Rearranging the deck chairs

Creativity comes in many forms.

I like to think I’m creative, but I admire those people who move a room around just for fun and come up with great new ways to make a conversation area.

I’m not one of those people.

Living room configuration No. 1

Our living room has only two layouts:

1. Couch horizontal to the TV/fireplace.
2. Couch perpendicular to the TV/fireplace.

After a year in configuration No. 1, I moved the living room around today to configuration No. 2.

Living room configuration No. 2

Stellar innovation, I know. But it reminds me of a few of my rules to live by. These are a few of the bits of wisdom that I would file in the “This is most certainly true” file (see Wednesday’s post for that musing):

1. Breakfast is not complete without fruit.
2. Never wear navy with black.
3. The best sex arises from love, not power (“Fifty Shades of Grey” did the world a great disservice on this point).
4. Nothing good happens after midnight (unless you’re observing No. 3).

And No. 5: At least one piece of furniture in a room should float. If one shoves everything against the wall, your room tends to look like your first apartment: Decorated by an amateur.

With that in mind, the sofa in configuration No. 2 is not shoved up against the windows; a sofa table behind it cushions it from the windows.

That’s my creative contribution to the world today.

You’re welcome.

Anything to donate? To infinity … and beyond!

I have a splitting headache, a muffin top, a tax preparation hangover and a desk so messy I can’t think.

Remedy?

Box up some books to donate.

Hey, it’s better than chocolate (at least for the muffin top).

First shelf of opportunity? The “Star Trek” shelf.

I consider myself a “Star Trek” fan, also known as a Trekker, but my fanaticism has waned in the past half dozen years. I’ve read that people cultivate collections for a reason, so maybe there was a logical reason I was obsessed with strange new worlds and seeking out new life back in the 1990s and early 2000s. Maybe I subconsciously yearned for a new world and a new life back then. I got a new life when I got a new man embodied by my Beloved. In any case, my enthusiasm for the final frontier is less fervent now, and I feel like I can let go of some of my “Star Trek” books.

But I’m keeping William Shatner’s memoirs and my Nitpicker’s Guides.

The Salvation Army website suggests paperbacks are worth 75 cents to a buck each and hard covers are valued at $1.50 to 3 dollars each for tax donation purposes. Which means the books I boxed up are worth approximately 1,800 calories: I’ve probably burned exactly as many calories lugging those books from place to place in the past 15 years as I would have burned in two weeks at the gym.

Before I kick these books to the curb, we’ll harvest one last quote from one of them, “Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories” by Nichelle Nichols” (yes, I purchased and read the memoirs of every original cast member — that’s what fanatics do):

“For everything we do to make it otherwise, life is never a simple journey. We think we’re plotting a course from point A to point B, when in fact practically every step we take is a detour, a digression, a side trip.”

I hope these books find a new home, a side trip so to speak, rather than end up in the black hole of a dump. Live long and prosper.

A hazy shade of winter

Sometimes, when I’m running really fast on the treadmill (“really fast” being relative), I pass the time by thinking of the 5-second fractions.

Five seconds is 1/12, 10 seconds is 1/6, 15 seconds is 1/4, 20 seconds is 1/3, etc. Pretty soon, the minute is gone, and I can return to a jog or better yet, a walk.

Today is like that, only I’m not wishing for the 11/12th fraction, I’m staring at it unbelievingly. As the second hand swings past midnight, the year is 11/12ths behind us.

Whew. I feel like Wile E. Coyote standing still in a Road Runner cartoon.

Shame on me for wishing away the seconds.

Time, time, time,
See what’s become of me.
While I looked around
For my possibilities.

~ Paul Simon

Sentimental shores

Being a Midwesterner means sometimes defending one’s residence to people who aren’t from the Midwest.

I remember a conversation one morning at a San Diego bed-and-breakfast with a California couple. When I told them we were from Minnesota, they exclaimed, “Minnesota! Who would ever want to live there? You must be crazy!”

As Californians, they apparently thought they knew Minnesota to be a vast wasteland near the Canadian border where it’s always winter and residents rarely emerge from their igloos.

It’s cold in Minnesota, and winter is long, and that bitter season is one of the reasons I’m now a Minnesota transplant living two states south.

But it’s not so bad that only crazy people live there (only some of the people who live there are crazy).

Living in Illinois now, I sometimes take heat for the state’s political machine and its perenially losing baseball team (don’t get your panties in a bunch, White Sox fans, I’m referring to the Cubs).

For the record: Despite its history of criminal governors and high interstate highway tolls, Illinois is not filled with a bunch of rubes and it’s a nice place to live.

I now can defend Iowa with its corn fields and early primaries also.

Dubuque, Iowa, is a beautiful place to visit. The postcard perfect city on the Mississippi River is filled with nice people, good food and absolutely stunning vistas. I now can say I see the love in this place.

This morning’s walk along the river revealed a pretty little bonus, too, on the muddy shores of the water sparkling in the morning sun:

Do you see the love, too?

Sometimes, unadorned is pretty enough

“Of course, I have my guilty pleasures… antiquing…”

~ Ronald in “Cedar Rapids”

I’m living the real life version of “Cedar Rapids,” the funny movie from 2011 about a naive insurance salesman at an insurance convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I’m in Dubuque, Iowa, the town with a name to rival Mississippi when you spell it over the phone: D-U, B-U, Q-U and then an E. It’s a lovely little town with architecture to take you back to a bygone era when people pumped your gas and told time with the clock tower in the square.

And I’m with my husband, who’s attending a convention (of sorts) of insurance agents. Talk over shrimp and steak at dinner centered on insurance markets and tax write-offs.

Life is strange sometimes, how it twists and turns to bring one to places one never would have dreamed of in one’s teenage diary.

But surprises bigger than one’s 15-year-old imagination can be pretty nice.

Post redux: On prayer, a president and a poll

Long ago, in a galaxy far away (OK, if you must be a stickler, a state far away), I was a radio deejay.

I was in college, and the university had its own radio station, and said radio station had dozens of shelves of vinyl albums (for you tweeners and teens, “albums” were those big black round Frisbees that looked and behaved a lot like music CDs — remember those?).

Anyway, back in the dark ages, radio stations didn’t have recorded satellite announcers, so they required live deejays to introduce various music selections, and volunteer college students looking for experience and possibly class credit were perfect for the position. This radio station provided index cards for various songs with the pertinent information for aspiring deejays to recite, but deejays added personality to their “shows” by ad libbing. And as you might imagine, underpaid and overtired college students came up with plenty of clichés to fill dead air.

That’s a long way to introduce this next post, the clichéd “oldie but goodie,” from Feb. 4, 2010, when the presidential election was but a twinkle in Karl Rove’s eye. Enjoy.

On prayer, a president and a poll
from Feb. 4, 2010

Even if you don’t like President Obama, perhaps you will find his words about prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning to be inspiring.

I am trying to be a better pray-er. One of my resolutions this year was to start each day with prayer. I’ve created a prayer journal (that I am actually using!). I’m reading “A Woman’s Call to Prayer” with my book club. Improving my communication skills with other human beings is a lifetime project, so I expect no less effort is required in improving my communication skills with the Creator. But I am working on it, slowly but surely.

So this morning, as I was running on the treadmill without my headphones, which I managed to forget to bring to the gym, I had to read Obama’s remarks on the closed-captioning on the TV, rather than hear them. But perhaps they were sinking in better for me that way.

He mentioned many topics, including Haiti and health care, but about prayer specifically, he said:

“For while prayer can buck us up when we are down, keep us calm in a storm; while prayer can stiffen our spines to surmount an obstacle — and I assure you I’m praying a lot these days — prayer can also do something else.  It can touch our hearts with humility.  It can fill us with a spirit of brotherhood.  It can remind us that each of us are children of an awesome and loving God.”

Indeed. Love that sentiment.

If you want to read his whole speech, try this website here.

And if you have a thought about prayer, or Obama or Obama’s remarks on prayer, or something else, please comment. But be civil. As Obama said this morning, “Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable.”

A fortune worth its weight in plastic trinkets and corn dogs

While wandering around the fried food vendors and hawkers of all things made in Asia at the flea market yesterday, I passed a psychic named Rachel.

I didn’t really want six bras for $12, and I didn’t need a kitchen gadget for real cheap, so I figured $20 on a tarot card reading would be good entertainment that wouldn’t fill my closets needlessly. I doubled back.

I used to believe tarot was the playhouse of the devil — I didn’t read horoscopes either — so if that’s how you think, don’t read any further because you’ll feel compelled to pray for my immortal soul.

During the reading, the grim reaper card made an appearance.

I gasped.

Rachel, a tiny Hispanic woman with soft hands and laugh lines around her eyes, said, “Don’t worry. It doesn’t mean death.”

She reassured me it might mean I think often of my brother, who died 13 years ago.

I think it’s more symbolic.

Online, descriptions of the meaning of the death card include phrases such as “speaks of a major conclusion in an area of our lives” and “acknowledged as a life changing symbol.”

I’ve been feeling I’ve been standing on a precipice, but I don’t feel like I’m about to fall off. I feel like I’m ready to fly.

Growing wings would certainly be “life changing.”

In other news, Rachel told me I’m married to a good man, my stepchildren love me and there’s a move in store for me (oh, and my second and third books will be even more successful than my first!).

For $20, my reading was certainly more useful than some of the dusty plastic junk I passed up at the flea market. And I didn’t have to lug it home.

Don’t read this post if ‘March of the Penguins’ made you cry

The day is one of those sun-kissed days with bright blue skies and as many red and orange tinged trees as there are green ones. A few still succulent leaves litter the ground — not yet the big piles of brown, crispy wisps that will drown dry lawns in a few short weeks.

It’s a beautiful day for a walk, and I donned my iPod and new running shoes, never intending to go faster than 4 miles an hour. I wanted fresh air and sunshine, not a sweaty workout.

Plain gray squirrels skittered out of my way as I approached, apparently intent on chasing each other or hiding acorns.

Two of them were crossing the street in front of me, one in front of the other. One of them noticed neither me nor the oncoming minivan.

The minivan wasn’t paying attention either.

As the second squirrel and I watched in horror, the van hit the fast-moving first squirrel.

For a second, while the van still obscured my view, I considered looking away. But I didn’t. Or couldn’t. The van kept moving, oblivious to the potential carnage, and I saw the first squirrel on its back in the street, its little body sort of convulsing for a few seconds.

Then he flipped over and finished crossing the street, climbing into the wheel well of a parked pick-up on the other side of the street. No traffic in sight, the second squirrel crossed the street, too, to join his friend under the pick-up.

I could have kept walking.

I see unmoving carcasses of dead animals on the side of the road all the time and barely give them a second thought.

But this time, I witnessed the accident. I thought of my cute little 8-pound doggie, too stupid to look both ways before crossing the street, just like the dumb squirrel. It was like watching an African documentary where a hungry lion claws down a slow-moving baby wildebeest. It made me want to cry.

I had no intentions of rescuing a wild animal, but I had to know the extent of its injuries. I couldn’t stand the thought that he might have been eviscerated; I had to put that bloody nightmare back on the shelf. So I doubled back and inspected the roadway where the squirrel encountered the van.

No blood. No evidence.

I tilted me head to look under the pick-up. The second squirrel scampered away. The first squirrel was nursing itself on the ground beneath the pick-up, unwilling or unable to move away quickly. I couldn’t tell what was wrong, but he appeared somehow wounded. Maybe he was just dazed, but I think his hindquarters were hurting. Maybe he broke something.

I wasn’t willing to take action, so I turned around and walked away, Freddie Mercury singing in my ears.

I don’t know why this squirrel bothers me. Probably thousands of plain gray squirrels inhabit the trees in my little village. Squirrels die all the time in probably much more graphic fashion.

But I was sorry he was hurting. What is the point of suffering? If he dies anyway, why not die quickly? If he lives to cross another street in hair-brained fashion, why did this van hit him on this otherwise beautiful autumn day in front of my eyes?

I don’t have any easy philosophical solutions to the question of pain in this blog post. Perhaps the whole story is a metaphor of the last day of September. I’m sorry if I depressed you.

But the next time you cross the street, please look both ways.

A pair is solitary only when it’s a pear

Google “I hate grocery shopping,” and you’ll get 25,800,000 results.

That’s a lot of vitriol.

Count me among the haters.

I live in a household of two, and neither of us is a teenager. We eat out six times a week. Volume is not an issue, so I realize the shallowness of my pain. And it’s not the act of walking around the supermarket comparing labels that I detest.

It’s the commute.

My little burg has lots of things … well, actually, it doesn’t … and among the things it’s missing is a grocery store with decent produce.

And ground turkey.

And I needed both today.

Spanish meatball stew and roasted plums are on the menu tonight. A “quick” trip to the grocery store is a 45-minute journey involving Interstate highways or road construction or both.

In addition to turkey and plums, I got a bonus. I found an image to fit the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Solitary.

Two pears might not be so bad.

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
A pear can be as bad as one.
It’s the loneliest fruit since the number one.

Thank you, Three Dog Night, for the produce section entertainment.

Like the fickle shopper earlier, I left the forsaken pear behind, too.

It’s the butter, stupid

“Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.”

~ John C. Maxwell

I’ve been avoiding bread lately, not because I have celiac disease but because wheat products just don’t agree with me. I won’t get into the details.

As an experiment the past five weeks, I’ve eaten no sandwiches, no spaghetti, no crackers and alas, no toast. Toast with peanut butter, that’s the hardest sacrifice. My father prefers to begin his day with a banana, toast and peanut butter — I have more of my father in me than I’d like to admit.) On the plus side, the mother of invention led me to most delicious gluten-free crackers from Crunchmaster — white cheddar flavor multi-grain crackers.

In any case, I’ve lost three pounds in five weeks. Which is better than a sharp stick in the eye.

I feel better without wheat in my diet, but my theory on why I’ve lost weight is because I’m not eating butter.

As I was grocery shopping today, I realized I haven’t bought butter in a month. The foundation for butter is gone.

Irony rules the day.

The dish-to-pass I’m bringing to a gathering tonight is skillet cornbread — made with wheat flour and butter.

We’ll see if I eat my own dish. I think I know the answer.