Nov 22-21-20

Hi Mom,

It's Sunday morning, the wind whipping around outside, "Sunday Morning" on the TV, (one of the few TV programs we both like) a fire in the Ben Franklin. Dale Sr. is in the kitchen making one of his famous omelets, with zucchini and aged cheddar.

The big news is that I've actually kept my front rooms free of clutter, and the bathroom clean, for almost seven straight days now. Sunday a week ago I worked really hard to clean up a very dirty, very cluttered living room, dining room, and kitchen, because I had a music jam scheduled.

Cleaning up my messy house when company is coming is something I've done so many times before, but never before have I kept those rooms straightened free of clutter for this long. This is a "first" for me!

Wow, at any time this past week, any time, someone could have come over and I wouldn't have been embarrassed! It takes a while for that fact to sink in! I could actually say to someone, "Stop by any time next week, just give me a call to make sure that I'm home." Or, "Why don't you just have dinner with us tonight?" I could actually say that!




Here's a photo of my dining room table with only one project on it!

I have found out the psychological reason why I have never kept my front rooms straightened for this long. I hate putting things away from the last activity before starting the next, I just hate it!  The clenching teeth kind of "hate it"! The pull within me to "just leave it" is as strong as the pull I sometimes get, to eat something "just a little something" more, when I've already eaten enough for me to stay the size I want to be.

What I'm hoping is that the little hated pauses I've taken many times this week, to stop and put things away (what a concept!) will become a habit. In the way, stopping eating as soon as I've eaten a healthy amount has become a habit, and not so difficult as it used to be (though whenever I'm stressed, it still is difficult).

Regarding my "back rooms": (dance room, bedroom, guest room and shop building) some serious de-cluttering, weeding out, bookshelf-building and organizing must be done before I can start doing clutter-free maintenance on them!  

I've had an annoying crick in my neck for the last few days. I couldn't figure out what caused it, and then I realized that for the entire seven miles I walked on Wednesday, every time I passed a cross street, I looked back over my left shoulder to make sure that no car was ready to turn into that street I was about to cross!

Thursday morning I finally finished going through my huge backlog of bills and paperwork. I also started writing a letter to Helen.

I had my computer tutoring session that day, in the early afternoon, and I asked my computer tutor to help me find an on-line program for some business cards. Of course they are not for a business, they are personal cards. The site he found was Vistaprint, and I since I could get 100 cards for 5.99 I went ahead and ordered 250 for twice that, five more for shipping.
My tutor was so impressed with the site that he decided to order some new business cards for himself, as well.

The purpose for the cards is to facilitate connections. Without the cards, for instance, if I meet someone who is interested in my travel meetup, I would have to write down the URL link for them, and the most efficacious version of that link has a very long string of numbers at the end of it.

With the cards, I will just have to circle one of the nine categories on the back of the card, and write a couple of short words on the line at the bottom. On the front of the card is my name, the URL of my personal website, my phone number, my e-mail address, and my post office box.

The person only has to type in the URL of the website, and make two more clicks, and in front of them will be the link to the actual meetup.com page they need to join the travel club.

The other reason for the cards is that I have also noticed that I tend to lose little pieces of paper with contact information on them which people give me, but I don't tend to lose cards.

We found a design with ivy growing up both sides of the front, which I liked.

Also, it's my hope that once they click on the home page of the website, and see my beautiful mandala drawing on the home page, they'll go "wow, what an interesting person" (ha ha) and be more likely to actually carry through on whatever we talked about.

On the website itself, I do not have my phone number, nor my e-mail address. The card gives that information, but the card would be given only people whom I actually had had "face-time" with.

Maybe now that I have ordered the cards, I'll actually finish the website!

While in Starbuck's, I saw on Facebook that Lyssa posted  that little Waylon gets more fun every day!

I got my car back Thursday, late in the afternoon! So glad to have it back. It has been so long since I've driven a car that I actually felt a little bit like I'd forgotten how to drive. Yesterday I took another short drive and it felt better.

Yesterday and the day before I have been pretty productive: some watering, yard upkeep, and re-potted a plant which had outgrown its pot, started de-cluttering the patio.

 I also finished one of the two blankets that I am making for little Shayla. 

Speaking of Shayla, I still have not seen Dale Jr.'s new daughter, because some of the phlegm from that cold I had still keeps hanging on. They are coming over on Thanksgiving for a little while, before they go to Michelle's sister's for dinner. (We have been invited to Marie's parents home for Thanksgiving dinner.)

I told Dale Jr. that I thought Thanksgiving (when they stop by) would be a good germ-free time to see the new baby because we will be hanging around outside in the back yard.

Last night I called Dale Jr., and we arranged a time to meet at a Tempe bank during his lunch hour, to do the $$ routing to his realtor for the home they are buying. Wednesday I have an Arabic lesson so I'll be in Tempe anyway, and his office is only around five miles further west, in Phoenix.

Love, Lennie

P.S. (Optional reading) For the past few days, I have been upset that my state and others have vowed not to accept any Syrian immigrants. Yesterday I went on my general Facebook page which I hadn't been on for about a week. (I try to check my group facebook pages daily, but don't always get to all the many messages on my Facebook home page.) (The groups are my on-line weight loss group, the "Hodges-Mitchell-Gray" page, Dale Sr.'s family's "Family"the travel group page, the beading group page, and the music jam group page---they are relatively quick to check because they average one or two new posts daily.)

Seeing my "home"page for the first time in a week, I was very heartened by all of the "posts" which friends had posted, all protesting that tightening borders against immigrants fleeing terror is the wrong thing to do. On many of these "posts", I left a comment: that closing our borders to people fleeing terror plays right into the hands of the so-called Isis because anything that causes anger against the US makes their recruiting easier. By the time I'd finished looking through all the posts, many little messages had come up at the bottom of the page, that people had "liked" my comment.

(I always say the "so-called Isis" because I hate for that group to have "Islam" used in its name, when the things they do are so against the message of the religion of Islam.)