craving simple

There's something so beautiful about simplicity.

I especially notice this when things are complicated. Take a day -- you wake up, simple -- then everything after that gets away from you. Depending on what's happening, your day can pick up speed like a runaway train with no brakes!! You almost can't wait to crash, cuz at least then you'll be able to stop!!

Sometimes there are different ways to get crazed, which don't necessarily involve speed so much as feeling like you're covered in superglue and everything is sticking to you and you keep picking up more and more layers as you go along, bogging you down, slowing you down.

Other days its like you have amnesia and you simply forget simple and you make everything 50 x harder than it has to be, frustrating yourself, others and piling more and more 'argh' onto what could have been 'aaaah'. You can suffocate yourself with it and not realize until you can't stop sighing out your tension, or feel those muscles clenching in response to your rising stress levels and it dawns on you that you've let go of easy and swapped it out for difficult.

When I start longing, then i start listening, listening to my common sense, which I admit I sorely neglect sometimes. Do you know what i mean? Like its saying to me "HEY! HEY!!! I'm here. Hello?! Why not keep it simple?" Complexity even seeps into my dreams in the form of anxiety, struggling, frustration. Talk about wake up calls! No pun intended. When my dreams are stressful, i know i've got a problem.

When I start feeling like i've got to daydream of a simple ice cream scooping job in order to be able to live with neverending production deadlines, endless stat requests, pressures to churn out complicated volumes with perfection and accuracy. . i find myself longing to bake cranberry scones and brew tea for wonderful imaginary customers. Sometimes i long to hula hoop with my laughing grandchildren in the green of my backyard in the middle of a work day just because i feel like it! Other times its not even daydreaming, but just finding that I not only long to pare my life down but I need to. Pare down all the stuff that's in my house. Use up all the food in the fridge and not waste or throw it out. Not have 5 bottles of hair products in the shower, but just one. Pare down so that I'm only reading 1 book at a time. Pare it all down -- why do i tend to fill up every night of the week? Why not just have one night without a plan? Why do I need to hang onto things i don't use? Why not pare down my thoughts, so I can cope with the multitude of them and have some peace in my noggin - especially at night when i'm trying to sleep. Multitasking!!!!??? Who says this is a good thing?! Half of society does! Women pride themselves on it. Why?!!! Why be so proud about building on layers of cloying responsibility? Why can't I be like my husband who does one thing, does it well and then moves on?! Simple.

Kids are simple. They aren't sophisticated. They don't strive to be a certain way, they're just themselves. I love that. It doesn't take much to impress them. I love that about them too. They laugh easily. They cry the same way. They smile. They dance as soon as they hear music. Kids speak the truth. I'm on my second 'go around' with little children in my life - grandchildren. I love what they teach me, cuz when my daughters were little i may have learned the same things from them; but it seems that i've forgotten and as they grew and became more sophisticated and adult, i became re-complicated again!! The kiddies make me forget everything . . and i just play or read them a story, throw a blanket over myself and 'wooh' like a ghost or cuddle a spike-haired baby doll in a facecloth 'bunting bag' and plant a kiss on its fabric cheek; all of which delight James and Erica to no end and teach me to relax.

My dog reminds me of simple. Sometimes i envy her!!! All she ever has to do is eat, drink, go for lovely walks, run around in the yard chasing squirrels and chipmunks, sniff fire hydrants, get held like a baby and petted and coochie cooed, lay around all day and all night, get treats, steal food from the kiddies' plates and crawl under our bed to hide when all of this gets to be too much for her. Yes, I'm jealous!!!

Well, its now become the simpler time of day. . ahhhhh. . . gotta breathe that in and store enough up to get me through tomorrow!!!! and the next day and the next. . . I have one word cross-stitched onto fabric, in a wooden frame -- it sits on top of my fridge and speaks to me every day -- i think maybe i need one in every room of my house and in both of my cars. . .

the word is "simplify"