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“I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka and have a party.”
--Ron White
And put salt on the rim of your glass—wait, I’ll bring limes and tequila.
Questions, questions:
1. If you enjoy reading your own book, does that mean it’s a good book? Or is it nostalgia? (Remember slide shows? Those slides, aka pictures, you took on vacation, that were fun for you but put your audience to sleep.)
2. Why do you always get a hair in your mouth when you have your hands full?
3. Why has packaging driven me almost into hysteria? We needed tools to open our Christmas gifts when we used to rip the paper and throw it with wild abandon. And now half the paper I encounter changes from a wad in my fist to a full-blown, almost half a page worth of hardly wrinkled paper. Paper? It’s something else
It must have been the desk my husband and I put together before Christmas that drove me over the edge—or the dishwasher that failed to wash our Christmas dishes.
I have to laugh at this griping, for there are people in the world who have never had a dishwasher, or paper to write on, for that matter. Many have never had a gift under a Christmas tree, or maybe not even a Christmas tree.
That we have running water in the house is a marvel; that it comes in cold or hot is an added blessing.
I am grateful.
A little drama likes to come with the holidays.
For Christmas Eve, we had food and gift opening, a splendid time. I cleaned up, loaded the dishwasher, pushed the button, and went to bed.
Christmas morning was grand. Before everyone else was up, I drove with Sweetpea to the grocery store to see if it was open, just to get rice crackers to go with the cheese. It wasn’t, but that’s okay, give those clerks the day off. And Sweetpea and I were in awe of the day—the glorious sunshine, the paper whites in our side yard are a foot high and budding—on Christmas day! The streets were virtually empty of cars, and the streets looked clean and black from the rain. To top it off, I drove by a street, and on a side street to my right, I saw a classic scene: a little boy trying to ride a miniature bike, and his parents out in the street photographing him.
Home from our excursion: Those dishes in the dishwasher were still dirty. Two lights on the control panel were on. I flipped the breaker to give that appliance another chance and proceeded to prepare for another celebration that couldn’t be beat.
Celebrate, Ta Da! Night, our guests went home. Still no working dishwasher at our house. Phooey—go to bed.
The day after Christmas, the kitchen had two celebrations of mess. I said, “*&%$ it,” and went to my office to write, or rather to edit that good book I mentioned.
After my husband read that the dishwasher has sensors and if something is amiss, like the seal around the door, or a plugged something or other, the machine won’t work. So, in the evening, he and I set out to clean, scour, and scrub every nook or cranny inside that dishwasher, even the spinning sprayers. Why would a dishwasher be dirty when I keep putting soap and water in it?
But it was.
Run that sucker.
Two lights are still on.
Last night I emptied the dishwasher, washed every dish, pan, and foil from two celebrations, and went to bed with clean dishes air-drying all over the kitchen. This morning, I tidied up the kitchen, and when my husband used a dish, I washed it immediately.
There will be no dirty dishes in that sink.
Then, my husband, being in a fix-it mood, tore apart the sink faucet that had been leaking, and he left it apart over night so we had no running water in the kitchen.
This is like The Cat in the Hat, fix one thing, that thing leads to another.
Sunday, the faucet is back together, one purchased part and another reamed-out part that husband dear used a drill press to fix, and now we have a non-dripping faucet. But still no dishwasher.
And now I am wondering what to do this coming year. I am disappointed that my readership has dropped over the past couple of months. And few people want to read me on Substack. Today I just deleted a pile of Substack posts. I was disgusted with my own stuff. I don’t choose to contribute to the negativity anymore.
I know it has been the holiday season, and people are busy, but I wonder what in the heck I’m doing here, and people seemed to like it when I was griping over the state of the Union, but I’m trying to save my sanity, and have slacked off with my griping.
For all of you who stuck with me over crisis and clam, over insanity and lucidly, Thank You, Dear Hearts! 💓💓💓💓💓 etc.
Woo Woo 💥💥💥Warning:
I may go woo woo this coming year. I have begun to read The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, and he answered something I have always wondered about.
It is the idea of good/bad, right/wrong, hot/cold, that we live in duality.
And I’ve heard folks trying to justify this duality by saying, “If you didn’t have bad, you wouldn’t appreciate the good you have.” To which I say “B.S.”
Good feels good, bad feels bad. We know the difference.
Holmes says that “As the belief in duality has robbed theology of its greater message, so it has robbed much of the philosophy of the ages of a greater truth; for in philosophy the belief in duality has created confusion that is almost as great as that in theology. It has made a philosophy of good and evil…True philosophy in every age, however, has perceived that the Power back of all things must be One Power, and the clearer the thought of Unity, the greater has been the philosophy.”
I do not believe that science and theology are at odds. Holmes explained that Science deals with results, and Theology deals with causes. You can see why one is more complicated than the other. We can grasp more completely what we can see. Thoughts? Well, thoughts can be debated, argued, or fought over.
Remember, there is no dark switch. The light is either on or it’s off, but it’s on a dimmer switch, and we are living in a dim room, when the bulb is a million-wattage one.
