Finding Your Smile

It's a bit rare to see the Queen of England in a full laughing smile. Obviously, she does laugh on occasion. I've always admired the Queen. I believe she is a strong and duty bound woman. She didn't wish to be the queen, just as her father hadn't wanted to be king. She loved her father very much, but felt that he wasn't a strong man. Elizabeth would do her duty to the best of her abilities and does until this very day. I've often thought of how incredibly difficult that duty must've often been. How many heartaches, disappointments and very hard decisions she had to face. The fact is, not station or wealth or beauty or intelligence, nothing makes us humans immune to life's troubles.

I certainly qualify as human. I can celebrate my unhappiness about life's zingers with the best of them, hold myself the biggest pity party. The kind where you sip from the cup of sadness, dance on the table of defeat and wake up with a hellava hangover.  My oldest friend is struggling through a terrible illness, the season at the summer cabin that I love is over, the children that I love have problems and heartaches, the hubby and I are getting old and have the short term memories of gnats...it's just not frickin' fair.  I taught my children that life is not fair but that was for them, not me...wasn't it?

Some of life's aggravations are just that, miniscule and some are humongous tragedies. I have a problem, however, with people that just refuse to and can't find their smile. The world is funny, you have to admit. There are the delightful children, the animals and the just plain goofiness of people. Even in the gravest and most serious situation, it's hard not to laugh when someone stumps their toe.

One of the things that I do when I'm down is read quotes. It always eventually makes me smile to read what other people do and say to combat the sad and unpleasant things in their lives. I really appreciated the faded copy of a quote on my mother-in-law's bathroom wall...it was so her and it was funny. One day as I sat all sad and weary, a little voice came to me and said Cheer up, things could be worse. So I did, I cheered up and things got worse.

Charles Shultz quoted that he vowed to only dread one day at a time...poor old Charlie Brown. If it wasn't for bad luck he would have none at all. He certainly must've helped his creator find his smile.   W.C. Fields said, I cook with wine. Sometimes I even put some in the food.  Makes me laugh and reminds me of when a dear friend and I get together to cook a shared supper.

It's very important to never stop searching for your smile.  A day without a single one is indeed a bad day.  Those days do happen, they are there. Don't let such a day be because you just didn't look hard enough for even one small piece of joy. 

They might not need me; but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.-----Emily Dickinson

Nesters

Before the hubby and I retired, I thought that I really wanted to have a travel trailer and just move around, place to place for weeks at a time. Never a fan of motels or hotels, we were always campers, owned various camping vehicles from pop-ups to a small motor home. We dragged our poor bored children around everywhere within our limited affordability. "Oh look...isn't that beautiful/amazing/cool?"  I have to admit that they all do appreciate nature and the outdoors.

As we began our adventures, dragging our long travel trailer from one new place to the next, it didn't take me all that long to realize...as much as I loved seeing the things that I'd never seen, visiting those interesting places, I wasn't ever going to be near the traveler that I dreamed I would be.  The truth is, I'm an incurable nester.  Whether it's a huge campground near the Grand Canyon or  a spot at the local lake, once I'm all set up and settled in, I don't want to leave.  I get all my little thingees squared away, set up the lawn chairs and I hate to tear it all apart and move along. And now that we don't have the kids, not even a sweet dog baby any longer, I've become a fan of motels.  Throw your suitcase in, turn on the AC and TV and you're set. 

So, these evolving times in our life have brought us to the lucky and happy situation of having a summer cabin in the Colorado cool and our home in Texas, splitting our time close to half and half. Guess what?  This old bird still doesn't like to leave either nest.  It's the end of the summer season here at the cabin, it's been a great and cool year. Family and friends and things we've lived with for years are calling us back home.  It's time to go home and yet...I'm having big separation pains.  Typically, I've feathered this small nest in the high country just to our liking. I'm feeling sad at the friends here we'll leave and all the little things...the birds that come to the water bowl on the porch, the rose that is flourishing on the corner of the house, the horses and antelope in the meadow, the mountains and the mornings and evenings that make you dig out your sweater.

Of course, I'll be so glad to see everyone and our Texas home. By Spring and the time to return, I'll be looking sadly at the nice St. Augustine yard and hesitating to leave there...it's the curse of the nester.  Birds migrate don't they? Should be a good thing but as I look at the little hummingbird at the window,  who seems to be wondering where the heck did that sweet stuff go, I feel a tug at my heart.

Sigh-h, another season ending, but always a hope for next year.

Happiness

It is an overwhelming, complicated and frustrating world for certain. There are frightening events happening everyday, outrageous things, things that make us say what-t-at?  Peace and happiness are states very hard to reach and to hold on to, for most of us average humans.  Far wiser people than I, have said much about the pursuit of happiness. You know, that constitutional guarantee...not the happiness itself, just the right to pursue it.

I've always been impressed by the ability of some smart folks to lay out such pearls of wisdom in just a few words.  I love quotes and they often inspire a whole train of thought that makes me ponder the answers to life's vast questions.  My quote this week, made well over seventy five years ago, is a great one.  It has to do with the small things, not the huge mistakes that we make, the big destructive behavior that we preform but just the stupid little things that we seem to repeat that make our lives very frustrating.  Reminds me of another of my very favorites that more or less says, Don't keep repeating the same behavior and thinking you will get different results.

I'm just repeating the wisdom of many, you are truly the only person that can make yourself happy, you are responsible for your own happiness, no matter what life if throwing at you.  I'm more or less saying what I said in an earlier blog about getting organized, one little step at a time.  Don't try to remake your whole life, your bad habits or destructive attitudes in one day.  Pick some small thing that, if you put your mind to it, you could either improve or plain stop it...quit repeating that behavior.  Sometimes the organizing thing is very close to the frustration of your life. In other words, if you just make a solemn promise to yourself,  "I will never walk in this house and put the car keys anywhere but right there on that hook"....immediately you are a touch more organized but more important, you are far less frustrated and therefore a touch happier. 

Sometimes being happier is about rewards and sometimes it is about discipline.  If you're a frustrated writer and keep telling yourself, I don't have time or when I get a nice place to sit and write...stop it today.  Clear away a spot, a corner and sit for one hour. Write, or make notes or just think about what you want to write.  Just one hour and go back to it another day and do the same.  The two things that you can take control of in this world, are your environment and your actions. 

There are some awesome and spectacular people, the I'm going to climb that highest mountain type of person. Let's get real, most of us are NOT that. Personally, I've always felt those people teeter right on the edge of insanity.  The huge majority of us just want to find happiness, perhaps would like to feel that we made someone else happy.  That is a goal that any one of us can accomplish. Forget the mountain, merely move that one small rock from your path and go forward. Don't look where you've been and don't worry about the rocks farther ahead. Find your joy in the path you cleared right in front of you.

9.11 Are You Prepared?

In my lifetime...and that's getting to be a pretty sizeable number of years...there has been nothing more sad and horrific than the events of September 11, 2001.  Whether you were impacted close and personally or whether you were hundreds of miles away, this was an attack on America and it deeply affected us all.  Yes, life did go on for millions of us. After the burials, the mourning, the cleaning up and rebuilding, the country had a deep wound that for some will never completely heal.  Make no mistake, though life did go on, that was not the intentions of the attackers.

In the more than 200 years since we fought for our independence, died and sacrificed to establish the United States of America, no foreign enemy has ever attacked us on our own soil.  On a grand "War" scale, it might seem now that this was a minor attack.  This is not so.  It doesn't matter if an enemy turns your own citizens into traitors, as in the Boston Marathon atrocity... if a lone assassin creeps across a border that is totally breachable with a small suitcase that could blow up  half of Texas or Arizona or California...or if a missile its lobbed right into our bellies. It is death and destruction to our citizens and our way of life.  There is a determined and growing enemy on the march and their goal is to see that America and it's way of life NOT continue forward. 

We cannot deceive ourselves that this is a small and weak enemy, that we are invincible to their attacks.  This enemy will chop our people's heads off and proudly film it, this enemy will use their own innocent children as shields, this is an evil enemy that believes anything is justified to achieve our annihilaltion.  Every small act of terror they impose on an American is a huge victory for them.

Having said all this, these things that a very large number of Americans are already aware of but so many more are oblivious to, I have to say, Are you prepared?  If our enemies are able to perpetrate an attack on any scale or if a catastrophe of nature occurs, can you protect and provide for your family?  The cold hard facts are that we cannot control the majority of events in the world.  We must make some plans and preparations for our own survival. A friend said to me recently, "I'm making some preparations that would maybe get me through two months. If the world isn't getting back together by that time, who wants to stay around?"  I think, always, some is better than none. I don't fault that reasoning at all.  I've got to say that if you've given thought and resources to being self sufficient for even a short time, I'd like to talk to you on your "deadline" day...you think you might use your ingenuity and resources and hang in a few more days?  

Water, because humans cannot survive without drinkable water.  Beans, because you must have sustenance. Bullets, because you must protect your water and beans. 

Get Organized

A dear friend of mine told me that she had once been told, "You love the idea of organization, but you're not."  I'd say that is the case with the majority of us.  In my particular weird case, I am...organized that is.  I'm compulsively, OCD, anal-ly organized.  Since I always self analyze, I would say it comes a great deal from a young life where I had very little control.  Keeping order in my surroundings is my way of controlling.  There's still a huge portion of life that I have no power over but I can keep my little world ship shape and no one can stop me from it.

Of course, there are multi degrees of organization and dis-organization; from the complete slob, the person surrounded in clutter and disorder or the dysfunctional hoarder to the irritating nut that you literally could eat off of their kitchen floor and their home feels cold, you're afraid to touch anything.    You never sat a dish down in my grandmother's living room, it went straight to the sink and was washed, dried and put in it's place.  My mother-in-law was  not a dirty or unsanitary housekeeper but an incurable clutter bug and my own mother was a complete little pig.   I do have to say, I never knew a truly messy and unorganized person that seemed truly happy. There is something to be said for the Chinese philosophy of Fung Shui, the art of being in harmony and balance with your surroundings. 

Honestly, a person that is buried in their own clutter is truly a frustrated person. How much time can you happily waste, searching for something that you never put back in the same place twice, moving things around so you can put something else down, digging through piles of clothing or papers or what-ever?  Wouldn't be the first time that I was completely wrong, maybe some unorganized people are perfectly happy, it seems to me that most are very scattered and unhappy.

In the spirit of  let's get our s--t together, here's some of my personal suggestions to clear away your life a bit.

            ---Make up the bed. I know, you're going to get back in it. Doesn't matter, just make it up.
         
           ---Don't let the clutter of all the things you need to organize, overwhelm your mind.  Just pick one small thing.  Maybe the closet where you've been piling everything or smaller, just that catch all drawer.  Maybe the desk where you want to sit down and write, but depresses you to even look at it. Just choose one small area and work on organizing that spot to the max. 

          ---Containers and labels are BIG.  Contain it...herd it up...get six cheap laundry baskets, get six free boxes, empty coffee containers....don't place loose piles of any thing any where. Those piles tend to grow and spread. Label it. Socks, shoes, dirty, clean, mail, tomorrow, today, pencils, take outside....once you've stuck a label on, NEVER put anything except what it says in that container, even if one is empty and the other overflows.

          ---Do it right now, not in a minute.  If you're through with whatever is in your hand, walk right to where that "thing" goes and put it there.  If you're taking off your shoes, the moment you stand on your bare feet, walk to where they go.  And, I don't mean go outside in a huge storm to put away that "thing" in the shed.  You have a box for that, don't you?

         ---Chairs and sofas and beds were not designed as clothes racks. That's what hangers, closets and drawers are for.  Floors are supposed to be covered with rugs, useful pieces of furniture and feet. Flat surfaces, counter and table tops are meant to have smooth expanses of clear space. Cabinets, drawers and shelves were created to keep these expanses clear and available for all the temporary tools of daily life that we need to place there.

You will be amazed at how much simpler life will be if you just organize.  The best thing is when you have no control over other things in your life, when you are feeling depressed or overwhelmed, you will find such reward in just pulling together a single area of your world.  Even if it's just one drawer, it's a physical accomplishment. You can stand back and say Now, that looks good. Just do it.