Miracles

Never cease.

I’m back!

I said I would be if I had anything to say.

Two miracles to report this Monday. One is from a while ago. And one just happened.

The “while ago” miracle was in August. I became a produced playwright. This is a dividing line. There are the writers who write plays. And there are the writers who get them produced. Once you cross the threshold, you can never go back. (Not that you would want to.)

Anyway, I wrote an adaptation of The Looking Glass by Edith Wharton. It was produced by The Wharton Salon on the grounds of The Mount, Ms. Wharton’s Berkshire mansion.

Just getting a production is a miracle. But mine didn’t end there.

Because it could have been bad. It’s a one-woman show, and we lost our one woman about a week before we opened. (Health reasons. She’s fine now!)

Producer, director, everybody scrambling for a replacement.

And, the collateral miracle…they found Jane Nichols. The amazing Jane Nichols. Who came in late in the day, and saved it.

Jane gave a marvelous performance. Eternal gratitude? The term was invented for what we owe Jane.

It’s not easy coming into a one-person show at the last minute, learning pages of dialogue with no fellow actors to help you out if you stumble.

But she did it…and beautifully!

Audiences loved her. They loved the play.

Thanks to Edith Wharton, Jane Nichols, director Daniela Varon, and producer Catherine Taylor-Williams of The Wharton Salon, I am not only a produced playwright, but a beautifully produced one.

So, that’s the first miracle. Long overdue for a mention in this blog.

The second one is that I am back on track wrestling the To Do List from Hell into submission. I’m getting stuff done! I’ll tell you tomorrow about the software that’s helping me do it!

Right now, I have to get back to that To Do List.

You, too, can learn to like

Yogurt

I’m sure that many of you already do. Like yogurt, I mean.

I, on the other hand, have never been able to acquire a taste for it. I’m aware of the health benefits, of the low calorie-ness of it.

It’s just that I’m a person for whom texture is more important than taste when it comes to food. And, let’s face it, yogurt does not have an appealing texture for one who thinks that the four basic food groups are pizza, popcorn, pickles and potato chips.

I have lately embarked on a serious quest to shed some pounds, however. Consequently, I thought I’d try again to see if there were any yogurt flavors or brands that I could actually bear to swallow.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s likely to become a staple of my diet—although I am starting to appreciate the quickness and portability of it—but the miracle is I think I’ve found one.

Yocrunch Cheesecake-Flavored Yogurt.

It doesn’t taste much like cheesecake. At least, not the delicious Baby Watson Cheesecake of my NYC days. On the other hand, the calorie count is, like, a million times less.

And it’s crunchy!

Well, not the yogurt itself. But it comes packaged with some crunchy graham cracker crust bits that you sprinkle into the yogurt, thus providing some welcome relief from the sheer awful smoothness of the yogurt.

A quick 100 calorie snack.

No comparison to pizza. Or potato chips. Or even pickles.

But it’s edible.

I even selected it out of the refrigerator by choice today. The choice was a little more due to the desire for a fast and easy boost to the blood sugar than to a craving for the actual taste, but I did choose it. And ate it.

And realized that herein lies a miracle.

A yogurt I can stand to eat!

‘Gators to starboard

Eeek!

Some weeks ago, as you are reading this, but actually right now, as I am writing it, I was/am sitting on the dock enjoying one of a run of beautiful days we are having here in Florida where the temperature is in the 70s and the humidity is low.

I love that I get to spend this part of my life sitting on a dock, in sunshine or shade as I choose, surrounded by water and birdsong (and the occasional spider—but that’s a small price to pay), with WiFi that reaches far enough that I can be online.

I’ve always had a little trouble just sitting outside enjoying nature without a book or something. Those spiders get more obtrusive—to say nothing of ants—when you don’t have something to occupy your mind.

So, it’s hard to say, on a day like today, which is the greater miracle.

Is it the low temperature? Is it the low humidity? Is it the cloudless sky? The glassy smooth water? The recently mown lawn? The internet access? The birds?

Is it…could it be…even remotely possibly…the two alligators that just swam past me?

There is certainly a part of my brain that votes for the “swam past” part.

I’m glad they’ve gone on. I’m glad they didn’t come any closer than they did.

But, seriously, in NYC, I rarely got sudden and unexpected reminders that human beings share this planet with other species. The occasional pigeon, yes. The unpleasantness of rodents and insects, sure.

I’m not saying alligators are pleasant.

But they’re different.

As a child, I got to entertain my friends with the story of the three-legged alligator that would come up out of the swamp to be fed hamburger in my grandmother’s yard.

Now, the sudden splash in the middle of the creek could be a mullet or a manatee.

Or an alligator.

So, you know, it turns out my house isn’t just named after the little anoles and geckos and skinks.

Casa Lagarto.

It’s also named after those two big reptiles floating on down the creek.

El lagarto.

Ellagarto.

The alligator.

Not everybody has one—let alone two.

Ideas for you

For free!

I’m talking about TED Talks.

TED started in 1984 as a conference to bring together people from three disciplines: Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It has since grown to include experts from almost every field of human endeavor in two annual conferences.

More than 1400 TED Talks are available online and have been viewed over a billion times. They are posted under a Creative Commons license, so they are free to re-post and share.

Participants in TED are challenged to give the talk of their lives. Scary, huh? What’s so amazing is that most of them do.

Fascinating, informative, moving.

There is something there for everyone, and everything on the website merits your investment of your twenty-or-so minutes to listen.

I, myself, am partial to Brene Brown’s talk on vulnerability. And I love poet and teacher Sarah Kay’s If I should have a daughter. You can find links to both of them on the introductory page New to TED?

There are various other compilations of recommended talks.

12 TED Talks that Every Human Should Watch

Five Key TED Talks

and lots more you can find by googling.

You can just go to the TED site and work your way through everything there. (I keep meaning to do that. Maybe one a day—like a vitamin!)

But, what a miracle!

These marvelous thinkers and speakers, sharing their ideas with us. Costing nothing more than a few minutes of our time. A bigger investment than scanning a Facebook meme or a 140-character Tweet—and with a much bigger payoff.

These are the ideas our best minds are considering. These are the things our best speakers are talking about.

These are conferences that happen far from most of us, and we get to participate. No admission charge, no airline ticket, no hotel fee.

What a miracle!

Look at what we can do!

Baffling, but cool!

I don’t understand how it works, but it’s fascinating.

Panorama of London

Also, a little scary, as you realize that whatever took these pictures can actually see in the windows. Big Brother is watching.

So, I don’t know whether this is something to celebrate, but I think it’s inevitable. The privacy issues, as always, are lagging behind the technology. At some point, we will probably have to deal with them. Although, I suspect, the ship has sailed. I don’t think I can recall any single instance of humanity deciding not to use some technology we have invented. The show-and-tell gene is too dominant in our species, I think.

At least, this has the possibility of benign and beneficial applications. Imagine real time web cams at Picadilly Circus. The Acropolis.

We can already watch manatees at Blue Spring State Park, falcon cams in Ohio, and countless tourist locations at EarthCam. (It appears to be raining in Times Square as I write this.)

Most of these shots seem a little grainy, and some are more active than others. For instance, there are more people out and about near the Miami News Cafe than there seem to be in Chios, Greece just now. Personally, I am rather fond of the giraffe cam. And I look forward to checking out the penguin cam (too dark in California just now).

The possibilities for eyedropping (I know it’s not a word, but “spying” just seems loaded with more evil intent) seem to be endless.

Really, it’s amazing what we can do!

And, I hope, that someday we can celebrate the miracle of careful consideration about whether we should do all the things we can.

The miracle of the finite goal

Cross it off!

There is something so extremely satisfying about crossing things off a check-list that I have one friend who adds already completed items to her list just so she can mark them off. (I wish I’d thought of that!)

Anyway, I am especially appreciative of this miracle today on this Miracle Monday because I have managed—more by luck, possibly, than good management—to wrestle my recent To Do lists into a level of such granularity as to make it possible for me to cross a number of things off.

One of the most interesting—to me—concepts in David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, is the idea that most To Do lists fail because they mix projects and tasks. According to Allen, you need separate lists.

Projects are things you can’t complete without taking multiple steps. “Buy new windows,” for example, cannot be crossed off your list unless you have already done the research, gotten the estimates, and made your decisions about type and style and when and where and so on.

“Call glass company for appointment,” however, is a thing you can do and cross off.

So, I try to keep a list of projects from which I try to pull out tasks in the smallest increments possible. Because then, I get to cross things off the list! Which, of course, is only the visible and supremely satisfying proof that the project has been advanced.

But, oh! How satisfying it is!

And how tangled things get when I forget that.

The item on the To Do list that sits there day after day, week after week, is almost always, upon closer investigation, a project. It doesn’t get done because it is not something a person can do.

Which is why I try to remember to take a step back whenever I am confronted by those lingering, uncrossed-off entries and realize that the actual task is to make a plan. Move it off the task list onto the project list. Break it down into the actual steps that need to be accomplished.

Those are the things that should be put on the To Do lists.

And today, I can celebrate moderate success at remembering that and the advancement—incremental though it may be—of several projects.

Yay!

Double-duty

The blind

One day, a couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with a friend. I was standing over my desk, in front of the window in my office. The newly installed window, I might add.

I could see out it.

Of course, I could only see out it in narrow strips, because the Venetian blind was down.

One of the narrow strips, however, provided an excellent angle on the concrete border of the flowerbed under the window.

Right there, busily picking at something—I think it was a piece of that stuff that falls off the oak trees in the spring—the pollen—was a female cardinal.

In and of itself, this is not so miraculous. We have quite a few cardinals around here. They seem to like it by the water. (I know they like water. They love the sprinklers. Several will gather any time the sprinklers are on and swoop in and out of the water droplets with zest.)

The miracle here was how close she was. I could see every separate feather. The slight reddening on her crest, the red-orange beak. Her little roly-poly body (she was not an underfed cardinal).

The second miracle was how long she stayed. I usually get to observe a cardinal as it is in the process of disappearing—unless, of course, it’s barreling through water droplets, and even then, it’s a matter of fleeting glimpses.

But this lady sat on that concrete border, picking at her meal, for several minutes.

And why?

Because of the blind.

Never have I had a clearer demonstration of the value of the hunter’s blind.

Had the blind been open, had I been standing as I was in front of the window, that little birdie would have been gone almost before I noticed her. Movement behind the window? Bye, bye birdie.

As it was, she didn’t notice me.

And I got a miracle.

Free trip

Enjoy!

I can’t find the origin of this quote, so it appears here without attribution. If anybody knows the author, speak up! I suspect it’s that prolific writer, Anonymous.

Anyway, here goes:

Life on earth may be expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun.

And you’d probably have to pay millions for that to do it in a space ship!

So, let us remember the ordinary, every day (or every year—because, you know, you get that trip a bunch of times in an average lifespan) miracles.

Let us remember in the midst of our scrabbling for money, attention and prestige, in the midst of our political posturings and maneuverings, in the midst of our squabbles and worries, in the midst of pain and illness—

Let us remember the rising and the setting of the sun, the heron on the dock, the moonlight on the waves, the rain-washed wildflowers, the babies’ laughter, the handclasps of friendship, the wisdom of the elders.

Let us remember the taste of the fresh-picked corn, the birthday cake, the sound of birdsong, the scent of blossoms, the strength of hands.

Let us try to enjoy that free trip around the sun.

‘ Cause everything else is extra.

On time!

For a change.

It’s April 15th, the Ides of April, that infamous day when our taxes are due.

Year after year, my accountants have applied for an extension—partly due to their own hectic schedules during this period and partly due to my not always getting the information to them quickly enough.

But this year, I was organized. I was prompt. I busily worked on keeping all those little receipts properly stored and labeled throughout the year so that the usual last minute scramble was neither last minute nor a scramble.

I am helped, of course, by the fact that I am semi-retired so that my corporate taxes are far simpler and by the fact that Florida has no state taxes. This doesn’t let me off the hook entirely, because my business is incorporated in NY and we have rental property there. So, we still have state forms to file.

Ergo, I haven’t felt like I could dispense with the services of the accountant altogether. This may be an area where I am spending money unnecessarily.

On the other hand, I have anxiety attacks when confronted with TurboTax or the like.

I realize I am paying an accountant to transfer numbers from my Quicken reports to the appropriate lines on the tax forms. Thus far, however, I justify that expense to myself by the knowledge that she knows which numbers and which lines and that, if she is wrong, she will go talk to the IRS and leave me out of it as much as possible.

Am I overpaying? Probably.

Is it worth it? I think so.

Anyway, the miracle is that it’s April 15th, and my tax forms have already been completed and filed, and I am done!

Done!

The only thing certain is death and taxes, but neither of the G-men* are coming after me today.

* G-men = Government Man and/or the Grim Reaper

Laundry!

I remembered to do it!

This is what you might call a minor miracle.

The thing is, I brought the laundry basket downstairs two days ago. Actually, the MotH* brought it downstairs—because of my pesky shoulder.

And therein lies the problem.

You see, the MotH took the basket all the way into the laundry room.

I rarely go into the laundry room unless I am doing laundry.

I don’t do laundry if I don’t remember that I have laundry to do.

My usual modus operandi when not actually starting the laundry the minute I bring it downstairs is to leave the basket in the middle of the floor in the more populated part of the house. That way, my feeble mind can be recalled to the necessity of transferring those clothes from the basket into the washing machine by the ever-present sight of the basket.

Fortunately, for some unknown and possibly miraculous reason, a little voice in my head announced, “Laundry,” a few minutes ago.

(This is a voice that should be encouraged. It needs a paycheck. Or cake!)

Anyway, I remembered the laundry, and I am doing the laundry, and this is a miracle on several levels.

First—that I remembered, second—that I have a washing machine and don’t have to go down to the creek with stones, and third—that I will have workout clothes for my next physical therapy session.

It’s not that my PT sessions are particularly strenuous, but I do think it’s wise to be able to move.

It’s not that I don’t have plenty of workout clothes.

It’s just that I don’t have very many respectable workout clothes, since I no longer belong to a gym. All in all, since I no longer go anywhere, almost, I don’t seem to have very many respectable clothes of any sort.

However, I have a couple of decent sets of workout clothes, and they are going to be clean.

Because I remembered the laundry!

* MotH = Man of the House

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Monday Miracles