Interesting challenge from my cousin: for one month write down 5 things a day for which you are grateful.

Ok, here is my first list of five:

1. Birds. I adore them flitting through the air and dive bombing each other and passing people. One thing I remember about my neighborhood growing up was the way the mockingbirds dove on passing cats, dogs, and walkers. This past week I have seen an immature Virginia Rail, a Rufous Sided Towhee, a Song Sparrow, a Sharp Shinned Hawk, Goldfinches galore, Red winged Blackbirds, Anna's Hummingbirds, and Robins, among others.

2. Rain. It makes things grow and keeps down the tree pollen. I better like it since I live in the Northwest.

3. Self-Hypnosis. Blood pressure coming down regular use.

4. Sense of smell. Flowers are great, rotting chicken not so great but a good thing to smell so I know when to chuck it out. Swamp water on a wet dog is nearly indescribable.

5. The ocean. Crashing waves, warm sand, hidden depths... little creatures and great behemoths.

A friend blogged about the ten books that she had read that tell something about her as a person.

1. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. My friend and I share a space in time, though not in region or year, where we dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, carried a notebook, wrote about what we saw, and had a not so very good day when our mothers found said notebooks.

2. Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein. This book got me to think outside the box of love, and introduced me to different kinds and levels of love.

3. Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright. I learned that I was not alone in having friends who weren't the same age as my peer group, and that it was ok.

4. Flatland by A. Square. Math is more than numbers.

5. The Nature of Personal Reality by Seth. I read it because my mom brought it home. It enlarged my world.

6. Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Brian Ruppenthal. A vegetarian tome written by folks on the commune where my stepsister lived. My family never really accepted that I became a vegetarian, and my co-workers never believed it. I felt better eating vegetarian.

7. Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel. I came across this book of photographs and stories in 1996. When we had my daughter study geography we used it to illustrate the differences and similarities of people in different countries. I never really understood just how much I had that people in other parts of the world didn't. I began to give things away from this this point on.

8. Birds of North America by Robbins, Bruun, Zim, Singer and published by Golden Books. I have marked up three copies over the years with dates and places of the birds I have seen. This book has brought me more pleasure in my years than most others.

9. How to Keep a Nature Journal by Claudia Nice. I love her art, and the simple way she has of encouraging me to keep trying to draw what I see, rather than what I think I see.

10. The Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. Written in the 1930s by a suspected spy, these are children's classics in the UK.

Isn't it a curse to wish a person, "May you live in interesting times," ?

My daughter, who grew up in a home with a combat veteran who is rated at 100 % disabled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and knows what that entails on a daily basis, loves a wonderful girl who has just enlisted in the Army. She is being sworn in today and heads off to Boot Camp soon.

Hubby and I have switched to the "9 inch diet" in order to lose weight without feeling deprived. We have bought 9 inch plates to eat from and are putting away our 11 inch plates for good. As a member of the clean plate club (thanks Mom!) I am a visual eater rather than one who pays attention to whether or not I feel hungry. This should help.

I just read an interesting thread at "Apartment Therapy" http://www.apartmenttherapy.com which made me think about my experience with cleaning services.

My mother's mother, whom I never met because she died long before I was born, was an RN in an osteopathic hospital. In the 1920s. Before antibiotics. Well, that isn't quite true. They had antibiotics (anti = against, bio = life) but theirs were in the realm of soap, boiling water, alcohol, vinegar, and a lot of scrubbing. When my grandparents married, she an RN who made $180 a month and he, a Lutheran minister who made $80 a month, of course she quit her job to stay home and make babies. Three kids weren't a lot to have during the 20s and 30s, but since my grandfather was often (yup, really) payed with a chicken or some vegetables, they needed some extra money to buy clothes and shoes. To make extra cash she took in paying farm girls and taught them to be maids.

Many of them had had very little experience cleaning a house to my grandmother's specifications, but they learned, quickly, that dirt was not allowed, and shiny surfaces were expected. According to my mom, her mother was a tyrant when it came to dirt and germs.

Over the years I have learned that dirt and germs are not all that bad for you and if we learned how to get along with them we would most likely have fewer kids with asthma. Be that as it may, I grew up knowing that every Saturday was "kill all the dust and germs" day. Our weapons were copious amounts of Clorox bleach, soap, scrubbing brushes, furniture wax and dust rags. Also a vacuum (kind of like a Gatling Gun for floors). We never knew anyone who employed a cleaning service, nor did we know anyone who cleaned other people's houses for a living.

When my hubby and I moved our daughter into a motor home to travel around the country, long before gas cost anything over a dollar a gallon, we made it to a winter Texan haven where we rented a condo for a few months. The condo came with a cleaning service once a week. They changed bedding, vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms, and dusted. Each condo was owned by individuals but managed by a central office, so if an owner wanted to rent it out the office made sure it was kept in good shape.

My hubby looked at me incredulously when the night before the cleaning crew came I was picking up clutter and putting it away. "Why are you cleaning the place when people will be here tomorrow to clean it??" he asked. I just smiled and told him that from my experience they couldn't dust if the surfaces were covered with art projects, books, papers, magazines and the like. Picking up the clutter and putting it away was helping the cleaning crew to get in and out quicker and with less disruption to our lives especially since they wouldn't be moving all the clutter anywhere. He saw my point and helped put things away.

I loved living in that condo. Not having to clean was a blessing.

I have thought of getting a cleaning crew to come to my apartment and clean, but I am not quite at the point that I need the time. It is a fairly small apartment and doable, though I really hate cleaning...

I found out this year why Christmas, which I always thought was scheduled for the solstice to overshadow the pagan solstice celebrations, is not on the solstice! Learn something new every day...

Turns out that the solstice used to be on the 25th of December before the powers that be changed the calendar to the current one we in the western world use. Since Christians were welded to keeping the number of the day that they celebrated Christmas the same, and face it, if they had changed it the fact that it was put where it was would have been terribly, glaringly obvious, it stayed on the original date. I suppose that it really doesn't matter now anyway since it is not a religious holiday for most of the world, but a buying holiday.

Weather...

Climate...

Sometimes they don't mesh...

We have over a foot of snow interspersed with ice. The infrastructure (I even know what that means now!) here isn't set up to plow roads, though they do have deicer and sander trucks. Since our forecast says anything from (depending on which computer model you believe) snow to rain for the next 5 to 7 days, we are pretty much stuck unless we decide to take the buses which are running chained. I am thankful they have chains. I decided not to get them for the current car due to cost and my PTSD about driving in snow. (Duh, why does anyone think I moved to the northwest? I didn't move here to get over my PTSD about driving in snow! It is supposed to rain here in the winter.) Oh well...

I am thankful for the roof over my head, electricity, my ability to walk in the snow to wherever I need to go (and the money to buy Ibuprofen to take care of the aches after the walk), and neighbors with shovels.

A Clutter Free Christmas

I have been trying to de-clutter my house for two years. It would be easier if I were a person living alone, but with Hubby going into the years when he wants to hang onto memorabilia for "the Grandkids and Daughters" I know there are things I will never be rid of even though we don't use them and have no plans to use them. Did I mention that Hubby is a writer who needs reference books? And odd pieces of paper that spill from manila folders?

My collections are limited to books, a small stack of art supplies, and some antique baskets. I don't think the books look cluttery, but they do take up space. The baskets hang on the wall during the year and sit under the bed when Christmas comes around and they are replaced by a tradition I regret I started; new homemade Christmas stockings every year. There are about 50 of them on the wall, various sizes, colors, and styles all having to do with something we did or saw or visited that year. I have tried three times to stop this tradition but the shrieks of dismay from my family have overcome my resolve every time. This year is the last and then my daughter can either take it over or give it up. She will also be required to remove her stockings when she moves out.

To have a clutter free Christmas we have a list on the fridge with present requests for each person. One only has to look at the list and buy from it rather than trying to decide if a Red 3 foot high vase for bamboo stalks for the entryway would be better than a two foot high garden gnome for the outside the front door. Interesting thing on all the lists this year was books.

I admit to buying junk for the stockings, one wind up toy for each, and a toy from yesteryear for each, but most of the stocking gifts are useful nonclutter; socks, pocket knives, lip balm, gloves, maple sugar santas, journals, pens. I hate getting junk for Christmas that I won't use, and the wind up toys go to charity very quickly but they are another family tradition that I don't want to give up.

Next year we are planning to radically change our Christmas by not having a traditional tree but using the Draceana as a lighted tree with no ornaments, ditching the stockings, and only putting out Hubby's collection of Santas on top of the bookshelves. The rest of the decorations will be stored for a year to see if we miss them or even want to keep them. We may swap out some decorations for others we decide to buy, but none will come in without some going out as we have no more room to save them.