My Life with Bob

I have been reading the book My Life with Bob. When I first went to collect it from the library I was thinking it was more about the homeless man with a cat, but that was a A Street Cat Named Bob. This Bob wasn't a cat at all but an acronym for Book of books. The author (Pamela Paul) started using a journal to record the books she had read when she was a teenager. No reviews or details of plot just date, title and author. Now why didn't I do that?
I've been an inveterate list maker over the years. Back in the seventies and eighties I kept a record of how many eggs my chooks supplied - enough to sell - and how many times a night my babies woke up - lots and for years. I used to keep a graph of my weight and gave that up as a bad job years ago. When I paid money to join the gym in the mid nineties I kept a list of every visit to make sure I got my money's worth - and I certainly did.

So why not a list of books I've read? I've been a reader all my life and now I'm beginning to have trouble remembering which books I've read. Several times I've started keeping track and given up (like many an attempt at writing a diary). Once upon a time the library had  a history of books borrowed, which would have gone some way to tracking my reading, but now with the wonderful Onecard system I order books from all over the place and read them avidly and then forget what I've read.

Of course some books are memorable. I doubt I'll forget Kerry O'Brien's A Memoir which in hardback is about six centimetres  thick.Annabel Crabb suggested that if you put it together with a few other memorable tomes including Shane Warne's story you should be able to reach any shelf in your kitchen!
In my retirement I have the enjoyment of reading many hours a week, but without a list of what I've already read, and with my sometimes dodgy memory, there is the real possibility that I will only need to have about five books and cycle them round and round. Now there's a thought....

Decisions, decisions, decisons.

A snippet of a song I remember from my youth suggested that 'in the first third of your life you chose your work, your faith, your wife,' (Or maybe it's a figment of my imagination since I can't find it anywhere on YouTube.) And maybe those choices are not so vital these days when people change work more often and few get the  gold watch after being in one job for years. As for choice of spouse or faith?? When I was a child  'making your decision' was church shorthand for deciding to follow the way of Jesus.
But there is no doubt about it, choices are tricky. What to wear int he morning. Maybe that[s why uniforms are so good. No need to think.

When confronted by an extensive menu I sometimes wish the waiter would simply say, 'You should have this.' And I believe some restaurants do that. If you front up to eat, you get what the chef has decided to cook that day. Of course many of us remember the predictable daily menus of our childhood culminating with the Sunday roast. It jsut made life easier when you made tuna mornay on Tuesdays. And I remember the person who told me, as part of a group icebreaker ('What did you have for breakfast today?') that every morning she ate muesli and soya milk with a banana.
There are bigger choices. A friend is trying to decide on a new car. What will be best for her future needs? How can she be sure she doesn't buy a lemon? Is tossing a coin a good way to decide or because you like the colour?

Oh and there's an election coming up. We have the responsibility and privilege to elect our leaders. How best to do that? Donkey vote. Informal vote in protest?
None of us can avoid decisions. Some small and trivial with little consequence. (In our house even Would you like a cuppa? seems to take some deliberation but I digress.) Other decisions have major implication for future life or finance. What to do?
Many years ago when faced with a decision about our son's future education, a wise woman suggested that we make the decision prayerfully and then move on in faith. How can you ever know if you really made the right choice? I have often quoted her and I wonder if she ever realised the impact she had on my thinking. Seek out solutions, do the research but in the end ti's a mater of following your nose (led or the Spirit of God?) and moving forward in faith.

Telephone talk - with bonus joke

Remember phone boxes? Those glass structures - originally red with glass panels and later grey with swing doors If you wanted to ring someone up when you were out and about, you went into one of these and had a quiet conversation. It was private. Just you and the other person.
Fast forward to 2019 and conversations are conducted in public - loudly. And to make it even worse, some people put their mobile on speaker so you can hear both sides of the conversation.

I was walking down the street one day when i heard someone behind me say, 'Hi Gorgeous,' so I turned around to reply only to find it was someone on their mobile. Now I reckon if someone is going to carry on a loud conversation in public it should be OK for the rest of us to join in.

It's tricky if you are sitting with a group of friends having coffee and someone takes a call and starts chatting away to whoever. It really makes it hard for the rest of us to continue our chat. Should the other person get up and walk away to carry on their talk? Last time it happened (and it wasn't the first or second or third time) I decided to continue our group conversation quite loudly over the top of the phone convo.
I find another problem is that when you ring someone on their mobile you have no idea where they are. The should feel free not to answer if inconvenient.  (I remember having a discussion with my mum's solicitor while standing next to the meat department at the supermarket.)  I now tend to ask if it's convenient to talk because it's not like the old days. Back then, when you rang a fixed phone it really was fixed. Not mobile or cordless. In my family home there was a special seat with a shelf next to it for the phone and that's where you sat to talk. If someone rang they knew that was where you were.
Enough. Times change...


Bonus joke
An old Greek /Italian/New Australian was showing a friend around his new mansion. He assured the friend that he had a statue and pointed to it. The friend said, 'But that's a phone'. 'Yes,' said the old guy. 'You pick it up and say, Statue?'

Konned?

I kept hearing about getting rid of the clutter. My first reaction was that I like my stuff. It's not as though you can't walk through the rooms in my house or find a seat - unless of  course the cat is sitting on your favourite chair. There is lots of storage space and bookshelves and wardrobes and it's all good stuff.

Then I heard about the person who has made whole career of helping people get rid of stuff - bags and bags of it. I decided I needed to know what this was all about and so my fabulous local library came good with a copy of the book with the fascinating title The Life-changing magic of tidying  - by Marie Kondo.
Tidying. Magic? Really. It's kind of fun when one of my granddaughters helps me sort out my clothes or jewellery drawer but I'd hardly say it was magic. Or life-changing.
So I got to thinking about all this. Marie Kondo talks about people buying stuff they never use and having piles of clothes still in the original wrappers. That's not me.  Mind you, I do like a bargain, but only when I know I will use what I buy.

The KonMari method suggests looking at every item you own to see if you want to keep it. Only keep it if it sparks joy. Hm! Not only would that take hours on end but there are perfectly useful things that don't give me joy but I need to have - veg peelers, toothbrushes, bras... My daughter assures me that her dishwasher doesn't  exactly spark joy but she has no plans to get rid of it. Kondo would suggest she should regularly thank it for what it does. It's bad enough that my fridge beeps at me when I leave the door open, the microwave tells me it's done and her dishwasher even sings a little song when it's finished. I really don't want to engage in full blown conversation with all my useful appliances. I do talk to the cat and the budgies but that's different.

I worry about what would happen to all the history,  photos and paper and letters telling of family and community if this approach to stuff is taken. [I also worry about the way history will disappear when the format is digital. All those zillions of photos or minutes of meetings on someone's hard drive.]
As I read on, I was fascinated to discover that if I put my socks into balls and chuck them in the drawer they will be sad. I am not a big fan of socks but I draw the line at apologising to them for the way I deal with them.

Sure, our current world is overtaken with consumerism but I am a child of the depression or at least heavily influenced by my parents who lived through it. They looked at everything twice and re-used, cut down, saved, as it might come in useful. As a young Mum I used to cut down old adult clothing to make clothes for my kids. They look shocking now but so do the haircuts and skivvies. 

I finished the book with a sense of sadness. Marie Kondo said she has been a compulsive cleaner since she was a child and thinks it is because she is a middle child who never got the needed recognition from her mother, so tried to get it this way. Her book promises that her process of sorting and tidying will make me feel more confident, successful and motivated. Hm...
I was sad that she looked for fulfillment and pleasure in life in this way. It's no good relying on stuff for contentment even if it is all neatly organised.