Thoughts on a Clean House

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

It’s embarrassing to be reminded.  Some people clean their houses every week, on the same day of the week.

Image

I’ve come so far from that, and I don’t necessarily call it progress.  My house gets… no wait, a room in my house may get cleaned when it becomes difficult to navigate through it.  My whole house gets cleaned only when I’ve lost something and need to find it. Of course, I might find it in the first room I clean, in which case only one room gets cleaned.

Spot cleaning is my specialty.  Spots on the floor, piles of mail on the table, sink full of dishes, a cat mess, a dead plant, are all within my 15 minute tolerance for housecleaning.  In fact I often turn to these obvious, flagrant crimes against clean to avoid other things I don’t want to do.  High levels of anxiety over other areas of life can be temporarily muted by these small but visible improvements.

My most effective tool against messy, dirty house is to invite company.  I like to have dinner time company and that is my most compelling reason to clean the living room, dining room and kitchen. If it’s the first time in my house for a visitor I am aware of how important that first impression can be.  I can get close to being fussy clean for those people.  If the company “knows” my kitchen from having been there many times, I skip being tidy because I’m counting on that first impression over-riding everything they’ve seen since.   It works.  Kind of…

Overnight company is more of a problem. I should really clean the whole house, except for rooms I keep locked (!!?) My solution is to only invite family, meaning people who have lived in my house before, to stay overnight.  I leave the cleaning supplies where they can find them and if they’re bothered they can do a little cleaning in their spare time. They are on vacation and have lots of that.

My bottom line is keeping relationships as the most important thing.  Remember that little poem?

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow

For babies grow up, we’ve learned to our sorrow

So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep

I’m rocking my baby, and babies don’t keep.

I don’t know who wrote it but I have it memorized from those days in the rocking chair with my little daughters.  It applies to company too, of all ages.  Better to let them know I like them and want to be with them, if they don’t mind my messy house. I’m just sayin’ they might even be relieved to see that my house looks kind of like theirs…

Dave

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

This morning I threw my bike in the back of my car and went back to the auto service center to check in with Dave.  He is getting to know me and my car problems better and better.  While he was writing down my mileage and VIN # I took my bike out of the Aztek and wheeled it over near his desk.  

He came over and started putting things in the computer.  He glanced at the bike and suddenly became a person instead of a dealership employee.  He said he admired me for going places on the bike.  He said the last time he rode a bike was the week before he got his driver’s license.  Before that he was always on the bike or the skateboard – went everywhere on them.  The truth was, he just didn’t have time or energy for doing things like that anymore. Most nights when work was over he went home, sat on the couch with a beer, turned on ESPN for a couple hours and then went to bed.  Not even energy to cook a meal.  He didn’t look very happy about this.  

While he continued writing up the service request another guy came in, opened a drawer on Dave’s desk and helped himself to a bottle of Aleve.  I asked Dave if he was the local dispensary – his friend laughed and said that Dave was  “my drug…, oops, no, my pharmacist”.  Dave said I wouldn’t believe all the places that he hurt from broken bones, dislocated shoulder and other injuries.  He said most mornings he takes a cup of coffee and three Aleve for breakfast and it gets him through the day pretty well.  He didn’t look happy about this either.  I was hoping that Dave took time for a good lunch, now that I knew what he had for breakfast and supper. 

Poor guy. If I had to guess I would say Dave is about 30 years old. I’m just sayin’ I kind of wanted to hug him.  

 

Thoughts on Knowing Myself

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

(As I sit at the table, looking out at the green world with bright splashes of sun coming through the trees, on my day off, aware of how amazing it is that I can have thoughts at all…)

Hello self. Who exactly are you?

I believe my self-knowledge comes through my spirit.  I am not just a body having a spirit, I am a spirit having a body (from A. W. Tozer). I am different from other creatures in that I am spirit and body, made to resemble certain characteristics of the one who made me. The more I discover about myself, the more I know about my creator – and the more I know about my creator, the more I will understand about myself. It’s called “made in the image of”.

I believe in the reality of a spiritual world even though I don’t have eyes that see it. I often wonder how frightening it would be if that world were suddenly visible… That unseen world affects me day to day, moment to moment.  My moods, my physical responses, my energy, my courage or lack of it are all of extreme interest to this spiritual world.  You might even say there is a war going on and I am at the center of it and most of the time, completely unaware.

Can I prove the spiritual world? I have proved it to my own satisfaction in several ways.  Ultimately, I choose to believe it because its reasons and defense makes more sense to me than other beliefs.  The natural world is such a testament to someone greater and smarter than I am, or anyone else is.  People who believe otherwise say that we will discover natural answers to things we now consider supernatural – given time we will discover them and be master of their processes.  I also think we will discover things given time, only what we find will be increasingly complex and intricate and I believe we will discover God behind it all.

I believe that we all worship.  If I made a list of the things that concern me, that I fight to maintain, that I spend great amounts of time on, the item at the top of the list is what I worship. Do I want to worship things, or the creator of things, all things? Even the things we discover about the world – we discover, we don’t create. Science admits that the odds of evolution creating the complexity and diversity of life that we see are astronomical.  The “faith” required to accept a universe of its own creating is something I don’t have. It’s too big a leap.  I’m just sayin’ that’s one thing I know about myself.

Counting Down

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

As the time for me to leave my job comes closer I have such a mixture of feelings.  Between now and October 11, my departure date, I am only scheduled for four days of work.  That’s a good thing because it means the new workers are getting a chance to get familiar with the routine.  I don’t know who the new day shift nurses are for sure.  I think we are still missing someone to work on the weekends because I’ve been scheduled to do them and have had to remind my employer that I can’t work on Saturdays and prefer not to work Sundays.  It’s been hard telling her that and she has gotten angry with me.  We’ve spent some days with bad attitude so thick in the room it’s overwhelming and spills out in sarcasm and criticism.

I was off last Thursday and she had a difficult day with a new nurse.  I don’t know if that was the reason for the peace and sense of relief that we had on Friday.  I know she was feeling a little better after a week of respiratory illness and was probably just tired from the previous day of constant talking, directing the new worker.  I felt sorry that she didn’t have a driver to help her get to church Saturday night so I volunteered.  I think that helped her feel like I still liked her and was intending to keep a good relationship if possible.  This is complicated – this leaving.

I know I’m going to miss the income, but I’m so looking forward to having time for other things that I don’t want to get seriously employed somewhere else right away.  A bit selfish perhaps.  I can live with that.  I’ve done some sewing and actually sold a baby carrier that I made.  A possible business idea?  And the new book I bought on making money with a blog is ready to read in my Kindle. Odd that when I should be eager to pursue writing I seem suddenly to have total writer’s block – no ideas – no inspirations – no desire. 

Last week I took the Aztek to the service center.  Two days I found it with a drained battery in the morning when it was time to drive to work.  One day I took the husband’s truck.  The second day he dropped me off and I rode the bike and the bus home. My ignition problems were supposed to have been fixed with the new ignition cylinder that was installed for $250.  Last night when I drove to my employer’s house I turned the key and once again, it wouldn’t turn to the off position.  I couldn’t get the key out.  My choices were accessories on or leave the engine running.  I turned the key to acc, took the fob off the key chain so I could lock the car, and left the key in it.  Coming back, I thought I had lost the fob and wasn’t going to be able to get the car unlocked.  In my church dress, in the dark I crawled under the car looking for a (non-existent) magnetic spare key holder. I  vaguely remembered having one once and wouldn’t it have been great to find it?  Is it time for me to get a new car? Of course it is because I’m quitting my job and we always quit our jobs before buying a major costly item, don’t we?  Just sayin’… 

Contact Me

Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

I have chosen today to be thankful for my eyesight – sight being an awesome gift on any day, but today my awareness is way up there.  Most days I stumble to the bathroom after the alarm rings and look for my contact lenses.  They’ve been soaking for at least six hours (and if it’s not that long you might go blind when you put them in) in a little container of peroxide solution.  The container has a little cage marked R for the right contact and another one for the left, unmarked.  Putting them in is always a little tricky because of the many odd things those little pieces of plastic can do – like folding themselves in half, turning themselves inside out, fastening themselves to the end of your finger instead of your eyeball, getting themselves stuck in your hair… I could go on.

Today there was no particular trouble getting them in and then began the adjustment from poor unaided vision to somewhat less poor aided vision.  I think everyone gets used to the way the world is supposed to look out of their own eyes and I have accepted the fact that contacts do not give me perfectly corrected vision.  Everything seemed pretty clear within a few feet but as I started walking into larger rooms I had the distinct sensation that I had one overly huge left eyeball.  I couldn’t think of anything that could cause this very strange feeling, one I’d never felt before.  I decided to listen to the little voice telling me that something was not right and went back before the mirror for another look.  It was scary to think it might look as weird as it felt.

I have done things like putting the left contact into the right eye, and vice versa, which is probably good exercise for my brain but is definitely not what the eyes are used to or comfortable with. Hoping it was something like that, I took the left contact out and examined it.  Nothing wrong there. And then I realized that I was actually looking closely at a small thing and was seeing it, which would not be possible without aided vision. There was still a contact in my eye.  I had been wearing two of them, in one eye, on top of each other.  How about that?

See how a little, ridiculous event can suddenly lighten up a day? I don’t have a tumor behind my eyeball! I am so grateful that I can again see at my accustomed level of blindness!  I guess what I’m saying here is that no matter what’s wrong with us there can be a beautiful moment of  awareness of something that’s still right, or nearly so, and that’s a good thing.  Have a great day!

Aztek, Behave!

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

The other day  I wrote a couple paragraphs about how much I loved my car. I never got to post it because my computer got jealous and made it all disappear.  And  I should have known that it was dangerous to confess that kind of affection for a machine because I’ve had nothing but weirdness from it since, and this morning my auto-mobile became auto-immobile.

It’s internal fixings (not the motor but the thinking part) has been a little suspect for the last two of its twelve years.  Most notably, the ignition would not start the car but would produce all kinds of electrical clickings and light flashings on the dash.  And before I could take it to be fixed it would revert to normal and hide any evidence of its misbehavior.

This last year it has developed a more frequently occurring, defiant quirk.  It has refused to turn all the way off.  The engine will stop but the key will turn no further than the accessory position.  Radio, lights, annoying ding, ding, alarm, all continue to function as I lock the car and walk away.  The keys slip right out in that position, in fact, the keys slip right out when the car is running.  IN FACT you can turn the car on without the keys, just turn the switch.  But the catch is that it won’t act this way all the time, and I never know when it’s in the mood…

This morning at the usual time to leave for work, it wouldn’t start – lots of flashing lights and the motor turned a couple of times but wouldn’t catch.  The husband crawled out of bed to see what was the matter and we instituted the new rule: whoever is up and ready to leave first gets to take whatever vehicle is running.  I took his truck.  Hopefully a little time out in the dark garage would rejuvenate the bad, bad car.

No, I still love my car.  Like me, it’s getting a little worn out and a little crazy.  We have to watch out for each other all the more.  I love that it’s school bus yellow, that it has carried every kind of cargo I could possibly challenge it with, that it has taken me east, west, north and all over the south for nearly 200,000 miles with no major catastrophes.  And I suppose if you count the time I spilled pool chlorine all over the carpet, all the peanuts, cheerios, and taco chips that have had to be vacuumed up, and all the coffee spills and blobs of yogurt in odd places, we are about even. Oh, and the time (times) I backed out of the garage with the hatch back up. Yeah, maybe I should cut my friend a little slack. I’m just sayin’, Aztek, I love you even if you are a little flaky.

Image
Me in my Aztek with brother Gary

Seattle September

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

Seattle September
.. and other words beginning with the letter S. The word striking comes to mind, since I have been looking at views that would fit the description. Today the dog and I were up early so that I could ride in to the city with Esther. I was glad for the chance to see where she spent her working hours so she gave me a short tour of the building. Striking.
The Russell Investment Center is a multi-story office complex on Union and 2nd. Her company has several floors of office space there for her division. We started way underground with her space in the parking garage. The whole building is fairly new and has won awards for LEED and energy efficiency so it is immaculately clean and smartly furnished. It has several elevator bays (I counted 16 elevators in the two I saw). I’m not from a place with big buildings so elevators impress me.

lounge corner 17th floor
lounge corner 17th floor
outside patio 17th floor
outside patio 17th floor


One floor I had access to was a lounge/restaurant area with an outdoor patio and garden. Trees and large stone features made it hard to believe I was 17 stories up in the air. Such an expansive area with no one there to appreciate it except me – an odd feeling. It was early.
I am now writing at Lowell’s Restaurant at Pikes Place. My Seattle family is not big on breakfast, not even small on breakfast actually, so I am enjoying sitting here having a classic meal and several cups of $2 coffee (free refills), which I’m finding satisfies almost as well as the $4 kind. I’m sure if I lived here I would become more of a coffee connoisseur, but thankfully that hasn’t happened yet. There are beautiful views of the harbor and ships coming and going here. I have sat by the windows on other visits but today I am tucked back in a corner with plenty of room to get the computer out. I can still see the water.

20130916_131511

The market is brimming with fantastic bundles of flowers and produce of all kinds. I will go back to the shop where they are saving the lighthouse painting for me. I will meet Esther at noon for a while. I might ride the big Ferris wheel on the waterfront. I will take the water taxi back to West Seattle today because I haven’t done that before. Long rows of grey clouds line the sky. I see islands and mountains through the wet haze. People everywhere – the city is waking up. I saw a girl and her dog sitting on the sidewalk at the traffic light. She held a sign “my dog and I, just getting by. God bless.” I’m just sayin’, this is Seattle.

from the water taxi
from the water taxi

Lighthouse at Alki

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

lighthouse imagesToday, if it were not raining every few  minutes, I would be adventuring (new word, unlike venturing) out to see the lighthouse at Alki Point.  I am surprised that I have not seen it yet in my visits to Seattle, since I am a fan of lighthouses in general.  This one in particular is not far from my daughter’s house.  There is a steady flow of ferries, boats of all kinds, and barges going past the point and visible from the beach – an interesting waterway, to be sure.

I was in a shop at Pike Place Market last week, drawn to the watercolor scenes of Seattle that were in the windows.  The artist herself rummaged around and found several of Alki.  The lighthouse was among them and she recalled having to get special permission on the day she went to paint there, since it was closed to the public.  I am thinking of making that painting my own, my souvenir of Seattle.

You know, a lighthouse is a very hopeful thing.  It’s not like something that you want to rush toward, because in reality it’s telling you to beware of something dangerous.  But it does speak of firm ground somewhere, and of a concern that warns of danger.  It represents a commitment to be always on duty.  Someone is watching out for you and that is the hopeful part.

Coffee House

ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

I’m not exactly sure why, but when you’re in Washington you go to the coffee house a lot, for many different reasons.  Sometimes it’s to get coffee, but often the coffee is just an excuse to go to a cool place where you can plug in your computer or ipad and write, or read, or watch people.  Coffee house owners don’t seem to mind what you do as long as you buy something, which you usually do.  It smells really good if you like the smell of fresh ground coffee beans and pastries.  We are at Fiore Caffe, doing what we like to do.