The Pursuit of Happiness

Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self,
and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art.

Bliss Carman

Just a reminder that some days 
have more of it than necessary.

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.
Woodrow Wilson

But what is happiness except the simple 

harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Albert Camus

Little Deer

Spring Bursting Out, Box Elder

Lost and Found

        I hate losing things.  Like keys, for instance.  Or my glasses.  I have three or four pairs of reading glasses, but the State of Wyoming now says I have to wear glasses for driving, so the green ones have to be set aside when I am on the computer, and put on for driving.  They disappeared under the calculator on my desk this week.  I looked in that general vicinity twice and didn't see them.  Then my  book vanished that I had just minutes before, and  after fixing a lunch, answering the telephone, unloading the dishwasher, taking a shower, and making a cup of tea, I can't find it for the life of me.  Aggravation.                            

         Really, how hard can it be to put your keys in one place every time?  I have wondered more than once if this problem is genetic.  I left my purse at Mr. Steak after my first date with the man I would go on to take as my lawfully wedded husband.  Probably "twitter-pated".  Except when my grandma came for visits,  we sometimes had to go back to restaurants to get her purse, too.  I left one once under a dark table in a booth, and when we called to tell them I had left it, and hoped someone would put it in a safe place, they told me it wasn't there.  So I went back and got it.  It was there, under the dark table, next to the wall, out of sight.  They couldn't believe it.  You can imagine how unhappy it makes me to unload everything for airport security.  Trying to make sure I'm all put back together after someone goes through my stuff is very unnerving.  I suppose everyone triple checks, and still feels harried.

         Maybe it should have been a warning sign to my future husband that he would have to help me find things after we should already be out the door, in the car and half way down the lane, instead of on a last minute treasure hunt.  Who gets the prize?  The one who calls out first..."I found it!" Then the sound of feet skipping up the stairs, two at a time, doors slamming hastily.  Ask my mom and dad...always I've been known as the cow's tail.  Who else could you count on every time to dash out the door when everyone else was waiting in the car...someone had to be last, right?  It was always me, at least it seemed like it.

      

     But back to the book I was looking for.  When I've lost my book, a substitute won't necessarily work, but I have been known pick up my Kindle reader instead.  I really prefer handling a REAL book, the bulk of it, and sizing it up.  I like the feel and smell of the cover.  I usually even remove the book jacket to see how they've designed the cover.  My Kindle has a leather case and I like the smell of it. I enjoy handling the weight of a book, turning the pages, and letting it fall open, and reading right there, but maybe not staying in one place, flipping to another, or picking up a different book.  I like placing a bookmark snugly between the pages.  I love going back to a book and and finding my place. I like using strange things for bookmarks that would otherwise be tossed in the trash, like a shiny, rectangular AAA sticker that is meant for the car, but since you don't really want it on the bumper,  it makes it feel useful.  I really like free bookmarks from the library, too.  Wish I didn't lose them so fast, and where is the hand lotion, anyway.    I know I ordered three tubes of it  last month.  And where, oh where has my toothbrush gone? 

     I have three or four other books that I've started reading, but set aside to finish this one, because the library says that since it's been checked out to me since January that I really have to bring it back.    They just can't check one book out over and over to the same person, you know.  I giggled.  "But it's a really large book," I said.  So I can have it two more weeks.  ONLY.  Librarians can be sticklers.   I don't think she thought it was very funny.  What are the books there for?  To be lent.  If someone is waiting for the book, I can understand the urgency.  If they are not, what could possibly be the problem?  Silly librarian.

       I thought about downloading it on Kindle.  I could have it for the rest of my life and maybe have time to slowly read every word of it.  I like this book.  It's big enough that I can spot it across a room so I don't lose it very long.  And I like its impressive size because it tells me something about myself.  That I'm now quite a bit more willing to plod through a book, instead of speed-reading it.  Although I did skip through some parts, naturally.  Sometimes I realize I missed something important, and have to go back.  Now I am more likely to savor the detailed descriptions that round out the plot, and consciously sink into all the parts of the painstakingly created story. 

      I could collect books,  and have stately and colorful titles lined up neatly across a shelf, tempting someone other than myself to choose to read one of them and fall in love with the author's perspective.  When I see books stacked on tables and in boxes at yard sales I am tempted to give some of them a good home.   Found out that, mysteriously, not everyone, even people I love very much and love me, like books especially.   But some do.  My kids.  They love books, and they have books, and they display books, and read books like Calculus, 1, 2 and 3,  and biographies, and books I've never read and am glad I don't have to.  I used to think I should build a library of my very own, and maybe someone else would laugh and cry over a story they found in my bookcase, just like me.  I know Algebra and Calculus makes some people cry, but I was actually thinking of Louisa May Alcott's works.  Calculus didn't make it to my bookshelf, but sure makes me curious.  I think I would like it.  It would probably make me cry, sometimes, too.

     I really liked this book.  Probably the longest story I've ever read and it has a lot of heroic battle scenes.  I love a really good hero, it makes you think about greatness and inspires you to be great.  But I'm not sorry I have finally finished my book.  It was an amazing story, and there are those other books, partially started, lined up on a shelf,  and some stacked neatly on a side table, waiting for me.  And I can come back to this book someday if I want to. 

      I never used to pick up any book of this size.  Takes too long to get to the best part, when everyone lives happily ever after, or not, and the descriptions are so long.  After all, I know very well what a desert looks like, and can easily envision meadows, mountains and houses of my own creation.  One thing I'm learning, about life and about books, it's not just about getting to the end.  You may as well take your time and enjoy it as you go along.  And who knows about happily ever after.  Sometimes endings aren't so very happy, and sometimes, although heartbreaking, the princess never shows up.  We can only hope.  Or perhaps we don't always know how much we are, to someone, a real life hero.

      Speaking of real life, I was informed, in a slightly superior way,  that my mother-in-law, did not read, therefore her children did not read.  She humbly told me later that since she couldn't read without being able to put a book down, then she ought not to be doing it at all.  So, in the interest of my reputation, I quit reading.  Cold turkey.  Fiction reading had been a relaxing escape for me, but no more.  Cookbooks and informational books were fine.  I learned to make balloon shades and roman blinds and cream puffs,  home made mayonnaise, bran muffins and lentil soup and invest in real estate.  No nonsense books.

       Then my kids got this or that little illness.  One night when Douglas was about two, I found him standing in his bed, crying and frightened.  Very unusual behavior for him.  I took him to the doctor and he was scared of and by the doctor whose rough handling didn't impress me much either.  Concerned that they might get something serious, and I would lose the power to make easy decisions about their health, I devoted myself to keeping my kids well.  A friend from California told me about a doctor and the success he had recovering from cancer.  So I bought books.  All kinds of books, and began to learn.  Soon I had a Materia Medica, along with a variety of manuals and home health handbooks: books of provings, history, and repertory so I could cross reference information.  I learned about Aconite, a remedy in which the patient is feverish, frightened easily, has nightmares and the symptoms appear quite suddenly.  It pretty much described my son, that night, and I wished I'd known about Aconite then.  In the process I learned about the concept of homeopathy, (the law of similars, i.e., that like cures like), about potency, the direction of cure, as well as the mysteries of susceptibility and energy fields.  We focused on getting and staying healthy with lots of home cooked meals, and a mostly sugar and desert free eating style.  We got rid of our aluminum and cast iron cookware, and we got sick less often.

      And I read to the kids.  We read To Kill a Mockingbird a couple of times.  They loved hearing stories, so it was a great family activity.  I was a little worried that they would pick up some of Tom Sawyer's ideas,  about convincing other people to do your work for you, but it doesn't seem to have worked that way exactly.   Not a bad thing to be good at delegating, right?  

        When they got into junior high and high school, where the classics were assigned reading, already beloved stories to them, it was no hardship to read the familiar stories.  They had seen me study homeopathy, and then begin a long session on the civil war era.  While they were browsing at the library, I brought home books about Abraham Lincoln and a book of letters that had been written during the war.  Recounting the interesting things I had learned was great quality dinner table conversation for a family.  Why not feed their minds on healthy thinking while feeding their bodies wholesome food? 

      One of the kids is especially interested in history, and family stories.   "Tell a story, grandma," became a familiar plea.  I didn't do a lot of reading, with three kids, a husband, a business and rentals, cooking, cleaning, sewing, laundry and errands.  Surprising what you can fit in here and there, though.  Some homework and school deadlines slipped through the cracks, and a busy mother sometimes wonders where she went wrong,  but they turned out to be bright, generally healthy and well-adjusted.  And one of my friends had assured me, grades aren't everything, so pick your battles.  Anyway, I couldn't say too much, after all, I had locked us out of the car at the circus.  Also, socks had a way of losing their mates at our house, and  finding my keys was a frequent family event.  

      

Projects

New shower walls at the rental.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Oscar Wilde

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi

             

     View from my bike ride.  About half a mile after a close call when my shoelace became wrapped around the bike gears. Tense moment, then I pedaled backwards and it unwound, and I managed to get stopped, without falling over, so I could I re-tie in a double knot.  Reminded me of Shep. He wanted to go with me and for a change, I gave in, and put him on a leash.  When I turned onto Sage Creek Road, I thought it would be handy to loop his leash around my handlebar.  Twenty-twenty hindsight reveals the remarkable imprudence of that move. It took about five seconds for him to spot some deer across the field and jerk directly left, making a bee-line after them, indifferently dumping me and the bike on the pavement.  Took the wind right out of my sails.

This was a very pretty day, but windy.  First bike ride of the year.  Worth it. Even against the wind.

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.

Pablo Picasso

di·chot·o·my

   [dahy-kot-uh-mee]  Show IPA

noun, plural di·chot·o·mies.

1.

division into two parts, kinds, etc.; subdivision into halves or pairs.

2.

division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups: a dichotomy between thought and action.

3.

Botany . a mode of branching by constant forking, as in some stems, in veins of leaves, etc.

4.

Astronomy . the phase of the moon or of an inferior planet when half of its disk is visible.