September gone ... already.

Thirty days hath September!

*sigh*

I love the fact we have moved into Fall.  

I am not in love with the fact that September 2012 is soon to disappear!

Is this the "march of time?"

Will the passing of this month receive its proper recognition?

Will we see September 2012 again?

Never again.

Focusing on the passage of time can be a very sobering experience.

So, everyone, make October count!!

Sleep

OK,

so which one of you is it! 

Seriously,

There will be no negative consequences to owning up.

I just need to know who is doing this.

Getting a full night's sleep is getting harder and harder.  Maybe one night in seven is normal.  Sometimes I can't settle down for sleep, sometimes I get to sleep and then wake for about 2 hours in the middle of the night, and sometimes (my all time "favorite" ... not ...) I wake at 4:00 for the rest of the darn day.  And if I am really "lucky" I can have a mix of these situations.

And, of course, I am tired in the middle of the day as a result ... and, no, I am not a napper.  I have tried.  My eyes are closed, my body is relaxed, but I am not sleeping.

I am trying to determine the cause.

I like the idea above,

 because it puts the blame on someone else

 (so typical in our society, don't you think?)

  Maybe I need more exercise.

Nope ... I get plenty now.

  Maybe my head is filled with worry.  

Hmmm ... sometimes that is true but not all the time.  

Maybe I need less sleep now 'cause I am older.

  They say as we age we need less sleep.

  Crap!

 I definitely don't like that reason. I am not that old!

  And if you looked at my mom, she sleeps all the time!

So, now, which one of you is it?  And how do I get out of your dreams!!

The Holiday Season - looming ahead

Warning!
  If you are a big fan of the coming holiday season,
 you might want to skip this post.

With the beauty of Fall and the magnificence of Winter (I hope ... )

 comes another season that is separate from nature.
The Holiday Season. 

(Already???
Didn't I put away those darn Christmas decorations just last week??)

If you are anything like me your reaction to the Holiday Season is complex.  I feel I am facing down Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years all in the space of about 2 months!

I know, I know ... it is only September.  I can hear your thoughts: aren't you rushing things a bit?

Well, not really.  The stores are stocking Halloween paraphernalia now.  By October 1st  Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff will be all over the place.  In fact, they will start putting the Christmas stuff on mark-down by December 1. I have even seen a few references in blogs that I read about preparing for the holiday season.

"Bah! Humbug!"  

For the last 2 holiday seasons (2010 and 2011) ... what I really wanted to do was skip the whole thing.  But is that even possible living on planet earth!

Isn't that sad?

How did this happen to me?  

I do enjoy the company of friends and family who are in a celebratory mood,

 but there is so much I feel I could skip.

I don't think the "Bah Humbug" mood happened over night.  I think it has been growing steadily over the years.

Thinking back to when my kids were young, I decorated for most holidays - Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas/New Years.  Christmas decorating was the BIGGY!  All my regular stuff got packed away to be replaced with green and red, and gold and silver STUFF!!  (There's that word again.)

For about 10 years I have been backing down all the decorating.  I turned a real corner Christmas 2010.  That year mom was sick from Thanksgiving until Christmas.  There were no decorations, cards, wrapped gifts, parties, cookie baking ... nothing, until the day I brought her home - December 23rd!  The whole month of December I wanted to stop the clock so I could catch up.  But Christmas still came or the spirit of Christmas arrived on the day mom came home.

Even Christmas 2011 was different.  Mom was newly placed in Assisted Living that December - I still felt time-constrained to do the traditional holiday prep.  New holiday traditions were forced to evolve.  And the spirit of the season still arrived - just looking different.

I think in the spirit of my new "pitch it, donate it, minimize it" mood, I will prepare and participate in the Holiday Season this way:

• I will buy a precooked Thanksgiving turkey and limit the side dishes to just a few. (Maybe I will eventually evolve to celebrating with dinner out as some have suggested.)
• I will buy a Thanksgiving dessert - maybe cheese cake (I feel so bold picking cheese cake over apple pie.)
• I will drag those 8 boxes of Christmas decorations out and shrink them down to 3 or 4 (there used to be 15 boxes - big boxes - ostentatious!  To be fair I inherited a bunch of Christmas stuff from my Christmas-loving mother-in-law so that holiday clutter was enormous for a few years.)
• I'll decorate a tree, put a wreath on the door,  mount the candle lights in each window, and put a festive something on my kitchen table.  I will stop there. 
• Christmas dinner will be much like Thanksgiving - easy!
• There will be gifts (I like that part - especially wrapping and giving), but I will skip sending cards (there are a few hours saved!)
• I will avoid the overly decorated Malls with the invasive holiday music.
• And I will get mom into the car one evening in December for a ride around to see local Christmas lights - she likes that.

hmm ... seems like a lot of bullets!

No matter.  I swear to you this list is WAY DOWN from 10 years ago ... scrooge-like by comparison.

Maybe if I stick to only this ... I won't feel like I need to move to another planet this season!

Confession Time

So here is the question!

If you were stranded on a tropical island by yourself and you had a TV set that brought in only one show (suspending reality a bit - because electricity would be a problem) ...

Wait ... let me expand the question.

If you were stranded on a tropical island by yourself, and you had a TV set that brought in only one show, and you had one of those bicycle generators attached to the TV so that you could power the picture with your peddling ...

(you have the picture, right?)

... if you had all that ... what show would you want on that TV?

(time for thinking ...  ...   ... ...)

(this is an important question ... think a bit more)

If you said something like the evening news, I can't help wondering how you got lost reading my blog!

If you said "Dancing With the Stars" you are in the right place!  

Truly, I totally enjoy watching this show.  If you are appalled, please don't let me know. This is a bit of a confession. I love living in my own reality of thinking that everyone loves this show!

And what is not to like:

• talent - those professional dancers are amazing dancers and choreographers!
• costumes - in my next life I want to have the body to wear one of those costumes
• entertainment - they have some great guest entertainers on the show (well, usually - tonight they had Justin Bieber - are all his fans nuts?  The kid can not sing!!)

Of course, admitting that I love "Dancing With the Stars" is something that I usually don't broadcast.  But no one is reading this post, so I am safe!  :-)

Anyway, this week started the new Dancing season!  I am in heaven.

What would be the show worth peddling your bicycle for?

Downsizing the onion!

I have talked about clutter a number of times.  It just keeps popping up again and again and again.  On my blog I have 13 (now 14) postings about de-cluttering.  It pops up in my mind way more than that.   It is like a baby chick picking its way out of a shell - something in me just wants to be something else.

So I have been cleaning out again.  This time the intent not to make more space in my current home, but to live in less home somewhere else.  We don't use the 2,100 feet of living space we have now.  We live in about 800 to 1000 feet of it.

And what is the rest of the space doing?

It is a close, cheap storage unit for stuff that is never used, or touched, or seen, or even remembered!!  We cool it in the summer and warming it in the winter and collect dust on it through all the seasons (dust that it heated and cooled as well.)

I grow very weary of it all!

Oh, don't get me wrong. I love my dear town house.  It is located in a lovely safe neighborhood.  It has housed growing children, adult children who bounced back briefly, and two mothers who needed help at end of life.  It has been the home for 7 of our cats over the 25+ years and a regular second home for my 3 grand dogs.  In the next year it will house my son and his wife for awhile as they spruce up their own town house, sell it and move closer to jobs.  This home has been a safe haven for more than just my husband and I.

I have always said, "Oh, we will be in this house another 10 years probably."  Now ... maybe a year or two.

I will be sad to leave this house as it is filled with many great memories (and a few not so great) ... but I won't be sad to stop:

• cleaning 4 bedrooms
• cleaning 3.5 bathrooms
• cleaning all the other spaces
• climbing steps, steps and more steps
• heating and cooling 1000+ feet of living space we don't need filled with things we don't need

I want to spend my time differently. 

I have also shifted my focus in other ways.  Over the last year I have discovered an unintentional mind shift away from these faulty ideas I nurtured for so many years:

• more is good (we had 6 functioning TVs - now we have 2 and we seldom watch those)
• newer is better (used is cheaper - saved $250 dollars on a used loom - "used a few times" kind of used.)
• expensive must mean quality (we used to have a $100 coffee maker - now we have the $30 one - they break at about the same speed)
• "want" must be "need" (I used to have a melon baller, had to have a melon baller ... seriously, who really needs a melon baller, I ask you.) 
• pricey vacations are the only way to unwind (pricey vacations require pricey salaries with headachy strings attached - fewer headaches mean less need to escape.)

Those are small changes in attitude that indicate big changes for me.  

So like pealing away the layers of an onion, I am making changes and sorting through the stuff of a life time - in both my mind and my environment.

And this time my de-cluttering is a sign of a root change in me.

Sharing the food of the Gods

Meet my Caramel Nut Apple

It is Fall 

(well, it feels like Fall here), 

and it is time for my yearly treat, 

food I consider the food of the Gods.

Tasty caramel and nut covered apple on a stick.
Hense the name!  :-)

Not that stupid red candy coating.
No, no ...  mine has a thick coating of
caramel and nuts.

A tasty bite.
Healthy too.
Apple is good for you.
  Nuts are protein.
Given enough time,
 I could sell you on the benefits of caramel.

The apple is looking slimmer.
(Small thought passed my brain that
maybe I am not looking slimmer.)
Begone Evil Devil Thoughts  

Plate licked clean!
(Yes, I put my tongue on the plate and licked.)
All gone - finished by 11:30 am in the morning ...
just minutes after the apple was carried into the house.

So now

 I am sure you are wondering where the "sharing" part of this post begins.

It doesn't. I lied. 

I had no intention of sharing that lovely caramel nut apple with anyone!

Welcome Fall!!!

Hiking with friends and nature

The secret to a rich life

 is to have more beginnings

 than endings.

Dave Weinbaum

Today was the first hike of knitting friends.

  We met for a walk at Middle Patuxent Environmental Area in Howard County, Maryland.

  The day was wonderfully cool, with bright sun and deep shaded and tons of green

 ... all provided by Mother Nature.

Walking in the woods was something my husband and I really enjoyed doing years ago.

  We had gotten away from it as his eye sight began to fail.

  But I always missed those hiking vacations.

Following a path that sometimes was wide,

 and sometimes was narrow ... 

sometimes was steep and sometimes was flat ... 

arriving at a fork in the woods

 and trying to decide the best way to go ... 

Being grateful for a path marker that confirms - 

Yes, this is the path we expect you to be on!!

Good Job!!

And there are always choices when you come to the fork in the woods.

  Sometimes those choices are confusing ... 

like that blue arrow that is pointing to the sky!  

Having sharing time with friends who enjoy the same beautiful surroundings,

 who want a little bit of adventure,

 who are curious to also see what is around the next bend ...

That is what I did today.  

I will admit my legs from the knees down are a bit tired,

 but my spirit is smiling broadly.

  Nature and friends ... an unbeatable combination.