The hot seat

I find most peace in my life when I try to live by the Serenity Prayer, which I mentioned many posts ago. In short, this familiar prayer urges us to control the things we can, let go of the things we can't control, and to have the wisdom to know the difference in these two categories.

That simple philosophy of life has really been helpful to me - up until now. Up until now, the control I managed to acquire gave me a sense of empowerment over my own life. This week I was asked to have control over someone else's life...and I didn't like it, not one bit.

I have been experiencing my first few weeks of jury duty. Actually, the judge said they call it "jury service" now to make it seem more palatable. They want us to think we are volunteering, when in actuality we are being drafted.

No matter - I didn't try to avoid it. I had reached the ripe old age of 50 and had never been called to serve on a jury, probably because we spent so little time in one place as we were moved around in the ministry. I was intrigued by the courtroom. I had never seen a real jury in action. I had minor trepidation in the midst of all this curiosity and anticipation, though, because I have always considered myself to be - well, not exactly wishy-washy, but I try to give both sides on any argument equal time and if the area is gray and not black and white, I find it hard to make up my mind. In one way, that qualifies me exceedingly well for a jury, but in another way, I'm a jury's worst nightmare. See? Even in discussing this, I see the gift and the curse in thinking this way!

The judge told us we were released from confidentiality about our participation in the cases after the fact, so I feel free to mention a few things here. The first case was not that important. A young man was visually identified by a state trooper as driving a car when he had been suspended from doing so. Sounded pretty clear-cut. Then we found out the trooper saw him only in passing, and waited 6 days to issue the summons, at which time the young man and his girlfriend swore it must have been someone else. It would have been an easy case if the officer had pulled him over immediately, but...we had to find him not guilty because there was too much doubt.

I didn't lose any sleep over that case.

The next case was rape. Suffice it to say, most of the jury figured the guy did it, but, for reasons I will not address here, he got off too.

I started losing sleep.

Then came the most recent case. This was a 65-year-old man accused of inappropriate sexual contact (touching through clothes) with a couple of girls, 8 and 9 years old. The state's case was weak - his word against theirs. There apparently was some tickling going on and the defendant, a small-statured old man with a mustache, balding head and bowtie, insisted if the touching happened at all, it was incidental. No witnesses. No evidence. We just had to sit there and make a grave decision - whether to send this man to jail and in the process give him the legal requirement to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

We agonized. We almost became a hung jury, but the holdouts who thought he was guilty decided to change their verdict because a hung jury would have required the girls to go through another trial. It had already been a year since this happened in the first place. Everyone involved in the case, even secondarily, had been under this cloud for a year to have their day in court. And, Lord help me, I was one of 12 people who were commissioned to decide the verdict.

That threw the Serenity Prayer out the window temporarily for me. It's easy to say, "Control the things you can," but it's not easy to come to a decision - with very, very little to work with - that will affect lives forever in a huge way. The pressure was enormous.

The verdict after 2-1/2 hours of deliberation was not guilty. It was decided we just didn't have enough evidence to say this man did it. Did he do it intentionally? Accidentally? Did the girls have a skewed perception of what happened? If he was innocent, we cursed the defendant for being stupid enough to put himself in a position of vulnerability. If he was guilty, we doubly cursed him for doing such a despicable thing. As a jury, we were certainly in a cursing mood.

I can say for sure most of the jury had a restless night after that. Did we save an innocent old man from being labeled for life and going to jail? Or did we let a potential child molester out to prey again?

There is not much serenity about being on a jury.

Self

My e-mail meditation for the day:

When we transcend ourselves and become in our ascent towards God so simple that the bare supreme Love can lay hold of us, then we cease, and we and all our selfhood die in God. And in this death we become the hidden children of God, and find a new life within us.

Jan van Ruysbroeck
The Sparkling Stone

To transcend one's self. To rise above the bad habits that have been ingrained in us since we started earning money and our choices were much more independently made. I can look back and see when we lived a more frugal life. I remember when we used card tables pushed together for a dining room table. I remember making most of my own clothes. I remember when eating out was a special occasion, not a last-minute decision. I remember life with one TV and - gasp - even one phone!

The difference in then and now is that those times represented involuntary simplicity as opposed to voluntary simplicity. We didn't have much back then because we just didn't have much - not because we chose to be frugal. We had to.

Now we are trying to change our mindset to voluntarily live a life of simplicity. It's easy to pass up a purchase when you can't afford it. It's much more difficult to pass up the same purchase when your wallet has enough money, but your mind realizes you don't really need the item.

The journey to simplicity is one we take as a chosen decision and goal, not because circumstances force us to. And part of that journey is "death to the old self" in order to find a new life within us.

Toenails

Wouldn't it be great if you could make a decision about simplifying once and for all - and it happened? That would be as great as making a one-time decision to give up junk food and never have to think about it again! Why can't things be like tattooing? You make a decision to have a tattoo, it's done, and it's over with and "activated" for the rest of your life.

The journey to simplicity, unfortunately, it not like tattooing. It is one major decision, carved out into little pieces of decisions day after day after day. Sometimes you stop on the journey, sometimes you actually lose ground, and other times you're full speed ahead. But it's a journey, nonetheless, and demands the mental and emotional focus of a journey. We may take a "break" but we cannot afford to "wander off" into the woods and forget about the trip altogether.

It's actually difficult to blog about the journey, because, using the sacramental words of the liturgy, it is an "outward and visible sign of a inward and spiritual [change]." Some of the changes are easy to write about, and some are still percolating on the stove like one of Ed's pots of delicious soups. "Is it ready?" I ask him impatiently, not being a cook myself and not knowing the signs that something is finished. Ah, it may be edible but not necessarily ready.

Which brings me to toenails. Yesterday I spent a few precious hours with 2-year-old Caroline, who was her usual precocious self. Our daughter, whose new house has no grass in the yard yet, requests that guests remove their shoes inside, so on this particular day I was walking around barefoot, following little Caroline, who was trying to show me where her "arts and cafts" box was so we could do some painting. At one point, Caroline turned to me, looked down at my feet (she always seems to have an obsession with feet!) and her eyes widened. "Gammy!" she said in awe. "YOU HAVE TOES!"

Now I want to assure the reader that I am anatomically similar to all other human beings in that yes, I have toes, I have always had toes, and Lord willing I will have toes the rest of my life. Her excited observation startled me for a minute. Caroline has seen my toes, hasn't she? Haven't I taken naps with her? Haven't I worn sandals in front of her? It took me the rest of the day to realize what had happened. She had seen my toes before, but my toenails were now painted with nail polish. I had done that this month to "spruce up" for Matt's wedding, and I realized she had never seen them colored before. She knew in her mind that I had always had toes, but something was different, and with her advanced but still limited vocabulary, the only way she could express her newly found insight was "YOU HAVE TOES!"

The journey to simplicity has been full of these "aha" experiences, hard to blog about but important nonetheless. Sometimes the words just can't convey the depth of things we are discovering about ourselves, our lifestyle, our wants, our needs, the lessons we are handing down to the next generation, and the attitude we are presenting to the world as a society. But these experiences, like the soup, can percolate for awhile. And every once in awhile, I can lift the top of the pot and breathe in a most heavenly smell, and exclaim in awe, like Caroline, "WOW!"

OK, I get the idea

There are many ways to learn how to create and maintain a life of tranquility and simplicity. You can read my blog, for instance! :) Or you can read the innumerable books that are published every year - books with names like Voluntary Simplicity (rev) : Toward A Way Of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich...Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World...Simplicity Lessons: A 12-Step Guide to Living Simply...The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life.

Or, you could just have a lightning storm hit your local electricity supplier for a few hours.

Yes, we got a crash course in living simply this week. Basically, life without electricity will bring home what living simply really means. Candles provide nice ambience when you want to have a romantic dinner - but they are quite useless for reading a magazine. There is an eerie quiet about the house when suddenly the lights go out, the fans go off, the refrigerator stops working, the TV turns itself off, and all you can hear are the wall clocks which run on batteries ticking in the silence. Motions you are used to doing automatically - turning on the light switch when you enter a room, for instance - are fruitless. Trying to find something to eat for dinner is a challenge in itself. (We ended up with cheese and bread and a little deli turkey.) Pity the poor soul in this situation who only has electric can openers. Fortunately, an old-fashioned hand cranked can opener is a staple in our kitchen; we could have least opened a can of beans or something. I don't want to confess how many times I was so bored I almost ran upstairs to check my e-mail before I realized I had no working computer. Even my piano is digital.

So after I played my harp (which is not digital), we spent the evening in total quiet, just talking to each other without the usual distractions.

Living truly simply is not for wimps. And without electricity, I couldn't even be writing this journal, nor could you be reading it. But it's nice every once in awhile to be reminded of what it could be like if we scaled our hectic lives back a little.

And the harp never sounded better!

It is Sufficient

My e-mail meditation today struck me enough that I had to post a blog entry in the wee hours of the morning. Here it is:

So it is, we come out of our escapes and retreats from a misguided, foolishly empowered personal experience and into the daily affairs of experience and THERE think from, act from, and rejoice from the Identity as Sufficiency, not as lack; from the Identity as Sufficiency, neither as poverty nor wealth; from Sufficiency instead of the agony of poverty and fear. We walk through the same garden, but this time we walk without the grind in the belly.

William Samuel
A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity

To live with a sense of sufficiency rather than insufficiency. This is our goal. "Neither poverty nor wealth." The idea is not to be poor, the idea is not to be rich. The idea is to be able to say, "The time I have been allotted is sufficient for my life. I have been given the same amount of time as anyone else on earth, as far as a day goes - 24 hours - and what I choose to do with that amount of time is directly responsible for what kind of life I will make." "The resources I have been given in my life are sufficient for me to live my life in a responsible, compassionate, creative, content, and joyful manner."

It truly is an amazing attitude change when you accept the word sufficiency and go from there.
I have heard it said that a good definition of "hell on earth" is the inability to be content with what one has and always wanting more, because there's always more. Even for Bill Gates, there's always more.

I came across this "sermonette" from the New Covenant Church of God in Sweden.

Philip Parham tells the story of a rich industrialist who was disturbed to find a fisherman sitting lazily beside his boat. "Why aren't you out there fishing?" he asked.

"Because I've caught enough fish for today," said the fisherman.

"Why don't you catch more fish than you need?" the rich man asked.

"What would I do with them?"

"You could earn more money," came the impatient reply, "and buy a better boat so you could go deeper and catch more fish. You could purchase nylon nets, catch even more fish, and make more money. Soon you'd have a fleet of boats and be rich like me."

The fisherman asked, "Then what would I do?"

"You could sit down and enjoy life," said the industrialist.

"What do you think I'm doing now?" the fisherman replied as he looked placidly out to sea.

My first father-in-law was a rich industrialist and his philosophy was to work as hard as one could and earn as much money as possible. He spent almost his whole life at his job and had little time for anything else. He expected me to have the same philosophy of life. And I dare say this is the belief of the majority of people in the secular world.

But what the world does not for some reason understand is that if we live only to accumulate wealth, we'll never get enough. We'll work more and more frantically until we collapse.

Happiness does not come in the abundance of possessions. We should work to sufficiently provide for the needs of our family and to generate some surplus for the benefit of the poor. But we should not go overboard. Our first and greatest priority is seeking for the Kingdom of God. Let us not, moreover, be so busy preparing for a rainy day that we miss the sunshine! Let the Kingdom be your career and your job the means to provide the necessities of life.

Amen, amen.

They're out to get us!

I was recently called for jury duty, so I used my impending civil service as an excuse to buy a couple of books. I could, of course, have chosen a half-completed cross-stitch or quilt project to pass the time, but my weakness for new books proved to be stronger than my desire to actually finish a project, and I bought two books, 1776 and Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America. I just finished the latter.

The author of Don't Eat This Book is Morgan Spurlock, the creator and star of the movie Supersize Me, which, as most of you know, was a documentary of his experiment of eating nothing but McDonald's food for a month, detailing the destruction it wreaked on his health. His new book reminds me in a way of The Jungle, which my son and I read together when he was in high school. After reading The Jungle, Matt gave up hot dogs completely and cut down tremendously on his meat consumption. Don't Eat This Book is affecting me in the same way about fast food. I did see Supersize Me a few months ago, and the book just confirms the facts used in the movie.

What impressed me most in this book is his take on the advertising industry. I have touched in this blog at one time or another on how the indisiousness of advertising in our culture can undermine a journey to simplicity. Spurlock brings the case home even more. He explains how the fast food industry as well as the processed food/junk food/cereal industry has taken great pains to market their products effectively, especially to children. Then came the cross-promotion with the toy companies, synergy, which made kids want to eat fast food/junk food even more. He even mentions a marketing study from 1998 called The Nag Factor. It was:

...done to help advertisers and marketers learn how to target kids better, to get them to nag...The press release that went out to advertisers to announce the publication of this study was called - I'm not kidding - "The Fine Art of Whining: Why Nagging Is a Kid's Best Friend." Another industry nickname for it is "pester power."....The different tactics kids use to nag: the whine, the threat, the guilt trip, the suck-up. How marketing and ads can be designed to trigger these different tactics.

I'm 50 years old. If you are around my age, are you thinking what I am thinking? We have been conditioned for decades by these marketing strategists who tell us what we want, what we need, and why we must buy it. How many hours of TV commercials have we sat through in our lives? How many billboards have we seen? How many magazine advertisements? How many ads at the movie theater? On the radio? It would be a very interesting experiment to go through one day and write down how many ads you see or hear. They say that even in movies and TV shows the ads are incorporated into the shows themselves. If you see a character drinking a Coke, the Coca-Cola company paid for their name to be seen on that can.

I used the term insidious because that's exactly what it is. From Dictionary.com:

in·sid·i·ous ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-sd-s)
adj.

1. Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner: insidious rumors; an insidious disease.
2. Intended to entrap; treacherous: insidious misinformation.
3. Beguiling but harmful; alluring: insidious pleasures.

Of course, advertising does not end with fast food and junk food. The corporations are constantly telling us that our lives will improve with all of their products. And we so often, like robots, accept the propaganda. This is what we are fighting in the journey to simplicity. We are fighting ideas that have been drummed into our heads from an early age. We are the generation that grew up with television, Ronald McDonald, Froot Loops, and Coke. It is time that I stop listening to their messages of "More! More!" and hear my inner voice pleading, "Less! Less!" There are some segments of our population that still think, "If it wasn't true, they couldn't say it on TV." And the manipulation grows.

The first step in fixing a problem is identifying some of the sources of the problem. Our corporate culture of pervasive advertising is a definite contributor to our society's excessive consumption and captivation with acquisition, regardless of the consequences to our health or peace of mind. May we have the ability to recognize it for what it is - years and years of mind control - and for our sake and for our kids' sakes, summon up enough power to defeat it!

The Fine Art of Staging

Anyone who has had experience trying to sell a house knows about the necessity of staging. This is in theory the art of displaying your house to its best advantage, devoid of personal effects which may detract from the environment you are trying to create. In other words, you try to make your house look as if nobody even lived there. I must say here that 1) this is not an easy task, and 2) we have pretty much become experts at it.

Those TV shows about selling your house follow the same basic line. They start with a house for sale, give you an overview, then bring in an expert who tells them basically that they have a snowball's chance in hell of even giving their house away until they clean up the filfth, buy some new furniture, update the decor, get rid of the clutter, slap on some paint, and bring in some curb appeal. Then the show's carpenters, decorators, contractors, painters, and landscapers get to work on preparing the house not only to sell, but to get what they call "top dollar" and "multiple offers," neither of which have made themselves known in our personal house-selling situation. The show usually ends with the grateful homeowner receiving multiple offers, all way above the asking price, and being put in the enviable position of having to decide exactly how much extra profit they want to accept.

How does one make a house look inviting yet look as if nobody lived in it? Well, it takes practice, practice, and more practice. We have had enough house showings that we could do this in our sleep. I'll bet we have shaved a good half hour off our preparation time since we started showing the house a few months ago. First, we have to put away all personal hygiene products. That means the potential buyer should see no toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, deodorant, hair spray, razors, hair brushes, etc. Second, we have to pretend we have no dog. That means making sure all the doggy toys and snacks and bed are removed from sight. Third, we have to pretend we don't read. That means all newspapers, magazines, paper clutter of any kind must be stacked neatly and relatively hidden. Fourth, we have to pretend we don't do laundry. Yes, we have top-of-the-line washer and dryer, but if we're smart, we pretend we don't use them. This means hiding all the dirty clothes and towels. Fifth, we have to give the impression we are perfectly healthy. This means hiding all the prescription bottles, the Gas-X, the Tylenol, the Benadryl, and especially the laxatives, which apparently don't convey a good impression.

Now why someone interesting in buying our house would care if we were constipated, I just don't know.

There is one part of staging advice, though, where I had to compromise. You are supposed to get rid of all personal pictures. I managed to pack up most of our family photos, but I am leaving the ones on the wall in the hall upstairs. For one thing, it reminds the viewer that this house had a big part in raising a happy, functional, well-adjusted family - and maybe it will whisper something like, "....and you can too!" The second reason for leaving them is the fact that if I took them down I would have a great number of holes in the wall to deal with. I'll leave them up, thank you very much.

Ed, of course, hates the staging aspect. "Where in the heck is my......?" has been his mantra since day one. I just tell him I hid it for staging and he gives me "the look."

Where we and the TV house-selling shows part ways is this: Somehow their group of contractors, painters, decorators, carpenters and landscapers never made it to our door to offer their services. And on TV they work hard at one single, magnificent, perfect staging, have one big open house, get their multiple offers, and are through with it. We, on the other hand, are constantly staging for another showing.

And it does make me wonder, sometimes, if the potential buyers who scout out our house think, "What kind of people are living here? They don't even brush their teeth!"

Slow Food

I heard about the Slow Food movement a few years ago. It was begun as a statement against the proliferation of fast food in our society. A good history of the movement and its mission can be found at this web site. The idea of "slow food" goes hand in hand with a journey to simplicity. And fortunately, I have a live-in chef who is an expert at slow food! He detests processed foods and tries to make everything from scratch. He buys organic if possible. He can take some onions, some colorful peppers, some fresh garlic and other seasonings, a little meat, some fresh spinach - mmmm! He doesn't use recipes. Everything is in his head, which makes it hard to write his delicious concoctions down for the kids, who, now grown, want to cook like Daddy.

All I can say is - the fact that my husband has done all the cooking for the family for our 31 years of married life - including Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays - definitely helps make my life simple! Thanks, Ed!

Back to nature

My husband Ed says that one reason society is so screwed up today is that we have removed ourselves more and more from nature. He thinks humans are meant to commune with nature, that we actually are part of nature and thus nature complements us. He says that every step of processing our food, for instance, is one more step away from food as nature made it. He said touching a tree soothes the soul, being out on a sunny day improves the disposition, and the changing of the fall leaves renews one's spirit.

I've thought about his ideas lately because in Maine at this time of year people try to get back to nature. Around here, the primary objective for tourists is, of course, Acadia National Park. Each summer the cars with out-of-state licenses are lined up for miles, aiming for those beautiful acres of forest and mountains on the ocean's edge.

Ed loves to hike. One day he hiked in Acadia, got lost, and ended up hiking for 8 hours on what was supposed to be a 2-hour walk. I once agreed to go on a "walk" with him at Acadia. I soon found out that a "walk" to me and a "walk" to him were two different things. He hikes for hours, and I like to walk as fast as I can for 15 minutes, then turn around and head back. Thirty minutes of exercise. Needless to say, after my complaining and his complaining about my complaining, we agreed that day that we would share other activities but never go "walking" together again.

I do love nature. I really do! At a distance. Through a window, or at least a screen. I realize now that any journey to simplicity must involve a truce between me and nature. I freely admit this will be difficult for me. So what do I have against nature? It's either too hot or too cold or too wet or too humid or too windy. I don't like dirt or mud either. Those "mud pies" we used to make in the backyard using little foil pot-pie cups have lost their allure.

I absolutely hate bugs, although they love me. The Maine blackfly effects some kind allergic reaction in me and I swell up at the site of its attack. Flowers are gorgeous, but where there are flowers there are bees. Yes, I know bees perform a valuable humanitarian service, one that is necessary for ecological purposes, but when I was a little girl I had a bee fly up my sleeve at recess on the playground at East Elementary School and since then bees have made me quite nervous. It didn't help matters when a couple of years ago I was taking a walk down a country road and a bee chased me for a good mile. I didn't know I could run that fast. See - even when I try to get back to nature, I am thwarted.

Ed used to preach that when God told Moses to take off his shoes, that he was on holy ground, it was not so much about the fact his shoes would desecrate the ground - it was that Moses needed his bare feet to be in direct contact with the ground so the "current of holiness" could go through his body. Now me, I never go barefoot outside. I am glad God has never asked me to do so. Our son-in-law is constantly amused at our insistence on wearing shoes. He's not a hillbilly - he's an educated teacher - but he was raised to run barefoot all summer. The idea just freaks me out. There are so many things that would be dangerous to step on, and eww...the dirt and mud!

Jesus said we must become like little children, and that's one thing kids do enjoy - the outdoors and nature in all her glory. And somewhere in my inner child I remember walking home from school, going by the Pink Palace museum and climbing up onto a low-lying branch of the deodar tree (I know it was a deodar tree because it had a plaque on it stating that fact) and just resting there, mulling over the events of the day, and - yes - talking to the tree. Since I have grown up, I am, like many other adults, a fan of the creature comforts in life: Heat, air conditioning, floors, walls, windows and screens. And comfy chairs to sit in so when you get up you won't have wet grass and dirt on your pants.

I think this is a good goal for Caroline to help me with.

Master of Everything?

One of my personal blocks to achieving simplicity is simply the fact I have way too many interests. Anyone who knows me well knows I have too much I want to learn. My amazing parents instilled in me a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world. I also inherited their pride in a sense of accomplishment and work well done. I don't think I have been very effective in meshing those two ideas into a workable lifestyle.

There are some things I just want to know about because they fascinate me. These involve just facts, and they would require a certain amount of time to research and read about. Some questions, I know, I've bothered various family members with but still can't understand:
How do planes get up in the air and stay up? How do telephones work? How do microchips work? How can Google take one second to research a million sites? How can an ink cartridge in a printer spit out such precise patterns? How can people build such tall buildings? Why can't we predict earthquakes? How do they decaffeinate coffee and tea? How can you freeze human embryos without damaging them? How can telescopes see far into the galaxy? How does an electron microscope work? How do we know what an atom consists of? What is electricity?
How do they get glue in tubes? How do cameras work? How do headache medicines know it's your head that is hurting and not your foot?

Then there are other things I want to learn that are skills. I would like to be able to play the violin, the cello, and a wind instrument. I would like to be able to smock and to knit. I want to be able to do incredibly realistic-looking photo manipulation. I would love to learn to make wood furniture. I wish I could professionally frame pictures, refinish floors, and install carpet. I wish I could garden like my sister can. These too would require inordinate amounts of time to learn - just the basics. What time would I need to master them? Some people practice all their lives to perfect these skills!

The problem essentially comes down to one question. I have asked myself this question for years and cannot come up with a satisfactory answer. Would I rather be brilliantly proficient at one or two things in life, or would I rather be moderately competent in lots of things? Because it doesn't look like I can do everything wonderfully. Such a dilemma for a perfectionist! Such a conundrum for one who is determined to simplify.

Just think - If I concentrated only on quilting and let everything else go - what I could accomplish! The beauty I could create! The quantity of quilts I could make! The creativity I could release! I would be a master at quilting - but I would miss cross-stitching, singing, playing the piano, playing the harp, working with photography, making my own greeting cards, writing poems...

Sometimes I feel that I have made the decision to not make the decision - and that means I default to being moderately competent in lots of things. At least that's where I am now.

And I still don't understand how I can pick up a telephone in Maine and talk to my mother in Memphis. It's just too weird.

Button, button, who's got the button?

It would help us simplifiers if the manufacturing industry came "down" to our standards. I am constantly amazed at how many "bells and whistles" component every technological product has to possess. I realize it is now an old joke about nobody being able to program the VCR, but the pattern is truly insidious.

I have what was in the late 1980s a top-of-the-line computer sewing machine. I still don't know how to use all its features. And I don't sew often enough to remember them when I learn them.
Every time I have to sew a buttonhole, I must take out the instruction manual and look up the instructions. I have presser feet and specialized attachments I not only will never use - I haven't even learned what they are for.

In spite of all the wonderful tasks my serger will perform, I still use it mainly for finishing seams - and for you sewing-impaired readers, that is like asking Meryl Streep to act in a first-grade play.

We bought a new smaller microwave so it takes up less counter space in the kitchen while we are trying to sell the house. Does anyone really use all those features? Sheesh! I was trying to explain to Ed, my resident culinary expert, how to cook bacon in the microwave, and he dismissed my whole lecture, saying, "I don't want to know that stuff. All I use the microwave for is defrosting and heating up food and drinks."

I'm currently on a rampage about how they make remotes. Like most families, we have several remotes - TV remotes, VCR/DVD remotes, stereo remotes...even a remote to turn on a ceiling fan and light. Each remote is different, and each time I have to complicate my life by trying to remember how each one works. I know there are "universal" remotes out there but they are just as bad and I have never been able to get them to work right. Yet these remotes are supposed to be simplifying our life by allowing our lazy selves to manipulate the machine without getting up. I suspect our kids can't even remember the days we had to get up and walk over to the TV and actually change a channel manually.

The cordless phone is another "miracle of technology." What was that Paul said in the Bible? He doesn't do what he wants to do, and does what he doesn't want to do? Yeah, my cordless phone is the same way. It has functions I will never use and never learn, yet the function I use the most, storing numbers in the digital phone book, limits itself to 30 numbers. Let me tell you, I can list 30 numbers I need to store in less than a minute - and have numbers I still want to add - but I'm limited to 30. The rest I will have to look up or memorize, I guess. And this is simplifying?

The cell phone is no better. There are apparently a few buttons on the side of the thing that I am accidentally pushing when I handle the phone. I think one of them turns off the ringer, but I'm not sure. How in the heck does one pick up a tiny phone like that and not push anything on the outside?

The CD player in my Toyota is another wonder of technology. I still can't remember how to skip a track, etc., without pushing several buttons. Not good when I'm driving.

So is technology simplifying our lives or making them more complicated? Are we more productive? Are we less or more stressed?

I will admit here that, with all my recent rants about clocks, it gives me some satisfaction to look on the wall and see basically the same kind of simple clock I grew up with. Round, 12 numbers, 2 big hands, one little hand. It even has the same numbers I grew up watching. I'm so glad they didn't change the numbers. It's nice that some things never change...not yet, anyway.

Time...and time again

Time....I can't escape it, but I can't seem to make peace with it. When I was a child taking piano lessons, I had to play a song about a grandfather clock. I looked up the lyrics today:

Written By: Henry Clay Work
Copyright Unknown

My grandfather's clock
Was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half
Than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn
Of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;

But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.

In watching its pendulum
Swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy;
And in childhood and manhood
The clock seemed to know,
And to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four
When he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride;

But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.

My grandfather said
That of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found;
For it wasted no time,
And had but one desire,
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place,
Not a frown upon its face,
And its hand never hung by its side.

But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.

It rang an alarm
In the dead of the night,
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit
Was pluming his flight,
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time,
With a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side.
But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.

The idea of a clock tick-tocking someone's life away used to freak me out back then, and I must say it gives me a nervous feeling to read the lyrics again now.

I have previously written about my bumpy relationship with time, but lately I have noticed an exacerbation of one of my worst traits - wishing time away. It is such a horrible thing to do that I hesitate even to admit it. And the worst thing about it is - I must be successful, because every Thursday when I leave work for my weekend of Friday and Saturday, I think, "The weeks are going faster and faster...time is slipping by me." Yet, on Sunday through Wednesday, I spend much of the day watching the clock and getting irritated by the slow movement of its hands.

I have come to the realization that these days I hold the majority of my conversations with clocks. I get to work about 5:30 a.m., so about 8:00 I start wishing the time away. The clock is right over my computer. I am an excellent conversationalist, and I hold my own weight in the dialogue spinning around in my head. (The clock, however, never has much to offer on its end other than its relentless "tick tock.") Isn't it lunch yet? No, it's 9:00. Just 9:00?! It ought to be at least 10 by now! Then when I get home for lunch at 10:30, I start up my conversation with the living room clock. Whoa, there, slow down, buddy! I'm trying to eat lunch here! I'm trying to relax! Why do you have to be so efficient now? At work you were dragging your feet (OK...hands) and now that I'm home for lunch, you seem to finally summon up some energy.

Maybe my work clock is low on batteries. Maybe my home clock takes vitamins.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't like the idea of wishing away minutes, hours, and days of my life.
Sure, I'd rather be home than at work. Yes, I like my job all right, but at times it can be boring and stressful, and, again, I'd rather be home even on a good workday.

I have to keep myself in the moment. I have to realize that every moment is a gift from God. I have to somehow learn the art of being able to look forward to the future without pining for it, and in the process losing sight of the "now." Even when the "now" is uncomfortable, stressful, or just plain boring.

Tick-tock. The clocks are mocking me. They're getting ready to usurp the dandelions.

The Whitten Road Property

Two months and counting and still no offer on the house. Ed is having phone consults with Ritchie from Coastline Homes about every other day regarding the plans for the new house. Ed designed a modular home that will be perfect for our lifestyle and Coastline has taken his ideas and transformed them into architectural scale drawings. It's strange to see a house plan out of Ed's head take shape on paper.

We haven't built the new house yet, of course; we haven't even bought the property. We are "holding" the property - almost 3 acres of land in Hancock. That is where our hearts are, but our wallets can't get involved until we sell this house. This puts us in a kind of limbo. Limbo is not a pleasant place to stay for any length of time - trust me. The state of limbo is not conducive to patience. It instigates arguments. When one is in limbo, one is kept off balance just enough that moods alternate between fear and pessimism. Occasionally limbo will erupt into sheer panic. Gurunet defines limbo in this way:

Limbo in Roman Catholic theology is located on the border of Hell, which explains the name chosen for it.

How apropos, don't you think? Just on the border of hell!

Lately we have begun to call our 3 acres in Hancock "The Whitten Road Property." This may seem strange when you learn that it is not located on Whitten Road. It is not even near a Whitten Road. There's a story behind this, of course.

When we were living in Memphis, we joined a small Episcopal Church in the heart of the city. After we got involved in the functions of the church, we would always hear talk about The Whitten Road Property. It was discussed at coffee hour. It was on the agenda at meetings. It was mentioned in the announcements. We finally learned that this church, located well inside the city limits of Memphis, had several years prior bought some acreage on the outskirts of Memphis on Whitten Road with the intentions of one day moving the congregation out there. They never took specific steps to do that, but the intention was always clear that "in the future" they would build a new church on The Whitten Road Property. With all the talk, though, we got the feeling that it would never happen. It became almost like a joke to Ed and me. Decades - yes, decades later - they still have not moved. We occasionally wonder if maybe they ended up selling The Whitten Road Property. Or maybe that would have admitted defeat, and as long as they owned the land, they would keep hope alive.

Through the years, churches we have attended have blessed us with the opportunity to create countless inside family jokes. This week, it is the Trinity Syndrome that I am reliving.
Trinity United Methodist was another Memphis church. It was a beautiful old building with a graying congregation. The few children who were there stayed in a dingy little nursery in the basement. Finally it was decided that the nursery needed sprucing up. They decided to paint it. This was accomplished speedily with little effort. Uh-oh...the nursery looked great, they said, but did anyone notice how the adjoining hall looked ugly now that the nursery was freshly painted? Well, yes, they did. Something had to be done. So they painted the hall. Can you see where I am going with this story? After the hall, they painted the other basement rooms...and on and on and eventually the church underwent several thousands of dollars' worth of renovation encompassing the entire building including the sanctuary. You have to be careful when you start fixing up. It makes the rest of the area look really drab in comparison.

That's what I'm involved with this week, our 10th week in limbo. I started painting a few places in the house, and I can't seem to find a stopping place.

So I'm stuck in the Trinity Syndrome, thinking all the while about our Whitten Road Property. In the state of limbo, one must keep hope alive!

It's perfect!

I'll freely admit that I am a perfectionist - in some things, that is. Not in cooking and not in housekeeping, where I will ignore defects in the "finished product." In grammar and spelling and punctuation, however, I demand absolute perfection. No apostrophe where it shouldn't be, and its corollary, an apostrophe where it should be - that's one of my mottos.

Excepting grammar, I have come to realize that sometimes it's hard to determine when something is perfect. Other times, I just feel it. When I create a poem for a homemade greeting card, my rough draft is edited many times before it is finalized. I can't put my finger on it, but I just know when it's perfect. Sometimes that perfection is achieved in a few minutes; sometimes it takes days.

As a quilter, I have always treasured the quilter's tradition of having a deliberate defect or error in an otherwise perfect quilt. According to tradition, the error is a reminder that only God is perfect. Of course, I joke that my quilts contain more than the required defects, and they are definitely not on purpose!

Ed told me once the word "perfect" as used in scripture ("Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect") means not the definition we assume, but means to be whole, complete. To be as it is supposed to be.

Caroline was over here on Friday. She continues to fascinate me in everything she says and does. I feel as if I am growing up all over again with her. (If I let myself loose to act as a kid, though, I am painfully reminded that I am an adult. Those climbing maze-like structures at the playground are definitely not made for a 50-year-old body!) Caroline loves this house. She loves the stairs, she loves the bow windows where she can wave goodbye to her mama, she loves the fact there are so many places to explore.

One of Caroline's favorite pastimes is to play with stickers. By "play," I mean she peels a sticker off its sheet of origin and sticks it on another piece of paper. I think she finds the challenge in this consists of being able to peel the sticker off in one piece without a tear and being able to adhere the sticker permanently to the paper and not her finger. On Friday, she found some stickers in her toybox here, expressed her usual joy over the discovery, excitedly accepted the green sheet of paper I offered her, and got down to business. I helped her peel off the first sticker. After she admired its beauty (which in itself made me chuckle; it was a gargoyle from Hunchback of Notre Dame), she transferred the sticker onto the green sheet of paper. Once it was secure, she inspected it, smiled, and said, "It's perfect!" For the next 15 minutes, she repeated the process, peeling each sticker off its sheet of origin and transferring it to the green sheet, and with utter satisfaction, saying, "It's perfect!" Of course, it wasn't perfect. Some stickers were torn. All were placed in a crooked manner. There was no rhyme or reason to the layout. But to Caroline, the whole thing was perfect. It reminded me so much of Genesis, where after creating the world, God looked at it and said it was good.

The scene was repeated in a way later when she sat on the steps to take off her sandals to prepare for her nap. She took each shoe off, then held her little feet out and wiggled them.
"Perfect!" she said. She reached down and pulled one foot close to her face and inspected it closely. She turned it over to look at the bottom. She did the same thing with her other foot. Then she put her feet together and wiggled her toes. "Perfect!" she repeated with enthusiasm. "I LOVE MY FEET!"

We're trying to get the house perfect so that a potential buyer will fall in love with it. Of course, it will never be perfect, and it is truly far from it. There are some things we will never fix because doing so would cost too much money. One room is a testament to the fact that paint has its limits in beautifying cheap paneling. The carpet we bought to replace the paint-stained carpet in the hallway was installed because it was inexpensive, not because of its color. We tried to clean out the dirt-floor basement yesterday, and I dare say that whoever looked at it would be amazed that we had accomplished anything, because it still looks like it needs a bulldozer.

Yes, this house will never be perfect. We can fall back on the old line that its imperfections give it character. We can remind ourselves that, after all, the house is over 100 years old. Every time I walk through certain areas in the house, I see more that we should/could do. Nothing is ever finished. The task of getting the house ready to sell will never be completed to our satisfaction.

Not to worry. Caroline loves this house just as it is. And she has high standards!

Attitude Part 2

I'm a complainer, unfortunately. A lot of it is done inside my head; some of it I actually say.
That has been bothering me recently. I think part of the lifestyle I am choosing to adopt is, as Oprah says, "an attitude of gratitude."

The next time I complain about having to get on the treadmill and exercise, I will be thankful that I can walk when others can't.

The next time I complain about my coworkers, I will be thankful I have a good job with great benefits and good pay, when others are out of work and have no insurance.

The next time I complain about having to clean and fix up this house to sell it, I will be thankful I have a roof over my head when others don't.

The next time I complain about gas prices, I will be thankful I have a car that works, when others have no transportation.

The next time I complain about my hair on a "bad hair day," I will be thankful I have a head of hair when there are women losing theirs to chemotherapy.

The next time I complain about a minor health problem, I will be thankful I have my general health when, as a medical transcriptionist, I see on a daily basis reports of horrible diseases and their effects.

The next time I worry about my kids, I will be thankful I was blessed with such wonderful children in the first place.

The next time I say, "I'm starving!" I will be thankful that is a hyperbole.

The next time I complain about Ed's annoying habits, I will be thankful he quit drinking over 20 years ago.

Life is good.

Simplicity versus kids

I have come to the conclusion you cannot have true peace, contentment, and simplicity if you have children. I'm trying valiantly to let go of my fears; in fact, my e-mail meditation was on that very subject today. What fears are involved in striving for simplicity?

In the first place, we have always tended to hoard. Why? Because we might need it someday!
Aha! Fear of being in want. This is true of my collection of quilt books as it is of my collection of rubber bands and clothes that no longer fit. I can't count the times Ed has told me, "I gave away that jacket two years ago and now I could sure use it." He then tends to want to replace the object, which, of course, defeats the whole purpose of paring down. We are trying to face this specific fear and transcend it.

Fear is closely connected to worry. Now here is where the kids come into the story! I worry about their relationships, their finances, their jobs. I worry about whether they are making the right decisions. I worry about their being involved in a car wreck. I worry about their health, their eating habits, their exercise habits, if they are seeing the doctor and dentist on a timely basis. I worry how loss will affect them, how grief will strike them. I worry that they will move far, far away and I won't get to see them....(Yes, Matt, this is about you, you West Coast dreamer!)

I just have two kids. I wonder if someone has, say, five kids, is their worry compounded? Or maybe my 2-kid worries stretch to fill the available "worry space"?

Then there's the idea of shopping. Buying and accumulating more is against everything we are trying to do for ourselves right now as we are downsizing. But the key words here are for ourselves. There's always a loophole in life, right? And I am the first one to take advantage of a loophole as fast as I take advantage of a cute denim pair of overalls with flower embroidery - on sale - in Caroline's size. I can (fairly easily) restrict things I buy for myself. But my kids and their spouses and especially my 2-year-old Caroline - that's where it gets hard.

My point is that once you have children, you have to work extra hard on simplifying, and I am not even sure it's possible to simplify as successfully as one could simplify without children.

My mother, of course, has mastered the art of simplifying for herself but not for her family. She will joyfully shop at the Goodwill for herself and send me an outfit from LL Bean for my birthday.

I remember that when Ed and I were in Weight Watchers once, some of the women were bemoaning the fact that their houses were filled with treats and it was too tempting for them to resist. The leader asked, "Why are there treats in the house?" One woman's answer underscored what I am trying to say here. She said, "Just because I'm on a diet, I shouldn't punish the children!" I remember at this point Ed turned to me and whispered, "So what is she teaching the children? To grow up as heavy as she is?"

Somewhere in my attempt to rein in my spending (and my effort to consider carefully what purchases I make) I must ask myself if my joy in showering Caroline with gifts may in effect be teaching her that "things" mean "happiness" and that "more things" mean "more happiness." She only a little girl, though! And most of what I buy consists of books - we all know how important those are.

{Sigh} Life is too complicated. Now I have to end here, because I have to get ready to celebrate the 27th birthday of our firstborn! I also have a little surprise gift for Sarah, and I got these cute Caillou books for Caroline...

That's a bunch of garbage!

It is a proven fact that the majority of people who decide to change their lives by living more simply also get more interested in the care and preservation of our environment. That has indeed happened to us. For instance, we bought canvas bags and now use those in the grocery instead of the plastic bags or paper sacks. We already recycle, even though our local town does not do anything, unfortunately, to encourage this practice.

For awhile, however, I have been considering the waste we generate, as a family and as a society. To illustrate: Today Ed and I ate at Wendy's for lunch. He got a combo meal with baked potato and I got a kid's meal and a small Frosty. Between the two of us, here's the waste we generated:

1. 10 napkins (half unused)
2. 3 plastic cups
3. 3 plastic cup lids
4. 2 straws
5. 2 foil burger wrappers
6. 1 small french fry cardboard container
7. 1 kid's meal sack
8. 2 spoons
9. 2 sour cream containers
10. 1 baked potato plastic container
11. 2 straw papers
12. 1 salt packet
13. 2 paper tray liners
14. 2 catsup miniature paper cups

That was just for us - 2 people. I then counted the other people eating in the restaurant. There were 30. Assuming each person had as much waste generation as each of us, it was easy to imagine the amount of trash this group of people generated. But that was just in 30 minutes. Now multiply that by the number of customers at Wendy's in our town today alone. Then multiply that by the Burger King customers, the McDonald's customers, the KFC customers, and every other fast food joint who served meals today in Ellsworth. Then multiply that to encompass the state of Maine - just for today. Then multiply that to encompass every fast food joint in the country today, then the world. And that's just for one day! It is totally incomprehensible to me how much trash that results day after day after day - just from fast food restaurants.

I felt so guilty about the waste. Then I read this:

In the world today more than 2 billion humans are now malnourished, and this is the largest number of hungry humans ever recorded in history (Neisheim, 1993; Bouis, 1995; World Health Organization, 1995)! Conceivably the numbers of malnourished will reach 3 to 5 billion in future decades.

I throw so much trash away without a second thought, and my belly is full. Suddenly I remembered a bumper sticker I saw once: Live simply, so others may simply live.

Living a life of simplicity, with integrity, is always expanded to include choices of how we spend our time, our money, our energy, the earth's resources, and yes, even whether we grab a handful of napkins at Wendy's and only use 5, or whether we only take the number of napkins we actually will use. Tiny decisions, global effects.

For those who are interested in some good tips on environmental responsibility, this is a good site: http://environment.about.com/od/greenliving/qt/ED05_waste.htm

Maybe Ed's not so crazy after all

Back in high school, a friend gave me a copy of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. It was a very popular book back then. (I hope I kept it when we gave away so many books!)

I just had to share the the daily meditation message I received in my e-mail today, as the quote is from that book. It reinforces Ed's desire to have a Timeless Room:

And the astronomer said, Master, what of Time? And he answered:
You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, and knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream. And, that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space....

Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet

The people who send out these daily meditations always make an interpretive comment about the selected passage of the day. Here is what they said:

Time is an imaginary line, drawn by imaginary beings, to note their imaginary position. All that ever has been, or ever will be, is right here, right now, in this timeless moment.

The originators of the daily e-mail are Bert and Christina Carson, and their web site is
http://www.your-inner-peace.com/

A free subscription to the daily e-mail can be obtained here:

http://www.your-inner-peace.com/DI-Subscription.html

Their meditations are always thought-provoking and provide a brief moment of tranquillity at the beginning of my day. I believe they have an impact on my journey to simplicity, if only to focus myself on the direction I am trying to take.

As far as Ed being not so crazy....well, in this he's pretty smart. In other things...I take the fifth!

Family Forever

When we moved from Tennessee to Maine, it was a major ordeal to coordinate. We were moving three cars as well as all our possessions. In my experience, moving has not been fun. In fact, moving is something I dreaded whenever Ed was assigned a new church. When we decided to move to Maine, I made Ed promise me that we would never move again! Content in our eternal housing stability, it didn't take us long to fill up this 3-story house with stuff, more stuff, and even more stuff. It didn't matter - we'd never move again!

Alas, fate intervened. Rachel got married and left. Matt is getting married and has left. We looked around us and agreed that it's time to find a small, cozy home for us old folks.

How on earth did we not think this would happen? We knew our house was huge, and we realized our kids would grow up and move out - at least we realized it on a subconscious level. It was more comfortable (but definitely not realistic) to imagine that it would always be the four of us - because as much as I enjoy seeing my kids fall in love and get married, it is a major source of loss for me. I miss them.

We four have had so much fun in this house! Matt used to play basketball in the driveway. Once he had his whole class over after a school play in which he was narrator. We still laugh about the time he was downstairs and saw a girl walking on the railroad tracks and ran up to his room to get a better view, hopped right up on the windowseat and ran smack dab into the window frame. Ed told him even though his nose may hurt, at least he didn't run into the window pane and fall into the yard two stories down. Matt and I stayed up countless nights reading Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby and The Jungle and Heart of Darkness. This house is where he recuperated from grueling jobs at Dunkin' Donuts and the grocery store. This is where he held his LAN parties - with computer cords snaking everywhere, even up to the third floor. This is where Matt finally grew taller than me. The pencil marks are still on the wall beside the sewing room door.

This house was a respite for Rachel, too. She was away in the dorms in Orono for most of our time here, but when she experienced stress with the College of Education at the university, it was here she could talk about it with us and sometimes cry. It was in this house that she watched countless football games on TV (along with Beverly Hills 90210). Here she played with her beloved Rusty dog, laughing when he climbed up on the couch to get a better view of a cat outside the window.

It was in this kitchen that Rachel proudly presented her new boyfriend, Chris, and I got to shake his hand for the second time (the first time was school open house years ago when he was Matt's science teacher). It was in our Timeless Room that Sarah and Matt excitedly told us their engagement news, after they returned from Schoodic Point where he proposed.

And it was here we continued the traditions for family Christmas. It may sound monotonous to outsiders, but these little rituals are what I will probably miss most. Daddy helps with lights, then leaves the rest to us until it's time for the angel on top. We have the annual argument of whether to use tinsel (Daddy likes it, Mama and kids don't). As we lift each ornament, we reminisce on its significance. Then we have another disagreement over the cardinals. Daddy thinks they are too old and disheveled and need to be thrown away. The kids absolutely adore those little birds and don't care how they look. So the birds manage to perch on the branches, slightly askew. We have another bird that is not a cardinal, and all its feathers have fallen off. The kids insist on its staying too. We humor them. The naked bird never stays upright. It ends up upside down within a few hours. Then before we open presents on Christmas Eve, we have to eat our special dinner of chili, cheese, and hard rolls. Rachel hates chili, but still insists on having it because it's tradition. She takes a few token bites. Of course, that's OK because on New Year's Day we have cabbage or greens and blackeyed peas and cornbread - a meal Matt hates.

I guess I can find consolation in the fact that these traditions started when the children were very young, and I know they will continue in our new house, and their houses as well, as they blend old traditions with the new.

Yes, we knew the children would grow up and move on, but having it actually happen catches us by surprise, in a way. They are our two important treasures. I hope their spouses realize how much we trust them to take care of our Rachel and Matt. I know Chris and Sarah are up to the challenge.

We will always be family. The family is just getting bigger. Now the house is ready for a new family to move in and start making memories. And Ed has promised me, that after this move, we will never move again!

Precious Dandelions

I don't know about the rest of the country, but it has rained here almost nonstop for over a week, and we are all pretty tired of it. I looked out the window the other day and saw the telltale signs - a yard covered with dandelions. Ed hadn't been able to mow the grass, and I was getting impatient. When we put the house on the market, I talked to Ed (OK, nagged Ed) about the importance of mowing the lawn. He hates to mow the lawn, and I can understand that. We have hills and slopes and rocks and sticks and bees and everything to make lawn mowing unpalatable, but with a "for sale" sign in the front yard, the lawn just has to be mowed on a regular basis now! And here he had the best, most valid excuse of all - it had rained and rained and rained.

I did notice how pretty the tulips and daffodils were, so many colors, so many shades. They are really gorgeous.

But those dandelions were everywhere. I think they were mocking me.

The next day 2-year-old Caroline came to visit. I was ecstatic that the rain decided to take a break and the sun was shining for a little while, and Caroline, as always, wanted to go outside and walk around the yard.

I said, "Look at all the pretty flowers!" Her eyes got big. "Yellow flowers!" she said.
"Yes," I said, "and pink, and orange, and red..." She immediately reached for a dandelion.
She pulled one up and clutched it tightly. I steered her toward the tulips. "These are tulips," I told her. "See how pretty the red colors are?" Caroline was not interested. She went back to the dandelions and plucked another one. And another one. My attempts to show my granddaughter the real flowers were met with only a cursory attention. She only had eyes for the little yellow, common, utterly irritating dandelions. I walked all over the yard with her while she toddled from one group of weeds to another, and her bouquet was getting fuller by the minute.

Finally she had plucked all her little hand could hold, and we started back to the house. Of course, as soon as she picks them she gives them away. One for Grammy, one for Pappy, one for Mama, even one for the dog. She presents her gifts as if they were the rarest orchids in the world - because to her, they are.

I receive an inspirational message by e-mail every day, and the one today made me think of Caroline and her precious dandelions. Here is what it said:

What a dawning appears to the man or woman who earnestly inquires, "Who is living life for me? Am I really thinking for myself or am I unknowingly projecting acquired ideas which may be all wrong?"

Vernon Howard
Psycho-Pictography

Why do I value the tulips over the dandelions? I guess society has taught me that dandelions are weeds (OK, my Dad may have had a hand in this idea - he was the weed expert!) which are inferior and tulips are real flowers and thus superior. I have never questioned that assumption. Why did Caroline go for the dandelions? Maybe because she had never seen a TV commercial touting tulips over dandelions, she had never opened a magazine article explaining which flowers were more important or more beautiful, she had never polled the neighbors to see which flower was more preferred. She just saw them, thought they were worthy of obtaining and worthy of giving to the people who mattered most to her.

In my quest for simplicity, when I make decisions over what is truly important to me, I will try to ignore what society might think is important. We tend to accumulate things based on what we have been told is important (it might be the biggest house, or car, or swimming pool, or the "right" designer clothes, or the highest salaried job) and rarely consider the fact that our inner spirit is leading us in a direction where choices are made on a deeper level and come from the inside and not the outside.

I look at Caroline in a different light now. I look at her as my teacher.

Thanks, Caroline. Love, Grammy.

Time and Silence

Time has always fascinated me. One of my favorite books is The Mirror, which is a novel about a young woman looking in her grandmother's mirror and being suddenly transported to her grandmother's body when her grandmother was a young woman. Time travel exchange. So intriguing! My mom is turning 82 years old. My dad died when he was 64. My mom has always been 8 years younger than my dad, and for years now she has been older than he ever was.

Ed says our mistake is in how we think of time - as linear. Even the word timeline denotes a linear route. I used to love to look at history books at the chronological timeline, seeing that first this happened, then this happened, then this happened. What I never thought about was expanding the timeline another direction. OK, so Columbus sailed in 1492 - what was happening in China then? Or Africa? I would love to take one year in history and find out what was happening everywhere in the world - in science, politics, religion, romance, literature, etc. To see the whole picture.

I know part of the simplicity idea is to be still and reflect on our lives and priorities and relationships. It is so hard for me to be still. Ed says I've always been that way. I have to be doing something. I watch TV and then I read during the commercials. He says I have to be still and listen to my inner voice. I tell him it just means I value time so much I don't want to waste it. He says my idea of wasting time is not a waste. Being still and doing nothing relaxes the spirit and revives the soul and gives me "time" outside the physical realm to reconnect my spirit with God.

It's hard for me to be still and do nothing. My mind keeps busy thinking of things I need to be doing.

When we had our downstairs repainted last year, we had to take out everything in the rooms, obviously, including everything on the wall. That included all the clocks. After the painting was completed, we put back everything - except we later realized we had neglected to put back a clock in our fireplace room. I kept nagging Ed to hang back the clock, and he balked. We finally left it without a clock, and we call it "The Timeless Room." It is supposed to be a relaxing area where you are forced to be without a clock (which is a reminder of time itself). I have to admit that sometimes I am little uncomfortable in that room. Oh, the chairs are comfy and in the chill it is heavenly to sit in front of the wood stove, but something makes me slightly jittery about not knowing what time it is.

Ed is the opposite. He'd be late to appointments if it weren't for me, sometimes, because he has no idea of time and doesn't really care. He wishes we had no time. He really hates daylight savings time going on and off, "as if we could make more daylight!" he says. Probably some of his anxiety comes from timed tests he has had to take all his life, which he never took well.

One day at work I found myself getting too stressed and I forced myself to stop typing and sit still and listen. It was a day I was by myself, so the only noise I heard was the ticking of my wall clock. As you can imagine, that stressed me more. Who was the comic book character that always said, "Time's a'wastin'!" That clock is ticking away and those seconds are gone forever. What did I accomplish in the last hour? The last day? The last week or month or year? When I think on those questions, I can even feel my heart beating faster! Those are anxiety-provoking questions for me.

This is definitely a lesson I have to learn if I want to bring simplicity and peace to my life. I have to make friends with time, that mysterious entity whose power seems to determine my outlook and increase my stress - in essence, it has set itself up as ruler of my life. The odd thing is that if I value time fully, how I use it should bring me a sense of peace and contentment, not panic.

Ed and I decided we need a "Timeless Room" in our new house too.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Matthew 12, excerpt:
What happens when an evil spirit comes out of a man? It goes through dry areas looking for a place to rest. But it doesn't find it. ⁴⁴Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives there, it finds the house empty. The house has been swept clean and put in order. ⁴⁵Then the evil spirit goes and takes with it seven other spirits more evil than itself. They go in and live there. That man is worse off than before.

OK, the above verse is talking demons but I find it strangely familiar. I think cleaning and uncluttering your house is getting rid of demons in a way, demonic mess that screws up your life, sucks your energy, time, and money until you are a weak, wimpy, useless shell.

I was thinking about that verse this week. I went on Amazon.com to order a couple of books for my grandchild, and the demons reared up. "Look at all the new books out! Think of all the room you have now that you've cleared out your house! Lots of room for lots of new books! Read! Buy! Spend!" And when I sit down with the Eddie Bauer catalog, the little demons pop out of there too, "Hey, look, since you gave away all those clothes to the Goodwill, look how much room you have in your closet! It's time to build your wardrobe back again! Buy! Order! It's on sale!"

Those who aim to simplify need to take these demons into account. They will try to get back in your house and will bring their friends with them. This is just a friendly warning. Get some earplugs. You're going to need them.

I want to be the boss

I've come to the conclusion that the more control you have over your own life, the less stressful it will be.

Take, for instance, heating oil. Here in New England the price goes up, up, up. Now with automobile gas, you can just choose to drive less, but you have to have heat. The oil company brings the oil to your house and they tell you how much you will pay. You can't barter, you can't "talk them down." It's whatever they're charging and that's it. We have a contract with an oil company and they come every so often and fill up the tank. We don't even know the current price until we get the bill in the mail the next day. That's stressful.

That's why Ed and I want to be as independent as possible. The more you depend on others to do something, the more control you give away. I guess I'm one of these people that they talk about when they say, "If you want it done right, do it yourself." Not that I can do it right, but at least I know to show up on time, what deadlines are, how important a certain task is, etc. (I'm thinking now of a cleaning lady who cleaned our kitchen recently and was supposed to come back in 3 days to clean a laundry sink - never showed, never called, never heard from again.)

Specifically with heating, Ed can buy the wood, saw the wood, split the wood, and store the wood. Unless, God forbid, he had an accident or something, our heating with wood is pretty much dependent on Ed himself doing his job (which he does). For the same reason, when we move we want to get a generator and not depend on the electric company to keep things going in the event of an ice storm or something like that. Self-reliance.

I figure there are two keys to keeping your life as stress-free as possible. The first is my favorite prayer, the Serenity Prayer, which is familiar to most everyone. Change the things you can, accept the things you can't change, and having the wisdom to know the difference. I can't change the price of heating oil, but I can certainly move to a small, cozy house that can be heated almost totally with wood.

The second key came from my friend Sally, and before her from Viktor Frankl in his book Man's Search for Meaning. Sally and I are medical transcriptionists and we "met" on an MT site, finally got to meet in person for a few days, and now "meet" again on the web. A question was asked on the site about how to deal with difficult dictators. Here is what Sally wrote:

When I get a dictator that is difficult for me, I always try to put myself in his/her shoes. Often I can hear in their voice that they are tired, rushed, frustrated, puzzled, concerned, happy, sad, or even if they just don't feel well. Sometimes, that alone helps me to "hear" better. I have even prayed for them. Theirs is not an easy job.

I can't repeat one sentence of dictation even at regular speed without tripping over my tongue. I don't know how they manage to get it out at the speed of light.

That second step for me is found in her quote. It is attitude. Sally has a remarkable attitude toward dealing with difficult dictators. She becomes empathetic and relates to them on a different, more personal level. The same theme was written by Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor. His book details what he learned from those horrible experiences. Here is what he had to say:

Everything can be taken from a man but ...the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

So if we control the things we can (trying to simplify our lives and making decisions that enhance this goal), accept the things we can't control (having an accepting, peace-filled attitude), and really pay attention to the difference between to two (wisdom), we will be so much better off!

The use of the Serenity Prayer and its corresponding attitude adjustment can affect all areas of our lives - from eating to finances to how we spend our time and energy. Oh, I have so much more growing to do!

The Gift and the Curse

Ed says that every gift is a curse and vice versa. All my experience has proven him right.
At this time of downsizing, however, I can see the wisdom of that clearly.

I'm thinking about choices today. When I was young, the grocery didn't offer the overwhelming amount of choices we have today. For instance, we had white bread, more white bread, maybe something like rye and Roman Meal. Go into a store today and take a look at the bread aisle.
Unbelievable! Even narrowing it down to sliced bread is too much. Whole wheat spelt? Organic? 10-grain, 7-grain, 12-grain? Oat? Regular whole wheat or soft? What about extra fiber whole wheat? Hearty whole wheat? Half the calories whole wheat? Half the carbs? Bread made especially for toasting? Sourdough? Bread with nuts or seeds? Pumpernickel? Cinnamon? Not to mention the other kinds of bread - the hot dog buns, hamburger buns, sub rolls, olive rolls, French and Italian breads, pita, tortillas, etc. It must be quite a culture shock for a person from a developing country to walk into an American grocery. That person is probably happy just to be able to eat bread - any kind of bread.

After we decided to probably build a house, we had to make countless choices. I HATE CHOICES! I have always had a hard time making up my mind about anything. Even in a restaurant, I will order what I want, then when the food arrives, look longingly at someone else's plate and I will wish I had ordered that instead. (I inherited that tendency from my grandfather, JW McDonald.) I could never serve on a jury. The prosecution would convince me of the perpretrator's guilt, and then the defense would come along and completely change my mind.

Back to the house. Choice of countertops. Ed's the cook, so the kitchen is his realm and I was along for the ride. Soapstone? Corian? Formica? Granite? Concrete? Tile? Marble? I had no idea there were so many choices for countertops. Forget color choices - it was hard enough to weigh and pros and cons of basic material!

OK, Ed decided on a butcher block countertop. He asked the salesperson to give him an idea on price comparison between butcher block and all the other types of counters. The lady said, "It depends." (Oh, by the way, I hate that expression too.) It depends on what? On what type of butcher block. She opened a humongous catalog of butcher block countertops. She said, "First you choose the wood. Maple and oak, for instance, are cheaper than the exotic woods." (Then she listed a whole bunch of woods, some I've heard of, some I haven't.) She continued. "Then after you narrow it down to the type of wood, you have to make some other choices." She pointed to a picture. "Here," she said, "you see the grain is balanced." She moved her finger down. "Here," she said, you see the grain is different." She showed us more grain pictures. (Looks like the grain in flour is not the only grain messing with my head!!) Then she turned a page. "OK, now right here," she said, "you can see a whole countertop without seams. A little cheaper than that, you can get seams. This picture shows evenly spaced seams. Cheaper still are non-evenly spaced seams." She turned another page. "Then you must choose the edge. We have straight edges, rounded edges, beveled edges..." And on and on she went. Amazing. And that's just for the countertops!

Just when my brain could hold no more information, we walked over to the floor section.
Here again - who on earth deserves to be faced with so many choices??? Pergo, cork floor, tile floor, stone floor, vinyl that looks like brick, vinyl that looks like wood, vinyl that looks like tile, tile that looks like vinyl, wood that looks like brick, vinyl that looks like stone, and - yes - bamboo, currently a popular choice. Then there's carpet.

Even narrowing the floor choices to wood, it's still too much. They have wide plank, medium plank, and one Ed likes which consists of cuts of the end of 2 x 4's made to look like brick. They even sell special wood planks hand scraped by Amish men who signed the back of each plank! There are certain finishes available, too. Here's one web site's version:

Factory Prefinished Hardwood Flooring
Wood floors that have been factory finished before they are installed.

UV-cured � Factory finishes that are cured with Ultra Violet lights versus heat.

Polyurethane � A clear, tough and durable finish that is applied as a wear layer.

Acrylic-urethane � A slightly different chemical make up than Polyurethane with the same benefits.

Ceramic � Advanced technology that allows the use of space-age ceramics to increase the abrasion resistance of the wear layer. See Award Hardwood Floors WearMax finish.

Aluminum Oxide � Added to the urethane finish for increased abrasion resistance of the wear layer, which is becoming extremely popular on the better grade wood floors.

Acrylic Impregnated � Acrylic monomers are injected into the cell structure of the wood to give increased hardness and then finished with a wear layer over the wood.

Good grief!!!!! We have to choose either white oak, American maple, Brazilian cherry, Brazilian teak, American cherry, ash, Appaloosa, hickory, mahogany, birch, pecan, walnut - and each of these woods is subdivided into styles and finishes, e.g., "rustic," and then you have the color variations and tones.

The thing that makes this so hard is that it is different than choosing a loaf of bread. This will be very expensive and whatever decision we make we will be stuck with for a long time.

I just can't stand it! I'm trying to simplify and all these choices do not make it simple!!

Stranger in our Midst

One of my favorite things to do these days when I'm hanging around the house is to watch the cars go by and see if they slow down to look at the house when they see the "for sale" sign. I can't see the drivers' faces, but I consider it a hopeful sign that they slowed down to look.

Late yesterday afternoon Ed was preparing dinner in the kitchen when he commented, "There's a lady who looks like she's turning around in our driveway."
"Really?!" I said. "Is she just turning around or did she stop?"
"She's still there," said Ed, turning toward the stove. "She backed in."
"Is she looking at the "for sale" sign?" I asked.
"How do I know?" he said as he stirred a pot.
I ran to the sink which overlooks the driveway. The window there is a bay window which juts out and I had to really contort my neck to get a good look. The lady (I think it was a lady, could have been a man) was definitely stopped at the edge of the driveway, close enough to read the phone number on the sign. Dang it, I wished I had an easier view!
"I can't see the license plate," I murmured. "I can't tell if it is out of state." (Ed has this idea that the house is too expensive for locals and he thinks an out-of-stater will buy it.)
The lady just sat there. Then I saw a flash of white.
"Hey! She's got paper! Maybe she's writing down the Alex's phone number!" (Alex is our real estate agent.)
Then I frowned. "It could be a map, though. Maybe she's lost."
Ed turned around. "Maybe she'll get out and walk around the yard like those people did a couple of weeks ago."
I stepped back to relieve my neck muscles, then took up my position again.
"She's still there fooling with the paper. Is she interested or not? We don't even know if she stopped because of the "for sale" sign or for something else. Lots of people stop in driveways to turn around for one reason or another."
Ed smiled. "Maybe she'll ring the doorbell at any minute!"
I said, "Maybe she's calling Alex from our driveway!" We laughed.
I looked again. "OK, she's pulling out. She's gone."
Oh, well. It was pleasant little diversion.

Less than 30 seconds later our phone rang. "Hey, it's Alex," he said. "Can I show your house Monday at 8:30? Someone just called me from your driveway."

Mixed Messages

When we first decided to start downsizing, I bought my husband a small sign that says "SIMPLIFY" and he put it where he could see it every day. (I got it mainly to remind him not to order a bunch of stuff from catalogs.)

I saw a different sign for sale yesterday. It simply said, "INDULGE." Isn't that just like our society? SIMPLIFY yet INDULGE. Kind of like the popular women's magazines which feature an article on how to lose weight right next to a recipe for a rich chocolate cake. I laughingly told Ed I would buy the INDULGE sign and he could hang it next to the SIMPLIFY sign and every day decide which sign he wanted to consider his advice for the day.

We are constantly bombarded by the written and broadcast media, who send very clear messages that we are to treat ourselves, whether it's with a luxurious shampoo or a car with a DVD player in it. Our very economy is based on consumption. Didn't George Bush give similar advice to the country after 9/11 - buy, buy, buy to help the economy?

My sister's blog today is bemoaning the media's messages to and influence on our children regarding their bodies and skills. I too am fed up with the media today. I guess our goal is to teach our kids and grandkids to weigh carefully what they are hearing and reading and use common sense and wisdom to help discern the direction their lives should take.

Journey to simplicity cannot be undertaken lightly, for there are distractions at every turn in the road.

Moose nightmare

After our "for sale" sign went up in the front yard, I had a nightmare. I dreamt I was walking down an isolated country road and saw moose up ahead. Now I just love moose! I always look forward to spotting one when we are driving around in that part of Maine. In the dream, as I came closer to the moose, I could see they were menacing with red eyes. They terrified me, as they looked like they wanted to attack, so I turned around and tried to nonchalantly walk back down the road, casting quick glances behind me. When I felt assured they were not chasing me, I started running until they were out of sight.

This nightmare was not hard to interpret. I love the idea of selling the house and moving to a smaller one, just like I love to see moose. But once the "for sale" sign hit the yard, I panicked. Maybe my desire is clouding my reason - what if this move is dangerous? What if it's the wrong decision? What if...what if...what if.... and I want to turn and run.

The subconscious mind is certainly intriguing!