LIFE MY WAY

This blog was never intended to be a personal diary and I shall never make it such. Yet it is difficult for me not to share some of the important things I have learned, and am learning on the route to the ultimate conclusion of my life.

First, I learned that you can get your back clean without another person around to do it. It took only eight years of widowhood to finally figure that one out. I have had brushes, scratchers, and all kinds of other tools, but they have never equaled this simple tool. I bought a wonderful piece of thick, waffle like material with two loops on the end. Sticking my hands into the loops after soaping up the middle and throwing it over my head, I was able to feel a REALLY clean back for the first time in years. Since I have always been a 'latest gadget' explorer, I wonder how it was that I missed this one all these years. I figured it might be because I rarely stop in stores. Proof that often the simpler, is really better. It made me start to think of all the other things in my life I might simplify.

Trying to make my life less of a blivet, I think (as I open kitchen drawers) why have I not gotten rid of some of the clutter in them? I no longer cook as I used to when my husband and I were feeding the extended family every holiday. I am totally unable to throw away still-useful things. I know I will never go to the trouble of having a yard sale. There are charities and halfway houses that could probably use lots of the things I no longer need and I have been planning to find them for years.

I love books and have, to the amusement of many of my friends, too many of them. It is why I usually buy what I want to read rather than borrow from a library, because I rarely sit down and read a book through (unless it is an exciting novel, which I also rarely read). Finally, they are going into a database; first, to know what I have, and secondly, to make it unnecessary to hunt through the whole house only to realize that I probably gave it away or lent it to someone who failed to return it. If I have not read it, or have read it but want a refresher re-read , it stays around as do gift books, for the persons who gave them to me to read when they visit. While consumables are appropriate for seniors, I request that they not do that since I don't eat the munchy kind of stuff as much as in the past. Family has grasped that humor is always a good gift.

At the top of my priority list is to choose one tool to crush garlic, instead of the several that I have. Meanwhile, I more often whack the clove with the side of a flat, wide knife, throw the peel off, and dice it quickly. When I realize why I don't use any of the others, an enormous sense of shame overwhelms me (not actually, but it sounds better that way)and it is clear that I don't use them because they have been lost in the maze of unused tools in the drawer and i can do it quicker by my own hand. The conclusion makes me wander off shaking my head as I look at my priority list. Well, I guess I will just have to live longer than I had planned, to get to the bottom of the list.