PNewL PNewS
Volume 23 No. 4 “All the pnews that phits.” October
2015
What is Hard Work?
I got an email from a woman I have been
working with who wrote, Thank you for your hard work. It stopped me in my
tracks. Some things take me years to “get.” Hard work? What is hard work? I am
not a brain surgeon or otherwise saving lives. I am not digging ditches or
building houses. I am not a first responder. I am not raising or teaching small children.
I do not consider anything I have done in my work life as particularly hard.
Sometimes it was annoying—working on the west coast and getting phone calls
returned to my home at 5am PT from the east coast’s 8am and trying to sound
like I was already at my desk was exhausting and challenging but it was not
really hard. Spelling medical terms or finding doctors who would talk to me was
frustrating but it did not raise a sweat.
I have been working on a project that has
been a lot of fun and is one of those experiences that makes me feel good about
collaboration. There have been a number of balls to keep in the air and things
to remember but it has been so much fun and wound up being a big success–where’s the hard part? I am connecting with people who I might not have met
otherwise. I reached out to people in the community I might have been
intimidated by under other circumstances so it was not hard—it was…am I really
going to say it? Empowering.
On a completely unrelated subject but stay
with me here, this summer I learned what people have said all these years about
mint. Pardon my language but it is a royal pain in the ass and I regret the day
I thought, “How bad can it be?” If the root structure carried electricity, it
would power Weaverville and that covers some territory. I planted one
plant…something like pineapple mint, which I never really figured out how to
use…in a 4x8 slightly raised bed. It took over. I spent an hour or so pulling
it out this afternoon. I will confess—that
felt like hard work, but it was only an hour.
I guess what one considers hard work is
personal. Now that I think of it, getting the doublewide ready for tenants was
and still is hard because people don’t do what they say they are going to do,
they don’t return phone calls, they really don’t want to work on 40 year old
doublewides, but it feels a little more like torture than hard work. The nice
man who cleaned up all the overactive growth in my yard in a mere four hours
didn’t seem to find it all that hard though it might have killed me, or more
likely never would have happened.
Perhaps I think hard work must be physical
and painful and messy. Perhaps the hard work I have done I don’t remember
because the relief of it being over is what I remember. Perhaps it’s all one’s
perspective.
Things I am
Learning
&
Miscellaneous Observations
• One of the joys of living where I live is the
renewal of a friendship from high school. Patsy and her husband Ernie are great
friends and frequent dining companions when they are in town. One of their
passions is television so you can imagine their horror when I disconnected my
satellite dish—something they call my "TV situation." Recently, Patsy
emailed that it was time for me to “consider prioritizing the role of
television in a rich, fulfilled life.”
• I came across the names of my San Anselmo
neighbors in my address book and wondered about them. We were neighbors for 15
years+ and we were friendly but we didn’t hang out. They were older
and…different. She once said she thought my yard looked great despite the fact
that it was all weeds. Another time, she offered to take some stuff I had left
in my driveway too long to the dump. Her husband didn’t talk much and didn’t
have many teeth and he went somewhere in a rumbly truck at dawn most
mornings…but he was friendly. Seeing their names, I googled them. They didn’t
strike me as folks who would have much of an internet presence. I don’t know
why but I was struck hard to find Berne’s obituary dated 6/22/08 (Don seems to
be still alive and living in the same house). I was probably in California
then, maybe even driving by to check on the old neighborhood. It was also the
June I moved to North Carolina. It was a poignant search.
• The
latest foster dog is still here and I can’t seem to figure out how to send him
on his way. I signed up for two weeks but then the rains hit South Carolina and
the shelter was inundated with SC shelter animals and I just couldn’t imagine
forcing them to take one more. Then Frankie the nervous (aren’t they all?) Chihuahua
started biting folks in the neighborhood. He was surrendered by his previous
family for biting one of the children. At my house, he is precious. I enjoy his
company—he’s cuddle-y and he’s darling—he plays tug o’ war all day with Roger.
Outside, he is wretched. He barks the whole time. If he gets off leash, he
literally disappears. He is so fast he can be three properties away before I
finish tying my shoes. He’s so little
and so cute everyone thinks he’s harmless which is when the biting begins.
[Since the above was written, I finally said Enough. I had come to love Frankie
but I knew the time had come for him to move on. I told the Shelter when I was
bringing him in and enjoyed our final days together. I took him in and waited
for them to rearrange crates. I set him in one with tears streaming down my
face and Frankie shaking like a leaf and looking a little like he was thinking
“Traitor!” By the time I got home, there was a message in the Daily Begging
letter saying he’d been snapped up by another foster home. Yay!]
• As I am starting to go through paperwork in
my effort to eliminate the overwhelm, I have come across files that have not been
touched in years. It’s fascinating. From a file marked “Fun Stuff: PNewS”: Reduce
discomfort from poison ivy by rubbing the rash with the inside of a banana peel
(USA Today, 2009) I recycled the rest as it was all crazily out of date.
• Lately I have been watching
people near to me go through life changing experiences and it gives me pause. I
keep thinking, these are things that will affect the rest of their lives. David
emailed while having chemo. Elspeth, Andy and Henry came home with a 4-day-old
baby. Others are experiencing the later days of their parents or the old age
wake up calls themselves. It’s one of those times that life feels Big and Real.
Meanwhile, I am rolling up socks and shredding old bank statements which is fine with me.
• At the last meeting of the
itty bitty knitting group, one member said she thought she might have enough
yarn to last her the rest of her life…or something like that. I panicked. Does
that mean we have to stop buying yarn? Noooooooooooooo!
• For the last few issues of
this PNewSletter, I have been
battling with horizontal lines that didn’t seem to want to go away. I was so
frustrated. Nothing I did did anything to them—I could not delete, I could not erase. Finally, I googled it and there
it was! The internet is amazing. (In case you were wondering, the line was no
longer a line--it had morphed into a border. You go to the border section,
choose None and kaboom: Gone!)
• It occurred to me as I
walked with Roger this morning that I have lived in places for over 30 years
where every single morning is gorgeous and often different. I am feeling that
thanks-giving season coming on.
The WNC Version of Life-changing Decluttering
In case some of you missed it, Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up: the
Japanese Art of Decluttering by Marie Kondo is a popular new book. I was
skeptical, but Jean said she learned some things but hadn’t put any of them to
use. Ha. (Jill the librarian confirmed that she had not heard of anyone who had
actually followed through on suggestions made in the book.) Still, I was
inspired.
So I folded all my t-shirts and stood them
up in the drawer and then I was really inspired. It sounds goofy but it works—I
can now see all my t-shirts—and I have a LOT (fewer than I had before but still
a lot)—and now I don’t wear the same ones over and over. Socks? OMG—I have
great socks and they have been separated and hiding all these years. There is
even a yellow section of socks from my sock dyeing period. Who knew?
Then I started going through my closet,
which I dreaded. When I looked at the pile I was giving away, I was really
surprised. The basic concept from the book is to only keep what you love, which
I amended to only keep what fits and looks okay. I have some clothes I love but
look like hell on me so they are going to some other home where the person—and
my clothes—may shine.
My clothes closet is still not finished. I
have left the shoes and blue jeans until later. I wandered in there this
morning and found that I actually own silver shoes, which will come in handy
for an event next week, and inside the shoes? A necklace I have been looking
for…well, for longer than I care to admit.
And
this is just the beginning—yesterday I took a stack of towels (I swear they
have been multiply-ing in my linen closet!) and clothes from Ray’s to the
homeless shelter, plus boxes and boxes to the recycling center. Today, I have
boxes and boxes of books to take to the library—some of them belong to the
library but that’s another story…Last night, instead of doing something fun,
found me going through files and recycling or sending the contents to the
shredder. (My shredder says it takes five pages at a time. Au contraire…I’m shredding two pages at a time. Sigh. But that is
not quenching the fire to de-clutter!)
I have heard people speak (and it was
probably also in this book) of how eliminating a lot of miscellaneous stuff
feels like relieving a burden. I was not then but am now a believer. I will
always have a lot of stuff. It is the lot in life for a crafty type who is also
the offspring of two packrats, but I am enjoying the feeling of cleaning out a
lot of too much. I own a queen size bed and a full guest bed—how many sets of
single sheets do I need? And where did they come from? And why have I saved
them?
I
think the key to my success is this: when dealing with any subset---blouses,
for instance--bring them ALL out of the closet and lay them on the bed (get rid
of the foster Chihuahua first), and then put them back in one at a time. It has
made all the difference for me.
I so hope I can keep this up and see it
through. But now the sun is out and that distracts me. Rain returns tomorrow
night and that’s not all bad.
Happy Autumn Y’all!
“I want people to remember me for
laughter…
and that I was a good guy.” Art Buchwald
