Animals Know What's Best

All animals know and go for the best part of anything: Here's a daddy long legs enthroned and lounging in the most elegant and fragrant of palaces, the crown of my basil plant, not caring if the plant is not native and scrawny because, I think, I transplanted the young plant into too big a pot, hoping for a big lush green bushy grant of basil. But I love it anyway and am glad a creature has found and appreciates it and feels safe there; there are not enough leaves on the plant for the spider to worry about the risk of becoming pesto.

A young cedar plant, being invasive, picks the choicest spot for its growth an inch in front of a healthy deciduous tree, such as an oak, with the goal of overshadowing it and appropriating all its nutrients, not caring that it's being rude and the other tree was there first; it's just nature.

I was taught to expect or take second-best and leave the absolute best for somebody else -- let them have the best bedroom, best part of the chicken, or shower first and get the hot water, etc. So glad I live where wild animals are teaching me the proper attitude, and there's no pressure to compromise.

Happy Labor Day!

Good Things About the Dead of Winter

• No bugs.
• No bug bites.
• Everyone else is flabby too.
• Heating pad for car seat.
• Tired of chocolate.
• No garden worries.
• Lengthening days.
• Hats to cover up unwashed or unstyled hair, parkas to cover unwashed and unironed clothes, etc.
• Big thick anorak-style hoodies with agricultural logos.
• Sitting in the rocking chair staring into space is okay.
• Hands encircling warm cups of coffee or tea.
• Citrus.
• Having trails all to yourself.
• No waiting at the pedicurist.
• People bake.
• Soups.
• No bell-ringers.
• Everyone buys lotto tickets without shame.
• No one is on your case to go out and have fun.

Good, Good, Really Good!

At a Chicago conference last week I heard in person a famous channeler of positive messages, author of millions of books and CDs. She might be fake, but I liked her message and echoed to myself, “I will accept that things are always working out for me, and any expansion is good.” Minutes after starting back home on the tollway, my left rear tire blew. I take the next exit and, by the grace of God, it's a suburban Chicagoland avenue lined for miles with car dealerships and car-repair shops.

The repair shop I pull into mounts my spare for free and sends me to a tire dealer where I'm told there's a two-hour wait. “Things are always working out for me,” I thought, and in entirely foreign Naperville, Illinois, I take an aimless walk and two blocks down find a wonderful nail salon in which to spend an hour and a half. Across the street is a Greek restaurant. They know how to cook fish, and the waitress is great and gives me a free dessert. Hours off schedule by now, I’m as happy as they make ‘em. The weather is gorgeous. As I’m finishing lunch the tire place calls; the car’s ready.

Back safely in Missouri, I find a client has paid me. Years ago Mom had given me a floral-type 1950s white-gold diamond ring with a mousy little diamond that Dad bought for their 25th; I never much liked it. She swore me not to sell it; but bravely telling myself, “I can afford this,” I went to a jeweler I didn’t know and said since he was the pro he could give the stones any new setting he liked. The little squirty trailer-park ring is now dazzling, classy and worth more than before, and in the same shopping plaza was a frozen yogurt shop. Saying, “Things are always working out for me,” I scheduled my ten-year-old Toyota for removal of its two little rust spots and it’s in the body shop right now increasing in resale value.

At the bank, the fun never stops.

During my weekend in Illinois, summer came to Missouri. The public pool opened for the year but I lacked a beach towel; I’ve never owned one. Goodwill—next block over from the jeweler—didn’t have any. Oh well. Stopping by the bank I find it's Customer Appreciation Day with delightful free hotdogs and model trains. I told the teller this should happen every day.

When my last haircutter, a sub for my usual, gave me a “Moe Howard” (bowl haircut) and I'd cried, a friend recommended a stylist 30 miles away, booked up weeks in advance. Saying, “Any expansion is good,” I called, and drove for my appointment far into the city, and for my efforts got a soft and flattering haircut. Because any expansion is good (by then I was playing the channeler’s CDs in my car), I bought that same day my very first eyeliner and some brow highlight called "Living Luminizer." The next day when I’m wearing them (plus my new haircut) a man approaches me, the first in almost a year. He’s not a contender (his dentures smelled), but any expansion is good!

I’d been thinking about buying or leasing a new car because I want updated safety features, and even phoned around and daydreamed at CarFax but said, monetarily, “I’ll just keep and fix the 2007 Toyota,” but while it’s in the shop I am driving an impressive silver 2016 luxury Nissan. The body shop worked out a specially cheap deal with the rental place. Things are always working out for me. . .

Towel and bathing suit

I got up at sunrise and outside bathed my new ring in the rising sun and thought, "Life is great. Life is always expanding. Things are always working out for me."

At the gym, Nissan in the parking lot, I attempt and ace the strength class that last year sent me to the cardiologist. Meanwhile, the bank phones: I have won one of their Customer Appreciation Day prizes: a beach bag with beach towel and a $25 gift card. When I pick up my prize (the bank takes my photo), I see the towel matches my bathing suit! And the bag is great, too.

Things are always working out for me!

Life Is Hard

Life is hard sometimes, especially when you don't do everything perfectly and to everyone's taste, or do or say anything without first considering every person's experience in life and their personal needs and opinions and how they might feel or react. Makes it kind of tough to actually do or say anything.

And I've never understood how people put a lot of stock on what is said rather than what is done. That's why you have miserable people saying, "He said he loved me, so I know he loves me, but he never calls," "I know she will make good on her promise because I made good on mine," "My boss told me a year ago I was up for a promotion and a big raise; he must be getting ready to promote me." Or the classic "Check's in the mail."

That's why I live in the woods, where right now a few cedar berries remain in areas, such as deepish road shoulders, where birds aren't finding or getting at them. They aren't true berries; they're actually little tiny cones, because cedars are conifers. I must remind myself that things aren't always what they look like -- but most of the time they are.

Slice of Heaven Bakery

While passing by I saw this bakery in Valley Park, MO, and thought, "Why pass it by?" So I went in and it was the old-fashioned kind of bakery that doesn't serve $8 paninis. Decades had passed since I was last in a normal pastry bakery like this one. They had St. Louis Cardinals cookies (I guess we're in the World Series), kolaches, danishes, cakes, brownies, cupcakes, turnovers, doughnuts, and chocolate-covered Oreos, to name a few. I could have only one slice of heaven so selected a cannoli, a dessert I can't make in my own kitchen. They gave it to me in a small white box with a cellophane insert, just like a piece of jewelry in a presentation box. I am so glad I did not simply pass by.

The Variety Pack

I first saw single-serving cereal boxes at age 9 at scout camp, and you could lay the box on its side, clip the cardboard, slit the wax paper, pour milk in, and your box was the bowl. Was that true, or did I dream it? I vowed that when I grew up I'd buy cereal only in those cool little boxes. Yesterday, 45 years later, the Kellogg's Variety Pack at the store caught my eye. Three dollars. Bought it. It is fascinating. Ten cereal boxes are packaged back to back. Facing out on one side are all the good-for-you cereals, including "Crispix," a contemporary cereal as strange to me as contemporary art; the other side marshals the candied cereals we grew up on: Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Sugar Coated Sugar Cubes. And also the Raisin Bran, sweeter than one might think. This two-faced packaging sends a cultural message I can't quite decode. Is it giving me a choice between being a kid and a grownup, or a sinner and a saint? Omnivorous vs. orthodox? Duty or decadence? Or--is it all random and meaningless? Good Lord, the Kellogg's Variety Pack is a moral problem and a spiritual exercise! And then--oh wow, man, blow my mind--both sides have Frosted Mini-Wheats!

So which to eat first? I chose Raisin Bran. It filled a teacup, not enough for breakfast, so I also ate the Corn Pops. Eating the Froot Loops I think will require extensive psychological and spiritual preparation.

Ye Shall Know Them

I plant arugula, a peppery little salad green, always, because it's easy to grow -- like a weed, the more you ignore it the better -- and because it's expensive at the store. The seeds resemble poppy seeds. In March I poked a pencil tip into the cold ground, dropped a seed in the hole, and after 30 days, ruffly healthy plants. Clip the larger leaves to eat and the plant will generously make some more.

The most helpful quotation I know comes from gardening: "By their fruits ye shall know them." (Matthew 7:20). It reminds me that we are what we do, not what we say. You can gauge moral character by the results of people's actions, by the grace or disorder they leave in their wake. Just sayin'.

Nature Wants You to Have the Best

Had a housecat that always claimed and slept on the best chair cushion, and in winter she'd curl up wherever a sunbeam entered the window, and as the sunbeam moved, she'd inch over to stay in it, her black fur getting wonderfully warm. She wanted her favorite salmon for all meals, but she got it only on Sundays, and was persistently vocal about how unhappy she was with dry food. This cat sat on my newspaper while I was trying to read it. I shooed it off. It came back. It was communicating, "What's so interesting there that it absorbs your attention? Pay attention to me."

Cardinals stop coming to my feeder when they've plucked it clean of sunflower seeds. They'll pick them out of the assortment of millet, corn, finch seed, and other grains in normal wild-bird feed, just like they know those seeds are the most expensive in the mix.

Bunnies go right for the tenderest and tastiest things in the garden. The box turtle, like us, waited for the exact day when the cantaloupe was perfectly ripe, and the morning we ran to the garden to seize it we saw the turtle with its head stuck through the hole it'd chewed in the melon's side (even though we had the melons tied up in nylon stockings) shamelessly enjoying the sweet juicy flesh.

Young cedar trees competing with young oaks for good growing spots root themselves just inches in front of the oak, trying to get all the sun and nutrients for themselves.

Everything naturally wants the best for itself -- except human beings. I was raised to settle for what's shabby, secondhand, stale, underpaid, accepting what's below par and be glad I have it at all (called "being grateful"); let others grab the good stuff and take the leftovers ("being noble"); let people exploit and abuse me or mine without objecting (called "being polite"); sacrifice small pleasures like buying a $5 bunch of flowers because I wasn't worth it or every penny must be hoarded out of fear of the future, or to pay bills ("being frugal"). Made for a dull and bitter life. I am learning from nature that what I lived for so long wasn't life at all.

Unfoldings

I look with reverence at plants. Brave things, alone, unfolding out of rock, or between cracks in sidewalks, or in the dark where they live on little love or water. They freely give fruit that's the basis of the food for all living creatures, and flowers that feed all sorts of amazing aerial and terrestrial creatures (a bunny just ate the leaves off my sole surviving baby kale!). In a a miraculous partnership plants trade oxygen for the carbon dioxide breathed out by those of us who are mobile. The finest trees grow greater and more impressive as they age, falling with a mighty crash, totally spent, after a hundred fifty years of patiently waiting for human beings to "get" what trees know and demonstrate and witness: that everything's a miracle and it's enough to be alive, stand still and contemplate it all as the earth turns through starry space...

January Stars

So I'm looking upward at burning winter stars and the pale stripe of the Milky Way running from east to west, right at the zenith, and I think to myself: "That's infinite creative power."

Lately I've been thinkin that I'm not all I should be, that I lack that last ounce of creative power that would put my work over the top. Well, that can't be. Because there's infinite creative power. If it's infinite, I can take some, or channel some, or ask or pray, or somehow get at it. More and more (I'm gettin' philosophical because another birthday is coming up) I see that I set and can break my own limitations.

Too Tight!

Lawnmower was balky. Cleaned the air filter and bolted it back on. Mower would run for 2 minutes and quit. David poked at it and said, Definitely an air/fuel mixture problem. And he fixed it in one stroke by loosening the bolt that held the air filter. When I'd bolted it on I'd made it -- too tight!

In Jan. 2007 I was workin' my 50-year-old abs to the max, and had a beautiful six pack (in my case, a four-pack). Trouble is, one day I stretched and tore a big sheet of muscle -- my rectus abdominis muscle -- in two places -- rip! rip! near the groin. It got inflamed and I saw 6 doctors and had scans, tests, medicines, 4 misdiagnoses (diverticulitis, hernia, spine, psychosomatic), physical therapy, and chronic pain for 11 months until I went crying to a chiropractor, and she broke up the big lumps of scar tissue that were crippling me. I'd made my abdominal muscles -- too tight! (That's why they call it "ripped"!)

Branch loaded with tomatoes breaks off because when I staked it I tied it -- too tight!

I make and sell jewelry for fun and the #1 reason I have to redo necklaces, anklets, and bracelets is because I pull the "tiger tail" jewelry wire -- too tight!

The fishing line snaps because it's too tight! You get indigestion because your waistband is too tight! You get Morton's neuroma foot pain and calluses and corns because your shoes are too tight! I've learned from experience 100 times now -- don't pull anything or anybody too tight!