Life Advice – Word Ninja Girl

It Depends On Who’s Looking…

This morning, I hung a new painting on my wall. It was done by Charles Passarelli; a 92 year old artist who spends his summers up here in the Leelanau Peninsula painting and teaching workshops in watercolor.

The painting joins three others done by well known painters and they all share the same subject matter: Willowbrook Mill. That’s the wedding and event venue I own with my family and it’s a charming and beautiful space that’s stood on this land since 1879. Well known and well loved as locals and tourists alike hold memories of this place from all its incarnations through the years.

When I hung the new painting, I turned to look at the three other pieces we have of Willowbrook and it was so clear how differently each painter had seen the exact same subject. And these aren’t just painters with a small “p”. These are PAINTERS. Plein Air winners and highly sought after artists known around the country. Hell, one of them, Neil Walling, literally, wrote the book on Plein Air Painting. And there they were, painting this sweet old building.

The differences in the images were angles and locations that gave them their best view on that day in that particular light. Their styles are different, from the dreamy soft strokes of Pat’s painting to the crisp, almost photographic brilliance of shadows, light and detail in Charless’ piece.

Same subject yet different circumstances, different perspectives, different feelings. It just depends on who’s looking.

Looking at the different perspectives, I remembered doing a personal growth workshop years ago. At one point during the workshop weekend, a participant was in a conversation with the presenter about an ongoing war he was locked into with a relative. “But she’s wrong! That’s not who I am! Why does she think that? Ask anyone and they’ll tell you! I am not that kind of person!”

The presenter chuckled and then proceeded to share this gem. I paraphrase because it’s been a long freaking time since I heard it but it was so good a response that it burned into my hippocampus like the Oscar Meyer bologna jingle.

He said, “Dude. If I brought 100 people into this room who have known you at 100 different points in your life, they would tell us 100 different stories about who you are. Why? Because each experience of you is unique. It comes with a fresh perspective of who you are right this moment if they just met you. Or maybe it comes with an airport full of baggage if it’s someone like a sibling who still hasn’t resolved the missing Hot Wheels Crisis of 1970. It depends on who’s looking at you. “

And damn if that isn’t the truth. It sure as hell is when it comes to me.

To some people, I am the shoulder they lean on, the maker of tea and the bringer of the soft blanket so they can curl up and escape the world for a while. To others, I am the evil overlord who swept in and severed the ties to the free flowing cash cow that they relied on to maintain their worry free (to them) existence. Or I’m the business woman who doesn’t have a filter when it comes to getting things done that need doing. In my 20s, I had a friend who called me Frank. A little bit because of my last name. A lot because I said whatever the hell I wanted to say.

100 different people, 100 different versions of me. And every one of them is 100% accurate.

To those individuals, given the little information they had about me and given whatever the source was that gave them this information, they formed a picture that will never be changed until they actually spend time with me and dispel rumors to learn the truth.

I have a nephew who grew up far away from me and our only interactions were few and far between when he was little. Everything he thought he knew about me, he learned from my sister; a famously unreliable source. We had the opportunity to spend several days together when his own sister got married in the South and each evening, after his wife put their daughter to bed, we would sit and talk into the night.

On the last day of the wedding festivities he shook his head and said he was completely blown away at how opposite every one of his expectations about me were, given the story he had been fed all of his life. Apparently, I would have been a great character in a Stephen King novel complete with Satanic worship and veins running with hydrochloric acid. Huh.

Sadly, people’s thoughts, opinions, positions, judgements are not visible like the different views and perspectives we can see in pieces of art.

Maybe it’s why we are so drawn to art. It’s so real. There it sits for us to ponder. A painting, a sculpture, a song, a story. All the dark and light, beauty and ugliness, depth and shallowness there for our eyes and hearts and minds to do with what we will.

Many years ago, I started a project I was calling The Three Questions. These three questions would “paint” a picture of your relationship with another person. They would, if the participants were brave enough to be honest, tell you exactly what you need to know about who you are to them. And it would tell them exactly how you wish that would change.

Are you ready for the questions? Here we go…

How do I see you?
How do I think you see me?
How do I wish you saw me?

That’s it. So simple. So clear. So deadly. Take a moment and think through the people who affect you in your life and just imagine their answers to these questions. And remember that their responses are coming from historical data they have about you and also where their perspective was when the data was “collected”.

I double dog dare you to do this with at least three people. Buckle up. You’re going to get a painting of yourself that will either have you crying tears of joy at the love fest or reaching for the headache meds and dark place to curl up as you rethink everything you thought was true. So, yeah. Have fun with that!

How do people see anything?

It depends on who’s looking.

Willowbrook Mill by Phil Fischer, pre-2016

Willowbrook Mill by Pat McKeon 2016

Willowbrook Mill by Neil Walling 2017

Willowbrook Mill by Charles Passarelli, 2022

https://www.philfisherfineart.com/

https://neilwalling.com/

https://passarelli-artcom.weebly.com/

Local Leelanau Peninsula fine artist- Pat McKeon

Ten Years Ago When My Brain Melted…

Ten years ago, a health issue led to some questions, that led to some answers, that then led to the destruction of my imagined life and its imagined stability. And that led to what felt like my brain melting and my soul howling out into the void.

If my life were a melatonin induced freaky dream, it would have found me climbing the rope in the gym back in grade school, slapping my hand on the rafter to signal my arrival and then looking down to see someone had lit the rope on fire and it was fast approaching the soles of my Keds.

I have always listened to the Universe as it has guided me on my way. It hasn’t been an easy sprint from point A to point B. In fact, it took me a few decades to figure out that my spiritual guides might be slightly sadistic bastards that thought leading me on wild goose chases was highly entertaining. Case in point: at age 27 I was guided to pack my life in the desert and follow love to a northern city only to be met with a full stop, u-turn and a “Just kidding! Hang in there for seven months in this new location and your work will take you to your next stop which we aren’t going to tell you about until you’re seriously questioning all your life choices! It’ll be great! Trust us!” See? Sadistic.

I sat still. Miserably. Heartbroken. But then the next stop did put me on a path that held a pretty clear route for three more decades. Until the brain melting happened.

So, there I was ten years ago, at my kitchen table in East Lansing; charred bits of my old life flaking off me; writing like a mad woman on the wall I had painted into a giant chalkboard for big ideas. It was handy for menu planning, thought processing, doodling and list making. It’s too easy to lose the post-it notes or the 37th spiral notebook you write the big ideas in, but you’d have to be Criss Angel to lose a wall. So there you go.

New Life Goals!

Uh… Happiness? Nah. Too vague. Success? At what? And really, isn’t “success” the achievement of a singular goal? Then you set up a new hurdle to jump. Screw that. This brain exfoliation went on for a while.

Until I ran into a thought that stopped the brain leakage. “What the hell do I actually want now?” Staring at the doodles, finally, some strong words shouldered their way to the front of my burned brain.

Yahtzee!

The first word was COMMUNITY.

I wanted a real community of friends and neighbors who I could interact with, create with, commiserate with on whatever shenanigans we would get up to. I had lived in that house in that college town for two decades and for reasons that no longer matter, I had only connected with a handful of people. Those were lonely years. And I was done with that.

The second strong word was MOVE. Five years prior, I had set a deadline for a decision to be made for the years ahead and if the spouse hadn’t come up with a viable plan to relocate somewhere that I had a say in selecting, then I was going to make the choice and he could come along or not. Afterall, I had uprooted my life three times at this point, each time moving for his work that took me farther and farther away from a location where any of my eclectic skill sets were viable career choices.

Ten years ago, it was clear that I needed to get out a metaphorical machete and start clearing a path to where I was supposed to be. It was a true winter of the soul where I had retreated, hibernating and trying to keep the delicate seeds of dreams alive while I let my listening stretch out again to those sadistic guide bastards to hear where I needed to move next.

NORTH. That was the word. I don’t think there are any coincidences because I know how those sneaky bastards work, but I had two simultaneous invitations to go north for visits from two women I’d known for years who both lived at the tops of two Michigan Peninsulas; one in the Keweenaw and the other in the Leelanau. They did not know each other so three guesses who set this up.

Why the hell not? I packed my car and hit the road to Copper Harbor. I had a great visit with my friend and the miles on the road alone helped air out my head. The morning of my departure from her house, I sat alone on the dock with my coffee and threw out to the Universe a request for a sign to let me know if our communication line was open so I could pick up the next bread crumb they tossed on my path. I did not see a bird fly over, but as I raised my cup towards my mouth, a feather dropped right into it with a satisfying plunk. Hilarious. Message received. As Ellie in the book Contact frantically reported to the control room team, “we are good to go!”.

Next stop Northport. I had some very interesting days in this tiny town and I met a lot of people and already had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time I visited. Sitting at the donut shop before hitting the road, my friend asked what I saw myself doing next, and I said I wanted to create gatherings where people can celebrate and learn and interact with their community. She pointed across the street and said that building was for sale. We walked over and got a tour from the owners who were outside tending plants. The very second I stepped into the ballroom, everything that was twisted and broken in my soul straightened out and said “THIS”. THIS is my future.

It still took another three years to bring together all the wiggly bits and pieces to finally take over this building and another seven years to become one with this beautiful business in a lovely town with a real community of friends and neighbors, but it happened. Ten long freaking years.

So, the moral of this story is that when your life explodes and your brain melts, it’s a really good time to reopen your communication channels with Sadistic Bastards Are Us. I mean your spiritual guides. Let them lead you on a merry chase as they move you closer to your own next step. The golden part is just over that hill with the steep incline, razor wire, fire ants and random lightning strikes. Come on! It’ll be fun! And ten years from now you’ll look back and laugh.

A word from the Patron Saint of Sadistic Bastards-

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward” Soren Kierkegaard

Can I just say that the Toon Me App is ridiculously fun? The self portrait image at the top of the article is from 2012, taken in my kitchen in East Lansing, next to my chalkboard wall. The other images are from Toon Me’s portal access to the Faerie Realm.

Thankful…

I am thankful for the beautiful spaces of my home and my work that flow with people and the opportunity they offer to witness as we celebrate happy things, mourn our losses, commiserate on worldly matters, or laugh out loud over the perfect madness of life on Earth

I am thankful for a community that rallies when one of us needs something we can not do alone

I am thankful when cancer fails at its job to wreck a life

I am thankful for the change agents who make loud noises about things and wake others up to the fact that the old system no longer works and it is time find a better way

I am thankful to the Universe that has coaxed and cajoled and led and dragged me towards the next and the next and the next small and large adventure in my life

I am thankful to the ever growing circle of family and friends who have arrived at my door on the road of love and for my chance to welcome them in

I am thankful for the gifts of music and art and word crafting and food creation that keep my soul skipping like a kid to their wild playgrounds

I am thankful for this new day where there is another chance for hard hearts and closed tight minds to open and stay that way

I am thankful for the rich and funny, small and large conversations I have had with friends, loved ones and strangers that brought baskets of ideas and inexplicable joy

And I am thankful for my life and the thousand things that allow me to dream something that is not there now and the ability to make them happen

I Knew That…

So, back in 1991, big things were happening. The Soviet Union took the first steps to disband the USSR. Yeah. So, now they are trying to put it back together, but hey, “A” for initial effort. The Internet was made available for commercial use and the number of computers “online” reached 1,000,000. The Dead Sea Scrolls were unveiled, and cyclone in Bangladesh killed 200,000 souls. Ah. You forgot about that. Sadly, me too.

Smaller things happened too. I was writing a regular column then for iCE Magazine in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. It was called Karmic Soup and I reviewed films, books, workshops and new technologies in the Woo-Woo realm of metaphysics. I enjoyed the heck out of that gig. I got to interview some amazing people like Dr. Brian Weiss; a pioneer in past life regression. Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 astronaut who returned to Earth with a whole new thought about what’s “out there”. My favorite was The Amazing Kreskin. I was given a twenty minute time slot with him and when his agent pointed to his watch to call time’s up, he waved him away and we spent two hours talking and laughing. I still get Christmas cards from him.

On a more personal level, I was starting to cook some fiction in my head while I also did intuitive readings and was a part of a fantastic channeling circle. Yes. I did channeling. No. It’s not dangerous. It’s akin to meditating out loud. Trance channel and author, Kevin Ryerson, once said (through one of his guides) that praying is talking to God and meditating is listening to God. Brilliant. And I assume that God would have far more interesting things to say to us than we do to It/He/She.

Today, I was going through one of those scary boxes where you stash crap in hopes of one day organizing it. In among the paperclips, sketches, building plans and writing samples, I found a “list” that I had channeled on some random day in 1991. It was so simple and straight forward that I filed it in the DUH category of my “keep this ‘cuz you might want to use it someday” box.

The list isn’t going to cure cancer but it actually could create world peace if everyone followed each point. Really. No fooling.

I have a slew of things that I’ve written down; big ideas and such. A year or five would pass and there that thing would appear out in the world because someone else had the same thought and actually took the time to do something with it while mine was fermenting in the DUH box. Ask my family. They’ve been witness to dozens of moments when our mouths fell open as we saw the very thing in the DUH box on TV.

Anyway, it’s twenty seven years later, but here is A Plan For Living. Needless to say, the advice herein was mostly forgotten over time, but now I am printing this out and I’ll look at it often to see if I can actually do what I wrote.

Thank you Highest Teachers & Guides. Don’t give up on me. I’m a little slow, but eventually … I get it.

a plan for living

Through the Muck

I have a big dog. A Great Dane in fact, and this morning I was out back collecting some spring flowers that only seem to thrive in the places where we’ve dumped her winter offerings collected from the snow covered yard. A 135 pound dog can create an impressive volume of offerings. It’s a ritual; following her after her daily constitutional with the blue metal scooper and carrying the mess to the side beds to toss it just over the ornamental rail where it decomposes beneath grapevine, clematis, day lilies, azalea and other sleeping things in the garden.

By May, after the mess has been incorporated into the soil and mulched, it’s a tiny jungle of green. As I crouch down to move the lush green leaves and collect the delicate violets and lily-of-the-valley that grow there, every brush of my hand against the petals will cause a cloud of heady fragrance to perfume the air. The amazing scent these tiny bell shaped flowers give off herald spring and all the little things that have returned after our punishing Michigan winters. They bloom and thrive for a few short weeks and then they’re gone. Waiting for next winter’s feeding to gather the steam to do it all again.

These beautiful, tiny wonders were fed from the mess that was once dog crap. Hey, it’s fertilizer. Whether it comes from cows or another creature, the nutrients and organisms make for rich ground.

Dog shit. Who knew that out of such an unpleasant situation, some of the most fragrant and lovely flowers could rise from the muck and thrill the lucky recipient of the bloom? It got me thinking about other things; people even, who started their lives in awful, challenging and difficult situations and somehow turned their time on Earth into a blazing wonder of creativity.

I have bought, and received, gorgeous hothouse flowers; roses and other things that look absolutely perfect from a distance. Moving closer I am always disappointed to find there is hardly a scent to them at all. Pressing my nose right into the blooms I find nothing; as if they were silk and a Made in China paper tag should be found stuck to the stem near the plastic thorns.

These flowers have been given the perfect setting, just enough water, nutrients, light and tending to produce perfect petals and uniform color. They bloom on time for the growers and are cut and delivered to market like obedient little children; having done their homework and gotten the proper eight hours of sleep each night. Everything…right. Everything…calculated and perfect. And they are that; perfect. Flawless. Soul-less. Lifeless and perfect.

These hot house flowers are like so many boarding-school, trust-fund children; their path from birth to death a safe and predictable journey. Bred and trained to maintain the family’s reputation and to protect the fortune amassed by relatives until the young reach an age when they can quietly whither in their private gardens observed by those who can afford the luxury of their physical beauty.

Call me crazy but I’ll take a handful of dog-shit-fed, knock-you-on-your-ass-with-their-heavenly-scent, drive way throw off, back-garden lily-of-the-valley any day over the surgical beauty of a hothouse rose.

I’ll take my friends and my heroes like that too. The people I know who started out fighting their way through the shit are the shining stars that make life fascinating. They took what they were fed and used it as fertilizer for books they’ve written, for art they have made, for inspiration to grow on through the mess. The ones who came from nothing; even the wealthy rebels who rejected the attempts to conform them to the family cookie cutter shape, they have brought a bouquet of fantastic memories to anyone lucky enough to meet them.

Here’s to starting life in a pile of crap and coming up smelling like heaven…

Other Projects

“So, what do you do?” God, that question. I never know how to answer that. I don’t have a neat little job description like insurance actuary, doctor, real estate agent. Those would explain in a few words, exactly what you’ve been up to for decades. When people ask me what I do my awkward response usually begins with, “Umm…” It probably leads them to the conclusion that my work involves things that I would rather not explain.

Like my friends who also trip over that question-my background reads like several different people tossed their odd jobs onto a community resume and the amalgamation was used for my new identity after fleeing a war torn nation. I’ve been a writer, a tour guide, a gift shop owner, a metaphysical counselor complete with tarot card readings, past life regressions and hypnotherapy. Very early on, I was a directory assistance operator (Remember 411? Yep. That.) I was even an airport security person in Phoenix long before a post 9/11 world. I’ve worked as a photographer and assistant and also did design and marketing under contract for a University.

It’s a big old casserole of accepting opportunities because they sounded interesting to me. Because of my willingness to hang my ass out there and learn on the fly, I have been asked to do all sorts of interesting things including script and assist in the direction of a destination promotional film. It was a two week gig with a crew of mostly Spanish speaking editors and long nights in Miami drinking Cuban coffee and surprising the guys when they were tired enough to lapse into Spanish and I could still follow their commentary on the film cuts. I must have been too tired as well to remember that I only have the most rudimentary knowledge of anything but English.

This year, just for the hell of it, get out a notepad and write down all the odd jobs that you could still do in a pinch and all the hobby skills you have acquired in your lifetime. You may be shocked at just how much stuff you actually know how to do. Don’t leave out weird stuff like knowing how to drive a motorcycle. I taught my kid sister how to drive one in a short afternoon. Still drive a stick shift or know how if you had too? Me too. I keep telling people who dismiss this skill that someday when all the computers crash they are going to be staring at the high-tech giant paper holder in their driveway and I will be driving my manual shift car over to rescue them. That’s a skill and one that someone may ask you to teach them so brush up.

I take a lot of photographs. That started with a brownie camera as a kid and graduated through several 35mm models, my favorite being my lightweight and trusty Olympus OM-1. That thing went everywhere with me. Like a cave person, I have yet to purchase myself a decent digital camera. That is on the horizon. For now I have set a challenge to take interesting photos using only my cellphone camera. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 and it has a pretty decent little system.

Yesterday I found the website YouPic and decided to upload only my cellphone photo portfolio. At first I uploaded a handful of pictures and as the day progressed I continued to toss more out there as I retrieved them from my sd card. When I opened the site this morning to upload a few more photos I saw that I’d gotten 5,229 views. That was shocking. How the hell are that many people enchanted by my cat? Who knows?

The next thing I did was peruse the “fans” I had acquired while I was sleeping and I started to go through some of their uploads. Granted, some are professional photographers with some serious equipment though many are amateurs who managed to capture life on Earth in spectacular pictures. I am blown away by the talent out there. They have skills! I have skills! You have skills! Remember those?

Next time you are tempted to sit your ass on a sofa and stare blankly at a TV screen, take a minute and make that skill list I mentioned. Then get up, off your ass, and do one of those things for at least an hour. Remember some of the thousand things you one day thought that you might be and pick up that guitar, or that cooking pot or paint brush or Bic pen and MAKE SOMETHING. And if you need some inspiration, say hi to my cats at: https://youpic.com/photographer/mimidifrancesca/mimi.difrancesca-from-michigan-united-states

UPDATE: Four days after opening the YouPic site there are now 13,422 views and 252 Followers. Dang. That Lucca is one sexy cat.

What I’ve Seen…Reaching 60

Tomorrow is my birthday. It’s a big one. Sixty. At this auspicious moment I am wondering how the hell did this many years pass so ridiculously fast?

When my kids were young teens itching to do something they weren’t ready for yet, I would get out the construction tape measure. I would lay it out to 100 inches and chalk where their ages fell and how long their wait really was to participate in the activity that eluded them. Then I would point down the line to how many more times they could do that forbidden thing in the one hundred or so years they had to live their lives. It made the two inches from 14 to 16, when their driver’s license would come seem like the paltry eye blink that it was.

Looking back down my own line of numbers, already passed, I am embracing my million moments that drew together to make me. Gathered knowledge is just hoarding thoughts until you share it. For what it’s worth, these are some of the things I have seen.

Even if you grew up watching shows like Friends and assuming adulthood would be a constant coffee klatch with your across the hall neighbors, you will spend most of your time alone in this life. Unless you are conjoined, this is the way of the world. And if you can’t be at peace in your times of solitude, why in the hell would you think other people would be interested in spending time with you either? Learn shit. Get interested and then you will be interesting-to yourself and to others.

The greatest lesson for young teen abstinence should be the fact that the first person you get naked with will-in all likelihood-not be the last. With the exception of the four couples you will meet who are childhood sweethearts-you will swim into and out of tubs, ponds, raging rivers and oceans of love in all its forms until you find somewhere that becomes your place in the world. That’s where you will build your home- however early or late in life you find it and trying to pitch a tent anywhere else will give temporary shelter and nothing more.

When people close to you lash out it is usually because they want you to love them more than it appears you do. If you pay attention, people will tell you what they want-so listen.

Most people, even the most hardened among us, still have a soft, gooey center and if you are paying attention and listening you can figure out what they love. That is what made them gooey like that in the first place. If they showed you the gooey love, they shared the keys to their castle. Honor that.

There are seven billion people on this planet. When you are not famous, the statistical magic of finding one person who can see you for the blazing light you actually are is a gift rarer then the most expensive gemstone. Own that.

Real love never dies. It only changes shape to accommodate the way you live now.

The secret to happiness is this: figure out what you want and find a way to ask for it.

Love is your own personal experience. It sparks and blooms inside your own head-like a private revelation; a movie only you can see. Even if the object of your affection does not return your ardor with the same intensity or at all, never hold regret for having felt that feeling. To know what love feels like is like visiting the most beautiful place on Earth. Not everyone will go there in their lifetime but you have, and you can tell others what it feels like to stand in the center of all that beauty; what it is to see the blazing light of someone else and have it warm your soul even if it’s just for a moment. It will change you forever; no matter if life or death moves you far away from that other person, it will remain part of who you are now.

What I have seen while I have run, swam, played, danced, loved, fought, created, walked, crawled, bled, cried and laughed my way through the sixty years on planet Earth comes down to this: love. It always comes down to that. And on the last day I get in this life, it will still be about love; who I loved and who loved me.

That is where I have a cave of treasure like Aladdin. I remember all the love my heart has felt. It fills my pens, my brushes, my cooking pots and the large broken parts inside of me. It is my gold.

The Japanese have a practice called Kintsugi. It’s a ceramic pottery ritual where a beloved broken vessel is pieced back together with molten gold used like glue. It gathers the shattered parts together; making it whole again in a new and beautiful way.

Today, I will visualize all the love I’ve known as gold and let it fill the cracks and broken parts of me to make me whole like the day I was born only different…better. It will be my private gift to myself; the strengthening of my weak places. What I’ve seen in my sixty years has been a kaleidoscope of wonder and I am filled with anticipation as the curtain rises on the next act.

Hey. Is That Squid on Your Face? The Italian Eyeglass Mafia…

I’ve been wearing prescription eyeglasses since first grade. Calculating one pair per year and accounting for lost or broken pairs as a kid; plus some years as an adult when I had two or three pairs; plus prescription sunglasses, I have had about one hundred pairs of glasses.

My life with eyeglasses dragged me through horrifying 1960’s when flesh-tone-sparkle-laden cat eyes were one of two options for girls. The other option were those wire and plastic gender bending numbers worn by accountants, government geeks and nuns. You know them. They’re back again as the ugly things that hipsters now pay a month’s rent to wear because they are suddenly cool and not just the state issue monstrosities you would have gotten with your orange jumpsuit before entering the penitentiary.

The 1970’s brought some better styles and totally groovy rose lenses or sky blue; wire frames like John Lennon or a big girl cat eye from Rayban. I lived in the Phoenix area then and I bought my glasses from Gatesh Opticians. Suffice it to say they were most famous for being Elton John’s favorite eyewear purveyor. R.I.P, Gatesh brothers, now selling outrageous eyewear to touring angels in galaxies far and wide. Mine from that era didn’t hit the same crazy level Elton’s did but I definitely pushed the envelope.

In the 1980’s I had leather glasses, wooden glasses, purple glasses, navy blue glasses, green glasses and others that frighten me now when I see them in photos. I also traveled a lot that decade and had the chance to buy an eyeglass wardrobe in Hong Kong for a song, some of those my most favorite frames.

In the meantime, I’ve tried conservative, dressy, mom-glasses, edgy frames and non-descripts and have settled into a few styles now I can live with but do not love.

There are a few things about glasses that I will never understand. Lots of insurance policies do not cover eyeglasses. If you need an eye exam it’s $100 and up. A pair of frames will set you back $90 to $300 and up. Prescription lenses? Another $150 and up. Don’t want them to look like coke bottle bottoms? Another $100 charge. Not wild about bifocal or trifocal lines that cut horizontally across your line of vision? Add $200 and up. Your purchase is going to cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $1300 for one pair of glasses. If you can’t see, you’re going to have accidents that will hurt you and maybe others so isn’t it incredibly stupid that insurance companies would rather roll the dice that you won’t get hurt instead of coughing up our own money to give us glasses?

If you pulled apart a pair of glasses, the entire amount of material you’d have is roughly the same amount of plastic, wire, screws and polycarbonate that many tiny children’s toys have. Those shaped plastic things sell for less than $15.00. Total.

Back in 2012, CBS News did a story called Sticker Shock about why eyeglasses are so darn expensive. Apparently, there’s a company in Italy, Luxottica, and they are like the mafia of eyewear. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sticker-shock-why-are-glasses-so-expensive-07-10-2012/ They sell billions of frames around the globe under hundreds of different brand names and control the market keeping the price of eyeglasses sky-high. Like vision-crack, we poor sighted humans just keep going back for more and they just keep getting richer.

This year, as I wade back into the alligator pool to look for a new pair of glasses, I’m going to roll the dice on a website I just found
called www.SpiffySociety.com. They have a virtual try on area for their eyeglasses that uses your webcam to slap a pair onto your face and once it’s there, you can change the color options to see if you like them. It’s kind of genius.

I’ll order a new pair again this year and I’ll wade in that murky pond knowing full well that I’m going to be royally screwed by that Italian conglomerate…again. Yeah, I see you over there counting your money, Guido Scungilli. At least you could buy me dinner.

Jar of Wonder

I’ve used the last of the lotion I concocted several months back and I can’t seem to toss out the cool jar. It’s squatty and round and it once held a moderately pricey and amazing royal jelly body butter from Savannah Bee Company.

Custom blending makes me feel like an alchemist; scooping and stirring and sniffing this and that to decipher its compatibility with the other bits and bobs. I do the same thing with spices, much to the entertainment of my family. Oh, crap. Here she goes again. It starts as a chore because I’m out of something that I need. Once I get going, I fall into the spirit of the scavenger hunt around my home. Every bathroom has some Bermuda Triangle area of lotions and potions and tiny tubes and bottles from hotel stays and gift baskets that I open and smell. If it passes muster, it comes with me to the kitchen.

I start with something thick and un-tinted like Nivea and add a few tablespoons of it to the jar; then the fun begins. A teaspoon of Curel, another of Jergens another of some cocoa butter weirdness and on it goes until it’s almost full to the top. At the end, I add a big dollop of some perfumed cream with a soft and lovely fragrance like the old Breathe Romance from Bath & Bodyworks which, of course, they no longer make just because I love it. Luckily, I’ve been a miser with my last jar so I save it for mixing like Merlin would have saved his stash of dragon blood for spell work.

I’ve made a tiny treasure of this oft used vessel and now call it my Jar of Wonder and the lid bears some of my artsy handiwork and sparkles like a starry night. It seems so much more lush and decadent with the beauty lid when I go to rescue my indoor-winter sand paper feet and hands.

The point of all this is that when I found the jar empty this morning, my first reaction was the same as it is when so many good things end; a downslide into an inventory of all that once was and is no longer at my fingertips. It’s just a jar for cripes sake. I know this. But, cut me some slack. I live in mid Michigan; the second cloudiest place in America, so my vitamin D sunshine levels are dangerously low in January.

And as it turned out, while I was on my search for ingredients, the more I found, the deeper it sunk in that I do indeed have far, far more of everything of this sort than I could ever need. Even if that means I have a whole lot of a little of this and a little of that.

So, it’s not a 40 oz. vat of royal jelly body butter. No matter. If I had a giant container to mix and stir in, I could probably make 40 oz. of my Wonder Cream and be up to my neck in it for months to come. And is that not the way of all our “I don’t have enough…” stories?

Maybe we don’t have Jay Leno’s garage full of cars and motorcycles to choose from that might match our outfits today, but we can always find a way to get from point A to point B and that was the goal anyway.

Perhaps we aren’t in the throes of big-big love at this part of our lives, but we may have a dozen friends and family members who collectively fill our cup with joy and that is really something.

So I don’t have any royal jelly body butter left, but I do have all this other stuff that, together, works remarkably well.

The point is, when you’re feeling like you’ve just run out of something and you’re going to feel its absence because you have come to count on it, go on a scavenger hunt in your life and see if you might have a variety of things you can notice and celebrate and bring together to make your own Jar of Wonder to soothe the rough spots in your life.

Look around. You just might surprise yourself.

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