Neighbors

One year, early on in our time here, I took Sarah trick-or-treating through the neighborhood. A block from our house, almost parallel with it, was a house that was being rented to a Chinese family. This was their first Halloween in the neighborhood, maybe their first ever, and they were in compliance with the needs of the holiday, having chosen a treat, which they were handing out to costumed kids at the door. These were fruits, the size of a big gumball, wrapped in clear plastic.

To my horror, they were all over the ground, starting just steps from the doorway.

My neighbors were coming to the door, saying their bit, receiving the candy, and then dumping it on the ground. It was thicker than crab apples under the lawn mower.

I took mine, thanked them, and ate it on the spot, for all the difference it made. I never saw any of them around after that, and someone else has lived in the house for quite some time.

My neighbors. I'm still disgusted.

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Fifteen-Seven

Just fifteen minutes a day can do you a world of good in a number of ways. If you spend just fifteen minutes looking at the outside of your home and fixing small things, you'll have a nicer home and yard soon. Spend fifteen minutes a day in the kitchen cleaning surfaces, and see how quickly your kitchen starts to look better to you. Spend fifteen minutes on a selected room each day. Spend fifteen minutes working to eliminate boxes full of junk in the room next door. I mean, for instance. Fifteen minutes might be the right amount of time for this activity. I know that I can work fairly well for about that long, or perhaps longer, making a 'keep' pile and being coolly unsentimental about the 'discard' pile. At a certain point, my brain becomes fogged; filled up with floating particles of styrofoam. This point can be recognized by me starting to justify keeping things, like 'Well, it's the only X I have. I should keep it as an example." At this time, I must stop sorting or trying to sort, because the next phase is removing discard items and putting them in with the keepers.

Fifteen minutes a day at your musical instrument will begin noticeable improvements in your abilities. Devote fifteen minutes to technique and sight-reading, work some scales, and read pieces of music you would't be interested in otherwise just to build your skills. Spend fifteen minutes diving through old books of music you brought home, thinking you'd play them one day. Spend time digging through big collections of songs and see how many unrecognizable titles went with familiar tunes whose names you never knew. (Caveat: You still might not know them, since those old collections have weird features like taking well-known bits of classical pieces and concocting a bogus 'song' from it--usually on some anodyne and vaguely indoctrinal topic.)

Fifteen minutes of exercise, taken regularly, will ease some of your physical shortcomings. Fifteen minutes a day of walking comes to less than two hours, and my doctor said 150 minutes a week was recommended, but hey! An hour and forty-five minutes might be an improvement. Be sure to plan your walk so that you have time to walk back, unless you plan on calling for help wherever you end up.

Spend fifteen minutes with your eyes closed. It's like a nap, but it doesn't matter if you fall asleep or not--you're just retiring your visual cortex for a while, and maybe listening to stuff. Set an alarm so you can wake up.

Spend fifteen minutes outside your four walls. Sit on your lawn furniture. Circumnavigate your block. Spend fifteen minutes taking photos. Or spend fifteen minutes deleting your worst old photos.

An unexplored possibility is to simply hoard the time. Save fifteen minutes every day by picking a time and skipping all activities that you'd have participated in during that time. Move everything after it up fifteen minutes, including going to sleep and getting up the next day. Do this enough times, and you'll have saved a whole day! 24 hours of "advantage: YOU!" It requires a certain amount of discipline, amounting to monomania, however, once you've mastered it, you'll have free time coming out your elbow.

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Left foot. Right foot.

I walk through the world on the soles of my feet.
Left foot. Right foot. If not there yet, repeat.

Out of my driveway and over a block;
Detouring through streets with the shadiest trees
I figure on just over four miles to walk.
I'm ready to relish the tiniest breeze.

The path between houses, a trail through the woods,
The Auburn trail beckons. I enter its shade
Past daughter's old school via two neighborhoods
To tread the firm earth that the railroad men laid.

Small movement seizes my gaze at my feet
A frog moves one yard and then freezes in place
Another blackberry is ready to eat
White butterfly drunkenly flies in my face.

The last leg's uphill, it's slow going but sweet
Umbrella and cap help to temper the heat.
I practically coast the last few dozen feet:
Left foot. Right foot. If not there yet, repeat.

The house is a haven that always needs work
Our work gives life meaning and fodder for talk
Complaining is free. It's an un-ending perk
A topic for small chat along the long walk.

The leak that I fixed last year's dripping again
I'd call in the plumber, but he must be paid
I'll do what I can just one more time, and then
Next year they can deal with the muddle I made.

This is the year when the porch's damn roof
Must be fixed and fixed well, or we'll lose the whole room
Winter will come, we're not yet water-proof
We ponder our financial peril with gloom.

Solutions don't last, resolutions aren't neat
It isn't an option to shrug that we're beat
So we struggle ahead, not admitting defeat:
Left foot. Right foot. If not there yet, repeat.

The world is a house on the edge of a drop
Some party inside like tomorrow won't come
While others are nervously working up top
Trying to re-roof, for Winter will come.

We work for solutions and think we're ahead
When we've managed to budget for vittles and rent
But our loud, feckless roommates have broken their bed
And accused us of wasting the money they spent.

The going's unsure: slowly gain, quickly lose
The prizes we'd won somehow frittered away.
When we're running ahead, someone's stolen our shoes.
The progress of decades wiped out in a day

The road is uneven, the map's incomplete
And it's rare we can hitchhike or otherwise cheat.
We work through this life with our souls in our feet.

Left foot.
Right foot.
Are we there yet?

Repeat.

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I'm not sure if this is finished or not. Watch this space: Changes may take place silently.