Those words -- good, better, best -- come straight out of an autograph book I had when I was twelve. Do you remember those books? Mine came with a zipper and it had blank pages for your friends to scribble in. Messages filled the book: sweet ones from girls, braggy ones from boys, sometimes funny ones from either. Clichés, all of them, but it was great fun and real keepsake for kids like me who were soon to leave their friends forever and return to the home country. One girl wrote -- good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better and your better best. Silly as it was, I have, nonetheless thought about it, on and off over the decades -- whether you should always aim for best, or maybe "better" is good enough, and indeed, isn't "good" also of value?
This morning I thought about it again as the air quality had improved, coming down from "unhealthy for all groups" to "moderately ok" if you're a cup half full person, or "moderately lousy" if you're on the half empty side of things.
Me, I thought it was a tremendous morning! The haze had dissipated, the cloudless sky actually looked blue. The mosquitoes seemed to be on the decline, and I snipped just enough lilies to keep the garden looking "good enough."
(the hens are thrilled that I'm in the thick of the corn freezing project)
And, Ed agreed to a breakfast on the porch. (He's on the "moderately lousy" platform, so he avoids doing a lot of outdoor stuff even in these moderate air quality conditions.)
(the pink Mandevilla plant on the porch is a total success story: I over-wintered it indoors and it looked pretty sad by April and now it is one exuberant member of our porch plant community.)
Too, he asked for me to trim his beard! I love doing this because I think his face is beautiful and the beard pulls his mouth down so that he looks like he is scowling even when he is feeling upbeat. (Granted, Ed rarely feels upbeat. Mostly he just is. In the photo, he's handing me some chocolate covered peanuts.)
I was anxious to move some today. And I mean real movement, outside. Not flower snipping and not pedaling a stationary bike indoors. Move with the wind! I had shucked and filled freezer bags with corn kernels from two dozen ears of corn yesterday and I told Ed I was willing to work on another dozen today if he would bike with me to Stoneman's to get more corn. He agreed.
Delightful! The farm stand is rarely busy on a weekday morning and so I chatted to the two in charge about their big family trip this June (a photo hangs in the shed with all of them in it -- grandparents, parents, grandkids). A Mediterranean cruise to celebrate grandma's 70th. She said -- best to go now, while everyone is willing and able. I agree with her on the "able" part, but I'm pretty sure that if you gift your family a trip, they will come, quite willingly! Still, I have said this before -- that family has a lot of love going around. Three young families and nine grandkids and they always appear to be in harmony, working together and at least once a year vacationing together. It makes me smile just to see them in action around the corn stand.
And now I should pack, because tomorrow, I'm leaving on my own trip. But I put off the job of filling my suitcase, concentrating instead on making granola for the weeks I'm away, and tending to the corn. Why the packing postponement? Well, because I care what goes in it.
I love taking great care with everything when I travel, and that includes how I appear in public. There are earrings in my ears. I'm never sloppy. I take my favorite bottle of perfume along. And I do this for total strangers! (This trip, I will be encountering people I know, but only for a handful of days. I will be otherwise alone.) How does this make any sense? For the people closest to me -- Ed, the kids and grandkids, my best friends here -- I wear shorts and tshirts in the summer and sweatpants and sweatshirts in the winter. When I'm dead and gone, my grandkids will never say about me -- gaga took such great care with her appearance! She always presented herself so beautifully! At home, clean clothes in pretty colors is good enough. Sometimes I go with "better" -- if there is a special celebration, for example. But when I travel, I aim for "best." And it feels special to actually care about appearance, unwrinkled clothes, a tidy room and bathroom -- with everything laid out neatly -- mmmm! Not for me grubby vacations! I want every aspect of it to shine!
This means that packing is tough. Choosing the right clothes is tough. Ironing pants (yes, I do this!) is tough. And so I postpone it all.
By the evening, the air quality had deteriorated and nothing had been packed, but I did prepare a supper of shrimp and corn for tonight, with leftovers for Ed to have later in the week. And I printed out boarding passes, and ironed a bunch of pants. And when I say it was a good day, I do mean that it is as good as I would want it to be. At least here, at the farmette. What's going on elsewhere in the world is too heartbreaking and worrisome. Not even close to good.
with love...
