To wear or not to wear

I am necklace challenged! The most special ones always seemed to get lost or broken, or too tangled to wear. For many years I mostly just gave up wearing them.

Last year at church I noticed a friend wearing a necklace that reminded me of one I had from my Grandmother. It was a delicate antique gold colored chain with a few tiny coral colored roses on it. I told her I had a similar one from my Grandmother but that it was too tangled to wear. That I had tried several times to untangle it. She said if I put it in oil and rubbed it between my fingers that should do the trick, and that it would clean it at the same time. It sounded like a brilliant idea. But later when I looked for it, I couldn’t find it.

Then I remembered that a few months before after yet another unsuccessful attempt at untangling it I had thrown it away in a fit of anger. I was heartbroken, how could I have done something so rash and silly?

I remember I was feeling super frustrated that night with all the clutter in our house. Every surface seemed covered. Why keep it if I can’t wear it, I wondered? It’s just so much useless clutter. Besides I don’t have anyone to leave it to! I was feeling particularly lonely and a little sorry for myself, I suppose. I don’t have a sister to ask about things like that. And i didn't feel close enough to any of my other friends to think to ask them about it at the time.

I was also upset because when I asked John to help me untangle it, he made a seemingly halfhearted attempt and then gave up. Later he said he would have helped more after he was finished reading his book if he had known how upset I was. But I didn’t want to ask again. I just thought, that’s it, he doesn’t care or want to help. I just have to deal with it myself! (He has a much higher tolerance for clutter than I do. It’s usually an uphill battle to get him to help deal with it. I’m sure that was also fueling my frustration.)

I never told my friend what I had done. I was too embarrassed and sad.

Anyway. After that I decided I needed to get a necklace holder to help the rest of them not get so tangled. It took several more months before I finally gave myself permission--it seemed too self-indulgent and frivolous. I also wondered was it worth it? After all I hardly ever wear them anyway. What was the point? But for some reason that I can’t explain it mattered to me. I couldn’t keep dismissing it. I wanted to take better care of my necklaces and start wearing them again.

So I finally made the time to search for necklace holders and found one on-line. When it arrived, John mounted it next to my dresser and helped me untangle them so i could hang them up.

So I am wearing necklaces again. It is surprisingly difficult. Other women seem to know about this stuff automatically. I ’m still learning which necklaces go with which outfits. I even texted my friend Susan a couple of selfies one Sunday to see which necklace she thought looked best. It feels weird and embarrassing to be such a neophyte at this. It also takes more time and thought. As someone who hardly ever remembers to even trim my nails and put lotion on until we are in the car on our way to church and I notice how ragged my nails look, it is a new thing to take time on, seemingly trivial, personal details like this.

Maybe this is the point of starting to wear necklaces again after so many years. I’m learning it is ok to do things that matter to me even if they don’t seem particularly useful to anyone else.

My current favorite one is a short chain with a tiny little heart on it. It’s not very noticeable to anyone else. But it is sweet little reminder that I am loved.

One of my favorite wildflowers

Yesterday morning i was thrilled to see one of my favorite wildflowers growing in our yard!  I was getting ready to go out with some friends for the day so I didn't take the time to photograph them just then. I wish now I had. They were wet from a rain storm and looked fresh and sparkly as the morning sun shone on them. In the afternoon I took some photos but they didn't look as pretty as my memory of them from the morning.

Nevermind, I am trying to be less perfectionistic anyway and they are still there so I took some more photos this morning. It is amazing how their color seems to change with the time of day. They look more purple in the photos I just took.

Based on my internet research, I think they are grape hyacinth (muscari botryoides)

The first two photos below are from this morning. The next two are from yesterday afternoon. They look much more purple and grape-like in this morning's light. They are really quite small. These are enlarged a lot.

Taken this morning.

From yesterday afternoon. The color looks more of a light blue.

not as purple as this morning but still a beauty!

I also took this yesterday afternoon. It's the same sort as from my last post but more open

This one is quite pretty too. It's so small it's difficult for me to get much detail. It looks almost like an orchid 

 

 

 

The first wildflowers of Spring!

Saturday I went outside and discovered wildflowers had come up in our grass. It's been a long cold winter and I was so thrilled to see any signs of Spring that i picked some and put them in a little vase in my kitchen window.

They aren't the most colorful or exciting of our Texas wildflowers, but when I looked at them up close through the camera lens I was surprised to see how much detail and color they really have.

After taking these photos of them in the vase I went back outside and took more of them in their natural setting.

To think that God lavishes so much beauty and creativity on such small things is amazing. Most people if they notice them at all might think they are just a weed they need to mow.

It brings to mind when Jesus said, " do not worry about your life ... see how the flowers of the field grow... If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you...?" (Matthew 6:28-30)

The magazine basket was getting full. Usually that’s an easy fix since a lot of them go into the recycling bin. The rest go on a shelf that I periodically purge. I was surprised when I discover that none of the few I wanted to keep would actually fit on the bookcase. Looking at the shelf I noticed how large of a collection of old Dwell magazines I still had.

Although I canceled my subscription before our last trip to Australia in 2016, I was baffled that I could not detect even one "spark of joy" about keeping them. What is wrong with me I wondered. I used to love these. Looking at the sleek uncluttered modern interiors pictured in Dwell at my favorite book store gave me such a feeling of calm and peace during high stress years when I was caring for my Mom full time, that I subscribed to it for myself.

So here I was looking at my four plus years of Dwell gold and realizing that not only had I not looked at them for a couple of years, I didn’t want to look at them anymore. I felt more joy at the thought that I might get something for them from Half Priced books and that I wouldn’t need to persuade my husband to let me get rid of them--since getting them was entirely my idea in the first place.

I was disappointed when we took them to Half Priced Books, though. They said they were too old to put on their shelves. So, they gave me 50 cents for the whole lot!-- “as a way of saying thank you for bringing them in.”  And a coupon for 10% off future purchases for a year. That could be worth something if I wanted to buy more physical books. But since I mostly want to buy e-books that isn’t very exciting. It is nice to have more space on my shelf, though, so I don’t regret getting rid of them. I mostly regret I didn’t do it sooner while they may have been worth something.

I do wonder why I’ve gotten so unsentimental about so many of my things. I seem to be becoming a grumpy old curmudgeon before my time. Is it due to diminishing estrogen? That seems to explain nearly every weird change lately. Or am I depressed and need to see a psychiatrist.

Is this desire to de-clutter a sign of some deep psychological problem? Am I trying to erase myself? I have wondered that. Why for example do I want to get rid of my old high school yearbooks?

But maybe it’s not that I want to erase myself I just want to prune away the old to make way for the new. To get to the essential me. The things that matter most to me now and not let the old me clutter my home. Maybe it is actually a sign of healthy growth. Some of my tendency to hang on to stuff may have come from unhealthy “people pleasing.”

But caring about others doesn’t mean I need to keep every greeting card I ever got, for example. (I love e-cards--no painful decisions later about whether to keep it or not.)

Most people downsize by moving into a smaller space. I do sometimes wish we could move somewhere warm, especially on cold days, like today. And there are things I don’t like about our current house. But I mainly just have a strong yearning to experience life here in this house with much less stuff.

I want to pare down so I can more easily enjoy the things I currently care about and not waste time and space on things I don’t.

Last year I decided I’m just not into gardening anymore. I'm tempted to get rid of most of my gardening books? But what if I decide I want to garden again some time?

What about books on writing that I haven’t read in years? I care about writing but do I really need so many books about it, most of which I don’t even use?

What do you think? Please feel free to leave comments!