A New Perspective

This past week I took my memory card in to have an archive copy of my photos made.  As I was choosing pictures for the archive CD I came across this photo that I took early this summer.  I loved the little button mushrooms growing in some moss under the trees.

The photo wasn’t anything special just one that I had taken walking around my yard this past summer.  I was trying to capture some pictures of the many mushrooms that had grown in various places, sizes and colors in our yard.   

When I focused in on the mushrooms I failed to notice what else was present in the picture.  Do you see it?  You might have to stand on your head to see it or just take time to notice something from a different perspective.  I loved learning about perspective in my art classes in high school and college.  The same thing can look entirely different depending where you are standing.

 

As the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas approach sometimes a change in perspective is what we need.   When we focus on one thing as I did on the mushrooms we miss out on other things like the heart-shaped shadow in the picture.  I’d rather focus on the love of others during the holidays and what they have to bring to enrich our lives than the fungi that is present and growing in all of our lives.

It will take a new perspective on my part to keep my priorities in place.  I may have to stand on my head to see things differently this season but it will be well worth it.

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Walter’s Car

Last night  my husband and I had a special delivery to make.  It’s a delivery that Walter has been waiting for nearly 35 years.  Our delivery was a 1968 Chevy Camaro Z28.  Walter bought the Camaro brand new on August 30, 1968.  In the mid 70’s Walter was married man with a family to support and sold the Camaro to pay bills.  It has been in my husband’s possession ever since.  He and his Dad painted the Camaro and it was my husband’s car while he was in high school.  He parked it in his Grandma’s old garage when he left for college in 1977.  There it has remained except for one brief outing in the 90’s when we took it out to show our kids their Dad’s old car.

Last week my husband made the comment to me that he thought it was time.  I said “Time for what?”  “Time to talk to Walter to see if he would like to buy his old Camaro back.  Neither one of us are getting any younger.”  Walter is 61  and my husband is 51.  He continued, “I always told him that if I was ever ready to sell the old Camaro that I would give him first chance to buy it back.”  Later that evening he called Walter’s wife and asked for Walter’s cell phone number to call him.  She gave him the number and he got Walter on the phone.  They talked and I listened to one side of the conversation.  Walter is an over the road truck driver and said that when he got back in town he would stop by to talk.

Walter and his wife showed up at our shop yesterday afternoon.  They had been out to the garage to check the car out.  Noted that it had one flat tire, was dirty but in overall good shape.  My husband and Walter got down to the business of negotiating a price.  I sat down with Walter and his wife to begin the paperwork for the sale while my husband drove out to the garage to retrieve the mileage off the Camaro.  It was 92787 actual miles. 

It was fun to hear both my husband and Walter reminisce about their time with the Camaro.   My husband talked about how the window really shook when they got it up to 140 mph.  Walter said he thought the fastest he drove it was 150 mph.  They commented on the fact that it more amazing that both of them were still around rather than the Camaro due to their driving habits.  Walter talked about picking up his future wife for their first date and how she was wearing white go-go boots when they went out that evening.

Walter talked about stopping by the dealership to see if they had the original invoice from his purchase in 1968.  He said the dealership is still in business.  He talked about how he would have to call his friend who was with him the day he picked up his Camaro the day he bought it to tell him he had it back again.  He told us how they had Nehru jackets to wear while they drove the Camaro.  One was green and one was blue.  Nehru jackets became popular when the Beatles and the Monkeys wore them during performances. 

After we finished up with Walter and his wife we told them we would bring the car out later that evening after we finished up with our other customers for the day.  Walter had to hit the road at 10:00am the next morning.  It took us longer than planned but finally we headed out to the garage with the air tank, flashlight, and flatbed to retrieve the Camaro and deliver it to Walter. 

The anticipation of delivering it was like waiting for someone to open a special Christmas present that you know they will be excited about.  We worked together to carefully load the Camaro on the flatbed and drove to our shop to air up one tire that wouldn’t hold air and to give the Camaro a quick bath before we delivered it.  It’s last one was in the mid 90’s.  It needed it.

Getting a Quick Wash

 

We drove slowly the mile or so from the shop to Walter’s home.  When we drove into the yard the sound of the diesel truck and headlights brought them out of the house for the unloading.  After we unloaded it my husband got in the car to show Walter the old eight track tapes he found inside.  There were a couple of Beach Boys and a few others.  Then he opened the glove box to see if the owner’s manual was still in the car.  It was and a few other items.  As he paged through the owner’s manual neatly tucked within its pages was Walter’s original purchase invoice for the Camaro.  He wouldn’t need to make a trip back to the dealership after all. 

At the end of the day some things just feel right like the Camaro back home with Walter.  Sleep tight!

 

Unassaulted Time…Early Mornings are worth it

I love early mornings.  A quiet mind within a quiet house not yet awake.  It’s a great time to read, think, and write.  I enjoy sitting in the quiet and thinking about the day that is just beginning and its possibilities with a cup of hot coffee in hand.

Some mornings like the past week have been dreary and rainy making it hard to get moving.  This time of the year it is difficult to force myself out of bed in the dark.  It takes so long to see the early morning sun which is another motivator for me.

I love to listen as one by one the others in my home wake up and join the day.  Each in their own way.  My oldest son jumps to meet the day and hops instantly into the shower to get ready.  Not late, it’s just how he starts his day.  My youngest daughter greets the day slowly and slumbers later into her morning.  She takes it slowly never in too much of a hurry.  It’s always been that way since they were born. 

My youngest son used to greet the day screaming as a baby.  He was hungry.   Now!  Feed him and everything was right with his world.  He’s mellowed a bit in that department.  My older daughter always greeted her new day with delight and still does.

Throughout the day at work so much of the day is spent in the reactionary mode or as my husband likes to put it “Putting out fires”.  When you deal with customer service you drop what you are doing or planning to do to meet the needs of the customer  your day becomes fragmented.  It ends without a feeling of accomplishment because not one thing was finished to completion on your list.  Many things may have moved forward with some progress but not entirely finished.

Even on the most stressful days at work if there was time in the morning for quiet before the chaos the day seems to go better.  If there was none because I started the day racing through it and there was no time to relax in the morning,  things just don’t go as smoothly.  Unassaulted time has its benefits even in the dark.

 

My Load is Lighter…over 400 magazines to be exact

I love magazines.  I love to read them cover to cover.  Some of my favorites are home improvement magazines, cooking magazines, and especially flying magazines.  I love to keep them and go back and look at the pictures for various home improvement projects that I thought some day I would like to do.  The problem was getting out of hand.  I bought those handy storage containers for storing magazines.  I thought if they were kept neatly it was okay to keep them all.  They were taking up space in closets and shelves in just about every room in my house and some in the attic and garage.

One of the websites I frequent often is a home management system called FLYlady.net.  Each month she has a goal to work on in your home to make it a more enjoyable place to live.  This month the goal is to get rid of paper clutter.  She says living in clutter robs you of your peace. 

One reference she made when she made this statement was that we all love to stay in a nice clean motel/hotel.  What is it about it that we like?  It is the fact that it is uncluttered.  That’s what I want in my home.  Uncluttered and peaceful.  I am not a hoarder like the new TV reality shows but I do have areas in my home that have been taken over by my magazines and fabric that I use for sewing. 

Tuesday morning my grandson Jack and I loaded up the truck of my car and drove to the local recycling center and dropped them off.  Oh how I was tempted when I saw the cover of several magazines and wanted to keep just this one copy or maybe two as I was putting them into the recycling bin.

Then I found myself looking at what others had put in for recycling and realized that their magazines were different from the ones I was bringing and started to pick them up and read.  I put them back and thought of my goal of a clean, peaceful, and uncluttered home.  Bringing magazines home with me did not fit into my goal.  It’s a good thing I had Jack to keep me moving. 

The next thing on my list as far as paper clutter is all of my household records.  I love office supplies so I have found ways to keep just about everything paper for our household.  If I go in my attic I could find a box that contains receipts for what I paid for fuel oil for our first home.  We haven’t lived there since 1992.  It would be interesting trivia to read but I don’t think I need them anymore. 

My goal is to work on paring down all this paper for 15 minutes a day.  That I can handle.  I’ve already begun to tackle the mail each day as it comes into the home.  I stand next to the paper shredder, recycling and trash and sort immediately.  With four adults in our home we get a lot of mail. 

I’m feeling better already about my home and the spaces that I have cleared of clutter.  Sorry Tyler that the magazines had to go,  I know your love of magazines,  but the peace is worth it.  I will always read magazines just not keep them as long as I have in the past and pass them along to others to share.

I’ll let you know of my progress at the end of the month.

 My new idea of an uncluttered, calm, and peaceful life!

 

Multi-tasking is Not Good for the Soul…

For years my husband has been telling that he likes to finish one thing before he starts another.  In our business it is very hard for him to do that because he sells, buys and fixes vehicles.   He has many interruptions throughout the day and some days he feels that he hasn’t accomplished anything.   That usually means that he spent the day talking to customers about vehicles but has not completed the mechanical work he intended to get done that day.  My answer to him in the past years has been “Welcome to Motherhood”. 

When you are taking care of a baby or a family, in general,  it is a day and sometimes a night filled with many interruptions.  There are many days when you feel that you are farther behind than where you were when the  day started.  The house is messier, there is more laundry and dinner isn’t ready either.

I think that I am starting to come around to his way of thinking.  I’m finding it increasingly difficult to move from one thing to another without feeling agitated.  I like how I feel when I complete a project.  It seems that I have less completed projects at the end of my day than I used to have.  Maybe its my age or laziness.  My husband used to get frustrated with me because I would use commercials to go and do the dishes or laundry and never just sit through an entire tv show.  I used to pride myself on the number of different things that I could accomplish in a day.   Where is that pause button on life?

When I was learning to fly my CFI (certified flight instructor) was constantly reminding me to divide my attention from inside the plane and outside the plane.  You need to do that to remain safe.  Dividing attention keeps you aware of your surroundings and your instruments in the plane.  She said “I know that when you taking care of your grandson that you are doing more than just watching him.  You are probably doing laundry, cleaning, fixing a meal or maybe working on your computer.”  I reached a point in my life where I would like to just savor the moment. 

If I am gardening, I want to keep gardening.  I don’t want to stop and fix a meal.  If I am quilting I’d like to keep quilting until I am ready to stop and not be thinking about the laundry that needs to be done.  If I am reading a good book there are days I would like to read through the entire book if I felt like it without guilt.

Since I started my blog in January I have enjoyed thinking about different topics to write about.  I enjoy reading other blogs and hearing about different parts of the world.  I don’t want to divide my attention to different tasks anymore.  I  just want to devote my time and  attention to whatever is my interest is at the moment.  Could this be a glimpse into those possibly elusive retirement years waiting for me?