How Cleaning the Rugs Changed My Life and Made Me Do An About Face

Then again, sometimes it’s hard to choose an opening line. There are four choices this time for opening paragraphs.
 
#1--- Opening the front door was like when Dorothy opened the door in Oz and everything was in Technicolor. A rush of fresh, clean air swooped into my nostrils and made my upper palate feel it could sing high ‘B’s.
 
The best decision I’d made that week was to take Sunny from CFM Cleaners’ advice to do the whole carpet when I wanted him to just spot the five spots from Boris’ nervous tummy spots while I wasn’t able to live at home the month of January. "Otherwise you get the reverse problem and end up with five clean spots.’ The carpets, as is often the case in rentals, had not been done in years, certainly not before I moved in and I used to laugh and tell people to not take off their shoes because I didn’t know who was in the fibers.
 
I was so excited to smell clean and fresh and life giving air I couldn’t go to sleep until 2AM. I just wanted to stay up and smell it. A week later one of my teen clients walked in and said, "Gee, Deborah, your house doesn’t smell like an old refrigerator anymore."
 
I kept thinking all week, I need to do this with my life. I have a lot of people with rot in their lives enmeshed in the fiber of my life. I need to wash them out and rinse them out and have a fresh smelling life.
 
In one wonderful moment I was free of smelling the odors of the lifestyles of a dozen people who had lived in the house before me. I no longer had other peoples’ stuff in my lungs. The house suddenly reflected my values and my personality and my choices. I felt like I had the energy to accomplish anything.
 
Call Sunny by the way…he can do it for you to!
 
OK…#2 choice for opening paragraph…
The new IGA is a ‘must shop’. It’s phenomenal what’s been done and how wonderful the shopping experience is. There’s good fresh product, new registers, bright lights, fresh paint, and best of all these energetic, genuine smiling workers bustling about. The woman in produce who told me, "Wait here, I want to bring you some of the beautiful asparagus that’s in the back’ then said with a huge smile, ‘It’s so good to come to work and work’. And everyone loves how Sean the owner/manager is just there all the time and working hard to serve everyone. Best of all for those of us in the AARP Senior time zone…Tuesdays are 10% off your whole bill.
 
-2-I can’t tell you my whole grocery retail story, but I can tell you the punch line. Wait until God has a chance to sort things out and replace darkness and sadness and greed with goodness and light and quality living. Am I really saying God is connected to a grocery store? Well..Yes, but that’s another narrative discussion for another time. Suffice it to say, the new IGA is a testament to the power of restoration. Go shop there. Support happy workers and the turnaround anybody can bring to anything…and yes, you can get Western Family there and they have some bulk items too…and organic….oh Vashon…What’s great about this Island are the business people who are careful with the money we work so hard to earn and recognize we have a choice and work hard to give us wonderful life giving options.
 
And…choice#3
As the car sped past Southcenter I had this sad epiphany about my life. I realized having come from a contest where the only way I could win was to publicly shred the other person in a vicious ‘go for the kill’ way, that I can never do that. I can expose, I can set limits, but I cannot go for the kill. I can report, I can hold up to accountability, I can FINALLY say, ‘You can’t do that to me’, but I cannot kill.
 
One time a long time ago, I was in a meeting with a colleague and afterwards the colleague said to me, ‘You really had that guy; why didn’t you nail him?’. To tell you the truth it hadn’t even occurred to me.
 
Then, within the same split second of that new realization that I was never going to be able to get ahead in this world because I didn’t possess that ability, I thought of all the good people in my life both on and off Island who are also not killers. Now Vashon has plenty of killers: liars and cheats and deceivers and greedy bastards. Probably higher than the norm because we are somewhat hostage to culture here, BUT it also has people whose integrity shines brilliantly and bring us beauty and nurture and betterment, rooted in love.
 
My thought was this. If I set good limits early, like I’ve learned to do now, and protect myself, which I’m learning to do and do everything I do with as much excellence as I can achieve, which I love = please no comments about my proofreading, that is a limited skill set  = Is that enough? Is Excellence enough to get ahead in life? If you are not capable of destroying those who set themselves up as competition or bully you or bear false witness to win, is it enough to bring victory? I had my next set of marching orders. My job this year is to see if limit setting, self-protection, and executing everything with excellence is enough. I think I’m going to be happily surprised.
 
Ok…choose which column would mean the most to you this week and write the rest from your own life.
 
Love,
Deborah