LADY IN THE MIST

Lady in the Mist

Amazing who jumps out of the mist when you aren’t looking! Now trying new paths in paint, I find it disturbing to sit and stare at a piece of paper wondering just what I will paint. After several days of abstraction and distraction, it occurred to me that what I am really attracted to in depicting in paint is people.

I had had an image in my mind which never seemed to come together. After painting, washing, scrubbing I ended up with a pale nothing.

As I prepared to toss it in the bin, I turned it around and this image showed up. Where my tree root had been was actually a lady leaning forward. I have no idea what is of interest to her in what was meant to be greenish rocks, but there she is! I decided to let her remain a misty image perhaps from a distant past.

MILO ONE

Piles of milo

You only have to know one thing; you can learn anything. It’s amazing what we don’t know, but comforting to know that there is so much we can still learn.

Colorful milo grain lies in orderly piles on the Kansas plains, confounding the uninformed as to just what they are. Tiny beads of gold and saffron fall in random design after the harvest, ready to serve as fodder.

Seeing the fabulous photos taken by Shoreacres prompted the return of my paintbrush, for how can one resist mountains of red, orange and yellow lying where Mother Nature put no mountains.

MONDAY, MONDAY

Remember the Mamas and Papas singing “Monday, Monday so good to me, Monday morning all I hoped it would be.” This worked out to be that kind of Monday morning. Bright sunshine, a door and window open day. a few selected trees showed the possibility of green growth.

Since Maty left suddenly, we are back to cleaning house once more. You never forget how. Dr.A is often looking for something to do, which isn’t easy once the gardening is taken care of by someone else, so he took over mopping and polishing miles of tile floor this morning. I tackled bathrooms. I told him that there is always something to do around the house. If I play this right I may have the only handsome 91 year old housekeeper in the neighborhood. People will be begging for his services.

Some younger people seem to think people older than themselves have nothing to do. The truth is that age has nothing to do with it. You still have a lot to do, but you do it slower.

Charlie has been given a blue pill to take for a month for an obscure internal problem. It is supposed to be given with his breakfast food, but I found it tucked neatly against the side of the bowl, so I began wrapping it in a dab of cream cheese. Like Mary Poppins said “Just a spoonful of sugar—“. This Morning Dr. A proudly said he had tried to give it to him in three different cheeses to no avail. However, I saw the remnants of the cheeses he turned his nose at. One was ricotta, another was sour cream, and the third was a half empty bag of mozzarella. Charlie is an intelligent dog and waited for the cream cheese.

I wrote a post some time ago about how long it takes to form a habit. It was interesting to read the other day that some experts still often say 21 days. The real answer is more complex.
I looked for an answer the same way most people do these days. I asked Google. Most of the top results referenced the same magic 21 days. These websites maintained that ‘research’ had found that if you repeated a behavior each day for 21 days you would have formed a brand new habit.
There wasn’t much discussion about what type of behavior it was or the circumstances you had to repeat it in, just the same figure of 21 days. Exercise, smoking, writing a diary or turning cartwheels; you name it 21 days is the answer. In addition, many authors recommend that it’s crucial to maintain a chain of 21 days without breaking it.

Thanks to recent research though, we have some idea of how long common habits really take to form. In a study carried out at University College in London, 96 participants were asked to choose an everyday behavior that they wanted to turn into a habit. They all chose something that they didn’t already do that could be repeated every day; many were health related like eating a piece of fruit with lunch or running 15 minutes after dinner. Each of the 84 days of the study they logged into a website to report their findings. Acting without thinking or ‘automaticity’ is a central component of a habit.

So how long did it take to form a habit? Across the board it took 66 days until a habit was formed depending on what activity each tried to do. People who resolved to drink a glass of water after breakfast were up to automaticity after about 20 days while people who tried to eat a piece of fruit with lunch each day too twice as long. The exercise was the trickiest, with 50 sit ups after morning coffee still not a habit after 84 days. Walking for 10 minutes after breakfast turned into a habit for one participant in 50 days.

This research seems to say that habits are slow to form and some might even take as long as a year. In my own case, things such as drinking water or exercising a certain time each day, while once being considered habits, are now occasional activities. However mysterious it may be; when we moved into this house 44 years ago, we had a light switch moved from one side of a door to another. This was accomplished in a matter of a few days during a remodel, however, I still reach for the original place to turn the light on. That habit had only taken a few days.

GAME PLAYING

There was a time when nearly every house in America owned a Monopoly game board, as well as Parcheesi, Checkers, both Chinese and the other kind, and if you were somewhat intelligent, a Backgammon board and a chess set. Suffering the lack of visual entertainment, we either passed the evening hours playing games or reading.

When TV knocked on the front door, we forgot how to play games. You might say we forgot how to think. It was so easy to sit in front of a lighted screen and wait to be entertained.

We played all kinds of games while I was growing up. I used the floor as my table for solitary four handed play. I’m sure I wore out at least a couple of Monopoly boards during the 30’s and 40s.

My family were keen on a great number of card games, the names of some are no longer in my memory. Game playing complements our spirit of competiveness as well as polishes our little gray cells. As we grow older we find that fewer people are playing games. Out of a large number of our friends, there are only a few who still like game playing.

I learned to play Bridge many years ago which has given me a great deal of pleasure, both in the game and in the social aspect. Some friends have been social players and some have been eager, go-for-the-throat players. Usually that kind of person likes all games.

My friend Joan was that kind of person. After learning a few tricks from a male client of mine, we entered a local Gin Rummy Tournament, and though we did not win, we didn’t disgrace ourselves.

I grew tired of Monopoly, perhaps because of such close early association, but a number of years ago on New Years Eve, we played the game with close friends at their cabin at Lake Tahoe. The men lost their paper money and went to bed early, which left Joan and I still in competition.

The hours passed, the coffee pot was refilled, and still we battled the game. This became serious stuff. The snow lay thick on the ground as the sun rose on a new year, when the game was finally decided—ten hours later, Joan was the unanimous winner! I have never played Monopoly again, and I do not expect to find another competitor with such determination.

Toward the end of her life, when beset with so many stumbling blocks, Joan continued to test her game playing with all comers.