I'm sure you look great! You just can't please everyone.

The other day I found myself being appraised by someone. They were so obviously looking over my outfit, judging. They might have even had their lips pursed. It took all of my strength not to ask in a sarcastic voice, "Well? How did I measure up to your standards?"

I was wearing jeans, a nice blouse, and a jacket. And, amazingly, a necklace. (I always have good intentions to wear necklaces, but it rarely happens). There wasn't anything exceptionally amazing about my appearance, nor did I think I looked trodden. I just looked . . . normal.

Years ago in college, a similar situation happened to me and my roommates. What happened all those years ago was much, much worse.

Three of us were at a dance, standing off in the "waiting" section. This was the place where anyone wanting to dance could hang out and anyone wanting to ask could come there. Standing and talking, the three of us watched this young man walk right up to us. He slowly walked by all three of us, looking us all up and down in what felt like an exaggerated motion. He would look one of us up and down, move to the next one and look her up and down, and then went to the last of us and looked her up and down.

And in the end, he passed us all up!

My roommates and I looked at each other and just burst out laughing.

Why? because it was so awkward!

The three of us were all very different. Different heights, different hair colors, different styles of clothing, and different (if he had gotten to know us) personalities.

And yet he couldn't bring himself to ask any of us to dance after his crazy appraisal?

Really, it was rude.

But the point is that you will never please everybody. You will always get the people who think you need a designer purse. You will always get the people who don't understand why you aren't always wearing makeup when they drop by your house. You will always meet those who can't fathom wearing tennis shoes with an outfit, even when you are going to be walking miles and miles that day.

And just like that young man at the dance, there are people who will never be satisfied.

Which has nothing to do with you.

Frankly, I feel bad for the people who can't imagine wearing sweats out of the house. There is no way they are as comfortable as I am.

Goliath and the small head of cauliflower

AWWWWWW!!!! Isn't this adorable! A cute, little, smaller-than-palm sized cauliflower head from a cute little cauliflower plant. Right?

Wrong!

The plant this came from was huge!!!!! Ginormous! Like, taking over the garden kind of big. 

For months I would go on a safari through my cauliflower plants and see if anything was growing. And for all of those months, no cauliflower could be found. Then, right before it was supposed to get cold, I went out to chop down the plant and clear it out from the garden. But lo and behold! Two of the plants had a little cauliflower growing. 

So I left it. I had heard that cauliflower can survive some frost (True? Who knows.) so I left it, hoping that we'd be able to cook some nice cauliflower.

But, right before the big snow dump I went out one last time, ready to cut off whatever had grown. I got 2 heads, Both about this size. Frozen. Underdeveloped. Cute, but sad.

What the crud! How could this have happened? No, seriously, how could this have happened? Any savvy gardeners know how I can have Goliath plants and only get fun size cauliflower?

I know there is some kind of a lesson that I could take from this. Some kind of parallel life story that I compare this too, but right now I am too frustrated to come up with one.

Here I put all of this hard work, time, energy, and money into this plant and all I get out of it is a small, soggy piece of cauliflower. Oh sure, on the outside the plant looks all perfect and huge and awesome. But beneath the surface it was barely producing. And no matter how long I watered it, nurtured it, all that came out was a little flowerette. 

I know that nothing else in life is like that...

Though I will say that, after thinking my plants weren't going to give me anything, finding a little bud of hope inside was quite fun! And even though I only ended up with a little cauliflower, I really do think it is cute and precious. It was a miracle!

Again, I can't think of anything else in life where that happens...

I've learned a lot from gardening, and hopefully next year it will be all the better!

An Open Letter to these trees. Individual Worth Week, Day 4!

Dear Trees in the park,

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but you pretty much stink at being trees. Maybe at one time you were pretty, but that time has passed. You aren't even worth the ground space that you take up.

You aren't beautiful, you aren't useful. In fact you are an eye sore.

In short, you are all worthless.

Everyone can clearly see that this tree is uglier than ugly. I mean, come on! Its trunk doesn't even grow straight! It's twisted and swirly, all uniform. Yuck!

There is no easy way to say this, but this tree has a crook in it. Totally not uniform.

This one is short.

Is that a knob? 

You couldn't just grow upwards?

Trunks? There shouldn't be two.

And I'm deducting points for the tacky birdhouse.

This shade has holes in it.

Yup. Everyone can plainly see how worthless these trees are.

No value whatsoever.

Rediculous!

Sincerely,

Sar Castic

Don't let anyone diminish the value of your tree. They obviously don't know what they are talking about.