Change may not be what I think it is

The Art Garden in the making. It still needs work but I am slowly getting there. We will have various art gatherings here, in this wild woman flower garden. It is amazing what good food and a decent bottle of wine and great company will add. I have to learn to grow flowers and dig holes for fence posts. Just don't rush me and I will get there. Fall will be great and cool.

My new front door. Well, we are missing windows but it has character. I will paint the door soon but Venture won't let me paint the building, even stripes. Just glad to be here.

I look down this dusty alley every day and try to remember Taos looked like this in the 70's. Just think Taos and non-corporate super-store and it will be fun.

Watching Nora Ephron's "You've Got Mail." I just heard the line,"Change is when something awful happens and nobody can do anything about it to help you." A small bookstore owner is closing her shop because of the big guys. I jumped off my bed and have to respond to this idea.

And another part of the movie declared,"It is all personal. It starts personal and that is why it should be personal. It is personal.

More wise words from Nora got me thinking. All my writing about change, people places and things and of course my pottery shop changing, was this just a desperate attempt to go with the flow? Is the truth "change is when something happens and nobody can do anything about it to help you?" Yikes.

Well, you must help yourself and certainly lots and lots of my friends tried and did help me. But, the truth is I am now in the alley, facing my old bright yellow bright door with the name stripped off and I have no heat or air or much walk in biz. Nobody could save me or do anything about it. Unless I could get a MacArther grant, noone could save me and pay my doubled ( now tripled) rent. And I wrote and wrote about how normal change is and how I can take it and appreciate it.
If that is not going with the flow what is? But, for better or worse maybe the line from Nora is very very correct, again. But, change happens and happens.

And then there is that personal thing. "It is all personal. It starts Personal and that is why it should be personal. It is personal." When I write this blog, I sometimes wonder if it is too personal. But then I would not enjoy writing it if it were not personal.

There seems to be men blogs and lady blogs. Men do not want to be personal, generally, politics. It is all business and facts and women like to ramble and dream or philosophize.

Every now and then I get an interesting response saying, "I know what you mean, what you really mean and now I feel better too." That is when I know I not wasting time writing and someone out there is listening. Are these words just zooming around in the air until someone finds them?

Meanwhile my husband tosses me an article in The New Yorker, July 2009 to read about Nora who is 68 and looks maybe 40 or so. Good grief. The article is Nora Knows What To Do.

I was in Santa Fe a year ago or so at Garcia Street Books and picked up I Feel Bad About my Neck. I started reading it and could not put it down. I read most of it all the way home out loud to my husband in the car. Here is a woman after my heart. Neurotic enough to understand and sane enough to survive. Who else could understand the eternal search for the perfect purse?

I'll admit I would never spend half the money she would buying a purse but I do pour over them everywhere and I have a box of perfect purse attempts in my away at college daughters closet, still clinging to each one hoping one is perfect. I have an incredibly talented friend from Wales who is a leather seamstress and has tried to help me find this purse. I find a pattern or get an idea and she sews it. Still,I keep looking.

Having enough meat on my bones to shop in the second helpings department of women's clothing, I have never worried about my neck or about hiding it, another chapter in her book. Padding fills the gaps and wrinkles. It is that extra supply of padding below the boobs that I worry about.
And then, trying to please my Mother in law I read her the last chapter in the book thinking she might relate and or enjoy it. I had not read it in advance and guess what? Wrong chapter to read out loud. It is about the end of life and decision making times which were too direct and honest to be reading for humor, out loud, in the car on a journey to an old hometown. It is always best to never assume not reading the chapter first is ok. Whoops.

And, how many times have friends repeated the line, "I'll have what she is having." from When Harry met Sally via Nora Ephron. I am still reading "Heartburn."

Even when I have a hard time sitting down to read because of this ridiculously busy life I create for myself, I try and make time for Nora knowing we are on the same page.