Whatever your style, a useful exercise is to take inventory of your time, your stuff and your relationships.

Here are a few sample questions to get you started:

* What am I spending my time on? Does it still have value for me?
* What would I like to spend more time on? How can I do that?
* Is there stuff I no longer want or use? How and when will I dispose of it?
* Are there people I’d like to reconnect with? When will I do that?
* Are there relationships that no longer serve me? How can I change those relationships or let them go?
* Is there someone I need to forgive? Express gratitude to?

Finding the answers and acting can lighten and enrich your load in 2012.

“Why not let her test the toys and see what really appeals to her?” was the theory. It turned out to be a good one because it turns out that Taylor is not as enamored with the Fisher Price “Sing a Ma Jigs” as the online reviewers were. In fact, she was much more taken with a $2.00 violet vinyl ball.

But the real surprise of the trip was my discovery that toddlers now have laptops. Or can have them if there’s a willing buyer. “My Own Leaptop” comes with a USB cable which magically – only a two-year-old could understand how – would let her personalize the entire set-up to receive e-mails from grandma. She can also do blog posts of some kind, apparently with an electronic dog (sold separately) and create her own playlists. I don’t even have my own playlists.

I think soon she will be writing my blog posts, which is really fine since I am quite far behind. But maybe she won’t have time because she will also be pressing letters to learn the alphabet and common facts about animals. Or, more likely, playing with the $2.00 ball she was actually interested in. Or (don’t tell…I found this on my own) reading the Peter Rabbit book that lets her push a button and hear Peter eating the carrots in Mr. McGregor’s garden.

The real question is whether a two-year-old who already has three cell phones needs a laptop or should simply keep practicing with that vinyl ball. I think I know the answer.

Yesterday, the topic was coffee, and the stories were really percolating. Seems we love it or hate it, have childhood stories to explain it, and clothing stains to prove it. The only thing I cannot drink coffee with is pizza.

T.S. Eliot wrote, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” What’s your relationship with coffee? And what does it say about your life?

Among her stories, this “biting tale” in three parts from Joan is my personal favorite. It shows how her mom Peg held on to her girlhood feistiness even at the end, when she was dying of cancer. Joan will also receive a copy of Chicken Soup For The Soul: Grieving and Recovery.

Once, when Mom was just a girl, a neighbor came up to her with her crying son in tow.
“Margaret, you bit Johnny!” she accused.
“No I didn’t”.
“Oh, yes you did.”
“Let me see it.”
The angry mother held out poor Johnny’s arm.
“Oh, no,” Mom said. “When I bite it looks like this!” She chomped down, right beside the bite mark, and Johnny wailed. It was undeniable; her bite was completely different.

XXXXX

Copyright 2011 Joan Nienkirchen

Rather than each creating yards and yards of fabric by writing a longer personal memoirs, the Howling women – all over 60 – simply brought their own patches of life to the stage and allowed the common rhythms of their stories to stitch together a picture larger than any one of them might have separately envisioned.

The fragments together created a view of female aging – varying perspectives on men and widowhood, on aloneness and busy-ness, exercise and weight-watching, and most soberly, wariness of dementia, losing control, and being “taken.”

Inspiring, this piecing together. And reflective of the way we as women collaborate and connect over the course of our lives. For those lucky enough to live right here in Columbus, OH, the Howling women will train other writers, who can occasionally appear with them as guests, at a Lifewriting Workshop July 10, details online.

If you’re a woman of a certain age, It’s bound to enrich your balancing act.

“Wahoo!” I thought. “Why not ‘A great fortune will come you way’? ‘Sunshine will light your path today’? ‘You will have amazing success in all you do’?

Reflecting on my dad this Father’s Day, I award the dependable cookie to him.
Without cringing.

It might be fun to share some zany dad stories like my Facebook friends are posting today. But other than insisting – for years – that “unjar” was a word in Scrabble, Stephen Ondo was not a character. He was “Even Steven,” as he liked to describe a perfectly equitable arrangement.

Shying away from flair, he was a cautionary tale who saved his warranties, changed his oil on time, and ran to the encyclopedia in the middle of dinner to settle a point that the rest of us didn’t even know was a point.

A self-described “realist,” he humored my mother by reading Norman Vincent Peale. In later years, he began to cross the line toward optimism. “Don’t get your dauber down,” he would tell us, and – though not religious – “Keep the faith.” From him, these admonitions seemed real.

In an age of fleeting Internet fame for all (he would hate this post), he has lived on as an increasingly important reminder of the value of consistency, stability and – yes – dependability.

I his honor, I have booked an oil change. (Sorry, dad. It’s slightly overdue.)

Not only that. I was excited to announce that the Big O had carried the sought-after acronym NIB (“new in box”) and had, in fact, been found like an abandoned treasure, under the rafters of an old house. Through my wishful thinking and Oskar’s need for a home, I knew the two of us had been synchronistically connected!

All this I was writing in my head as the Big O was making his way from Pennsylvania to my kitchen counter.

“He’ll be good for another 20 years!” I exclaimed to all who would listen, as I finally lifted Oskar from his original Styrofoam packing onto the counter.

All was blissful until I plugged him in, fitted the shiny new lid into its familiar locking position, and flipped the switch. At which point, as my mother used to say, the silence was deafening.

Apparently, with nary a carrot chopped, Oskar died a quiet death from disuse under the rafters. Or perhaps, he was Oskar the Lemon to begin with, and his young newlywed owners had stashed him rafter-ward in frustration.

And so I am left to ponder the philosophy of my friend and fellow coach Amy Ryan Rued, who assures me that the universe will attract my vision “or something better.”

Maybe a paring knife???

What surprised me was how willing the hospital was to go along with the process, which is outlined in a book called “Prepare For Surgery – Heal Faster.” The “Prepare…” routine involved taking an IPod loaded with meditation prompts into surgery and taping several “healing statements” to the front of my hospital gown for the doctor and the anesthesiologist to read.

The thought occurred to me that maybe their attention should be on something other than reading meditation statements, but apparently they are good at multi-tasking.

The fact that I’m home and writing this blog post just 48 hours after leaving the recovery room is the best recommendation for positive visualization that I know. Now I just have to behave myself for at least two weeks. No overdoing. And that will be the hardest part of all.

Enter the A/C wizard, who announced after a good deal of sleuthing, “Your A/C isn’t working.” A bit later, he pranced back in – proud as a cat with a mouse in her mouth – and presented me with several burned out bits of wire.

“Looks like the mice got in your outside unit, ma’am, chewed up the wires and blew out your compressor.” To his credit, he wore his best “don’t shoot the messenger” look. When he quoted the replacement cost, I understood why.

I would like to pass along some learning here – maybe a way to prevent a similar demise. But I’m told that a determined mouse can slip into a hole no bigger than a dime – and in the dead of winter, will.

And that, dear friends, is how the mouse ate my air conditioner.

Last summer, I tried meditating – the premier activity, it seems, for staying in the present rather than worrying about the future or ruminating about the past.  But no sooner was I sitting still than  I fell asleep or remembered that I was almost out of regular coffee and dashed off to buy some right away.

Apparently, I fell victim to “monkey mind,” the Buddhist term for a “restless” or “unsettled” state.  And the monkey had not only crawled into the car that was my mind. He had reached over and grabbed the wheel. 

I am happy to announce that have found a way around monkey mind and into mindfulness.  It is “closet mind,” or the complete focus on cleaning out one’s closet.  When I am clearing the unwanted and unloved into garbage bags, I do not fall asleep or think about the coffee supply.   The past is cleared out and so – for that particular garment – is the future.

Jon Kabat-Zinn would be proud.  And possibly Goodwill.