Fruity

There is a picture of me when I was about 6 or so, standing in a line with about 5 other children (one child being my cousin with whom my I was in some sort of vague competition with, not me, but between Aunt and Mom. Poor mom, I was always the sort of loser). Anyway...one sees in the picture 5 straight erect children, arms to the sides and smiles plastered on their faces, and one broadly smiling girl (um, me) bending over to adjust her sock.

See that was me, always (and why I was losing to the cuz above). He did great in school, I ...well despite my IQ school wasn't my forte. Neither was being organized, neat and well prepared. A scouting failure I rather tried my moms patience with my ideas about "keeping my room up" and other such organizational habits.

My desk looked like my room, and while personally clean, my clothes were not well coordinated. Long past the time my mom assured me when most girls were worrying about whether the blue of their socks went with the blue of their dress.

I'm still not a fashion maven. I still don't  really care. But the house you see...well there have been times when I've looked at the house and gone "maybe if we set fire to it and move elsewhere?" While I did not of course (Fire Marshals may back off! Rest assured I'm not a potential arsonist) it actually did seem to me that the best method of housekeeping available at the time.

Enter fly-lady..after several other tries. Seemed okay...and I tried it. Didn't like it, for a variety of reasons. One being her issue with shoes. So while it worked for a time, after awhile I just felt mad that I was being made to wear shoes to do something I couldn't stand to do and didn't derive much benefit from.

Hop skip jump to about a month or two ago.

Fed up once more with the state of the house, and having heard it through the Yishuv grapevine that there was a flylady group starting up...well I joined.

But with a bit more "she isn't in the house and isn't judging me anyway" attitude.

ie.  I houseclean in the buff...toes-wise that is.

And since it is with a group of other women, we can talk and encourage each other...figure out where our problems lie and help find solutions for our tough spots.

And I am finding the not uncommon problem of perfectionism ...

WAIT!!!! Didn't you say above (quickly scan) ...well where was the perfectionism in all that??? Nowhere I assure you...but it is in me, as I noticed as I was doing the fruit bowl.

Dang girl you are confusing!!! Fruit bowl???What Fruit bowl...can you make sense?

Okay..fruit bowl, as in occupier of the table in order to prevent other items from taking over the table. Doesn't work to perfection (hahahha) but it does help. 

But I realize as I am arranging and rearranging the fruit bowl how nuts I get about these incidental details....like trying to evenly distribute the various types of fruit (as if I were intent on making sure that no minority fruit was unequally represented in any area...) GAH!!! 

So with most of the fruit this wasn't too much of a problem. I arrange here and there and had a balance that I could tolerate if I could just force myself away.

But then came the bananas. Now bananas should be easy...draped dramatically in one bunch on the side of the bowl. Their home is easily found. But in placing them I accidentally pulled one banana off.

Ya know I was thinking of eating the durned thing so it wouldn't upset the fruit bowl balance? Take it to work or eat it then and there...Ya know I am not a big banana fan; don't hate it... but don't especially like it, and I wasn't hungry then at all. So there I am staring at this banana and actually upset that it would create a disharmonious fruit bowl presentation. 

Imperfection.

Foolishness. Because surrounding that less than perfect fruit bowl were bags and a purse and other odds and ends that actually did interfere with harmony and neatness.

Details getting in the way of the presentation. Not that details aren't important...but it is knowing when to focus on the details and what details really count that actually makes the difference. A skill that I am still working on.

Nu...I put the banana under the bunch, and then cleared off the other junk that crowded the fruit bowl on all sides and I'm still trying to ignore the nagging feeling that the banana is there improperly. If I get lucky someone will eat it soon. And if not, I still actually did what I needed to do.

One small step for me... but maybe small steps are really bigger sometimes than they first seem. (Yeah, one small step for man comes to mind...but really didn't know how to play that line out).

Puzzled

I like doing puzzles of all kinds and I'm always in the market for new and different puzzles. Sudoku, hitori, crosswords, cryptograms...and jigsaws. Work today involved finding information about a particular jigsaw program and while I was looking...after I finished my work...I stayed and played.

Weird thing is I have always found the "next to last" stage of putting together an online jigsaw puzzle the hardest. There always seems too many pieces for the board I'm playing. I manipulate a piece here and there, listening for that lovely "you got it right! click" only to hear nothing at all, and think; but where else can I put this piece???? There is no where else for it to go!!! And the thought always crosses my mind that I've been double-crossed; the puzzle makers have added pieces just to confound me! (Ok, I'm really not that ego-centric. I do realize the puzzle makers don't take a personal interest in me...)

But of course once I've placed a few more pieces of the puzzle in the "extras" turn out not to be "extra" at all. They were needed, they necessary, no matter how annoying they felt at the time. And in the end, there is the puzzle, completed, all mysteries solved.

But I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to do the zebra.