Fall is a poor time to turn over a new leaf

It’s fall, and with all the leaves flying about, don’t be lulled into thinking it’s a good time to turn over a new leaf. It’s not. In fact, successfully negotiating any turning point in your life not only should be, but quite possibly could be, the last thing you do.

Several years ago, recounting the car accident that claimed the life of a teenage mother-of-two on his mother’s side of the family, my former stepson added, “What makes it worse is she had finally got her life together and was back in school.”

Isn’t that the way it always happens? The daily news is full of people struck down just as they struck it rich, received a promotion, bought a new house, gave birth to a miracle baby, survived cancer or a natural disaster. Death even has the nerve to boldly interrupt joyous events, such as weddings, with the bridal party massacred or the reception hall inescapably engulfed in flames.

I hate to think about it, but I can’t not think about it. Stories abound, too, at the local level: People who had just achieved some significant milestone when the Grim Reaper pulled up with his bus and ordered them aboard. They’re gone quicker than you can say, “But I don’t remember purchasing a ticket!”

The rest of us are left to bury the bodies and pick up the pieces. We shake our heads, mumble about the injustice of it and silently wonder who among us will be next. I scan the obituaries in the daily newspapers, ultimately as surprised as I am grateful when the names all belong to strangers.

While I haven’t done any official research, at least anecdotally, mediocrity seems to be the balm that protects more people than sunscreen. In my experience, death takes no pleasure in cutting short a life that is going nowhere or amounting to something less than worthwhile. That just wouldn’t satisfy Mr. Reaper’s grim sense of humor.

Grim Reaper, Father Time, Mother Nature. They’re in cahoots and own stock in the untimely death business, working in conjunction to insure a regular harvest of unsuspecting souls. Similar to Santa Claus, they see you when you’re sleeping, know when you’re awake and hope that you’ve done extra good, just not for goodness’ sake.

In addition to keeping one another apprised of the suddenly successful who are simply asking to be eliminated, the trio must also keep abreast the retirement roster. Recent retirements, in particular, seem to most capture their fancy, similarly to how anything NASCAR titillates most rednecks.

Bob decided to retire early so he and Joyce could travel. But Bob he suffered the BIG ONE on his way home from the good-bye bash his co-workers threw, leaving behind an unpartnered spouse, an unused golf membership, an untended garden, a host of uncompleted household projects and several unpursued hobbies.

Worries of a similarly ironic death have been on my mind more since my own life has begun an about-face in the direction of satisfaction. Please note I said “begun.” Like the wee little Billy Goat Gruff, I do not yet feel robust enough to be targeted by any life troll or death toll. I plead to be given a little more time and to be allowed to pay a few more dues to make taking me out a bit more satisfying.

For now, I enjoy the safety of my husband and I still having two mortgages and my struggle to launch a new career while dealing with the complications of dog incontinence on the eastern home front. In short, I feel reasonably certain my life is still crappy enough to keep me off Grim Reaper radar.

But once time resolves those issues, and should something really great happen to me, perhaps finally getting some long-overdue new carpeting for the upstairs, building a much-needed garage, or having some professional landscaping done, I might find myself Prime Time fodder for an untimely demise.

Heaven help me if the landscaper shows up with a shovel, dressed all in black. I promise to go peaceably, leaving behind the likes of you to watch the clock alone, wondering how long before it will be your time.

These aren’t your father’s school pictures

We just got back the kids’ school pictures. They still come in an over-sized envelope with a cellophane window that frames, yet protects the photographs. They also come with a lot more hype than in previous generations.

In recent years, somebody had the bright idea to turn school pictures into something other than what they are: Basic photographs taken once per year to help fill the pages of a school’s yearbook, something to stick in Christmas cards to relatives, and something to laugh at in later years, when you find them tucked away in an old wallet or the back of your underwear drawer.

Like most things related to children, school pictures have gone over the top. It’s part of everything these days having to be turned into a major event. Why settle for just a photo when you can have a full-blown photo shoot?

Personally, I’d rather be shot than wade through the glitzy promotional literature that doubles as order form. You get to choose from two different poses: Standard headshot or a waist-up photo with one hand resting atop the other, similar to the pose criminal attorneys strike in their Yellow Pages advertisements.

What’s really criminal is the 16 photo backgrounds now available to school-age children. Everything from eye-enhancing colors, to tie-dye prints, to waterfalls, forests, beaches and sports lockers can be yours for a price. Drab gray is the default background if you don’t feel like shelling out an additional three bucks for a specialty background. I’ve learned to dress my children in something that coordinates with gray.

For a mere four dollars more, you can have your children’s photographs personalized. That begs the question, why would you send photos to people who can’t identify who is in them? If Grandma can’t remember “Jared” and “Caitlyn” between Christmases, you’ve got more urgent matters to attend to than diddling around with photo options.

Looking to drop more serious bucks? The school photographers also offer something called “Prestige Options.”  For only $12 more, you have your pick of five different photo collage options. Curiously, the collages feature the same photo, repeatedly superimposed in different areas. I’m not sure what that’s about, but somebody must like it because they sell it. Reminded me of mug shots. Just in case your kid ends up on the other side of criminal law.

And finally, retouching services are available. Yes, you can begin airbrushing your kindergartener’s future today, starting with the realities of childhood: Scabs, scars, Kool-Aid mustaches, pimples and other unhappy memories.

Thanks, school picture studio, for lessening my only leverage to get my kids to stop picking the open wounds on their faces. “You don’t want to have that scab still oozing come school picture day, do you?” I start harassing them around Labor Day. “Better lay off picking it now or it’ll show up close and personal in your photo!” To me, retouching should be reserved for senior pictures or for later in life when you need it with your post-divorce dating website photos.

School picture options complicate our family life. My daughter and I had a screaming fight over my unwillingness to pay extra for the rainbow light ray background. Death rays came from Kate’s eyes as she ran and locked herself in her bedroom, only to emerge later with a brown shirt that would have looked goofier than all get-out against the basic gray background. Under protest, she put on a mom-selected pink dress that contrasted nicely with her blue eyes.

Connor simply reported to duty on picture day, donned the maize and blue-striped polo I had picked out for him, announced he didn’t care what he wore and that his sister was just a dumbhead. He practiced in the mirror his patented strictly-lips smile so no one would see his gapped teeth.

Kate marched to school, and, in a show of defiance, had some other kid’s mom French-braid her hair. Her photos came back with a large strand of braid-defying hair hanging off to one side. It looks goofier than all get-out, but she’s going to have to live with it. Re-takes are for sissies.  I refuse to run the option gauntlet again.

Simplification turns into a complex effort

Simply your life. What a simple concept. But do its proponents realize just how complicated simplification can be? Simplification, itself, is a 14-letter word. Coincidence? I think not. You are here. Simplicity is over there. You have to get there from here. If simplifying were truly simple, we all would have done it sooner.

I don’t have a lot of use for simplicity simpletons. In fact, I try to avoid spending time with people who begin sentences with, “All you really need to do is . . . . ” because it usually means they’re either incredibly naïve or hopelessly stupid. Maybe both.

Only occasionally do the solutions to life’s problems consist of, “Oops, the cord was unplugged.” Usually the cord is frayed in multiple places and a replacement needs to be special ordered before you can even plug it in to test it. Assuming simplifying is as simple as the word implies, quite simply, an over-simplification. For most of us, the simplicity rub lies where the rubber meets the road because that’s where the lies we tell ourselves lie.

I have a small sign that says, “You can’t do everything at once, but you can do something at once.” That accurately describes my quest for simplicity. I’m changing one thing at a time toward a simpler life. My first objective was finding a job closer to home, at which I could work fewer hours. And I speedily accomplished that in a mere seven years.

Well, at least the closer to home part. While I am paid as though I work fewer hours, in reality, I put in more hours outside of the job preparing for the job than I actually spend at the job, so I am now working more hours than before I chose to reduce my hours. Sometimes the frayed replacement cord you finally got around to ordering ends up on back order.

One of the biggest job change perks is Fridays off. The prospect of weekday time off was huge. Working out of town for the past several years relegated my errand running to already jam-packed Saturdays, necessitating ridiculously early rising to try to fit in everything. Surely having catch-up Fridays would enable not just errands, but completion of other postponed projects, too. Right?

In response to that rhetorical question, let me just say I am writing this at 4:36 AM on a Saturday, one month into my life simplification campaign, in an attempt to get back on top of (or at least run less far behind) yesterday’s Friday off.

Friday started out simply enough, a brief to-do list scrawled on a 2-inch square Post-It note. Furnace guy here at 8:30; run to credit union at 10:00; make copies at Staples at 10:15; pick up vintage chair in Galesburg at 11:00; revise friend’s resume at 1:30; donate clothing to Thrift Shop at 3:00; be home baking cookies when kids get off bus at 3:30.

But while in the basement, I noticed water trickling from our front-opening freezer. Uh oh. I’d accidentally cut the power two days earlier while messing with the electrical box. Playing frozen food salvager and freezer defroster suddenly trumped all other projects. Double dammit. I had to cook up 10 pounds of thawing chicken when I’d already made chili ahead.

With the morning shot, I stripped some damaged wallpaper that had been bugging me. I opened my pail of synthetic wallpaper paste to find I had not closed it properly after last use and it had molded. Didn’t know that was possible. Lowe’s and Menard’s quickly got added to my errand list.

The check I planned to deposit didn’t arrive in the mail, so I headed Staples. There, I remembered I needed blue construction paper, but they had only yellow. This launched me to Michael’s, where I waded through glitter and two-sided construction paper to get to basic blue. Grrrr. The Thrift Shop was not accepting donations again until Nov. 1, so it was off to Bibles for Missions as the clock ticked on.

The kids beat me home to a cookie-less welcome. Over homemade chicken fajitas, I reflected upon the complexity of catch-up Friday. So glad I decided to simplify.