfortable.  What a beautiful young woman she has turned into!

And all around these wonderful happenings I was moving things into my new apartment.  After the party my daughter helped me and to give you some idea of how tired I was, we found ourselves driving around and around, somehow always missing the street where I will soon live!  Amid a flurry of giggles my daughter said, “Oh my Mom, you can’t find your new house!”  We did finally find it and later I dropped her back at her home then came here to pack some more.

Tomorrow she is going to help me some more and when we are finished we will go out to eat and celebrate.  Pretty cheap labor and lots of fun too.

Fathers

Role models change from generation to generation.  What is considered normal in one era seems out dated or even wrong in another and nothing says this more than gender roles.  They have so many layers it’s difficult to really sort them all out.

But of course that is what I am thinking about this morning after spending yesterday afternoon with family.  We had three generations of boys and men there, the middle one deeply involved in fathering at this time and it was his thoughts about that that sparked  my thots today.

Fathering runs the gamut from simply creating a child to being an active participant in raising that child.  A truly conscientious father who, in spite of his own basically fatherless childhood, wants and is succeeding at being a loving, affirming, empathetic, and firm parent has his work cut out for him.  It’s a big job.

He still has all the responsibilities that fathers of earlier generations had, but now he often has to deal with long distance parenting, or shared parenting, or even combined parenting.  He may not only have his own biological children to care for, but the children of other fathers or mothers.

When I meet bright, happy, loving children who are well behaved but still have distinct and flavorful little personalities I have so much respect for their parents and especially for the men who are turning out to be some of the best fathers I’ve ever encountered.

The next generation could possibly be one that stuns the world.  Stability in an ever changing world is a magnificent gift and in among yesterday’s birthday money and new clothes, there it was, quietly wrapping itself around four beautiful children.

Fathers, don’t ever underestimate their value.

Time to move

Now is the time for all good moving skills to rise to the surface!

I was given the key to my apartment last night and it has been a flurry of activity ever since.  It seems if I don’t get all the utilities in my name right away then I will be charged a reconnect fee and I don’t want that. 

Now that everything is computerized you would think this would be a snap, but the computer actually slows it all down. None of the programs recognize my new address so I have had to make calls to each one and now I have to wait for the computer to update before it is considered official!

Someone else has their name on the cable in my apartment and he had to be tracked down before I could hook up my Internet and cable! 

I have been running up and down the steps and across the parking lot loading boxes of books and house wares into my car and then unloading them at the new apartment.  That becomes even more difficult Saturday when my parking lot will be closed for resurfacing and I have to park three blocks away!  The main road from here to there has been closed and will not reopen before I move either.

But with a little luck, by this time next week everything will be moved except the large things which I am paying movers to take care of.  In between then and now I have birthdays and graduation and homecoming parties as well as two doctor appointments!

Could life be any busier? 

Still, it is all good busyness and for that I am grateful.

Goodnight, sleep tight

There are some things it would seem impossible to share, but between friends almost anything is possible.

Kindred spirits turn a thought into a concept so magical that the brothers Grimm are put to shame.

Once upon a time steps off the page and becomes a moment in time so real that it creates a whole new continuum.  Better than a time machine, more powerful than sorcery or magic, it flies across space and creates families from nothing.

There is really no magical word unless it is the unspoken love that permeates every action and even though it might appear to be make believe, the results are so real that there is no denying them.

As I am tucked into bed tonight a smile fills my eyes.

Attention please

Isn’t it amazing how important a little attention can be? 

I can be sitting here ready to devour a whole peach pie when suddenly a note from a friend lifts my spirits and instead of eating, I go for a forty-minute walk!

Who knows how many disasters have been averted by friends simply checking in on other friends?

In a world where families live hours apart and everyone is so busy they don’t know if they are coming or going, it isn’t like the old days when neighbors dropped in for tea unannounced.  So a simple text message can make a world of difference.

It is good to share life’s little tragedies and dramas with a sympathetic ear.  What seems unbearable can turn funny with the turn of a phrase.

All because of a little attention.

 

Waiting

Twenty-six years ago I sat in a hospital waiting room with my father, my grandmother, my godmother and my siblings waiting to hear the kind of news that, until then, I’d mostly seen on TV.  Dr. Kildare, or Ben Casey would come out and inform the family that the operation went just fine.

Only for us, on that day, it didn’t go fine.  Or maybe it really did.  Maybe if my mother had survived the surgery the quality of her life would have been so poor that it would have been awful.

I will never forget sitting in that room for nearly twenty-four hours waiting.  The words, “waiting room” will never mean quite the same thing to me after that.  First we waited to see what was wrong.  Then we waited for a team of surgeons to be gathered.  And finally we waited to see how the operation would go.

Most of the night I remember just sitting there.  Once I tried to find the chapel only to discover it was under renovation.  I kept hearing my godmother's voice calling my mother’s name, but in truth she never uttered a word, out loud.

The result was so good the first time the nurse came out.  The operation was over, my mother was being taken off the machines.  All was well.

It was the second time she came out that all of us knew something was wrong.  They took us into a tiny little room and told my grandmother that her child's heart would not restart.  They told my father his wife's heart would not restart and they told my godmother her best friend's heart would not restart. I could not believe my mother's heart would never beat again.  Our hearts all stopped in that moment and broke into a million pieces.  It was the singular most difficult moment I have ever lived through.

And on this night of all nights, I think of my mother and who she was and what she was and how short life really is.

Early morning thots

Walking in the early morning mists of a spring morning in a Heartland city is not quite the same as standing on a ridge in the Appalachians watching the clouds roll in, but there is a sense of one-ness that comes with each.

Maybe because I am not normally an early morning person, these times seem especially sacred to me.

The constant hum of traffic is not the same as the insouciant sound of sea waves lapping against the black rocks of a far away cliff, but there is a sameness here too.

There is always background noise and sunrise and sunset everywhere I go and I find a strange kind of comfort in that.

Once I thought traffic was not natural, but I am not so sure anymore.  Is traffic any less natural than anthills and bird nests?  It is a thing created by an earthling, albeit a more destructive thing than most others, but on an infinite scale probably not much more important.

Perspective is daunting.

The Glancing

Closing my eyes I breathe out and for the first time in a very long time I release everything!  It pours from me like a river of madness out and down into the darkness, into the eternity it came from.

All thoughts and memories: all desires and needs:  all connections and disconnections: everything I am, or was, or might be, or will be empties from me on a breath that leaves nothing.

I am not.  I am not not.

For one infinitesimal moment I yield all back to the truth from which it sprang.  It is no longer mine because there is no me to hold it.

One long breath, gentle, complete, absolute.

And then, I breathe in only what returns to me and it is glancing.

Stunned by the purity of a moment so exquisite that the realization of it destroys its existence, the illusion of what is mine is set free once more.

One less thing

In our country everyone seems to want, and feel they need, more!  More room, more clothes, more money!  But with more stuff comes more responsibilities and I want more freedom!

Freedom from taking care of stuff, from taking care of the places stuff needs to sit in, from the time it takes to gather, store and maintain it!

Stuff can be such a burden!

I am not exactly a minimalist, but by the standards of most of the people I know I am.  I get almost as much pleasure from giving things away and paring things down as I do from acquiring it.

I think I was born this way.  As a child, when other children wanted collections of stuff, I wanted to design the spaces they put that stuff in.  A piece of paper and something to mark on it with always gave me the most joy because I could draw or write or design to my heart’s content.  Now my computer does that for me.

Some people call that a virtual life I guess, but for me it is freedom.  I love changing things.  I have always rearranged everything.  In fact, if I were to have the perfect living space it would only be a moderate sized room with walls made out of closets and storage spaces on wheels that could be moved around to create and recreate different spaces depending on my mood.

Perspective

What a day!  A friend was stranded in an airport for nine and a half hours waiting for take off while I was walking in a downpour here trying to get my walk in for the day.

I slugged along in my waterproof, (or not quite so waterproof,) jacket and felt quite noble about my dedication and “suffering.”  When in truth I enjoy cooler weather and even rain so much more than hot humid weather.

Still I love the idea that what I am doing is noble and it is fun walking along thinking about all the things attached to that!

Then it occurred to me that most of the enjoyment comes from choosing to do this.  If I were having to do it, like being stranded in an airport, or dealing with some other unpleasantness, it would be more frustrating and maybe even awful!

Funny how perspective changes things.