Project update

The fairy lantern turned out pretty good, but it didn't take very long to make so that left me needing another new project. 

And here's a plant update. Remember the tiny little palm tree?

It's all grown up now...

I guess it was happy in its little home, but it outgrew the space so now it's free to take over the windowsill. 

Another miniature world

I just bought some items to make another miniature hideaway. This lantern and patio table and chair and some cute little milk pots for plants is going to become a fairy gazebo to enchant the corner of my desk. 

My handwriting journal is working well as a form of zen practice, and it's helping me to slow down during the day as well and enjoy every chance I get to hand write something. In a digital world, I'd forgotten how enjoyable it can be to write something by hand and not have to be in a rush to get it done. 

I'm also reading the book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson - which was a birthday present from a friend. Like most self-help books, it oversimplifies some problems that plague us with the usual 'just do this!' rhetoric, but one thing it mentioned stuck with me, and that's how we tend to make life into a series of emergencies - which causes stress because really very little in life is actually a real emergency. 

The book suggests ways to not take life too seriously and create the stressful feeling that every occurrence is somehow a problem that needs to be solved - but in thinking about my own stress load, I can see that my 'emergencies' tend to come more from other people thinking things are an emergency than from me thinking they are. 

My general state is really one of laid back laziness. I hate to jump into flight mode over little things and I prefer to take time to put things in perspective, but I have a lot of people in my life for whom life is a problem and everything is an emergency. 

A friend whom I see little of these days was fond of the phrase "What are you going to do?!" exclaimed over many problems, and I recall always feeling like someone lost in a storm when I heard that sentence. It would mold my thinking - What AM I going to do? How AM I going to fix this problem? Am I not taking it seriously enough?

I spend less time with that person now and find I'm much calmer for not hearing that plaintive exclamation all the time. I still deal with a lot of people who make mountains out of molehills and unfortunately my go-to response is to question whether I'm actually under-reacting to something rather than to assume they are over-reacting. It's been my experience that most things that seem like terrible problems tend to un-knot themselves over time and so many things that looked like impossible hurdles turned out to be no more than minorly inconvenient speed bumps when I look back on them. 

I regularly deal with people who are hypersensitive and become morose and pouty over the slightest perceived insult, as well as people who turn every sniffle into a medical disaster and people who exaggerate small issues into World War III whether for effect, or for their own entertainment. It makes it very difficult to look at life as basically calm and uneventful and easy to navigate when, in addition to the media preaching that the sky is falling every chance they get, the surrounding populace is always in a state of bereavement over something - for instance the person who called my office the other day in a tizzy because the street cleaners had created a bit of a traffic backup that had resulted in her children ALMOST being late to school. ALMOST. I mean a close call like that can really ruin someone's day - and of course we all laughed about it, but that's exactly the type of thing that happens on a more personal level to cause stress. 

When a random person has a melt down over something inconsequential it's a source of amusement, but when it's a friend or a family member having the melt down or urging me to have one with phrases like "Are you going to put up with that?" or "Why didn't you..." or "You should have..." or "What are you going to do?" or "You have to..." it becomes a lot harder to laugh.

So my goal is to figure out how to nip these emergency responses in the bud and not allow someone else's perception of life as a problem to make me question my perspective that it's not a problem. 

I'm not sure how I'm going to do that. Perhaps writing in my zen journal will help. 

Art journaling

I know. I know. I waxed rhapsodic about not being able to make a bullet journal work for me, but that didn't stop me from wanting an excuse to buy a nice journal and play around with it. 

So I agonized for a while about how I would use a journal and decided that I would try my hand at art journaling. 

I've always kept sketchbooks with all kinds of art in them from paintings to zen tangles and Pokemon and butterflies and you name it. 

So I decided an art journal that would give me a place to doodle and practice handwriting [a dying art!] might actually be a very zen way to spend some time. 

I spent about $12 on the following - a gorgeous little leatherette journal with lined pages and a set of bold tip ball point pens. So far I'm loving it. It's yet another outlet for creativity with no pressure. I can just write and sketch and tangle. 

I've decided to write zen proverbs and sayings in it as a means to work on my handwriting which has gotten so bad over the years because I don't have the patience to write neatly. 

Here's to beginning...

The Impatient Gardener

The impatient gardener - that's me. I want to plant things NOW and see them grow and harvest them...right now. 

Plants take time, so I tend to rush things, but I don't care. I'm enthusiastic about my garden, and that's what matters. 

Having a ton of polymer clay leftover from my miniature food obsession, I decided I could finally make some weather resistant garden markers, so for the past couple days I've been fiendishly rolling out strips of clay and embossing them with plant names using a clay embossing set I got for a song with a coupon at JoAnn's. 

Here's the finished product - they're sharp on the ends, slightly flexible and color coordinated to the crop they represent [as close as possible]. 

I won't be able to use them all this year, but I have a wide variety that should cover just about anything I want to grow. 

Now to start coaxing my little seedlings out of the ground!!

Bullet journaling, life planning and organization

I love things that are organized and color coded and neat. I don’t have that much patience for organizing, but I recently applied the Konmari method to my clothes closet and dresser drawers, and I’ve been happier for it.

Last year I got on the life planner kick – not in a big way, but it was a good excuse to buy washi tape and colored pens. Rather than spend a lot on a premade calendar or planner, I made my own, so that I could have five years of planning in one place for the whopping cost of $3.00 instead of what would have ended up costing $50 or more [much more]. I also got to use purple paper, and all the stickers I’ve been foolishly hoarding for years.

I spent a little more money on a Filofax type system that would hold all the information that doesn’t change. I created my own Filofax for under $25.00 to keep vital info – the kind of stuff people run around like headless chickens looking for when there’s an emergency. This way my husband and my kids know to look in one convenient place for all the information they might need to handle doctors, plumbers, banks, credit cards, etc.

I update the “life planner” whenever necessary. This allows me to plan things for future years and keep track of stuff from December to January without having to dig up a new calendar.

I think I’ll probably spend a little time once a year updating the Filofax.

Now I just heard about the ‘bullet journal’ which seems like another word for ‘life planner’ and/or Filofax. It’s all about analog planning and list keeping, something I’ve been doing without a fancy name for… well ever.

I make lists all the time, cross things off, migrate them to other lists, allow things that become unimportant to drop off those lists, make check marks and tables and analyses. Sometimes it’s helpful, but not always.

I love the idea of the bullet journal as much as I love the idea of the life planner and the Filofax, because it’s a reason to go to the store and buy pens and notebooks and pretty things in multiple colors. I like the idea of having a document that represents your life…

…but…I’m also reaching a point in my life where living it is more important than documenting it. Ending up with a drawer or a shelf or a box full of old journals/calendars is not attractive to me anymore. They look pretty in all the photos that the bullet journal enthusiasts post online, but I just see clutter that one day I will look at and say “Why am I keeping this? So I can know when my dentist appointment was in 2011?”

I’m also not a fan of the obsessive data recording that seems to go with the life planning lifestyle. I don’t want to keep track of pints of water consumed or loads of laundry washed any more than I want to keep track of calories consumed or trips to the bathroom. Some people do, however, and that’s fine, it’s just not for me.

My quest to become organized is currently more reliant on my quest to become a minimalist. And while I like my 5-year calendar because it eliminates FOUR calendars out of my life, and I like my Filofax because it consolidates dozens of file folders into one book of vital info, I just can’t see myself becoming a dedicated bullet journalist.

Unfortunately, I can see myself trekking to Staples to buy the various and sundry supplies to bullet journal. #zennotsozen

Bonsai again!

Finally!

I've mentioned before that I'm obsessed with bonsai and I've tried a million ways to get one that have been unsuccessful because bonsai take time and I'm impatient, the ones they sell for indoor use are outdoor trees that are destined to die for $40, and growing a tiny tree from seed produces a sapling, not a bonsai.

The other week I was looking at some dead shrubbery that needs to be removed from the front yard and I came across two small boxwood shrubs that were half dead hiding in the shadow of a taller bush. I noticed the nebari [root system] on them and I was impressed. I decided pulling them out and repotting them wouldn't be a loss - they weren't going to make it anyway, so I had nothing to lose. 

This is the second tree which turned out just exactly like the mature bonsai tree I've always wanted. I bought a shallow pot at Lowes and replanted it. Hopefully it will survive the shock and become a flourishing outdoor bonsai with a little hit of fairyland thrown in. It needs time and some work, but I think I've finally got the tree I've always wanted. 

What the Internet doesn't have

It seems like anything you want to know, you can find on the Internet these days. You can Google anything and get tons of hits, and so, of course, I spend a lot of time Googling 'menopause' and 'perimenopause', trying to find more information about the hormonal roller coaster I'm on these days.

Sadly, while there are just as many hits for these topics as for any other, there's a really not a lot of what I'm looking for. Here's what I DON'T NEED from the Internet:

A definition of menopause/perimenopause - I got all this during my first search. Why does everyone who writes about it have to include all the clinical whys and wherefores? We get it people. Dictionary and medical text explanations are passé and boring.

The ubiquitous suggestions - ugh already with the 'discuss this with your doctor', or try XYZ or PDQ. Half that stuff doesn't work anyway and the other half you need prescriptions for. Unless I'm literally out of my mind, I don't need pills. I need reassurances.

The Big 5 or 6 major symptoms - again, we get it. We know the major stuff. I want to know the unusual stuff. There are 30 or 40 common symptoms of menopause/perimenopause. If you're stopping at 5 - you're probably a man.

The weight loss talk - Stop. Just stop. We know weight gain is one of the big 5 symptoms and we're SICK TO DEATH of hearing how we have to be more vigilant now to avoid something that is patently UNAVOIDABLE. So just freakin' STOP already.

Treatments - Once again, we know that the medical industry revels in being able to declare something an illness that requires lots of pills and tests, but this not an illness, it's a normal progression. So if I search 'treatments' give me treatments, but if I search 'stories' don't give me treatments.

What do I want?

I want to hear from other women my age who are going through these things: the anxiety, racing heart, feeling that something is wrong but you don't know what, trouble sleeping, mood swings, itchiness, bad hair, bad skin, exhaustion, forgetfulness, clumsiness, irritability and stomach issues. Tell me how you feel and even better, tell me it all gets better eventually. How will I know when it's winding down, and I can look forward to normal again? What will normal be like? I want the real dope on this nonsense, not the clinical nonsense and namby-pamby 'eat less exercise more avoid caffeine and see your doctor' crap that everyone thinks I want to hear.