Toenail Clippers

As I gave Sweetpea, my little dog, her morning sniff walk, I passed the spot where the neighbor had placed their garbage for pickup yesterday. There on the ground was a package that had escaped the dumpster.

 

I know this is trivial, and I am chuckling as I write this but what I saw was a wrapper for a toenail clipper.

 

It was one of those packaging’s of hard plastic surrounded by a cardboard casing with the writing "Toe Nail Clippers" on it. Now that plastic, as you know, needs an industrial chain-saw to plow into it, and then it has a cardboard casing that could be recycled, but can't because it is attached to plastic. Thus, it gets thrown into the garbage. And, I've heard, so many people injure themselves getting into those wrappers that the hospitals have a name for it. I looked it up—not that I don't have better things to do, but curious. Those heat-sealed plastic wrappers are called blister packs or clamshells. 

 

According to a British study, over 60,000 people receive hospital treatment each year due to injuries from opening food packaging. It's called Wrap Rage or Package Rage. 

 

I didn't intend to talk about packaging. Staring at the wrapper  gave me a chuckle at how much people are alike with their physical bodies. We clip our toenails, and brush our teeth. We use soap and shampoo. However, while driving down the street, differences stand out in bold relief as people advertise their political bent diabolically opposed to another down the street. One house wants to make sure we know they are Christian.

 

We as people are funny with our similarities and dissimilarities. One might say that makes us unique or individuals, yet we beat each other over the head with our ideologies. Ideologies aka, belief systems.

 

I missed posting a blog yesterday. I don't think that is important, except that I committed to Tuesdays. Maybe I will uncommit myself. 

 

But then, I have another commitment: completing my Real Estate Licensing studies. I thought I only had three tests left, but then I discovered that buried below those tests was another section. So, yesterday, instead of blogging, I was knee-deep in the Federal Reserve System, Real Estate Investment, Trusts, Purchase Money Mortgage, Land Sales, Secondary Market—yes, more than you wanted to know. Me too. I don't know if I can pass my State Licensing exam because I began this study months ago, and I've forgotten what I read.

 

It'll come back to me. I need to be positive.

 

So, after breakfast and a walk, here I am, sitting down at my computer. And in my email, I found this picture. 

 

 "Consciousness Streaming Over Water," by Grant Pecoff. I love it. The Source gave me a moment of calm. And it gave me the nudge that we (I) need to stop getting frustrated over things we can't control and control the stream of consciousness that we can.

 

 

Husband Dear, Daughter Dear, Baby Darling, and I discovered Grant Pecoff, the painter, as we wandered away from our favorite Pizza place in San Diego, Filippis Pizza Grotto on India Street. It's been there for years, and it smells the same it did 20 years ago, for as you walk past a counter, aged cheese and salami hanging overhead waft their scent on all that pass beneath. Oh yes, and salted fish, I can smell it today.

 

A sign on the street indicated a gallery upstairs, so we wandered into Grant Pecoff's Studio, covered with brightly colored paintings and skewed buildings and docks. I was fascinated, and Pecoff was so nice. I have followed him since but only get notices now and again as he travels the world to paint. (What a life, huh? He paints, and his wife Layne writes.) That day I sat on his couch and read Layne Pecoff's book, Live Your Dream, (for young and old alike 0-5) to Baby Darling, then bought it.

 

Oh, if you are interested, Consciousness Streaming Over Water sells for $10,000. 

 

(Books are cheaper than paintings.)

This is Life, and so it goes…

*

 

Do you have days of falling off the wagon?

 

I’m not talking about drinking or taking drugs—I do neither, except for a few glasses of wine occasionally. Although now those glasses of fermented grape juice just want to put me to sleep. And, I don’t take drugs—unless you call a Margarita a drug. There is a Mexican restaurant—Miguel’s Cocina--in Old Town San Diego California that creates the best prickly pear margaritas. You know what prickly pears are, don’t you?* Those fruits, green on the outside and beautiful magenta on the inside are sweet, delicious and grow on cactus. What I’m talking about, though, is the wagon holding the peace scale and the happiness quotient. 

 

This is Monday. I usually blog on Tuesdays, and I woke up this morning with nothing to say. So, I procrastinated for a time cleaning up junk email—gosh, I used to like getting emails, and I still do when someone wonderful writes to me, but now I get two feet of ads—and I’m fed up with cleaning up. 

 

Don’t whine. 

 

Can I just a little?

 

However, now, as I think about Miguel’s Cocina in Old Town San Diego and sitting on the patio sipping a Margarita and dipping chips in salsa, I feel happier. Whatever works, huh?

 

While doing my email clean-up, I stumbled upon a kindle book. I opened Rachel Hollis’s Girl, Wash Your Face. I’m sorry, Rachel, I didn’t like your title, so I resisted reading it, but I like what you said. So now you are on my kindle phone list. Any girl who begins her book with “Last week I peed my pants” has some moxie. And has had children, too, which she said was like a rocket launch, and contributed to her present state. If wet pants offends you, congratulations, you have never had bladder problems. 

 

Okay, I got it once again: “You are responsible for our own happiness.” Hollis told me that this morning. Abraham told me this afternoon. 

 

I know it. I’ve heard it a thousand times, but I need to hear it again. 

 

I had fried myself writing—no, not writing, trying to get it online on a site that encourages courses. However, it took days of fiddling. Do it this way, that way, I got it, I didn’t get it, and I was determined to win at their game. And since I hate reading manuals, I was figuring it out with hit or miss. It was my Money Talk course that I had decided not to mention again, but that bugger contributed to my burnt-out mode. It began as a Newsletter, then morphed into a course. I took a Seminar that suggested that I (and anyone else taking the seminar) write a course. I figured the universe had placed that information on my path at the precise time I was writing Money Talk. I tripped over it, and suffer bruises as a result. And the seminar fried me, and I’m tired of sales pitches. So, what do I do?

 

I charged for my course. And I felt guilty about it.

 

But hey, somebody has to buy those margaritas. 

 

 

 

The good thing about life is that if we wake up in the mornings, we get another chance to make it good. 

 

It’s morning. It’s Tuesday. Hurray!

 

Hello all,

 

How’s your life going?

 

You know something? We’re all in this together even when we feel alone and fried. 

 

I wish I could invite you in.