Five Easy Pieces

Today we have another little housekeeping game. If you scroll down to the House Games post, you'll see that the game I described does not necessarily involve putting things away where they belong. The point of Pick-ups is just to get crap out of the main rooms of the house, and to do it in a relatively painless, low-stress way. Because it only takes seconds, you never become bored or resentful.

Five Easy Pieces requires a tiny bit more concentration, but it's still fun. Just as the name implies, you find five objects to clean up, tidy away, or organize. In each round of the game, choose your five objects and put them exactly where they belong. The object of the game is to do it in a minimum number of trips. Sometimes I feel like a Munich Beer Wench, except with less cleavage, carrying five objects out of the room (instead of full beer steins, imagine books, catalogs, sneakers, hair clips, and the like.)

These games may sound silly, but they work unbelievably well. Try one and see.

Bliary

I didn't necessarily promise myself I'd blog every day. I write in my regular diary every morning. No need to blog on days when my private diary entry runs to more than two or three pages. Apparently this is blog a diary anyway (or a cross between a blog and a diary) because evidently no one is reading my solipsistic effusions.

Or should I call it a Dog?

That's fine, it still serves a purpose -- forces me to revise my prose so that it's clear to people who don't actually live in my head. Good for my writing.

No particular relevance in the photo; it's a picture of a trail tree in the southern Ozarks, one of my favorite places on earth. I've been deeply entranced by these deliberately deformed white oaks. Why are they all over southern Missouri?

Pollyanna

No, it isn't that I never become angry. For example, I'm often overwhelmed by road rage (mostly, people tailgating me when I'm already going 5 miles over the speed limit.) It's just that rage envenoms my days to the point of paralysis. I can't bear it. Being angry feels physically painful. I haven't quite worked out how to cope with anger in a healthy way without denying it. I've learned to hold it back -- not to bottle it up, just to keep it from lacerating other people. Or I express it in my diary, or perhaps I knit it away. Yarn has no feelings to hurt, so it doesn't mind if I unleash a barrage of opprobrium in its vicinity.

For some reason I find angry blogs distressing. That's not to say that I don't agree with them--I do, wholeheartedly--but somehow the official nature of the published word (whether in print or online) lends much more force to the emotional charge.

I've learned in the past few years that my anger is almost always misdirected, so I think it's better (for me, anyway) to look for the cause inside myself rather than to assault the open air with my brutum fulmen.

House Games

That's the Hunter-Dawson House in New Madrid, Missouri, a neat and tidy, but (or should I say, because) uninhabited early nineteenth century mansion.

While I'm struggling to meet deadlines, I thought I'd post a few more fun games. Anyone reading this blog (if indeed there is anyone, which I doubt) will probably have figured out by now that I see life as a circus, an opera bouffe, or a slightly absurd, occasionally tragic carnival side show. I can only force myself to concentrate and behave like a responsible adult if I make jokes at my own expense, turn obligations into goofy games, and ignore anything that might upset me.

I'd like to say more about all of that some time, when I have a little more air and freedom. For now, here's another little game.

Over the years I've developed dozens of little diversionary tactics whose sole purpose is to get me through a boring or difficult task. I'll be the first to admit that while I love a clean house, I am not naturally inclined toward immaculation. (Is that a real word?) And I have a short attention span.

I was vaguely inspired by some of the FlyLady's routines -- but I confess I find that site frightening, cultish, bossy, invasive, and downright overwhelming. When I began to receive--literally--a dozen emails from the group exhorting me to lace up my shoes, I fled in terror.

Here's one way to reduce the tedium of clearing up about a week's worth of accumulated clutter.

Pick-ups. This is a fun little game that takes only seconds whenever I do it. For one afternoon or one evening, I tell myself that I will never leave a room without picking up one thing that belongs somewhere else. All I have to do is to pick up one item that doesn’t belong in that room and to drop it off either at a collection point or else in the room where it does belong. I don’t have to put it away. That’s part of a different game. For example, say I took off my shoes by the front door; I pick them up on my way out of the living room and drop them in the bedroom, and that’s it. Then as I head out of my bedroom I’ll pick up one item and bring it somewhere else. Then the game is over, unless I want to keep it going. Takes seconds; and if I do it a few times while I’m doing something else, eventually the effects will accumulate and the house stays tidy. It really does – believe it or not.

Genesee Country Village

I returned from my trip to northern New York State to confront a long row of unforgiving deadlines. There's so much about my time there that I'd like to remember, but the work will not be further delayed. People will get mad.

So, for now, until I have another moment to breathe, here are pictures of the wonderful Genesee Country Village. I spent the entire day there and still barely saw half of it. I was so tempted to hide in one of the barns until the place closed down so that I could play there to my heart's content. I fell in love with a ghost there.

Be right back

Going out of town for a few days, partly for work, partly to visit friends and family. Didn't want anyone to think I was the kind of lame-ass who starts a blog and then wanders away distractedly.

Gentle Friends Project

This year I'm playing a fun game: a scavenger hunt for nice people. I call it the Gentle Friends Project. The inspiration came from a lace-knitting friend who took up the "Ten Shawls in Twenty-Ten" challenge on Ravelry. The idea is to knit ten beautiful shawls this year. I think she's already on number seven.

Because I'm not yet a seasoned lace knitter, I can't concentrate on those intricate charts while I'm trying to write. (This summer I'm working on a book, and every nano-droplet of focus must be expended on the current chapter.) So I wasn't interested in challenging myself on the hobby front. Instead, I decided, after a year fraught with loss, to encourage myself to reach out to more people.

Particularly, nice people. I have enough, shall we say, thought-provoking folks in my life; my job is chock-full of them. I realized last year that I needed more gentle, kind, easy-going, non-aggressive, pleasant friends. Seems to be a self-evident conclusion, but oddly enough, for some reason, it took quite a bit of work to get myself to that point.

Mostly, I wanted to convince myself that there were plenty of kind people out there. So I came up with the Gentle Friends Project: I challenged myself to find Twelve Nice People in Twelve Months. I thought, at first, that this would become an overwhelming task. I'm by nature somewhat shy around strangers. In large groups I can become very quiet. I'm not particularly aggressive, and I fear rejection as much as any other insecure person. But I told myself: at least give it your best shot.

Nothing to lose, after all.

So I dug through my old emails, address books, lists of attendees at various events, and every other roster or membership roll I could think of. I thought about every pleasant person I'd met in the past few years; anyone with whom I'd ever exchanged a nonspecific lunch or coffee invitation, but was too shy to follow up. As I scanned my lists it suddenly occurred to me that non-aggressive people would be unlikely to pursue a friendship, well, aggressively.

I have to say -- that struck me as a major epiphany. We can't both be quiet and timid. Someone has to make the first step.

The rules of the game are simple: all I have to do is to invite a gentle person into my life. There are few limitations; the person has to be someone with whom I have not yet established a friendship, and she/he has to be temperate and mild-mannered. So, no loud-mouths, no aggressive, combative, belligerent folks. (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being forceful-- it's just that, in the words of Jack Nicholson, we're all stocked up here, thanks.)

It's okay if I already know and like these people; if we've already talked about plans for coffee, for example; after all, I'm not likely to walk up to a total stranger and bleat, "do you wanna be my fwiend?"

And it's okay if they don't respond. All I have to do is to tender the invitation.

How am I doing, you ask? Here we are in mid-July, and I just met Gentle Friend number ten last night. Isn't that amazing? I've invited nine people into my life; seven of them responded enthusiastically. One said she wished she could join in, but she lives too far away and is about to have a baby. One never responded at all; and one other didn't respond to an emailed invitation, but later made up for it in other ways. (More about that another time.)

Of the seven, I see at least three or four regularly, and am in touch with all the rest.

What does this prove to me? Proves that there are vast numbers of great people out there who are easy to befriend; that gentle people are worth the extra effort; and that I really had nothing to fear. This was all far easier than I could have dreamed.

By the way, last night I went out to dinner with a group of people; I knew a few of them already, but most were either strangers or casual acquaintances. Normally that sort of situation would be productive of a fair bit of anxiety for me. But because the GFP, I felt that I had to make myself go. You see, I was almost out of "game pieces," i.e., nice people I already knew well enough to invite into my life. So I am proud to say that I made one completely new friend as a result of this outing. Some time this week or next I'll follow up.

Good morning.

I chose the name Shady Grove because it's a mild play on my real name; and because it evokes old-time roots music, which I love; and finally, because it embodies my life's ambition: to live in an 1840s log cabin near a shady grove. I was reminded of this recently when a friend posted a similar goal on her blog (and she's making it happen.)

Some well-known contemporary writer--unfortunately I can no longer remember who--once said that she discovered, upon re-reading a decades-old diary, that she continually came up with the same realizations and epiphanies, over and over again. I laughed out loud when I read that. How mortifying and how true of me as well. I've been keeping a diary for nearly a dozen years. Yes, it's been enormously helpful, if only to my friends (because they don't have to keep listening to the same whiny bitching over and over gain) -- but ...

It's time to stop talking only to myself. I can't provide myself with new insights outside my own head, apparently.

For the time being I think I'll remain anonymous. Initially this was going to be a knitting / crafts / gardening blog, but I'm not fatuous enough to believe that the world would be enriched by seeing out-of-focus photos of my haphazard creative efforts. Not that I'm criticizing my hobbies -- they serve their purpose (keeping me on a somewhat even keel when work becomes too frantic) -- but I don't feel a need to crow about them. Also, to be honest, they're a little too ... how to put this ... What White Middle-Aged Overeducated Single But Looking Ladies Like.

I mean, seriously, I even have cats.

By the way, when the inspiration to begin this blog first struck me, I took a solemn vow never to brag, never to whine, never to bitch (well, hardly ever) and above all, never to be deliberately hurtful toward anyone.