Living Beautifully...Occasionally...

This is an article I found in a Mary Engelbreit magazine and it describes exactly how I feel...so I am sharing it with everyone. It is by June B. Lands.

Every once in a while, I love to read magazine articles that tell me how to live a serene, gracious life. Usually a photograph shows the author of said article lounging amidst creative clutter, pets dozing at her feet. I long to be that person. I want to have a potted orchid sitting on a stack of well-worn books, to prop my elbow on table turned desk that I just painted a delightful shade of eggplant, to toss paper clips in adorable vintage teacups that I discovered in some out-of-the-way little shop.

My sister Glenda is that kind of person. She places baskets of seasonal potpourri at the pulse points of her home, gathers Queen Anne's Lace from a lazy country road and puts it into an old Ball fruit jar near her cookbooks, and greets each new morning in a bright floor-length robe - not baggy sweats and a t-shirt. There's no plastic
margarine container on her table; butter nestles in a cut glass bowl. There are no sticky jelly jars; marmalade is served in a footed dish.

For my recent birthday, Glenda gave me a book about how to live a beautiful life. "You need to spend more time honoring yourself by beautifying your surroundings," she advised. I read and re-read the book, which was like getting a while year's worth of self-improvement articles between two lavishly photographed covers. It inspired me to reach toward my higher self, a self hiding somewhere beneath the baggy gray sweat pants.

So I bought fresh flowers for the dining table. I rearranged the linen closet and tucked lavender between cool cotton sheets. My husband and I used festive cloth napkins at
each meal. I wrote letters on pretty note cards instead of recycled computer paper, and used cologne every day even if I was only going to the library. I even polished my silver.

My wake-up call came when I was on a deadline for an article while trying to nurse my husband and myself through a nasty bout with the flu. Cologne soon gave way to Vick's Vaporub; scones on good china were replaced by a dried-out turkey sandwich on a plain paper plate, scarfed down as I stared at the computer screen and tried to find a place to set my plastic water bottle but couldn't because my coffee mug and crumb-littered napkin from breakfast were in the way.

It wasn't beautiful, but it was me.

A couple of days later when the worst was over (and the article turned in), I emailed Glenda to tell her how much I was enjoying the 'living beautifully' book. "I'm soaking in a lavender-scented bubble bath and after that I am going to buy myself an orchid in a pot," I wrote. "It will look divine atop that pile of books artfully stacked on the floor." It will, too...if I ever get around to vacuuming up all the dog hair.