I like clean. I like organized. I like everything I need at my fingertips. Today, I have achieved this! If I could install an under chair toilet, and have food and drink delivered at regular intervals, I would never have to get up again. At least until I used up all the lipgloss in my pocket.

Plus the six lipsticks in that purse.

Back in November, when Ang. and I finally met in person, it was a totally awesome thing. I know I didn’t blog much about it, but, it was because I had a very difficult time finding the words to say. We had grown to know each other so well over our years of internet friendship that being in the same room together only meant we got to give our fingers a rest and jack our jaws instead. We even said BRB now and again. And when we got home, we agreed that we should not wait such a long time before having another IRL meetup, and we discussed meeting this spring in Pigeon Forge. I used the HotelsByCity website tonight to try to find cheap hotels and I was pleased to see that we can get a room for about 65 bucks a night during the first week of May. We could get them even cheaper if we go right now!

Unfortunately, that isn’t financially possible for either of us, but if I could anywhere I wanted to right now, it would be Pigeon Forge with Ang. I’ve had a miserable 2 months, and I need a get away. In fact, I probably need a good cry, too, and I know she won’t laugh when my mascara runs. I know they say only time can mend a broken heart, but coffee with a friend can go a real long way.

A great piece of news to cap off an otherwise fantastic day.

/end incredibly heavy sarcasm.

You know, some days just suck from the time you get up. Nothing goes right, and it seems like everything you touch turns to poo. This wasn’t that kind of day for me. I was able to accomplish everything I set my mind to (so far). On the other hand, every piece of news I got sucked. From “it can’t be fixed” to “Heath Ledger is dead”, this is one day I coulda gone without hearing any news at all.

Today, all through my area, swing sets and trampolines are empty and unused while kids huddle around televisions on this school holiday. Well, holiday for public schools. We aren’t taking today off, not because I am a racist pig, but because we are only taking off three days total this year, and I kind thought MLK was a lesser holiday that the Fourth of July, and an individual birthday and the day after Thanksgiving (when I will be in Charlotte).

Brr. It is cold! This morning I was able to put on my favorite sweatshirt for the first time in two years. It looks like we are finally having winter, and as bad as I hate being cold, I hope it lasts more than three days. We have not had a real winter in several years, and while it’s been fun to run around in shirt sleeves all the time, it has caused other issues. The past few summers, we’ve had mosquito trucks out spraying a couple times a week and the fly population is approaching Biblical Plague proportions. Ok, I exaggerate, but only slightly. My point is BUGS–without the winter cold to kill them off, they just continue to multiply. Exponentially.

Some time ago, I went to Las Vegas, and I have blogged extensively about that trip, but I have held one part back. You know, sometimes when we weigh and measure a life, we let the effect of that life color our perception of the person who lived it. Today, of course, I am speaking of Dr. King. In my mind, he has always been a huge man, full of wonderful pontifications, and saintly behavior. Only such a person could affect society in such a grand way. I had an opportunity to view the display of artifacts from his life at the Atlanta airport and my perceptions were false. MLK was a small man. Here is a photo of one of his suits. For reference, the plaque underneath is about a foot wide. He was little.

And he smoked. I didn’t take a photo of the photo, because I was concerned about copyright, but he was smoking in it. So there we have it, a little man, with faults and a dream. And drive and determination. I thought on these things on the way to Vegas: the magnitude of the things we can accomplish if we harness the dream and drive. See, MLK was so much more than the one famous speech. And he was also less. But when the call to duty came, he stood up and said yes. YES. God can use a Yes Man to do things way beyond what seems possible. I know many will say that the nation was ready for a change, we were on the cusp of it, whatever. That does not effect my point at all. If the man had said No, then the change would have been different, or delayed. He could have dwelt on all his shortcomings instead of what could be. It’s a powerful testimony to all of us with human weaknesses, that a man with feet of clay could ignite a fire in the hearts of human beings that changed an entire society.

I noted in my post title that I live in the Deep South. Not that I ever tried to hide it, LOL, just ask the people who’ve heard me talk. There were race riots here even after I was born. It was several years after the Federal Government adopted MLK, Jr. Day that the State of North Carolina adopted it as an official holiday. And yet we have come so far in such a relatively short time. King’s death in 1968 came just a hair more than 100 years after slavery ended. That’s an eye blink, really. Less than a 2 lifetimes from then until now. That’s crazy fast, historically speaking.

And, yes, I have spent time at the martinlutherking.org site, so there is no need to send me to it thinking you are enlightening me. This post is about so much more than the man. This post is about what ordinary people can do for and in our society, and if you don’t get that, then you need more help than I can give you. There will be another post some time on charisma and its effects, and I’ll likely mention King, and Jones, and Clinton, and Reagan. But that is not today’s post. Today’s post is about what can happen when you harness a dream, and aren’t intimidated by a little hard work.

I know I mentioned that I was really purging and cleaning my house. Did I mention my cousin was coming each weekend to help me? It is such a help to have a fresh eye look things over. We moved here 5 years ago, and I put the table long way in the dining area, and that’s how it stayed. And I cursed it almost everyday as I tried to walk around it to do stuff, and clean around it in the back, etc. Today, she said “let’s turn it, and put the hutch…..”. Well, I said there was NO WAY we could stand to lose one end of the table, but I called everyone in to come take a seat just to prove her wrong, and Lo and BEHOLD, we fit, it fit, they fit.

And I can clean behind and around and it’s EASY. I hate to fight my house to clean it, and if you saw the place, you would know. And, yeah, we scrubbed the floor on our hands and knees to make up for my weeks of neglect.

You can see the dining area as it used to be here and here. This is what it looks like now, except I’ve re-hung the curtains. They were in the dryer when I took the picture.

I am tired. That’s not lightweight contemporary furniture. It’s solid maple that dh inherited from his parents. And the freezer was no cake walk, either. (Not that I moved that very much–I let dh do it instead, LOL). I can’t wait to throw out another metric ton of crap and create more living space. The bathroom is next!

that cardboard boxes, paper bags and even trash bags dry rot and fall apart when you touch them. I learned this up in Grandmother’s attic as I was going through her things. There’s just something so sad about a trash bag, lovingly and carefully wrapped around an item to preserve it, that disintegrates at a touch.

that the things in our lives take their meaning from the hands that use them and that the tools a person leaves behind tell a tale of their own. There’s not a whole lot I want from her house, just a few things really to remind me of her, to continue the connection we’ve had all my life.

that the sight of a funeral wreath can make your heart skip a beat. And possibly make you stop in the middle of the street and burst into tears. Regardless of the traffic.

I looked over a website tonight that promises happiness. You know, that’s an amazing promise, isn’t it? Because who doesn’t want to be happy? Seriously, ask 48 friends if they would rather be happy or miserable, and en come back and tell me what they all say. I’ll wait. Done? Ok, they all said happy, right? So then, I guess the question at hand is …. how do you get happy? And would joy make you happier in the long run than happiness?

Well, the site was on The Sedona Method. It’s a programmed championed by the likes of Mariel Hemingway, and it’s the subject of a new book called Happy for No Reason by Marci Shimoff. The Sedona Method posits that the way to happiness lies in letting go of out negative feelings and emotions. The Sedona Method is based on two main premises:

* Thoughts and feelings aren’t facts and they’re not you.
* You can let them go.

It seems simple enough, and right now, you can get a free DVD and CD from the site to help explain it further. There’s also an MP3 that you can get immediately. I find it interesting that the Sedona Method teaches that the happiness you crave is already there inside you. In fact, they say “discover the happiness that you are”.

So, I read all that, and at first, I was thinking, “Man, that’s just a bit hokey, and they oughta just let go and let God.” Yeah, go ahead and laugh with me, because it didn’t take me a real long time to remember a time when I was so caught up in myself that letting go and letting God was the last option to enter my mind. I was so caught up in my hurt and pain that I kept it clutched around me like a blanket, as if it would protect me. And I would not let God heal my hurt, and I do believe that was last week, hello??!!?? Yeah, isn’t God good to remind us me when I got pompous just how foolish I really am? Keeps me from making a bigger fool of myself.

Here’s the thing though: if you can get yourself to the point that you can give these things to God, then you an move beyond mere happiness to joy. That giving things over, letting them go, it’s a daily process, sometimes an hourly process. Ha! I’ve had weeks where it was minute to minute, yk? The problem with only striving to be happy is that it is no more part of you than the anger and sadness and other negative thoughts and feelings the Sedona Method is trying to help you release. Trading one emotion for another is just riding the Himalaya. Remember that ride? That’s the name the county fair used the first time I rode it. It’s the one where the cars go around on the track, first one way and then the other. Or maybe like a swing, first forward, then backward, and ever at the mercy of your emotions, and how skilled you can get at letting go/redirecting/ giving it over.

Joy, on the other hand, is an attitude. Joy is what you get when you know that whatever happens in your life has passed by God; that your unique circumstances were specifically engineered and designed to bring out the very best in you. Joy is the product of a life bathed in infinite love and unending mercy. Joy is a product of grace. Joy is what you get when you go beyond letting go and you begin to let God.

Do you twitter? I twitter. Some days more than others. These past few days, not so much. I’ve been busy, just like I said. In fact, I did twitter this evening, and I said “purging my life of detritus, one broken/outgrown/useless item at a time. Feels mighty fine.” Now I think I told you I had cleaned the house pretty thoroughly from the 10th of December through Christmas, except for my room, so this is the second pass and I am still finding plenty of stuff I don’t use. If I use 4 pots to cook, why do I have 6? 2 went out to goodwill. Why do I keep frying pans in here that only hold food for one person? Ah, well, those belonged to my grandmother, you see. They went out to the shed, and when my family shrinks, I will bring them back in. They are cast-iron, older than my own mother, and they will wait for me. And that is just the kitchen. I’ve also been doing some work in the bathroom. I don’t need the shelves I thought I needed when I get rid of stuff I don’t ever use and then take advantage of the space I freed up. Although I must confess that it takes way more stuff to keep me looking pretty that it did twenty years ago, and it’s a little embarrassing to see it out on the counter, even in a pretty basket.

I told you I was purging myself of some excess weight. I don’t think I confessed that I wear pajama pants at home because the waist band of all my jeans are so tight it hurts. It seems a cruel twist of fate that I finally, finally, finally fill out the backside of my pants only to not be able to fasten them. I think I also failed to mention that my joints hurt almost all the time. And I am certain I did not mention the final straw: I dropped my ruler on the way to my cousin’s house last Saturday and I could not bend over far enough to pick it up. Dh had to pick it up for me, and he was driving. Yep, that was embarrassing, too, but I am fixing it.

I’m purging some of my responsibilities as well. I’ve pretty much made up my mind to let a couple more of my blogs go to seed, as it were. I have found that running so many is not the panacea I thought it would be. It takes me a couple hours to put together a top-notch post, the kind that will draw readers in and bring them back again, and I can’t do that with 5/6/7 blogs to maintain. There just aren’t enough hours in the day, provided I plan to eat, sleep, pee or parent, let alone wife. (Did I just use wife as a verb? Yes, I did. More on that later.) Rather than spread myself so thin that I can’t do a good job anywhere, I’m thinking it would be better to do less and do it well. And also, maybe smile more so my kids don’t ask me why I am mad so much. Especially when I’m not. And also, free up some time to do non-internet stuff that I need to do, which will directly impact lives today, tomorrow and forever, needful and important activities. See, it’s also embarrassing to tell Jesus my hands are too full to properly perform the tasks He lays out before me.

Finally, and most difficult, I am purging myself of some bad attitudes toward my husband. Oh, that is the hardest one to admit, the most embarrassing if you will. After all, I am supposed to have it all together. I’m a Christian, you know. Wife is me, you know. I’m Cinderella, you know. Of course Christian doesn’t mean I am perfect, just forgiven, and the rest of those things just plain aren’t true. And lately, I’ve been impatient, unkind, unloving and occasionally just plain mean to my husband. Oh we are struggling, no doubt. But I’m pretty sure that we would be wiser to stand together and struggle together against the problem rather than tear little pieces out of one another. My husband isn’t saved, he doesn’t know any better. I am and I do, and yet, I’m falling short of the mark almost daily. See, I told you that was the most embarrassing. The benefit of having told you is that now you can pray for me, and now I can share what I am learning, and you will now that I am not just blowing hot air out of my wazoo. God leads us through troubled times so that we can help others avoid them by sharing what we’ve learned. Notice I didn’t say He gives us troubled times, for He does not. But He is willing to lead us at all times, and trouble is no exception.