Dear Reader:

Some days you read a chapter of the original "Winnie the Pooh" (Ch. 10 - In Which Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded By Water) and you can't really believe how relevant it is to your life.  Namely, the life in which you stood out in the POURING, GUSHING MONSOON-LIKE WEATHER along with a phalanx of other parents of first day school goers because, darn it, you are no fair-weather parent who is not willing to get drenched for his or her freshly minted kindergarteners.   Under a pathetically inadequate umbrella which was nonetheless rainbow-colored and cheery to provide insufficient protection over the three of you as you walked from the bus to the car - a grand distance of about 20 feet.   No sitting in the car remaining dry until the bus arrived and the rain subsided.  No.  This is the parent who showed up 20 minutes early for the bus.  Just Because.  It's the First Day, folks!

Anyway, imagine my surprise at the serendipity of finding this story to be our next installment in bedtime reading pleasure:

And, because I know you, dear reader, and I know that you would love to read some of this story, but are way Too Busy and Important to look it up yourselves, here you go:

"You can imagine Piglet's joy when at last the ship came in sight of him.  In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull's egg by mistake, and the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself back into safety and say, "How interesting, and did she?" when -- well, you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, The Brain of Pooh (Captain, C. Robin; 1st Mate, P. Bear) coming over the sea to rescue him.

And that is really the end of the story, and as I am very tired after that last sentence, I think I shall stop there."

I might get a disproportionate amount of pleasure out of reading these stories aloud, folks.  Disproportionate.   Or maybe it is in direct proportion to how Amazingly Awesome these stories are.  Hmm.  Let me think on that.

So, when I left you at the end of the last blog post, I was preparing to purge and clean and trying to prepare myself, both mentally and emotionally for a New Start.   And, I admitted to being somewhat mired in negativity and perhaps the tiniest bit of depression.  And, I outlined a plan.   

Well, I am making some small, but perhaps significant progress.   All is not sunny in my world - still cloudy and overcast - but, I see some glimpses of sun behind the clouds from time to time.   

And, after my last blog post I thought about what has worked for me in the past when I have a tendency to Dwell and Ruminate about Things Over Which I Have No Control or Things Which Are Not Helpful In My Journey Towards Becoming A More Evolved Human Being.   Or when I have a tendency to Dwell and Ruminate about How Much I Want To Eat Numerous Hostess Cupcakes To Make Myself Feel Better.  OK, I will no longer capitalize.  That's annoying.  

So here's what I came up with in my mental rolodex files of solutions:

1)  Create something beautiful or meaningful or surround yourself with beautiful things, people, conversation, music, books, etc.  

2) Organize the hell out of something (see also: ways of exerting control over something when you don't feel like you have control over other things - like kids growing up/away, piles of work looming, situations where there is no clear "right" thing to do).

So, prepare yourself for a line of pictures.   First up - my bedroom beautification plan proceeds apace:

Look at the birds.  And, the branches.  And, the color - THE COLOR.

You guys - this is a triangle table.  A TABLE IN THE SHAPE OF A TRIANGLE.  Also, it belonged to my great-grandmother whose name was Bessie Inez Sayre.   A great name, right?

Also belonging, originally, to Bessie Inez Sayre, when she was rocking my grandfather as an infant in 1897, was this chair which made its way from my mom's place to my bedroom just yesterday.  

I want to surround myself with things that have meaning for me and/or give me pleasure or that I find beautiful.  So, my next step in this process - I am the Lady Bird Johnson of the Bedroom Beautification League, dear reader - is to frame these items and hang them on the walls in my bedroom:

Now, onto the organizing part:

Each set of earrings has its own little niche.  This, inexplicably, makes me feel as though the world is going to be all right.  

I don't want to be too self-congratulatory here, but...  that is one well-appointed pristine refrigerator, dear reader!  And, somewhat symmetrical and classically balanced, too.   That refrigerator makes me want to do the tree pose and practice my Ujjayi breath.   What can I say?  For some people, it is incense and pan flute music that brings this kind of peace to the mind and heart.  For me, it is a well-organized and clean refrigerator.   Namasté.   Next up:  THE CABINETS.

So, I am clearing the decks and creating spaces, hopefully, in which I can be calm and disciplined and peaceful.   So that I can make better choices about the feeding and care of my body and mind in the coming weeks.   The good thing about the weather, dear reader, is that it never really stays cloudy forever.  At some point, there is always another sunny day and another - as hard as that may be to believe in the midst of the Terrible Flood to which Piglet refers.   

So, onward.

Thanks for reading!