It was a surprise to discover that I was inspired! Not by the programs so much but a series of testimonials ads featuring the luminaries on MSNBC – Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell

Like their politics or not, it’s hard not to be inspired by the fire with which they describe their passion for their work: the thrill of asking just the right question, the joy of digging for more, the thrill of detecting dissembling.

Journalism isn’t for everyone. Neither is politics. But passion can be. So I’m working on my own two-minute ad, just for me. Not done yet, but some likely components – the thrill of finding just the right word, the fun of making someone laugh…. You get the idea.

What’s YOUR sound byte?

Nothing like a little foot surgery to make me appreciate my usual (though yes, ill-conceived) ability to do six things at once. Testing out the premise that it’s better to focus on one thing at a time, I’ve read two books in four days and filled six garbage bags with documents accumulated in office drawers since 2005 and happily retrieved the instructions to a previously “non-working” radio. Who knew the “on” button was in the back?

No doubt staying in one place is helping me focus. Now, if I could only keep my thoughts so well tethered….

Julia Cameron of Artist Way fame would not be surprised to know she’s inspired me. Her insistence on writing three pages every morning and taking a weekly “artist date” has inspired many a writer.

But she might be surprised to know that she has also inspired my choice this week of a bathroom rug. The design, which looks like one large single marigold, takes me back to a time ten years ago at a writers conference, when I noticed her taking an intentional detour on her way to the dining hall simply to examine a single marigold growing in the garden. I watched as she stood there for a very long time, taking it in. Art, I realized at that moment, sometimes comes to us from slowing down.

It will be nice to look at the rug and remember.

“It’s time to put my personal stamp upon the house.”

“No offense to your dad,” I assured my daughter, “but it’s time to change the space. I feel like he’s coming around the corner every minute. It feels a little weird.”

Diplomatic to the core, she worked hard to mask the terror in her eyes. She didn’t flinch or reflect on my decorating disasters of the past.

She simply smiled and caught her breath: “I think you should call a professional,” she said.

She was not alone. My friends offered the same advice. I was soon connected with a Feng Shui consultant in case my husband’s illness had tainted the energy in the house, and a real estate marketer, who would keep me from making the place completely un-sellable in the future.

“Not to worry,” I told my daughter. “I’ve got all kinds of experts helping me out.”

It was truer than I knew. On the first walk-through, the real estate marketer suggested calling a couple of design consultants, whose forte was offering style on a budget.

Since then, my head has spun with all the helpful advice.

“Don’t paint a thing,” said the marketer. “Keep everything neutral.”

Painting the back wall of the office darker might be nice, suggested the Feng Shui consultant, who favored warming up the “travel and helpful people” corner of the house, so I could move on.

“Definitely paint the office but in a light taupe that will show off the bookshelves,” offered the designers.

They also wanted the back of the living room couch to face the front door so the room would be cozier.

“Absolutely not!” said the Feng Shui lady, who wanted a more welcoming look.

The marketer was neutral on the position of the couch, but thought the hallway should have a runner. The designers disagreed.

Family pictures were an issue for everyone – the marketer urging me to remove them, the Feng Shui lady urging me to move them off the fireplace so the relationships “didn’t burn up,” and the designers shooting down my idea of parking everything on a portable photo screen.

The screen seemed like the perfect compromise, only they thought it would clash with the fabric panels they’d not yet recommended but – come to think of it – were absolutely essential.

After a few days of this, it occurred to me that two words had been left gasping by the side of the decorating road: “personal stamp.”

In a personal stamping fury, I yanked the TV out of the living room, ordered a small red one that looks like an apple for the kitchen counter, and hung the microwave over the stove.
I am proud to say that the apple – complete with stem and leaves – has won everyone’s heart.

“Fantastic!” said the designers.

“Perfect for the creativity area!” said the Feng Shui lady.

As for the ghost of my TV-loving husband, the living room will have much less appeal. And once I’ve mastered the apple’s simple two-step remote, I suspect he’ll slip out.

“I knew she could do it,” he’ll say.

Copyright 2010 Pat Snyder

Not a fan of TV in the living room anyway, I decided to move mine to the kitchen. It’s not so comfortable to watch in there, which is a huge benefit. I now limit my daily dose of depressing news to the time it takes to fix a salad and quick dinner. (Not to worry, there’s another set for great movies downstairs in front of the exercise equipment).

The unexpected benefit was this: With the TV came only two of the six remotes. The others belonged to a DVD player and VHS player (too big for the kitchen), and a CD player and speaker (just two remotes). Divided up, they’re almost impossible to screw up. Well, I think. The giant dismemberment required disconnecting all the wires. And who knows when I’ll figure out how to reconnect them. Till then, I’m living the blissful two-remote life and listening to the radio (no remote, just one button).

Then bring a pen, a notebook and a picture of your favorite pooch to Borders – Kenny Rd. at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, for Pat’s free writing workshop, “Love Me, Love My Dog.”

She’ll share her pet pointers for writing true tales and inspire participants to create original entries (due March 1) for Modern Dog Magazine’s first-ever writing contest. Register now by e-mail . 

Snyder recently published her first book: “The Dog Ate My Planner: Tales and Tips from an Overbooked Life.”

Snowy Vision

It was hard to miss the metaphor. Four of us, holed up for a “visioning retreat” in a Morrow County farmhouse over the weekend, got stuck in the snow both coming and going.

On one level, as we looked out on sparkling white farm fields, we were inspired to plan 2010 with high hopes. On another, we were literally spinning our wheels.

As with all times of stuck-ness, there was plenty of advice.

“Gun the motor!”

“Turn the wheel the other way!”

“Try backing up!”

In the end it was a unified push from my friends that un-stuck the Prius from the top of the hill and sent her handily down the driveway.

Hard to miss the metaphor on that one.

“New Year’s resolutions,” I grumped to my daughter.

What’s wrong with those?” she asked, yoga mat in hand.

I didn’t want to derail a healthy new habit before the lotus position got its first January bloom, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“I just don’t think they work,” I said. “Why do people start the year drawing up a list of things they really hate to do, so they can feel guilty in 15 days when they’re into the Haagen- Dazs and off the wagon?”

Patient person that she is, she gave me a hug, stopped to clean up the kale and apple smoothie she’d whipped up in the Vitamix, and headed off to the yoga studio.

“Do what pleases you,” she said on her way out the door.

I could not argue with her advice because I had already decided to follow it the week before when I had a random encounter with Emily Dickinson in an Arizona gift shop. I had hardly expected to run into the New England poet there, among the salt shakers that look like jalapeno peppers. But there she was, in the form of a vintage postcard written in a wispy hand, comparing hope to a bird.

Of course, being Emily, she did not directly compare hope to a bird. She went at it with a sideways glance, making me work a little to keep up and in the process feel the rhythm of the concept and possibly the heartbeat of the creature.

For the curious, I will repeat the verse in question here. Confirmed poetry-haters may skip to the next paragraph. Hope is a feathered thing, That perches in the soul, And sings the tune – without the words, And never stops at all.

Reading the verse several times over and loving it even more than the inflated $3.95 that I paid for it, I had a sort of New Year’s epiphany. If I resolved to do something I actually love in 2010, I would probably keep the resolution and lose the guilt.

I resolved, right there by the jalapeno shakers, to read more poetry just because I want to. I’m starting with Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, and Julia B. Levine.

So far, I feel compelled to report, my want-to resolution is working. Right off, in fact, it took a giant leap in a magical one-thing-leads-to-another way. The featured book at my local used book store extolled the virtues of living life “with heightened awareness” like a poet, and I began to suspect I’d stumbled onto something greater than one “feathered thing.” (Apologies to those who skipped the poem).

I have not, of course, completely given up on the idea of going to the gym. I will just not be going in any formally resolute way.

I plan to return at least by early February. I am sure there will be plenty of floor mats to go around by then.

Copyright 2010 Pat Snyder

In case this bit of genius has escaped you, the quarter tree is the online artificial solution to too-little-space-for-a-Christmas-tree.

The ads for these little pre-lit wedges work overtime to explain the concept.

“Imagine if a tree were a 7.5-foot tall Lemon Meringue pie, and you sliced it into four pieces,” says one. “This tree is one of those four big pieces of pie but way less sticky and tart.”

“We actually have room for a whole tree,” my daughter pointed out when the astonishingly little three-foot box arrived in the mail.

I couldn’t argue. The living room corner has hosted some giants over the years. But no matter how many hours spent shivering in the tree lot, there was always a side with bare branches that had to be hidden in the corner.

“Now we’re just ordering one with no back side,” I told her. “It will be lighter, I can put it up myself, and it will be so much simpler to decorate: 25% of the work! “

Unpacking the suspiciously tiny box was not as easy as pie. It was, in fact, just the first step in my sticky, tart mess of an idea.

I knew I was in trouble when three eye screws fell out of the box. Eye screws, in the world of “simple to assemble,” always mean holes. And holes always progress rapidly from “hmmm…do not seem to line up” to “NO (expletive deleted) WAY these line up.” And two of them did not.

Also perplexing was the sudden realization – not addressed in the instructions – that a tree bare on one side cannot balance itself on an ordinary stand.

“Simple physics would tell you that….” I heard my late father saying. Happily, though, the stand was not ordinary. It had two long legs and two short – two, it seemed for the bare side and two for the full.

With some twisting and eye-screwing of the stand, the tree did, in fact, balance itself, and astonishingly, lit itself up when plugged in. I should probably mention that the “It” we are talking about here was a very sparce-looking “It.” One, though, that I assured my daughter could be improved with decorating.

“I’ll get the tree skirt,” she said and bolted downstairs to fetch the now-splotched felt heirloom on which my grandmother had glued all names in our immediate family as of 1954. Over the years, we’d updated it – adding names upon birth and marriage and stealthily scrapping them off upon divorce.

Unfortunately, with names full circle, we’d have to eliminate 75% of the family in one year.

“I’ll just buy a quarter tree skirt,” I said, and went off to Google one. Apparently they are not yet invented.

“I’ll just make it myself,” I said, five words that should never be uttered just before Christmas.

As for the decorations, let’s just say I had no idea how attached certain family members had become to one or the other. I have decreed that anyone choosing more than five must help take down the tree.

And that may make this year’s Christmas more than 75% simpler.