Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

Early in November, Husband and I spent a Friday in our church basement making lefse. We were there for about 7 hours rolling and frying. In addition to sore and tired backs and arms, we took away a strange new sense of perfectionism that I hope ends soon.

It is exhausting us.

I am not a perfectionist, not really, especially when it comes to housekeeping and baking. As long as it tastes good and there is nothing for the cats to eat off of the floor, I think I have success. I have learned since the new DSM-5 has come out that people like me,  who chew their nails,  have an official diagnosis of Other Specified Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I have to think about that more carefully regarding my own psychological makeup. I don’t know if I accept it yet. I fear that it is true.

Now, the lefse ladies in my church basement are perfectionists! We were set at different stations around the kitchen, and the lefse manager had the nerve to tell me that my first lefse sheet wasn’t thin enough. My standard for lefse thinness is that you can read the words “Bethany Pastry Cloth” through the lefse before you take it off the cloth and fry it. Her standard is that you roll the 1/2 cup of lefse dough into a round that is at least 12 inches in diameter. All the other lefse rollers were doing it, so I swallowed my pride and rolled thinner. I also was put on notice that I was far too splashy with the flour, and that I had better sweep up the flour I got on the floor before someone slipped on it. My lefse didn’t stick as I rolled it out, but no one had as much flour on the counter, the floor, and themselves as I did.  My critic also complained that the flour on the edges of the lefse was going to make edges lefse hard. Well, we can’t have that now, can we, so she made a point to brush the flour off the fried lefses as they came off the griddle. We rolled almost 700 sheets of lefse that day.

Ever since we had our lefse day, Husband and I have been cleaning the house in strange and finicky ways. We spent the whole day after lefse Friday cleaning out all our kitchen cupboards and cabinets, meticulously wiping down the cabinet fronts and interiors and every spice jar and objects contained therein.  It wasn’t planned. We just started to do it at 6:00 am and didn’t stop until nightfall.  The next week I cleaned the basement carpets with vinegar water, and we washed windows for the first time in two years. All our stray papers and mail got sorted and put away. I have been dusting like a fiend.

I think we caught the Creeping Perfection Virus in the church basement. I am hopeful that it will start waning now that we are doing our Christmas baking, but I still wince every time I touch a cabinet front with floury hands, and everything that comes out of the cabinets gets wiped off before they go back in. I never realized how addicting perfection is. After all, how can you argue that something is too clean?

What symptoms indicate the onset of YOUR Creeping Perfection Virus?  

Today’s post comes from Chris in Owatonna

My wife and I spent a pleasant week in North Carolina with her sisters and respective families to celebrate Thanksgiving. Our hosts kept us busy with activities such as the Greensboro Gobbler fun run/walk/crawl, disc golf in a lovely nearby park, and a wine-and-cheese-and-art afternoon where we all (15 of us including one nephew’s girlfriend and her family) gathered at a local studio and participated in a group painting class.

Some of you may be familiar with this activity in your local area. Each class member starts with a blank canvas and essentially copies what the teacher is doing to recreate the example painting on display while we watch her technique and follow along. Sort of like painting-by-numbers without either the numbers or the precision.

Each student is free to deviate from trying to copy exactly both the example piece and the teacher’s new rendition. In the end, we all end up with more or less the same painting, but with subtle or not-so-subtle differences based on our personal artistic expression.

I consider myself an artistic person, having performed music at a semi-pro level and taught instrumental music for 6 years. I also fancy myself to be a respectable photographer to the point I’ve enlarged several photos, framed them, and hung them on my walls.Not that they’re good enough that anyone would consider buying, but they please me, so there.

Nevertheless, the visual arts–especially painting but also including sculpture, mobiles, pottery, weaving, collages, metalworking, tree stump chainsaw art, and everything else in between–are not in my bailiwick.The last time I attempted any sort of painting beside the interiors and exteriors of buildings was in 7th grade, almost 50 years ago. It was not anything even a doting mother would proudly display to the in-laws.

Imagine my surprise when, after about two hours of relatively intense concentration, plus a few glasses of wine and some gourmet cheeses and crackers, I produced this, um, specimen:

S-i-L who chose the piece the group would copy made an attractive choice. Not too detailed, lots of colors, relatively easy focal points (leafless, branchless-for-the-most-part trees) and an easy medium to handle–acrylic paint.

The process was easier than I thought, although I’m sure it was dumbed down for we airheaded adults. Ten-year-olds would have been handling their own versions of the Mona Lisa, no doubt.

When we had all finished, we gathered as many paintings as we could at the house and stacked them as sort of a collage/homage to untalented people letting out a bit of a talent they perhaps didn’t know they possessed. Here’s what the majority of the group produced:

The third painting up from the bottom center column paid tribute to Van Gogh’s Starry Night. My wife’s version (lower left corner) added a lake. One nephew is color blind, so his rainbow looks markedly different than the others. Some painted more trees or larger trees. Different artists favored different colors–some had lots of blue, others more red, orange, and yellow. It was fun seeing all the differences and gaining a small appreciation for each individual’s artistic sensibility.

My question to you: Tell me about a talent you realized you may have had for a very long time but for whatever reason never used that talent because you either thought you weren’t very good, had no interest, or never had the time to nurture.

Today’s post comes from Crystalbay

I’ve never had a green thumb.  The only plants I’ve ever been able to keep alive are hostas and pathos. In fact, I have one pathos which is 20 years old.  Every summer, I planted a couple hundreds dollars worth of flowers and new shrubs to replace the ones from the year before that died.

Last fall, I had an idea.  I’d bring a flower box annual coleus inside for the winter just to see what might happen. Well, a lot happened!  This supposedly summer-only plant was eight inches high a year ago.  Over the winter, it grew so tall that I had to wire it to a floor lamp to keep it upright.

Early this summer, I wondered if this very large plant would like to spend the warm season back outside, so I transplanted it from the living room into a landscape bed outside.  The damn thing grew even taller and thicker.

I’ve now brought it indoors again.  My grandson, a hulking body builder, could barely lift it.  It’d gone from 8” to 2’ to 3’ in just one year.  I’m thinking about going into the plant-selling business.  Or, maybe just growing several over the winter to give as Xmas gifts.

At this rate, I may have a tree by next summer.  I barely have room for it now, but there’s some kind of silly pride in having accomplished growing a small plant into almost a tree!

What surprising luck have you had with plant life?