A chilly Friday in San Antonio

My physical therapist told me today about her travels to Italy and recommended a site called Best Italian Vacations.  That's what I want to do this year, return to Italy.  Anybody want to join me?

Then I went downtown to the Nix to redeem a GroupOn for microdermabrasion.  When I left, I realized I was close to El Mirador with their Friday special of potato enchiladas which I love.  So I went there for lunch.  Unfortunately, they have removed those scrumptious enchiladas from the menu. but after a seven-month remodel, the place is beautiful, stucco walls and wooden ceilings.

Minimalists

Just watched this documentary on Netflix--I recommend it if you're looking for inspiration to clean out your closets and pantries and storage rooms!

Too many things, too much stuff, they say, can actually diminish our happiness.  What's it all for?  How much do we really need?

I like pretty things and books, but I have everything I need and want.  I'm going to try not to buy one more thing until I actually need it.  Like butter.  I'm out of butter.

What if we stopped buying material gifts for each other and instead gave each other experiences?  Most of my friends and I long ago decided to stop buying presents, and it's simplified our lives.  We prefer a cup of soup, cornbread, a shared movie.

The Minimalists suggest sharing--not going out and buying a tool or any other item if you're just going to use it once.  Just as I was writing that, Angela called to see if she could borrow my blower to clean up her yard for her little boy!

If you want inspiration on decluttering, check out this website:

http://www.theminimalists.com

Angels in Plain Sight

Today, after I bottled kombucha, washed clothes and the car, Angela came to clean my house for the second time.  She came at noon, left at dark.

When I popped in to pay her, she was raking the leaves in my yard!  "I hope you don't mind," she said, "But I just love doing this.  And I LOVE your blower!"

Mind???  She's a strong and meticulous worker, better than most men.  My house sparkles and my yard is clean, all in one day.

I was ecstatic.  I had already raked up two puny bags yesterday and gave out of steam.  Now I have fifteen beautiful brown bags filled with pecan leaves!

"You're an angel!" I said--then thought, I bet with her name, she hears that all the time.

I'd already texted the yard man I used last spring and he hadn't gotten back to me, so voila! I now have a Go-To Person.  Everyone needs a go-to person, especially those of us who live alone and sometimes need little jobs done between big ones.

Angela brings her 20-year-old daughter, Samantha, and they are both excellent workers and such sweet people.  Samantha was able to raise the Murphy bed for me and found a ring I'd been looking for, under my bed.

She also has a 17-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son, the daughter keeping the baby while she works.  On Christmas Eve, her house on Cincinnati was broken into and all her Christmas presents stolen along with her television and the food in her freezer.  That same week, her 58-year-old father died.

"I'll just be glad when this year is over," she said, continuing to bag up leaves.

"But as for the presents?  The thief will be disappointed.  They were just things from the dollar store!"

Post-Christmas

Christmas day included patches of gladness and was capped off with seeing LION (excellent!) with Freda and sharing her Christmas dinner from Central Market.  Otherwise, I was out of sorts most of the day.

I prefer Halloween and Valentine's Day over the ones that have all these expectations attached.  Norman Rockwell and Hallmark pretty much set us all up for disappointment on the ways that certain big red-letter days are celebrated, and with whom.

Freda said, "Maybe those of you who grew up with Christmas have more to deal with because you're trying to replicate past Christmases."

Next year, I'm going to be proactive, maybe travel to some country where Christmas music is not piped into stores for two months and ornaments for sale in October.  I'll be happy to find a traveling companion, a friend who wants to run away, or Carlene, or maybe my new romantic companion, the one I think I'll make up ahead of time so I will recognize him when he appears out of the blue.  But I'm not holding my breath on that one!

2016 Roster

 “Like a bird on a wire / Like a drunk in a midnight choir / I have tried, in my way, to be free...."
                               Leonard Cohen "Bird on a Wire"

2016 has been the dying year of Leonard Cohen and John Glenn,  Patty Duke and Morley Safer, Pat Conroy and Elie Wiesel, Gwen Ifill and Harper Lee, Mohamed Ali and Merle Haggard,  and so many more.

Every year's end, the names of the famous are read--movie stars, makers of art, music and literature, and those who left marks of other kinds--all part of a graduation roster for those whose year it was to peel away from the tribe.

Many left behind literature and music--Elie Wiesel's "Night," Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" and Pat Conroy's "Prince of Tides."   One stepped on the moon.  Morley and Gwen interviewed presidents and politicians.  Mohammed Ali was a prize fighter, Patty Duke a child movie star.  Here's to the graduates of the class of 2016--in their own words:

"It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”  Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird

"Some people, you have to grit your teeth in order to stay in the same room as them, but you get on and ask the questions you assume most of the people watching want to ask. " Morley Safer

"I'm not interested in my legacy. I made up a word: 'live-acy.' I'm more interested in living."  John Glenn

"I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it."  Elie Wiesel

"It isn't the mountain ahead to climb that wears you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."  Mohammed Ali

"I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog."  Leonard Cohen

My Favorite Text of the Season

From Daisy

I love you....my first and only Santa Claus!

San Diego Serenade by Tom Waits, 1974

Just discovered this song on Pandora today--love  it!  Having discovered him, I've just learned from Freda that PBS is broadcasting a concert of Waits, a classic from 1979, on December 29th!


I never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine 'til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

I never saw the white line, 'til I was leaving you behind
I never knew I needed you 'til I was a caught up in a bind
I never spoke "I love you" 'til I cursed you in vain,
I never felt my heartstrings until I nearly went insane.

I never saw the east coast 'til I moved to the west
I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast
I never saw your heart 'til someone tried to steal it, tried to steal it away
I never saw your tears until they rolled down your face.

Some favorite Christmas stories

1.  A cat healer in the 'hood

Jan just came over for a visit and told me this story.  Kate, her daughter, woke up with a blinding migraine headache, just miserable.  Their cat sensed it, got on Kate's head and gave her a cat-treatment of acupuncture/acupressure.  (She's never done that before!) and Kate's head immediately got all better.

2. A box of clothes

One year, Gerlinde filled a big furniture box with the best and newest-looking children's clothes from all the thrift shops in town.  Just before Christmas she delivered it to a women's shelter for all the children living with their mothers there.  I just love this story and want to do a version of it for next year.

3. A bad story followed by a good one--also from Jan

A local shelter has a warehouse in which they store Christmas presents for the kids all year long.  Someone broke in and cleaned them out just five days from Christmas.  A wealthy woman who heard about it on the news delivered a van-load of presents and $135,000!

4. Veronica texted me this picture of Nathan saying, "He loves the books!"

5.  My cousin Sharon gave her mother Dot a box with the word JOY on it and this note:  "Thank you for teaching me how to open a box of joy."

Living Long, Living Strong

Just watched Tony Bennet's 90th birthday party online (NBC) and so enjoyed the music, including k.d. Lang, Bob Dylan, Diana Krall, Andrea Bocelli, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel,  and others.  Who knew Kevin Spacey could sing?

The most inspiring part, to me, was watching the animated and kind face of Tony Bennet as he responded to other singers and hearing him sing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" and three other songs.

We need more role models of people continuing to do the work they love into their nineties.

Esther Vexler, featured in Bonnie Lyons' and Deb Fields'  book, Wonderful Old Women, taught yoga into her nineties and died at 98, shortly after her husband died at 101.

Younger people doing what they love is remarkable, but people who don't stop at 90 are the real beacons to the rest of us.

Three Terrific Things

Yesterday Carlene told me she was having vertigo.  But today--yay!--she went to the doctor and he gave her A plus on every single test, assuring her that "if she keeps walking, eating well, and sleeping well, " she'll live to be a hundred!

That made my day, of course!

Then I got another day-maker--pictures of my daughter, Day, and her two boys visiting Santa!

Jackson, Santa and Day

Marcus showing off his new haircut

Finally--

After returning the creepy pink troll to Build A Bear, I remembered I had a Group-On for a facial at the Tai Chi Chinese place on Huebner.  That and a bit of acupressure by a man with super strong hands made my face feel a lot newer than it looks.