A second epiphany, or perhaps a third

The trees outside my study window are gilded in the late afternoon sun, the stained glass gift that arrived outside my room one day when I was making the Exercises is glowing against the stark borrowed landscape beyond. I'm writing away in a not so silent house at this point. It's warm enough to lure the elementary school children out to ride bikes and the carpenter's radio plays softly just outside my study.

We celebrated the feast of St. Andre Bessette (a cousin of his made the Exercises with me!) at Lauds this morning, but I brought small gifts for Epiphany — and prayed for those beginning the Exercises at Eastern Point this week. In that spirit, I've reposted this podcast from last year.

This year, instead of contemplating the traditional three treasures (according to Gregory the Great: the gold of wisdom, the incense of prayer and the myrrh of self-denial) in light of my packed bags for the Long Retreat, I'm unpacking (and de-cluttering) as I move back into my newly restored kitchen (well, except for the hole in the ceiling).

Column (Redux): Doing Dishes

(Michelle is on retreat here, but thanks to the scheduled post feature, she virtually inhabits this space as well. The ability to bilocate used to be considered a saintly characteristic....)

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times March 27, 2008 - the very first one I wrote for the Standard. It resurfaced as I packed for a retreat where one thing on my mind is what it means to dispose of things. What I discard does not simply vanish, what responsibility do I take for what I acquire?

When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” [Jn 21:9-12]

It’s nearly 6 p.m. and the lab is dark. My students have gathered up their things and retreated to the dining halls for a well-deserved meal. I’m in the small departmental kitchen, up to my elbows in hot, soapy water, washing the mugs we used at the mid-afternoon break.

“You could use styrofoam cups,” offers a colleague, clearly perplexed at the sight of the department chair doing the dishes. My offhanded, “We’re trying to be green” satisfies her, though truthfully, the environment is the least of my reasons for taking on this mundane chore.

How else would I have known how many of my students this year drink milk, not coffee? Do they like chocolate chip or lemon cookies? Each week I brew less coffee and make an effort to pick up a quart of milk.

Slowly, over the course of the semester, I grow to anticipate what they need — I hold the signs in my hands, they’re not tossed aside in the trash. It’s in my power not to do the dishes, but I suspect I’m missing something critical if I don’t.

As I read this passage from John, I am caught not so much by the miracle of the groaning net, as I am by Jesus’ anticipation of the needs of the men He had called to serve His body, His Church.

The fire is lit, there is bread waiting — made ready with His own hands, not called down like manna from heaven. “Come, have breakfast.” Appended to a Gospel rich in theological reflection on the mysteries of the Eucharist and the mystery of the Incarnation, I wonder what inspired the author to record this decidedly unmiraculous encounter, this unadorned invitation.

In her essay “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and ‘Women’s Work,’” Kathleen Norris remembers being struck how, in the Mass, “homage was being paid to the lowly truth that we human beings must wash the dishes after we eat and drink. The chalice, which had held the very blood of Christ, was no exception.”

She reflects that our culture’s ideal self aspires to be above the doing of “humble, everyday tasks.” If we must wash the dishes, we want to make the work as undemanding as possible — get paper plates and toss them. Let someone else take care of the trash.

I suspect that the early Christians hearing John’s Gospel struggled as much as we do with the uninspiring chores of daily life — with loaves of bread that do not multiply and nets that do not fill with fish at a word. And so John’s heady and mystical Gospel ends by reminding us of the sacredness of the quotidian, of the daily.

We follow Christ not only through His passion, death and resurrection, but in the everyday ways we tend to each other’s needs. “Come, have breakfast.”

As we join the Apostles in encountering the risen Lord in our daily lives, may we be inspired by Christ’s example to become quotidian mystics. Finding God in the dishes, the laundry and the making of breakfast.

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God our Father,
work is your gift to us,
a call to reach new heights
by using our talents for the good of all.
Guide us as we work and teach us to live
in the spirit that has made us your sons and daughters,
in the love that has made us brothers and sisters.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Clerical Mysteries

(with apologies to Kathleen Norris^1,2 and a tip of the hat to my friend Katherine)

I've spent a chunk of time today clearing out my study to get ready for the summer's writing projects. My study was ringed with (relatively neat) stacks of books and folders, one or two for every project from April and May: columns for the Standard & Times, an essay for Nature Chemistry, student writing, general chemistry lectures. There are moments I wish for a wand to wave à la Mrs. Weasley, or to twitch my nose like Samantha on Bewitched (yes, my age is showing, I saw these episodes when they first ran) - so I can get on to the NEXT THING, but for the most part the gradual clearing of space is proving to be a contemplative exercise.

Slipping folders with drafts and tear sheets into their proper spot in the file cabinet, tucking correspondance from friends and family into a box and cataloging the book collection, let me see where I've been these last few months, in my teaching, my prayer, my writing, my family life. Where were things so crazy I didn't even manage to make a file? Did it really take me two months to answer a note from a friend confined to her bed?

You might have noticed the list in the sidebar of the blog labeled "Fifty Fewer" which is a remnant from a project undertaken four summers back — to clear out fifty things a week from my life. I stopped tracking around 250 categories — but wonder if I should return to the practice, albeit not on the same grand scale, and regularly track what stuff comes into my life and goes out of it. An Examen of Things.

Skimming the full list of Fifty Fewer and thinking about what I tossed/recycled/gave away in the recent tidy, I realize that I live in hope - which may not be a bad thing in many ways, but when it comes to things, might be less of a virtue. I hold onto the tea that I don't care for, hoping that I will grow to like it, or perhaps a visitor would enjoy it. Cooking gear that I don't use — ever. Am I hoping that one day I might decide to poach a whole fish?

My imagination, a faculty I generally would not surrender, also holds me hostage to stuff on occasion. I imagine that I might find a way to unstick the long rusted shut (and already replaced) pliers, or a use for the generic sticky notes that don't actually stay stuck.

The office space is neater, though I will spend a bit more time clearing out files and purging the book collection, and I am on to the NEXT THING. Writing a column — and an essay.

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1. Clerical as in filing, not ecclesiastical
2. If you haven't read Kathleen Norris' The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work, do.

A Study in Clutter

Robin is blogging about a topic that's often on my mind -- the spiritual aspects of physical space. You may have noticed the list titled "Fifty Fewer" on my sidebar. Two years ago, I spent the weeks between the end of the school year and the start of my annual retreat clearing out spaces real and spiritual by trying to have fifty fewer things in my life at the end of each week. I kept the list partly for accountablity and partly so I could keep from bringing the same stuff back in over and over again.

It's been a busy semester, and I've been trying hard to triage (or discern, if you prefer the Ignatian term) well what needs attention and what must go by the wayside. I find it hard to work on a cluttered desk, or in a cluttered space for that matter, but finally reached a point where I didn't always have time to reshelve the books or file the papers before I had to dig into the next bit of writing or class prep. So the piles began to stack up. They're organized, after a fashion, but at least two piles are threatening my work space — one on each desk.

I'm hoping to spend a bit of time tomorrow afternoon making some order in my study, and hoping there will be some spillover to my life — spiritual and otherwise. If I organize things, serenity will return? I'm not holding my breath!

column: God alone is enough

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 19 March 2009]

Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than a great fortune with anxiety. — Proverbs 15:16

There is a math joke that says that mathematicians are God’s way of turning coffee into theorems. Or in my case, tea into words. On sabbatical leave this spring, I’m spending many hours writing, a cup of tea always within reach. I seem to bring a new spoon up every time I make a fresh cup. On a good day of writing there might be more than a half-dozen spoons scattered across my desk.

“How many spoons do you have?” wondered a friend, slightly aghast, when I mentioned that you could track my scholarly productivity by the daily spoon count.

“At last count? A few dozen, maybe.” I responded sheepishly.

When I was in graduate school I knew exactly how many spoons I had — four. If I had more people than that for dinner, my guests had to bring their own silverware! Now I have spoons for more guests than my house could hold. Enough that I might not notice how many have migrated to various spots in the house for a week or more.

In his 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul VI reminds us, “The pursuit of life’s necessities is quite legitimate; hence we are duty-bound to do the work which enables us to obtain them: ‘If anyone is unwilling to work, do not let him eat.’ But the acquisition of worldly goods can lead … to the unrelenting desire for more … Rich and poor alike — be they individuals, families or nations — can fall prey to avarice and soul stifling materialism.”

Do I really need all those spoons? Searching the house for spoons I had left lying about and loading them into the dishwasher, I contemplated this verse from Proverbs. I wondered if tending to my current surfeit of spoons — and other worldly goods — might be taking time and attention I would rather devote to other things, might indeed be stifling my soul.

Lent is a season of fast; we undertake to deprive ourselves of what is necessary. Fasting strips away the excess and invites us to reflect how much is enough — not only of food but also of all the material things in our lives. In calling the Church to a renewed sense of fasting this year, Pope Benedict quoted St. Gregory’s Lenten hymn Ex more docti mystico: “Let us use sparingly words, food and drink, sleep and amusements. May we be more alert in the custody of our senses.”

Haunted by a vision of a Dickensian chain of clanking spoons pursuing me through purgatory, I’m finding myself gradually more alert to the unnecessary things that have collected in my life that stifle my sense of God’s providence. I look to strip out the excess, not just during this short season of Lent but permanently.

In Lent, or outside of it, God alone is enough.

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Nada te turbe, nada te espante, todo pasa;
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia todo lo alcanza;
Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta;
Solo Dios basta.

Let nothing disturb you, nothing distress you. All things fade away.
God is unchanging.
Patience obtains everything.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.

— Found on a bookmark in St. Teresa of Avila’s breviary

Minimal Surfaces and Maximum Storage

Math Man has been know to refer to my purse as a black hole - particularly after one memorable night. There was a raging ice storm, I had to be at a board of trustees meeting. Math Man parked his car for me at the far end of campus, and took my tiny Mini home before things got truly dire out. At the end of the meeting, I couldn't find my car keys. I dug through my bag, certain I'd put them in there. "They must be in my office," I thought. A quarter-mile trudge across campus through sleet and ice, to my office. A colleague lets me in, but no keys.

No keys? I search under papers, and in the few odd spots I might have tucked them. Not there. As a last ditch effort to avoid calling Math Man and confessing I had lost my keys, I emptied my bag on my desk. Bingo. The keys. Where were they when I was looking for them, I wondered.

My current theory, hatched as I dug through things to tuck into my briefcase before a trip yesterday, is that my purse is roughly speaking a sphere (at least when I have it pretty full). A sphere is a minimal surface, the smallest amount of material that can enclose a given volume. In other words, it has the most "inside" stuff in the least "outside" stuff. No wonder I can't find anything! It's all in the middle...

Red Ink is Salvific

Red ink is bad news for a business, but it was good news for me. I prefer to write with a fountain pen (or a keyboard!), but they tend to clog. Various methods for unclogging them have never produced fantastic results, so I tend to buy inexpensive versions, then toss them into a drawer when they get hopelessly clogged.

I've tried soaking nibs in cold water, warm water, hot water, water with ammonia....but as a chemist I should have known the best solution. The chemist's basic adage when it comes to dissolving stuff is "like dissolves like". Ink, use ink. Red ink as it turns out. Sheaffer red ink is an awesome ink solvent. I dipped a clogged nib in it, put the cap on and two hours later my pen was as good as new! I'm off to resurrect more pens...

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Photo is from Wikipedia by Ben FrantzDale.

Consumer Reports

Last summer, as part of the fifty fewer project, I decided to opt out of tissues and into handkerchiefs. I bought a dozen or so, mostly hemstitched linen, hankies. Each hanky cost about twice as much as a box of tissues, so I figured return on investment might be slow in coming -- but these things last forever. With the awful cold I caught from Math Man via Crash, came the acid test of my un-consumer option.

If you need to blow your nose a hundred times in a day (don't ask) the following rating scale might help - from worst to best.

• KimWipes (scientists will know this one)
• generic tissues
• Kleenex cold (the citrate in it kills viruses, but is NOT kind to tender skin, there is only so much I'll sacrifice for public health)
• linen handkerchiefs
• Kleenex regular
• cotton lawn handkerchiefs
• Puffs with lotion

Overall, I'm glad to be feeling better tonight. I apologized to Math Man if I'd been a cranky convalescent. "Not cranky," he allowed, as I breathed a sigh of relief, "more whiny, I think!"

Of Place Mats and Tablecloths

The boys (all three) ate without me tonight - I had a late meeting (one agenda item - changing the standard 4-6 pm meeting time to improve work-life balance). Everyone was tired and cranky, but Math Man kept me company at the table (and had nice things to say about the bread I'd baked last night). As I cleared the table after dinner and whisked off the tablecloth covered in crumbs I found myself contemplating the simplicity of the covering.

Math Man and I are agreed to disagree on this point. I think that not having to wipe down individual place mats, which are then left as "visual clutter" all over the kitchen to dry (and as a result occasionally catch fire on the stove), and not having to wipe down the table (except when someone's glass has been knocked over) is a huge time saver. It takes me just a minute to take off the tablecloth, put on a fresh one and toss the dirty one into the hamper at the top of the basement steps. Pop a plant into the middle of the table and I'm done. To him, it seems "too fussy" to use a tablecloth . Why cover more than you use? Last summer, I finally got to the point where the sight of 4 placemats on the table, which would have to be washed, would take up all my counter space while drying AND a table which would have to be wiped down drove me to tears.

I finally realized tonight, it's not the mats versus the cloth - it's that my life is so tightly packed that those extra minutes and that visual clutter were the final straw.

Fewer things, please.

Fiat Lux!

We finally succeeded at getting the Fiat Lux out of mothballs yesterday. She cleaned up nicely, and we're hoping to get her ready to sail, if not this week, soon. The only missing part is the transom bung plug. Seems small, but as I told Barnacle Boy, water going inside the boat's hull is generally not conducive to speedy sailing - just to speedy sinking!


I bought my Laser in 1990, at the Philadelphia Boat Show. Currently you can only get a Vela grey hull, not my splashy red. I have the radial rig - which is rated for one person massing 50-65 kg: perfect for me, the Boy and Crash. Math Man needs more wind that we do to fly (he really should sail with the standard rigging), but he still can get a good reach out of it. This year, the Laser Radial will be a women's Olympic class, the standard rig (for 65 kg and up) has been an Olympic boat since '96.

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Vela is from the Latin for sails.

On Fire

School's out and my kids and their friends have moved outdoors. They set up a tent in our backyard and have slept out there two of the last three nights. Last night Math Man appeared in the kitchen and asked if the kids were roasting marshmallows. "I don't think so, I can't imagine they'd start a fire without checking in with a parent." (Actually, I can imagine them doing that, as teen brain has kicked in for one of the players, but I was pretty sure they didn't have any more wood out there!) "Well, I smell burning marshmallows..." I headed out to the back, ready to raise a ruckus. The kids are ensconced in the tent, enjoying popcorn and a movie on very small DVD player. No fire. No odor of burning marshmallows. Whatever.

Math Man heads back to the basement laundry, I go upstairs to retrieve my shoes in go for my evening walk. Our bedrooms seriously smells of burnt marshmallows. I peer out the window; seeing the neighbor's barbecue out front, I assume that's the source. But as I exit the front door, I can't smell anything outside, just upstairs. Huh? Back upstairs, I check closets, feel walls, worried that it's not burning marshmallows, but burning insulation I smell. I open my study door to find my desk aglow. It's on fire.

My screams for help rouse - not my household - but the neighbor's dog. She is no help. I grab the fire extinguisher (not having a baptismal font handy) and put out the huge pile of papers Crash had abandoned on my desk. Math Man finally appears, pulls out the lamp that had fallen on the papers. We drag it all downstairs to the front drive and I douse it one more time for good measure.

Denouement: Crash's 7th grade math papers are toast ("Well, I'd wanted to burn those anyway!"); my kids and their friends all learned how to properly use a fire extinguisher ("Cool..."); the desk is undamaged (there were a LOT of math papers); my nerves are shot and we're only 3 days into summer vacation.

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If you're tracking the list of Fifty Fewer, now you know why a recently used fire extinguisher is number 200.

Pandora's Box

In the back of my garage is a red Olympic class racing sailboat, purchased almost 20 years ago and until the kids arrived, sailed several times a month almost all year round. It's spent the last decade in mothballs. Barnacle Boy's arrival put a stop to weekend sails, since I was unwilling to take 2-year old Crash out on the water alone, and I couldn't bring Math Man along, since obviously one couldn't leave the infant Boy on shore alone. And for some reason Math Man was not keen on being left behind with an infant and toddler while I flew across the water. (You may notice that I wasn't volunteering to be our girl on shore, either, so can't say as I blamed him!) So we turned to other outdoor activities, and the boat morphed into a convenient storage shelf.

Fifty fewer inspired me to delve into the boxes stacked on the boat and reclaim it for its intended purpose - sailing! Surely if I had not desired anything stored out there in years, much of it could be recycled, reused (by someone else) or just trashed? This afternoon's cool (for mid-June) weather and the absence of Crash and Math Man inspired me to begin digging. In short order Barnacle Boy and I had dispatched the decaying rug padding packed into the cockpit to the trash bin, put aside some extra pots and pans for St. Vincent de Paul, and cleared out a collection of cassette tapes that had long ago been converted to purely electronic playlists.

The Boy's attention drifted and he abandoned me for a snack, I was alone in the cool stillness. One box remained, from its label a stray from sabbatical leave in 1998 when we packed up much of the house to rent it out. I opened it to find notes and files from my theology studies, had I really once had all that at my fingertips? A flat package was tucked in the bottom of the box. Curious, I pulled back the flap. A crumpled, pale yellow cable knit sweater emerged. "Funny, I don't recall owning that sweater." Underneath were a pair of dirty socks, and a wallet. The pieces fell together with a resounding clunk. "Oh God, it's Tom's things from the night he died." The white plastic bag from the hospital, change from his pockets, his glasses neatly tucked into their case...I feel as if I'd been snatched from the quiet, dusty archives by an evil jinn and dropped back into the maelstrom of that night in the ER. Would the Boy come back to the garage and wonder where his mother had gone?

I didn't know what to do with the contents. What would I do with his shirt? much less with unwashed socks and underwear? I suddenly had a vision of Marie Curie sitting before the fire, in a paroxysm of grief, cutting her dead husband's clothes into pieces and throwing them into the fire. I could relate. Reality rapidly reasserted itself, far too hot for a fire in June and surely modern synthetics would not burn like Pierre's Parisian linen. I couldn't bear to actually take anything out of the box, I just looked. I finally called my best friend - who asked the very sensible question, do you need to DO anything with what's in the box right now? It's not as if I'm so short on storage space that I can keep only the bare necessities. So, no, there's nothing that must be done right this moment. I talked to her, poked at the box's content a bit more (his watch, a mass spec with his scribbled notes) and finally decided to close it up, label it and put it away for another time.

I suspect I subconsciously knew these objects were somewhere, and was therefore devoting internal space to wondering about when and how I would encounter them again. Even though I didn't move them out physically, I certainly feel as if some space was cleared around them internally. I wish I understood why I felt compelled to pray over the box before I put it away.

Yet another mystery is what those things were doing in that box in the first place? My best guess is that my mother would have put all these things aside for me to deal with later, though I'm sure she didn't intend it to be this much later. She was staying in our guest room cum study at the time, which might explain why it ended up packed with things theological.

Fifty Fewer Gifts

Barnacle Boy turned 11 today. He was born just after 11, a synergy not lost on him. When he came home from school today I asked him how he was. "Eleven!" he replied firmly. Yesterday he enjoyed a celebration with his friends and Crash. All week long he wanted to know when we were going to the local dollar store to get the stuff for the goodie bags. Three weeks into "fifty fewer" I could not bear to send fifty-odd pieces of "stuff" into other peoples' homes. Instead I suggested we hit our local children's book store and buy a paperback book for each kid. The Boy worried about transgressing the unspoken compact: you will come home from a birthday party with a bag of small plastic things that a parent will soon step on and break (undoubtedly muttering some imprecation under her/his breath) and CANDY. In the end he was game to give it a try.

We traipsed off with a list of names, and Crash (in case we needed a second opinion). It turned out to be a great deal of fun for the Boy to select books for his friends - Game Guy likes dark humor, while Bead Girl would definitely not want something too girly. It wasn't any cheaper to buy a dozen paperbacks, but it wasn't any more expensive either (we bought enough that the store gave me 10% off on the whole bill - yet another reason to shop local!).

The Boy held his breath at the end of the party. The first kid out the door was presented with his book, and crowed, "I haven't read this one yet. Cool!" Whew.

Fifty Fewer enters Week 2

It's more than a week since I started trying to move some of the accumulated "stuff" out of my life. I've gotten almost 140 different things out of the house (some to the trash, others into recycling, still others have gone to thrift shops and libraries). Listing the items has helped in two ways. It's satisfying to see how much has gone (though truthfully, I can tell by looking at the house, noticeably less cluttered), it's also helpful to see the patterns in what tends to accumulate. Choosing to count "classes" of stuff rather than total items has had the benefit of letting me discern once about the need for an item and then each new encounter doesn't require repeating the process. Crib sheets can just go when I encounter them, now that I've firmly decided that are not needed in our lives (I've found them stashed in three different spots so far...). Like reverendmother, putting a specific boundary around the project puts a bit of stress on it. When I didn't add to the list (though I was still clearing clutter) for a couple of days, anxiety crept in at the edges.

The clutter has been a stressor for a long time. I spend far too much time looking for stuff, and having to mentally track it all takes energy.

So far it's been a success, so even if I don't get to 400, both my house and my brain feel less cluttered.

Project Cookbook: Pound Cake

One project that has been waiting in the wings for about six months is the production of the second edition of the family cookbook. The first edition is twenty years old, and some of my sibs (and now nieces) have asked for a update. Part of the joy of all of this is recounting the family stories that these recipes are tied to. The unearthing last summer of my grandmother's recipe file is another impetus. The last version was spiral bound and printed on a dot-matrix printer (and composed on my IBM PC). This version will get laser printed and hand bound, testament to the new technologies and the very old (I learned to hand bind in a class on illuminated manuscripts). I'm going to post the recipes as I go, partly so I can have a searchable archive to go along with the codex when it's complete, partly so I can ask sibs to comment.

First recipe:

Pound cake

4 sticks of Imperial margarine
1 pound confectioner's sugar
6 eggs
3 cups cake flour

Cream margarine and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add cake flour. Bake in a ungreased loaf pan at 300^oF for 1 1/2 hours. Let it cool in the pan.

My mother made this as long as I can remember. The top of the cake always had a crack running its length. She always used Imperial margarine to make it, memorable, since margarine otherwise never made an appearance at our table or in her kitchen. She produced it from memory for me a couple of days before she died. It's been sitting on a sticky on my cabinet ever since. She said she got it from my paternal grandmother, Sally Miller, whose father was a tavern keeper, and was pretty sure it had come from an Imperial margarine box. (Fifty fewer got me to think about taking it down, and what to do with it when I did. It's in my writing notebook.)

RGBP Friday Five: Hard Habit to Break

1. Have you ever successfully quit a bad habit, or gotten a good habit established? Tell us about how you did it.

I started walking, 30 minutes a day, every day. It helped to ask a friend to help me monitor, "Are you still walking?", on a regular, but not too frequent, basis. It helped to ask for Math Man's, Crash's and the Boy's support (necessary if I'm going to get out the door while kids are awake).

2. "If only there were a 12-step program for _________________!"

Putting laundry away. During the semester, the baskets are always with me. Even though I know the time I spend digging through them in one day for socks is equal to the time to put it all away, I procrastinate this task beyond belief! And worse yet, I've enabled it by buying more laundry baskets!!

3. Share one of your healthy "obsessions" with us.

Singing! The extra oxygen is good for the brain or something...but I know it makes the people I live with nuts (but we're even on that see #4)

4. Share the habit of a spouse, friend or loved one that drives you C-R-A-Z-Y.

Leaving the drawers open - it looks like the bedroom has been ransacked. All three of my guys do this and it drives me NUTS.

5. "I'd love to get into the habit of ___________________."

Putting the laundry away the day it's folded.

Bonus: What is one small action you might take immediately to make #5 a reality

Giving away those extra laundry baskets (and then I could claim another fifty fewer category!)

Velvet SUVs

Where does a 400-lb gorilla sit?

Anywhere it wants to, goes the joke. Where does a 6000 lb SUV stop to pick up kids? Same answer, it seems. Watching an SUV stop in the middle of a traffic lane on a major road to pick up kids today got me to thinking about why people drive these infernal machines. (Full disclosure: I drive a MINI and ride a bike, which makes SUVs look seriously big to me.)

Parking is tight near where I live, and watching an SUV do a 10-pt turn to get out of a parking lot can be diverting, but it makes me wonder why people who live here buy these enormous vehicles. Unlike the ranch country where my dad lives, there is rarely a need to go off road here to pick up your mail or take the trash out. They use more gas, make more pollution, dump more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, require larger parking spaces and increase congestion (because of their height, cars tend to "hang back", so fewer cars can move through an intersection at a time - watch the next time you're behind one!). They're bigger, dirtier and scream, I've got lots of money!

In Victorian times, velvet drapes that were so long that they pooled on the floor were all the rage. They, too, took up more space than was needed for their function, and were "dirtier". And of course, the reason for having them was to subtly advertise your wealth. I can afford something that is way bigger than it needs to be, and the staff to maintain it. And we all know what happened to the British Empire, eh?

Old Rages

I decided tonight I could learn quite a bit from looking at the list of what I've moved out of my life. Maybe it would help me consider what kinds of things I let take up housekeeping with me! Each thing I tossed this week had it's own small discernment that went along. Why do I keep it? How does it serve the house? my family? me? If it were not in the house, would anyone miss it?

I went shopping tonight to get supplies for a wedding party I'm helping host on Sunday. As I wandered the aisles at IKEA, admiring the plethora of shiny household items arrayed with Swedish precision, I kept asking myself, why would I want to bring any of this home? (Full disclosure: I came home with extra champagne flutes for a toast, $0.75 each; napkins; and three new plants.) What do I really need?

Looking at the list tonight to begin my examen, I realized I had a typo: old rages appeared instead of old rags. I'm afraid it's a Freudian slip! Old angers are definitely something to toss if I want more interior space. My office and living room are both noticeably clearer after this weeks' fifty, it would be nice to feel equally spacious on the interior.

Fifty Things

I'm trying to throw away fifty things this week. I want less "stuff" to tend in my life as I reach my 50th year. The rules:

1. Keep a list of what gets tossed.
2. Only categories count. You only get one point for old magazines, not one point per magazine! (I could have gotten almost all the points for the week by just tossing periodicals.)

I'm going to try to do fifty a week until I leave for 8 days in silence in July. How much more space (exterior and interior) will I have when I have 400 fewer things?