Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time. Voltaire

A friend posted a quote by Voltaire on perfection today and that made me think. Perfection has been a biggie in my life since I was six years old and my teacher sent a note home to my parents telling them they needed to explain to me that nobody was perfect. My Dad jokingly told me that with a codicil. He was the only exception!

When I quit smoking my husband said, "Now, I suppose you think you're perfect!" (That was his fear that he wouldn't succeed, but he did.)

For years I struggled for the perfect recital, the perfect look, to be a perfect mother, whatever!

Today I realized what a shift has taken place when I read the quote about perfection requiring time.

I'm not even sure what perfection is!

After giving it some thought, I am inclined to believe that perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Living

So much of living is beyond my control.

I can't create absolute masterpieces in living without the help or cooperation of other people.

I can set the stage.

I can rough in my part.

I can even possibly weed out some characters.

But that still leaves a lot of room for improvisation by everyone or everything else. And for me too, if I want to create a living piece.

Or a piece of living.

Or a living peace.

Remember

February has been the hardest month of all.

I tried going out and eating moderately.

I tried not dealing with stress by eating.

I tried to remember that I am eating this way, not just because I want to look better, but so I can be healthier and have a better quality of life as I grow older.

It has been an uphill struggle. I have failed more often than I have succeeded, but I haven't quit trying and I give myself credit for that.

Creativity

I have a distorted view of my life. Today I thought, what if I quit volunteering and my next thought was, what if I can't afford not to volunteer? What? Wait!

That brings up all kinds of interesting questions. Like in what ways does volunteering feed into my life? Does it just keep me busy, or does it make me feel useful, or is it a social outlet, another way to be creative?

Yes.

Everything I do in my life is like this. I am an integrated being who loves to be creative.

Always being me. Always watching me. I am probably more fascinating to me that I could ever be to the rest of the world.

I read the menu, but I never know what I will order until I open my mouth and hear what comes out. I sit down every night and look at a blank page in my drawing book until I draw something. I type words on the computer until my thot emerges. I live in an eleven by thirty foot studio apartment that is in a constant state of flux.

When we built our dream house and finally moved in I was so depressed. I'd dreamed and planned and drawn it my entire life and here it was. Done to perfection. Done! Done? done

Same thing with my dollhouse, but I've learned since then. I don't want it to be finished. I like things perfectly unfinished. I like works in progress. I love change.

And yet I need the exact right amount of routine to make all that feel secure, so maybe volunteering and a few good people are my anchors in this world.

Are you reliable

In my experience, people put off what does not seem important to them. If they believe something will be there for a very long time, they do not hurry to procure it, so when I want something done, I generally set a deadline.

I need this done by the 27th. If you can't do it by then I am going to offer it to Aunt Caroline. Or some such similar statement.

Otherwise people procrastinate for what feels like an unbearable time to me.

Of course you have to be believable. You actually have to go ahead and do whatever it is you said you would do if they don't come through and that can be hard. The good news is, you seldom have to do it more than once or twice.

Credibility serves all walks of life. Parents must do what they say. Teachers must do what they say. All professions promote themselves better if they can be trusted.

Being nice doesn't cut it. You should be nice, but not at the expense of being unreliable.

I feel more secure with people I trust and I think others do too.

Home

Some people get out the silver and the good china on special occasions, but I use those every day. 

Today I got out those things that are precious to me and decided it was time to display them again.

Some of them are very very old and two are very very new, but each one has special meaning to me and the fact that I have them out speaks worlds about where I am.

I'm not sure how it started, but what was a very minimalist apartment for the last four years has become a home.

Character lurks in almost every detail from the paintings on the walls to the pictures above the cabinets, to the displays atop the desks.

Quan yin sits back in her place of honor, holding her baby, Green Tara is back on her stand. The Armani stallion rears its hooves above the doll made by Bestest's grandmother. The picture of us playing carols one Christmas is prominently placed, along with my great grandmother's hat pins and my amethyst geodes from Brazil. There is even a picture of Bestest with the note he wrote me on the back.

This is a collection of parts of me I have not unearthed for nearly ten years. It is a mini-museum of me.

Other parts of the room have pictures of my children and grandchildren along with their artwork, or things dear friends have given me. It is a gathering of love and loving.

Good authority

Witches and Sin Eaters and Fairy Godmothers and Guardian Angels!

What do they all have in common?

They give us things we want or need. They empty us and fill us with words and thoughts that surprise us, because we have thought them all before and those times did us no good.

They live in those enchanted cottages in the woods, or secret bowers in tall buildings, or other out of the way places that take a while to arrive at, because it is the journey that allows us to arrive at our destinations.

And the road to our own truth is the longest, most difficult one of all. Not because it is hidden from us, but because we do not want to see it.

But I have it on good authority:

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.

Hang in there. Venture deep into the woods. Fly high over tall buildings. Land gently on your own two feet.

Targeting

Our country is proud of its uncivilized habits. We pride ourselves on being rough, tough, shoot em up people who can run rough shod over everyone and everything. Look at who we elected president.

The rewards are great. The NRA funnels millions of dollars into people who perpetuate the idea that there is something innate and wonderful and historically necessary in owning guns.

At best a hobby that enjoys shooting at targets, at worst, a hobby that enjoys killing animals and maybe even people, especially if they are one of the racially profiled "undesirables" our white nationalists and president don't like. At the very worst people who could care less about other people's kids and who are willing to play Russian roulette with their own.

No amount of special preparation in schools is any guarantee, is really fail safe, if your child is one of those in the hallway when a shooter enters.

No amount of counseling is a guarantee because the people who need counseling are often the people already neglected and unnoticed.

Even guns in the hands of trained policemen are a danger to innocent law abiding citizens. Those same guns in the hands of mentally ill, or emotionally charged people are even more dangerous.

We do NOT NEED guns in this country. If you believe we do then you are putting the lives of all children and all people at risk. Your priorities are skewed. You have become the problem.

Imagine any child you love in front of a gun -- just hoping the bullets miss him or her.

How can anyone think this is normal, or okay?

Not

She walked through a world filled with mystery, with dark spots so black they looked like living Rorschach ink blots surrounded by a misty light she mistook for the sun.

She tried to empathize with a world that appeared to have more light, less mist, more stability, but empathy is like day dreams. It does not feed you, sustain you, make you stronger.

Her quest?  To keep from being swallowed alive by the dark, to find the place where the sun shone through more efficiently than the mist.

It was a fairy tale existence without the happily ever after. Fighting trolls and ogres is highly over rated, because they come in all shapes and sizes in a never-ending stream. Growing up is meant to dim eyes and dull perception -- to hide the unbearable and make the facade the norm.

But one day she met the sun in all its glory, like everything else it was disguised as something it was not. Not infallible. Not a sure thing. Not hers to own, but a place to bask.

Reflecting off the mist, the sun gave her world a focus, a sparkle and made the dark harder to find. 

But there is a price for everything.

Enthusiasm

I went to breakfast at a new place in town with some friends this morning.

You couldn't fault the place for trying. They had two or three people to do every single thing! There was no waiting for anything.

Except time to eat in between all the people coming to our booth to see if we wanted our coffee warmed up, our water refilled, if we liked the pancakes? The omelets? The waffles? The service? The atmosphere?

The food was okay, pretty much what they advertised, but nothing special, which was a disappointment, because it looked so good on paper. (Maybe they should have used paper plates! LOL)

The potato pancakes were greasy. The poached eggs runny. The corn beef hash was good though.

Now I've got to go back with other friends in three days.

I'm not sure what I will order, but it will be different.

Quantity verses quality

I am branching out from the very strict eating regime I've used to lose 75 pounds. Today I had a donut at the Donut Experiment, and it was very good! I met some friends at a southwestern grill the other night and am meeting friends for breakfast twice in the next week and just had coffee with some other friends yesterday. But at home, I still stick to my veggies, salad, and eggs. I volunteer two days a week, so I get out around people anywhere from two to six times a week and my daughter and I find different places to walk every Sunday.

People in my family tend to either live a very long time, or die young, but their quality of life has not been particularly promising.

They seem to equate work with the highest quality of life and often have no life after work. I have always felt work should be interesting and lend itself to leading a fascinating life.

I have to love what I am doing. No matter what it is. If . . . I intend to keep doing it.

Children go out every day looking for new things to do. That's the difference between living a long time and LIVING a long time. Not only do I need a reason to get out of bed, I need one not to go back to bed -- or just to sleep.

Everything evolves, but there is no reason for it to evolve into some sort of stagnant cesspool. My job is to keep me alive and active and interested.

Ode to Joy

The happiest face in the world is the one who is looking at its happy family.

Love is an odd duck.

It finds happiness reflected off of the shimmering, changeable waters around it.

No amount of hard cold gold can compare with the genuine smiles of those who are loved.

And so it is that the heart is warmed, the soul defined, and the world brightened by something as ephemeral as another's joy.

My Ode To Joy is played on invisible heart strings to the accompaniment of nature's wonder.

Orderly

The last few days that I have volunteered at the library have been so pleasant.

I had been contemplating stopping after this year, but now I remember why I love doing this.

I like interacting with the children, but I also like the way a library can work. The order appeals to all my senses.

There truly is a place for every book and it is unquestionable and finite. It's like slipping pieces into a jigsaw puzzle. That little click as the piece snaps into place is so satisfying.

And then, when things go the way they should, most other things are also very orderly and neat. It is a place that fits me especially well.

A Gathering of Women

I am sitting at a table eating dinner with five women, a doctor, a pediatric nurse practioner, an engineer, an advocate and a woman who works for the alumni department at a local university.

The conversation is all over the place. From pregnancy (one is pregnant,) to pets, to dealing with gender difficulties, to food,to engineering problems and of course the current shooting crisis.

I am surprised at the banality and the depth that flows through the nearly three hours we spend talking and eating.

No one realizes how long we have been here until one woman's phone rings to tell her someone just crossed her doorstep. As she checks the video, she sees the time and we are all shocked.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I enjoyed women more.

Happy Valentine's Day

Holidays are mixed bags.

Stuffed with memories that evoke very strong feelings, they can be wonderful and almost unbearable.

They are a time of reflection. A time to share, your love, your time, your wit, your inner most thoughts and so many more things that might not be so pleasant.

If there is one thing I have learned it is that love springs from the lover. No one can stop you from loving and no one can be made to love you.

I look back and am utterly flabbergasted by how quickly my life has flown by. It seems like only yesterday I was eating 25 cent hot fudge sundaes with my mom, wishing desperately to be a mother, looking at the tears in my husband's eyes when our son was born, going to my other son's college graduation, catching my newborn granddaughter in my own hands . . . how did it pass so quickly?

Today is Valentine's Day, a day famous for lovers and I am blessed to be a lover . . .

Of so much.

A little help from my friends.

I don't know what I would do without my friends.

They do the most unexpected and sweetest (and sometimes funniest) things I can think of. Actually the truth is, I would never think of most of them.

A Valentine's glass that helps me stick with this eating plan by making me laugh, filled with a no calorie sweetness I will love using.

A Mother's Day Card that boosts my feelings even months after that day is gone.

That's the way it is with these things. They are important long past the time they come into my life and that makes my life pretty unique and wonderful.

So here's to friends and laughs and good thoughts all around!

Just right

I cannot remember a time when I wasn't trying to figure out who I was and I wonder why that has always been such a big deal in my life.

By the age of three I imagined being Mrs. Pink, having a little girl three years old and living in a white house with pink shutters. Then at nine I saw myself as a willowy blonde sitting before my vanity combing my hair and thinking, if I just stay the same size and grow taller I will be just right. At twelve I dreamed of being married and having neat little dishes of leftovers tucked away in our refrigerator.

By my late teens I wanted to be a rebel with long straight hair, bell bottomed pants, smoking cigarettes and reading Zen poetry. Yet I was still looking for just the right husband so we could settle down into a life of adventure and not have litters of children.

And finally as a full blown adult I realized we were the Jones's in other people's eyes and things were still not just right.

Now, today, I look around me and realize that eight years after losing a life time's worth of possessions and people and pets, I am surrounded by the colors and books and furniture and friends that are truly just right for me. Even my social life is just right for me. It isn't what women my age are "supposed" to want," or Grammas are supposed to be, or success is supposed to look like, but it is me right now.

And that is just right.

The measure of me

I have put away my scale for a while. How long a while I don't know, but my need to measure things is evidently more intense than I ever dreamed.

Today I began by taking my blood pressure. 121/69, so it was good.

Then after a while I thought, maybe I should add up the calories I eat now that I am not eating avocados because they have been overly ripe lately.

Now I am calculating what to do with the three hundred calories I have to fill with anything I want.

I think what I want is to fill up the freedom of old age with youth.

How to raise a child

Raising children is simple. "Simply love them. Love them. Love them."

Of course those lines come from an old movie and everything is more cut and dried in movies than in real life.

Love means doing the right thing so a child can not only survive, but thrive in the world and that means different things for different children.

All children need to learn about truth and honesty. Without that their credibility will always be suspect. Next, they need to understand dependability, both who is dependable in their lives and that they are held accountable by others.

And finally they must know they are valuable members of this world whether they are lawyers, programmers, street sweepers, cooks, or caretakers. Each one as important as the next if we want the world to be clean, orderly, fair, and loving.

A world that values the bankers above the gardener might be a very hungry world indeed.

Faith

When it comes time to do away with crutches, why is it so difficult?

Perhaps the fear of falling is so great that hoping the crutches can prevent it is greater. Or perhaps it is because I can blame the crutches when I do fall?

Faith that I can make it without any crutch would negate the need for them no matter what.

Faith in myself, in my ability to do the right thing for the right reasons is powerful.

Perhaps even immeasurable.

Celebration

Some weeks are more difficult than others and some nights are easier than others.

My world is almost un-recognizably different than it was six months ago.

The apartment looks different. My clothes look different. My food is different. My image in the mirror is different.

And mostly it is wonderful, but with any major change in life there is some stress.

Tonight was a celebration of chocolate and sugar with Bestest who managed a whole month without it!

Tomorrow I'm back on the vegetable cart with my beans and avocados.

Strong

I was thinking, tonight, about what part of me is the strongest.

My first thought? My legs. I have used them to lift half the weight of a piano when moving it across the room. Yes, my legs are very strong. The problem? They are attached to my feet! My Achille's feet that fail me at the most improbable moments for reasons I sometimes never know.

Perhaps, then, my arms? Actually my arms are not particularly strong. They are good at hugging people and pull their fair share in hauling books and boxes when I move, but I cannot work over my head for any length of time at all. My arms must be upfront to be particularly useful in any situation.

So perhaps it is something inside of me that is strong. My stomach! I have a cast iron stomach that can probably hold twice its weight in food. Yet, should I be nervous about something, or concerned, my stomach fails me completely.

The next thing that comes to mind is my heart. My doctors have continually worried about my heart. My blood pressure flies up with just the thought that it is being measured. Tiny murmurs whisper through the stethoscope and set my doctor's ears on fire, but the truth is much different. Stress tests and sonograms show a heart that could win the Grand Prix. My heart is strong!

But so is my brain. It never sleeps, creating intricate dreams all night long and working overtime during the day. All the while continuing to keep the rest of me alive and functioning. My brain may be even stronger than my heart. But it is a chatterbox, that is for sure.

So if I had to rely on one part of me to be my defender and protector, what would it be?

I think it will require a running conversation with the things held most dearly for quite some time before I know the answer to this one.

Happily ever after

Once upon a times are generally one dad and one mom and two children, one boy and one girl. Very few people grow up to find out they are princes, or princesses and very few lead a storybook life.

Unless . . .

They live the real myth, the real fable, the real fairy tale, where witches aren't pushed into ovens and princesses are not awakened from a century of sleep by princes in the woods.

Because . . .

A princess is really an independent woman and a prince is an independent man. And witches are just the problem people that make us stronger along the way. We need everyone to create that fairy tale called real life.

In a story where knights in all sorts of shiny glorious garb work hard to make the world a better place and all men and women are majestic; whether they are growing food, or cleaning buildings, or teaching children, or making music, everyone has a job that is so important they should never give it up.

The real happily-ever-after needs a little bit of love, a little bit of joy, some pain, some tears, and a blister or two.

And you've got to remember what John Lennon said, "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

Refund refreshers

Tax refund season is like hunting season for those of us who forget this big refund is actually our own money coming back to us -- interest free from Uncle Sam.

It's not a gift to us, but from us and we need to use it wisely.

I went on the hunt for a new vacuum and did enough research to finally realize my old vacuum does so many things I forgotten about -- and never use!

Having had a refresher course on what I already own I am now quite happy not to buy a new vacuum.

So where else might this pretend windfall go?

Probably my dentist who gives a five percent discount on all procedures paid for with cash or check.

But even this large amount will not cover her until my car is paid for and I can add that payment to this one!

Seems no hunting is required.

Bumpy verses the light

Sometimes you really do need to count your blessings instead of sheep.

Partly because there are no sheep around here to count and partly because it's more fun than counting your woes.

Although if you are averse to counting blessings at this moment, go ahead and count your woes. It's better to be doing something than nothing and surrounded by enough darkness, any little light will start to look good.

I had a little old rabbit named Bumpy when I was a child. Poor Bumpy had a lot of woes. He had to listen to me cry as an infant. He had to sleep with a bed wetter and before he was three years old his ears had been totally loved off and replaced several times. I suspect having your ears loved off turned out to be a light in his stuffy old world.

Most things in this world are relative, but there is no law that says you have to compare anything. There will always be someone who is faster than you, happier than you, sadder than you. The trick seems to be to find happiness in the moment you are in.

Even if that is just having your ears loved off.

Fate

Sometimes I do wonder if there is such a thing as Fate.

Could it be that our lives really do have a purpose that drives us from some unknown place?

Are circumstances not haphazard or random?

Is there a reason that I have been uprooted from friends since 1954 when I met Julie and Paul, the little children across the street from me in Urbana? And at intervals throughout my life I have again and again been uprooted and left friends who were once important to me, never to see them again.

Even my own children have become disembodied voices or absent members who I never see for years at a time. And I have grandchildren who are well loved, but also at a distance.

My life is good. I am basically happy. It is just not traditional, or what I expected.

Is that Fate? Is there a reason? Is it subconsciously planned?

It is truly a mystery.

Four o'clock in the morning

Children think of four o'clock in the morning as an exotic time. Either very early, or very very late in the grand scheme of things.

Adults seldom find it all that wonderful.

I have been trying to turn myself from a late night person into one who goes to bed at a reasonable hour and rises at one too. For the past few years I have been fairly successful thanks to Bestest's persistent patter about the benefits of both.

Tonight, however, I am once again hobbling. That makes it impossible for me to walk, or exercise in any way at all. Just the necessary trips around the apartment require a cane and careful steps all the way.

Perhaps that is why I have not been able to go to sleep. I know that if I have to get up in the night, which I always do several times, it will be slow and painful and also not good for my foot which needs to be elevated as much as possible when fending off these injuries.

And so I sit here on the first day of February having been up all night long. I've read the book for book club, watched The Crown on Netflix, looked at Facebook, and now I'm writing My Thots.

It's four o'clock in the morning.