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Posts Tagged ‘simplicity’

Grimm closure

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , , on March 2, 2012| 4 Comments »

In tonight’s episode of Grimm, Nick came closer to some closure about his parents and aunt.  Only a bit closer to closure since we can’t cover everything in one season.  What would they do in season two if they covered it all this year?  I myself have been thinking a lot about life events.  I crave closure to certain events in my life.  I don’t like things left with loose ends.  Forgive the morbidity of the next statement, but I need to see a dead body to believe they are really gone.  It gives me closure that I need as part of my grieving process.  When that doesn’t happen, it takes longer for me to work through the whole situation.  That’s just what I need to do.

So I’ve been digging my Grimm and have been reading the Grimm stories to my boys.  They didn’t want to hear the “girly” stories.  I explained to them that the stories were originally more grim.  I went to the library at work today and got a wonderful edition of the Grimm stories.  I have to admit I did not know how many stories the Brothers Grimm had penned.  In this edition (claiming to be the complete works, but I’m too early in my research to be able to verify that claim), there are 210 stories.  Little Red Riding Hood is called Little Red Cap.  Cinderella’s step-sisters get their eyes pecked out by the birds…vicious pigeons that had not helped clean and make dresses.  Snow White is Little Snow White and the story ends with the queen wearing burning iron “shoes” and dancing till she dies.  Good times.  Good times.

As Nick has quests for closure on Grimm, I have my own quests.  One quest is to develop my sons love of fiction, hence our focus on Grimm.  I also let them read Creepshow by Uncle Stevie.  It’s a comic book, yes a creepy comic book, and they loved it. My quest for a less cluttered home, my quest for grace and simplicity.  My quest for closure on past troublesome events.  I’m a regular Don Quixote.

My sons are still so carefree.  We were discussing something one day-can’t remember what and the details don’t matter-and the next morning on the way to school, I told them that it wasn’t a topic to discuss at school.  I asked my youngest if he heard what I had said and his reply was pure and honest.  “Mom, I don’t remember what we talked about last night so I know I won’t talk about it at school.”  They don’t hold onto things, grudges, hurt feelings, and all the gobbily-gook we learn to hang onto.  I am fascinated watching them as they grow up to learn when it happens.  When do we start to hold on to emotional responses and events?  My sons already hold on to physical stuff…sadly, they are pack-rats in training.  I do try to teach them that is okay to let go of stuff sooner rather than later because you don’t really need it.

I now gauge whether or not to keep things by wondering if my sons would look at it and ask why I saved it for so many years before tossing it in a trash bag without much fanfare when cleaning out my stuff. Again, forgive the morbidity.  Lord willing, I’ve got many more years to clean out my stuff, but I want to make each day as full as possible and you can’t do that when you’re worried about saving crap.  I had a period of time when I so was obsessed with capturing the memory that I missed making memories.  I’ve gotten better at being in the moment.  But I still have years of old crap to purge.

Some of the crap is mental crap.  And you, dear gentle reader, get to read as I purge some stuff from my brains.  Let things go out into the void of the internet to finally be released from my heart, soul, or brain, whichever it’s been stored in for too many years.  This has been a week of purging things from long ago.  I didn’t plan it that way, but it worked out that way.  And I am thankful to move forward in several of my quests.  It makes the load lighter and the lighter the load, the quicker I can move.  Though it’s not really about how quickly I get through this stuff.  The stuff is the little bits and pieces that make up life.  To quote the lullaby I sing to my sons, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.  Take some time for life in between your plans.

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Release adding to simplicity

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , on February 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, I feel better.  I don’t know about you, but last night’s post really offered me release.  I know people read it (thank you!) yet even if it had only gone into the great big void of the internet, it helped me.  I think that’s one of the things I enjoy about writing a post.  It can offer a cathartic release for the soul.  Not knowing exactly who will read each post, if in fact anyone does, blogging is a very selfish project.  At least the way I look at it.

Throughout the day, I felt stress leaving my body.  I reflected over the course of the day about the post and felt warmth filling my spirit which worked quite like a hot water bottle for the soul.  I missed Brigs just as much today as I did yesterday, but the emotional baggage I had attached to him is fading.  This is a good thing because then I can begin to enjoy the memories of him and the happiness he brought more purely, without the crap.

I have been asked by several people if we have gotten a new dog yet.  Nope.  I have looked at the listings at our local shelter.  Little yippee dogs-not for us-or pit bulls-also not for us.  You can list it as an American Staffordshire terrier but still a pit bull.  I know that the dog is usually a sweetie and only becomes mean through the treatment it receives from an owner, but you have to wonder why the dog is in the shelter.  I’ve also looked at other pet adoption websites and there are some sweet dogs listed on it, but crying while reading the websites tells me I am not ready.

But at least I am ready to begin letting go of the remnants of hard memories.  Letting go is a lifelong process in my book.  There are always events in a life that cause strife and then you have to deal with them.  Sometimes the way I deal with them is to bury them deep down so I don’t have to work through them right away.  Maybe I’m not ready to, maybe I’m being lazy, maybe I’m scared to process it all.  So every now and then I work through some big chunk of stuff in my memory.  It’s sort of like purging the crap out of my house.  Time often helps process the hard stuff just like it makes the stuff in my house magically become crap that I can get rid of without regret.

Simplicity in life can be hard to achieve within my society.  It can be done but it means going against the mainstream and ignoring mass media and aspects of the consumer-based society.  I fall into the trap of “needing” things that are truly wants.  Then there is either buyer’s remorse or the need to purge items from our home.  It’s challenging to teach this to my sons when I still am struggling with it myself.  Happily, they help me get better at it.  As I try to teach them about wants and needs, it reinforces it for myself.

And so Brigs keeps helping me, teaching me, loving me unconditionally.  Isn’t that the heart of what Uncle Stevie reminded me of a few weeks ago?

“May be she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life but the end of pain.”
― Stephen King, Pet Sematary

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Thoughtful

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , on February 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

We don’t take enough time to think anymore.  To simply sit and be thoughtful about matters.  We rush through our days and possibly take stock at the end of the night as we brush our teeth.  I suggest that thought may only happen when brushing teeth since one’s mouth is full and talking becomes ridiculous.  Not impossible, but silly sounding!

In the heat of a moment choices can be made.  Without thinking it through, without making a thoughtful decision, a choice may come across very differently than one intended.  A person might think that what he is doing is making things simple for the others involved, but then it comes across to the others as having a deeper meaning.

When you are the recipient of such a situation, you need to be thoughtful about your response.

Tonight I will be thoughtful.  I will reflect on a series of events that span the past few months, perhaps the past year.  I will see where I stand after being thoughtful.  Then I will decide where to go with it next.  It may take more than just tonight.  It may take a while.  Because the action that may have been seen as simple was rather hurtful, at least with how the enclosed note read.

If only I had been more thoughtful and not thrown the note out.  But it hurt to read it.  Didn’t want to keep that around.

Thoughtful times are all that’s left to help me.  I will try to view things from the other perspective and hope the same is being done to understand my perspective.  And there is the gift of time.  Time softens things, makes the memories blurry.  Time lessens the importance I am placing on things today.  The perspective will be different tomorrow.

Treat yourself to a quiet time tomorrow to sit and be thoughtful. To reflect on the important people and projects in your life.  Be thoughtful of what you have done lately and what you want or need to do.

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Ah, simplicity

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , on February 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Today was a day of simplicity.  The boys and I went to church.  I was subbing for one of the other Sunday School teachers and my students were the helpers.  This meant I got to teach my youngest son’s class.  He did really well having Mom be his teacher for the day.  I try to teach a grade that neither are in because there is a wee bit more pressure when your mom’s the teacher.

The worship service seemed to be filled with simplicity in that so much of it was prayer.  Prayers for the community as we struggle with the tragedy from Thursday morning.  The words from my pastor filled my heart and I kept adding my own prayer of thanks for my two healthy and happy sons.  The boys helped me put the new curriculum in the classrooms after service and then we drove home.

On the drive we looked to see if the carcass of the deer was still on the side of the road.  It had been several weeks since we sat and watched the turkey buzzards (I think that’s what they were; they didn’t look like a classic vulture).  The bones were still there but no birds were circling anymore.

We came home and had sandwiches for lunch.  We had hoped to go to the museum this weekend but the boys didn’t keep up their end of the bargain.  Chores had to be completed by the time I got home from work on Friday and the chores weren’t done.  There were a lot of tears, a lot of promises, and I’m sure they were thinking “mean Mommy and mean Daddy”, but they had the whole day to accomplish a few simple chores.  What they accomplished was making the mess even bigger.  I hate that part of being a parent.  I love to take them on adventures.  But part of the job is saying no when the time is appropriate.

Without the trip to the museum, yesterday was spent working on the house.  With actual thought and planning, we simplified our kitchen.  We have this pile of stuff that tended to sit on the floor due to lack of cabinet space.  I measured the space and found the two random, funky cabinets we inherited with the house would fit in the space.  I gave them each a quick and dirty coat of paint (theater painting in my vernacular) and we set them up.  Not only does this give us the extra storage we needed, it provides the ever popular extra counter-top space.  Ah, simplicity.

My hubby and I also talked about the fact that we don’t need to buy as much food as we do.  I am dreadfully spoiled since my hubby does the shopping, but the man loves a sale.  He’ll stockpile like a hoarder.  Today he went to get the lunch meat for the sandwiches and did buy some Entenmann’s donuts–on sale.  Today he only bought two boxes.  Yea!

Hubby did a lot of work in his office too.  We also agreed that the more we cleaned out the more there is to clean out.  We agreed it will simply take time and celebrated our little victories of the weekend.  I repositioned my wonderful “Vera” bouquet in a spot that highlights it beautifully.  I used the space it had been in to set up a little bar (when did we acquire enough liquor to require a little make-shift bar?  Wow, we’re like grown-ups or something).  I dealt with several bags of “stuff” that seemed important enough at the time to set aside but now are clearly unnecessary.  Time really does work its magic, doesn’t it?  Things that seem so urgent and important rarely are as important as we make them out to be.

And now I sit looking at my home.  If one of those “staging for sale” shows came in, they would have a heart attack.  But man, it’s our house.  It is fun, funky, and a little bit strange.  It always strikes me as odd when people ask me how the boys handle the office downstairs.  I have to remind myself that to some that’s a weird way to grow up.  To me, it’s not like it’s a funeral home or anything.  It’s a chiropractor’s office.  Sure there are a bunch of spines and x-rays, but what house doesn’t have them?  With my hubby working from home, our sons get to have grand adventures after school and all summer long.  We are in a phase of simplicity yet also a renewing of our shared lives.  It’s quite a lovely place to be.

Our sons bedrooms would also freak out the staging people.  A picture is worth a thousand words. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So our house is our own.  We live life marching to our own drummer.  At this moment, our sons are cuddling on the couch watching their beloved Pokemon.  Then they’ll get ready for bed and they’ll probably fight just a little bit.  Because they are brothers.  And that’s okay for now.  Simplicity.  Spending the weekend together.  Simplicity.  Doing a little bit each day.  Simplicity.

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Revisiting the plateau

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , on February 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

An update…first, I’m totally going to try the spoon/bean game.  I love games.

Plus, proud to say I shut my office door today and did my stretches in the middle of the day.  I worked to keep my focus and kept myself centered on simplicity.  I summoned grace as needed.  I also ate dinner there, late in the afternoon, so I had more energy to get home.  I haven’t even snacked tonight which is good.  I feel naturally tired and will be going to bed after I finish typing this…goodnight!

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Verso Verso

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , , on January 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

My oldest was telling me about the big plans for the under-water camera liopleurodon he’s building.  He was listing how was going to attach the flippers and he ended his description with “or verso verso”.  I looked at him.  I asked him what verso verso meant, explaining that I wasn’t familiar with the term.  (Possibly it was a paleontology term that he had learned in the past 24 hours.)  He said wasn’t sure.  I asked if he meant vice versa and he said yup.  I then asked if he knew what that phrase meant.  He said nope.  I laughed a deep belly laugh.  He amazes me everyday with his attempts to grow up as quickly as he can while still clutching to childhood.  He has been asking a lot of questions about what it’s like to be a grown-up.  He’s at that stage where being a grown-up is so much cooler than being a kid.  I explained to him that while being a grown-up has some fun parts, being a kid is the best.  I also told him that while I may be an adult, I am not a grown-up.  I am a sufferer of Peter Pan syndrome in a big way.  I never grew up and motherhood helps keep it that way.

Yet I still progress toward self-actualization.  I had a great conversation with my boss today about striking the balance between work and personal life.  My quests for simplicity and grace are part of my quest for self-actualization.  I look at it as a recurring quest.  At different points in me life I feel I was self-actualized.  For that time period I probably was as self-actualized as I could have been then, but the little spark of wisdom I have gained is that you have to keep moving forward.  The level of self-actualization is always changing, always getting more complex.   While I am blessed enough to have the lower levels basically squared away (physiological, safety, love & belonging), to me, the levels of esteem and self-actualization are constantly in flux.  It’s like one’s own flux capacitor.  One travels between different levels, times if you will, and so the quest continues.

All this from a discussion about vice versa.

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Mediocrity leads to simplicity

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , on January 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Life never ceases to amaze me.  Simple declarations released into the cyber void can help shape one’s perspective.  While I have yet to officially scrape anything off my plate, my brain was swirling with wonderful, exciting ideas.  The overwhelming sense of mediocrity is dissipating and quickly being replaced with a sense of joy.  Simple joy…an achievable joy.

Simplicity is aided beautifully by the technology of today.  As I shape my goals, I am aware of the many ways technology could aid me in achieving the goals.  When I think of what we can use today, I realize I must feel the same way my great grandmother did when cars started replacing the horse & buggy.  The inventions my nana saw throughout her lifetime were life-changing.  From horse & buggy to cars, from radio to television to cable & VCRs, from ice box to freezer/fridge combos, the end of the milkman (which for her didn’t happen till the 80s…small, New England town advantage!).

I was introduced to many of these inventions along with her before she passed.  And I have returned to some of her ways of life (farm fresh milk…yummy).  I now know the meaning behind some of the cute and mischievous smiles that would spread across my nana’s face.  I enjoy the look of disbelief from my sons when I explain I only had five or six television channels (three that always came in, the rest depended on the antenna) and the same smile spreads over my face.  When I try to explain that you could only watch shows when they were aired, they simply don’t understand it.  Happily, library books don’t change and they are learning that the same way I did.  Imagination never changes-you either use it or lose it.  I share that with my sons.

We had a fun conversation during bedtime this evening about the donkey and elephant toys.  They were made by my nana for me so the toys are cultured (not old!) like me.  My son asked if used my imagination when I played with the donkey and elephant.  We talked about the differences in how I played and how they play.  They came to realize all the ways we play involve imagination.

Imagination is a key ingredient in shaping my goals.  Can’t tell you what the goals are.  Not because they are a secret, they’re just not fully formed.  Patience is a part of simplicity and I am actually being patient with myself, letting the ideas slowly mull in my brain as they take shape.  It’s exciting and invigorating.  At least for me.

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Revisiting mediocrity

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , on January 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Do you ever have a day when you wake up and think it’s not going to be a good day?  You wake up and just don’t feel good about yourself?  Then you go somewhere and you hear something that makes you re-examine the whole thing?  You say to yourself, wow…it’s all good.  Life is good.  You are good.  You are as good as you need to be.  But then the day progresses.

Finally you find yourself sitting, feeling confused, at 9:30 at night and wondering if it’s too early to go to bed when you usually go to bed around 1:00am.

I find myself in a place where I am so confused, wondering how and where to find the answers.  Then it seems like I’ve found some clues to point me in the right direction only to have them stripped away as quickly as they were given.  This was one of those days.  I felt like I had found some great resources to look into, where I might find a deeper answer.  Then the day totally turned around.  I feel more lost than ever.

I have snippets of seemingly everything going through my head.  In trying to make sense of it, I only confuse myself.  Am I doing what I should be doing?  Am I doing the right thing?

Searching for one’s passion when you already know what your passion is makes one slightly bonkers.  When you can’t pursue your passion full-time, what do you do to keep yourself from going completely crazy?  I am doing what I believe I need to be doing.  But which is the better route for me and for my sons?  I want to teach them to follow their dreams; yet if I can’t do it myself, how do I help show them the way on their journeys?  How do I incorporate my passion in to my everyday existence?  I can tell you that I’ve tried filling the hole with other pseudo-passions and man, I keep getting knocked down.  I think I may have finally learned that lesson.  Trying to force a non-passion into the space previously occupied by your true passion does not work and inevitably makes you feel worse.

I have attempted roles that I am not suited for in any way, shape, or form.  I knew it before I even started them, yet still went ahead and moved forward.  I’ve done this over the course of my life.  You would think I would have learned it sooner than this.  But no, I am only beginning to understand the mistaken choices I have made.  At least I stopped making big bad choices.  I made a few of them in my past and they are messy to clean up.

So.  Now realizing that I’ve been spinning my wheels and truly wasting time in some of these endeavors, I know I need to refocus.  This will, in theory, offer more time for me to pursue the endeavors that are a better fit.

What am I so afraid of anyway?  Okay, I know the answer to that one.  I’m not good with risk-taking.  I like to take risks that I know will work out in the end.  Granted, by definition, that’s not a risk.  And that is my exact point.  If it’s a safe risk, I’m your girl.  Therefore I will wholeheartedly pursue my safe risks and scrape off the pursuits that simply do not fit.

 

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Cleaning the fish bowls

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , , on January 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

If only cleaning my home were as easy as cleaning the fish bowls.  Granted, by writing this post, I’m delaying the cleaning of Captain Jack Sparrow’s bowl and Cretaceous’ bowl, but the point is still valid.  It’s a simple process and the results are immediate and bring happiness to the residents.

The problem remains that we have too much stuff.  We’re not hoarders-yet.  We’re pack rats.  We just hang on to stuff that we do not need.  This Christmas, hubby got a new coffee maker.  He actually wanted to keep the old one…just in case.  We have a lot of just in case items.  Two televisions down in the family room-that no one ever watches.  To be fair, there are other issues with the family room.  Two of our senior (read-lots of accidents) pets live down there so we don’t do much with the room.  The pets are old, they can’t help it.  But I digress…we are the proud owners of only one coffee maker.

Stuff.  How did we get this much stuff?  Why do we keep acquiring more?  I just don’t know.  Broken typewriters…really?  Do we need it?  Why don’t I simply bring it to the drop off place?  Part of it is time.  In the evenings, I want to be with my boys.  The trick would be to do the cleaning with the boys.  It would help them learn to let go of stuff that you don’t need or that is broken.

But even beyond the stuff that should actually be easy to get rid of, we have a lot of stuff.  I can’t decide about all of the stuff, because a lot of it is my hubby’s stuff.  The boys have purged toys, yet they could get rid of even more.  Now some might say I don’t need every Stephen King book in hard cover and paperback, but we can keep some things.  I feel like my Uncle Stevie books balance out the 40+ Concentration games my hubby has in his collection.

Bit by bit…foot by foot…inch by inch…simplicity will be mine.  We just painted the bathroom.  Ironically, that’s the second time since we’ve moved into our home that we’ve decorated the bathroom.  This time we let the boys pick the theme-dinosaurs.  I know, you’re shocked.  It looks good.  I want to repaint most of the house and rip down the paneling in the stairway (yep, house built in the late 60s/early 70s-you should see my golden harvest kitchen appliances!).  I have told myself that I can’t do any of the “fun” stuff till I do the icky stuff-the fun stuff will be my reward.

But tonight I clean fish bowls.

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Rotten bananas

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , , on January 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Bananas are about the best fruit in the world.  When ripe, we use them in so many ways: sliced on top of cereal, banana split sundae, funky monkey bread, as a delicious stand-alone fruit snack.  This can be said of many fruits.  But I ask you this: how many fruits do we get equally excited about when they are just about rotten?

Almost-rotten bananas make lovely banana bread…or as I recently snacked on courtesy of a friend at work…lovely banana chocolate chip cookies.  Not a lot of things have a second life upon rotting.

What other things in life get a second life?  We all love to donate our goods to various charities because it’s the socially acceptable thing to do.  Reuse, recycle.  Find another use for an item.  I feel though as if our society is missing the bigger picture.  We didn’t waste as much before.  We were more resourceful.  Now we recycle yet so many things have become disposable.

Imagine if we went fully back to the idea of local.  A dairy farm in every area.  Reusable glass bottles versus the plastic gallon jugs.  Local farms, butchers, small-town doctors.  I feel like other countries get this idea and haven’t over-expanded as we have.  We are so hung up on status, stuff, and schedules.  I have less and less interest in this type of existence.

Yet at the same time I’m planning to take my sons to the store tomorrow so they can get Pokemon cards.  Where is the balance?  How do I keep my sons’ priorities balanced?  How do I keep my own priorities balanced?  Where is the place between ripe and rotten?

I’d love to stumble upon the answers but I am not that smart.  All I can do is remember that one is enough for anyone and let that guide the choices I make regarding the material things in life.  Little by little I whittle down the “stuff” we have placing the focus on needs and a few wants.  It’s tough to keep that focus.  The boys float from craze to craze, fad to fad, ripe banana to rotten banana.

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