Winding Down

Resolutions, regrets, breaking habits. Personally I’ve given up trying to keep promises to myself. The best I can do is wake up every day and try again. Here are some end-of-year take-aways I’d like to share. If you’ll have them.

Krazy glue does us no good if the cap is glued to the tube.

Making our bed every morning resets possibility.

There’s no place more restorative than the ocean.

Writing a song has always been and will always be my favorite form of therapy.

I don’t feel I have to text my friends a turkey emoji on Thanksgiving and a Santa on Christmas to let them know I hope they have a happy holiday. It’s fine if they want to send me one but I don’t need to return it. Every time my phone dings it’s a distraction from life. If there’s something I need to know, by all means text me. Just not the Turkey or the Santa. However, birthday cakes are fine.

I have too many chargers and adapters. Fast chargers, slow chargers, lightening to USBs, USB-Cs. I have chargers to charge my chargers. How did this happen? Why can’t they come up with a universal fucking charger that charges everything?

After watching the The Blue Zone (a documentary about the 5 pockets on the planet where humans commonly live til 100) I purchased the Blue Zone cook book. I soaked beans for days. So many beans. So many jars. I soaked cannellonis or 48 hours but they never got soft. I decided that canned cannelloni are just fine.

Favorite new obsession: toasted sour dough with goat cheese drizzled with truffle honey. Try it. It’s insane.

Favorite purchase: I bought this strap that attach to your glasses and hang around your neck so you don’t lose them. It makes me look old but I don’t care. They worked until last week when I pulled my sweatshirt off over my head on a walk about the neighborhood and didn’t hear my sunglasses hit the pavement. Back home when I realized they were gone I got in my car and drove up and down Laurel Pass. They were nowhere to be found.

I dreamed the Universe told me not to give up. So the next morning I walked down Laurel Pass. Turned around and walked back up — doubling my chances of retrieval. I know the people I live amongst. They’d do as I would if I found a lost item — place it off-ground near the scene of the loss so if the owner came-a-looking they’d be found.

A few years ago the diamond fell out of my ring. I went back to Costco where I had shopped that day and asked if anyone found a diamond. 😳 Later as I sat on my backyard deck weeping and writing a blog about the loss of that stone I eyed something shiny teetering on the edge of a slat where any gentle breeze or brush of a foot or a sneeze would’ve sent it tumbling to the soil below. The last time I had been on the deck was a few days before closing an umbrella to ready for a storm. The diamond had stayed put. Miracle.

Which reminds me of the guy from whom I received a Facebook message saying he was in possession of my teenage diary. He found it on an east village sidewalk circa 1994 but being young and unmindful he didn’t make an effort to locate the author. Now 40-ish and internet-connected he had the means. We met on my next trip to NYC in a very Merry Christmas worthy moment.

And then there was the cellphone that flew off my tray table upon takeoff and the determined flight attendant who spent the entire trip trying to help me find it — taking apart my seat, removing cushions, flipping kitchen tongues back and forth underneath, and with the help of her iphone flashlight searching under everybody else’s seat only to have the device turn up (upon descent) in my waist band — exactly where it was supposed to be. Except, I swear I saw it fly off that tray table.

And just as I’m recalling all these epic finds…there they are. My sun glasses. Resting safely on a concrete ledge on Laurel Pass. Hello!

I believe lost items have spirits and they long to be re-united with us. Why do some things make their way back and others don’t? Why is life so random? Why do we sometimes work harder than others to reach the same goals? Why do we end ‘situationships’ that are bad for our health but we miss them just the same? Why does eating beans make us live longer? So many questions.

Which brings me to a favorite line in a book I read this year:

“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.” (Midnight Library — Matt Haig)

Have a Merry Christmas my friends. Don’t give up. 🦃 🧑‍🎄

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