The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

That’s what its called. A book by Marie Kondo about how to implode my very fragile mental stability. I say this from just reading the table of contents.

She appears to endorse

A tidying marathon: Designed to kill me or send me to the darkest deepest parts of the Abyss of Stillness. But I realize not everyone is working under the duress of Depression. So Maybe for some people.
Says tidying a bit each day means you tidy forever: Yeah but – you tidy forever either way, right? Unless she has found a way around entropy? 💩
Storage Experts are Hoarders: Uhm. Well, I’m NOT an expert. So. That shut her up.
What you don’t need, your family doesn’t need either: Wow. I’m single and I can see all kinds of things wrong with that statement. Narcissistic Cleaning – I didn’t even know it was a thing. 💩
Sorting papers – Rule of thumb – Discard Everything. – As the girl who recently paid $50 for 2 copies of her birth certificate, a piece of paper she definitely had 3 years ago before she was homeless and much of her life was thrown away – I cannot endorse this philosophy. 💩
Small change: Make ‘into my wallet’ your motto: I don’t have a wallet. But coins are easy to pitch into a Coinstar. It’s costly but ultimately less costly than not spending them at all. Which I don’t.
Make tidying a special event, not a daily chore: That’s crazy pants. Does she know the conditions that people (OK, I’m talking about me) will allow themselves to live in. This is NOT a good plan. 💩
Also – and I don’t like to heap on the criticism – but cleaning is not a Holiday like event for me. I mean who thinks it is? Unless she meant it like a “Very Special Episode of Blossom” But we all know those were Tearfests.

I’m sure she means well, but I think she is basically just playing into the hands of people whose lives are out of control and want someone to tell them its OK to live out of control as long as once in awhile you have a Very Special Blossom Episode of Cleaning.

This is the delusion that people who let their homes escalate into chaos live in already. I know. I have lived that delusion in my twenties. Its a bad and horrible drowning feeling. And depression just plays right into that madness.

In fairness to her, there are several chapters that I think probably offer advice I could use.

Clothing Storage: Fold it right and solve your storage problems: I have always suspected this is true.
How to fold: I’m seriously contemplating buying the book just to read this chapter. 💰
Keep things because you love them, not just because. Sounds suspicious but I’m willing to listen.
Designate a place for everything. This is already a mantra in my life. I cannot stand having things without a home, even if its not in the home, it should have one.
Discard First, Store Later. At first glance illogical but I think shes not talking about the same item, but the process as a whole.
How to identify what is truly precious. This is what was driving me batty me all day. So maybe I would buy it for this. But if she is so loco on fundamentals, can I trust her on this? I think… NOT.

Anyway, I’m afraid I can’t recommend this book, I haven’t read. Giving it a 2 star rating based on no more than the table of contents.

Take the review at your own risk.

Have A Plan

I cannot tell you how deeply I think this is true. It is advice I spew at the children who work in my office all the time. Don’t just think of the goal.

Think about the plan. The steps.

I also cannot tell you how often I fail at this very very good advice.

Today was one of those days. I had a plan for the Pantry. What would would happen in what order.

I didn’t have a plan for the chaos that now exists and so every time my timer goes off I just sort of faff about without accomplishing much. For example I just threw a bunch of dusty tupperware into soapy water. I want to use it for the all the pasta I have accumulated but which is all in different sizes boxes and it looks crappy and it’s harder to store efficiently.

This is actually NOT addressing chaos. This is fine tuning the already done Pantry. I’m doing this because I don’t have a step by step on dealing with the chaos, so I’m not doing it.

Admitting it is the first step – so, there. It’s done. Admitted.

Now we must create a plan. What will happen everytime the timer goes off. Small 5 minute tasks that can get done every 20 minutes or so. If you are looking at cleaning out a closet or corner or room, I suggest this method. I do it for everything in my life, but for normal adjusted people it helps with overwhelming projects. You don’t exhaust yourself, you don’t overwhelm yourself with one task. All of it is doable. And usually transferable. If you don’t get it all done today, the list of tasks remains and can be continued one at a time later.

In my case, there is no reason not get it all done today. It’s not that big a problem. Even without labels. Which I think we all realize is the real barrier to finishing this project.

Trump, we made him

I was listening to a podcast yesterday about a man with autism who is in prison for life. I was lamenting how terrible it is that he is in hell for the rest of his life, when the direction of my mind was changed. Said man is a racist Trump supporter. He literally said we need a bully in the whitehouse.

Here’s the thing. No matter who you are, you don’t deserve the life conditions we subject maximum security prisoners to. Our prisons are the clearest a reflection of us as a brutal society than almost anything else. And yet… once I knew this man was a Trump supporter, I stopped being able to feel much sympathy for his plight.

Trump is the personification of a society that is drawn to extremes and wants the world to be dualistic. Them and Us. When I was younger, I generally had a preference for one candidate over another, but the idea of the other guy winning didn’t really bother me.

But these days we have pushed ourselves into corners and Trump takes full advantage of the boxing ring mentality with all of his ridiculous blathering, making sure everyone finds their corner and fights it out.

He is a product of us, all of us. Even those of us who think he is a diarrhea stain on the planet’s backside. Because we want to feel that there is a THEM. And that means that there should be no way to sympathize with THEM. No middle ground, no way they are like US. And Trump plays into that American Mentality quite well.

He is running a reality show not an election. He’s working people’s greed and hate and fear so that he can be the last one standing. I hope there is still enough sanity in America to flick him out onto the side of the road like a used cigarette butt, but I’m not going to stop worrying about it until he’s part of the litter in the gutter.

Dear WordPress:

Look. I like you. Mostly.

But today. Today, you have pissed me off.

I got a comment on my blog post. I read it in your fancy schmancy hovering bell notification thing. I HATE the magic hovering stuff that pervades the web, but I get it – you have to keep up with the latest, even if it’s glitchy and pointless.

Today I responded with a rather lengthy and thoughtful comment to my kind commenter. I was quite pleased with my comment. And then when I hit send it disappeared and a notice came up that I had somehow sent my kind commenter to Spam Hell.

THAT, that right there, is the reason these stupid Hovery Magicy things are a problem. I’m sure I clicked something odd while it was moving mysteriously between one form and another. I certainly didn’t do it intentionally as I had no idea that was even a damn option. And the comment WASN’T spam.

I then fixed Your pointlessly created problem by Unspamming the comment, but I have no idea if my commenter was notified of this embarrassing mishap.

AND (and this is the crux of my anger) because it is UNFIXABLE, I lost my response to her comment. My thoughtful and rather long comment was LOST. Because of this UTTERLY pointless thing you have going with the hoverboard of notification hell.

I like the idea in theory – I want to have easy access to my notifications. But I’m all kinds of OK with them being in their own page. Being captured and STATIC is fine. The hovering stuff is more annoying than good. Stop the Madness. Lead the charge away from the sparkles and into the hard and fast reality of things that are FUNCTIONING PROPERLY AND CONSISTENTLY.

Sincerely,

Sara

Can we discuss… Emoji?

Last night I sent a message to a person who is taking care of her boyfriend in the hospital. She was exhausted and feeling defeated and I sent her a tweet of sympathy and what I hoped was validation for their most recent and shitty choice. In it I put the “shit” emoji. On my emoji keyboard it’s just a pile of poo, no face. After it posted on twitter it had a face that looks like surprised, possibly smiling pile of poo. It changes the entire emotional impact of the thing. To say the least.

A new language is evolving. A language of emoji. But rather than everyone the world over having the same picture, we have let every goddamn company design their own emoji picture – and so now we can’t speak to each other in what could POTENTIALLY be a universal language.

Because you can’t trust that they are going to get message you sent.

Unicode specifies “pile of poo” for these ASCII characters but every platform can interpret the pile of poo differently. Adding a face to a pile of poo vs a wave of smell means those two pictures have 2 different connotations.

Take the grinning smile for example: Look below and tell me that which of those grins look like the grimace of someone on a toilet with constipation? 3318bad000000578-0-image-a-100_1460464915474

You know I’m right. Apple, Facebook, Emojione and Twitter’s Graphic Artists need more fiber in their diet. I’m not going to send that and expect that someone is thinking I’m thrilled with something. I’m going to be afraid they will think I’m begging for fiber.

Samsung and LG nailed it. But don’t use it on your LG phone just because it looks great on it. You friend with the apple is going to be wondering if you are in pain.

I don’t understand how this opportunity for creating a world language could have been so horribly missed. WHY in a world that constantly feels the language barrier problem could the idiots with power at Unicode not hire someone to make each emoji, and then handed those out with the code? WHY? They could have saved countless horrible and embarrassing moments.

Fucking Morons. 😤

Did you know Mothers Day is NOT supposed to be a Hallmark Moment?

Listen to the memory palace podcast for the best version of this story but to summarize Mother‘s Day was supposed to be Mothers’ Day. A Day to fight for and recognize the work that women do in a home as equal in worth to work outside the home.

It was an idea created by Anna Jarvis when she wanted to pursue the work done by her mother. Her mother was also Anna Jarvis and in the mid 19th century she was an activist for women’s rights. She spend her life teaching women about healthcare and their workplace rights.

After she died, her daughter wanted to continue that legacy by bringing her campaign for women’s work into proper respect and she thought that if we had a Holiday it would raise awareness and respect for the work women do inside a home. A day that would bring women together to fight for their rights in their unpaid work. So as a legacy to her mother she focused herself on that task and won. Congress declared Mother’s Day.

And almost immediately it became a commercialized day about saying I love you to your Mom. Which upset Anna Jarvis A LOT. Because it was supposed to be about the bigger issue. It wasn’t supposed to be a Hallmark Holiday that exploits your love for you mother into a money making venture.

So instead of being able to rest on her laurels, she spent the rest of her life fighting the commercialization of a Holiday she created to change the perceived role of women in our culture. She died alone in a nursing home surrounded by Hallmark cards and candy that her oblivious fans continued to send her. She was never a mother.

Now, of course, no one knows the real reason Mother’s Day was brought into existence. And it’s hard to call the celebration of our affection for our particular parent a bad thing, because of course it’s not.

But it’s also true that we still have the problem of getting respect for the unpaid labor of Moms. That terrible term Mothers Who Don’t Work continues to plague us. We have started to head more into the direction of shared parenting, but it remains a cultural norm that women are the responsible party for all child rearing and house care and men are just helping. Clearly a holiday isn’t the route to take on improving that though.

Cemeteries and gravestones

I don’t want to be buried, I want to be cremated. I think funerals are a big scam on the vulnerable.

But, that said, I am a little bit sad that I won’t have a gravestone. My grandmother taught me the importance of cemeteries. On the western Iowa and Missouri border, there are many cemeteries filled with my ancestors. They are physical genealogy markers.

Grandma Allen would get a bunch of relatives in a car, or two cars and we would take an all day tour of cemeteries. We would drive on dirt and gravel roads for miles and stop at small rural cemeteries that looked like no one had been buried there for years.

We would walk around and look at the markers and hear how this person and that person was related to us. We would hear where their farm was – sometimes you could see it from the cemetery. We would hear how they died or some fabled family story about them.

Then we would get in the car and drive to the next one. Sometimes we would stop at a farm of some far flung relation, who had inherited a farm that had been in the family for generations. They always greeted us with warmth and took us on a tour, gave us something to drink and sent us on our way with a suggestion or two of who or what to visit next.

My relatives weren’t rich. They were farmers. But I also love to visit the big city cemeteries where the wealthy built crypts that look like mini cathedrals, and put beautiful stone angels and Greek goddesses on their graves. Often they put a beautiful poem or quote on the marker. Its a lovely way to be remembered, even by strangers.

spring-grove-cemetery-30796 These days very few people are quite so extravagant with their graves. I find it kind of sad. Which conflicts heavily with my first statement, doesn’t it?

Well, in the unlikely event that there is lots of money available at my death, I will ask for a bench to built. I want it be in the shade and to be designed to last for centuries. I want it be comfortable and inviting. And on it, I will put an inspiring thought or poem. And my name and dates, of course. My ashes can be scattered somewhere pleasant that my relatives would like to go on vacation, but the bench will mark my life.

Because, in the long run, who will remember me? I have no children. I will be the unremembered maiden aunt and quite forgotten by later generations. No one will tell my stories at the dinner table, the way we tell stories of my great grandparents and grandparents and parents. And even those stories will be forgotten by the spread of time.

But the stones, they last a bit longer. Its a silly human desire to be remembered. A desire of the living for something that will mean nothing to the dead. But I still want it.

Listed Under Appallingly Bad Idea

The CIA’s twitter account is doing a rerun tweeting the Osama Bin Laden’s Assassination as if it were happening today.

This is so… bad taste.

This is so… dangerous.

This is so… typical of our narcissistic American Centric view.

I’m embarrassed for this country. I’m sorry that Obama is making this sort of thing into a sideshow carnival ride.

I’m continually stunned by the choices people make. People who are supposed to be smarter than this.

Sometimes I need to be reminded that the world is not Entirely Awful.

chpms3wwiaavwip

I had a bad week. This means that when I looked at the world and my life all I could see was disaster. I felt like I was on a short road to Dystopia.

But then the smoke curtains lift and I can things a bit more clearly. And then when I look, I can see that there is always something good. Someone good. Things that matter and are good happen.

There are always helpers. It’s a terribly good thing to remember.

So. Alabama and Tennessee.

Sigh.

In TN, there is an argument that suggests that you wouldn’t want to see a therapist or doctor who found your gender repellant. But, its a false argument. Qualified doctors and therapists do not grow on trees. They are not evenly distributed among the population that needs them. Sometimes you need expertise not belief in your gender identity.

In Alabama there is no argument in any form that does not make this law repugnant, immoral and an abomination of human rights. Its unlikely that it will withstand any challenge but its existence is horrifying nevertheless. Its one town, but it exists.

I’m feeling worn out by the hate in the world. I find the people who stand up loudest for this sort of malice are the people who claim to work in the name of “loving God” and that is what makes me most depressed. Because if that their concept of love then we can’t even agree on what love is. Where is common ground at that point?

I try to remind myself that they aren’t the majority but then this happens. And it feels so much like the majority.

When I was young it felt like the future had hope. It felt like we were moving to a better place.

And even though there are huge obvious milestones that have been met, we have these kinds of things and I feel like hate is always going to exist. We will never get past it. There will always be those who look for things to hate in the name of righteousness. We will never be free of it.