In the cool this morning I went out to trim the manzanita bushes. They’ve grown unmolested for years. They were fine—healthy unremarkable bushes in my front yard.

That wasn’t what I wanted when I planted them. I wanted those throbbing twisted red branches that captured my eyes through my walks in the desert mountains. Could these live in my land?

These bushy little bushes weren’t bringing those desert mountain to me. What is missing? The mystery is under there. Was I brave enough to find them?

I had never taken the trimmers to get the extra foliage out of the way.

Clipping away the little shoots. I began to see the shape of the main branches and grew bolder. I didn’t knowwhat I was doing but the beauty I saw in the tree was my guide on what to cut away.

Then the sun grew hotter and I had to stop for today. The family is going to an art museum.

 The last sands are tumbling through the glass for my daughter’s childhood—she is tracking and crossing off the homework to finish her senior year. The teachers gave her syllabi and rubrics so she knows how to get it right. She has an art class as a treat after her hard work last year.

Careful mama that I am, I hope she has been given the wisdom to go into grownup life. Those instructions that guarantee an A+ are harder to find after graduation.

How will she know what choices to make?

Walking the museum we saw the results of a million choices. Why that stroke? Why that color? The reason and the action synthesize into these results. The cherished objects, highly valued and admired.

Those artists were guided in the same was I had been, cutting to see the beauty of the manzanita.

I don’t know why Van Gogh chose to paint his mother with green skin tones, or what she thought of it. I can’t explain every cut I made on the manzanita.

As my girl steps into the world, without the instructions of a teacher to guide her, I can let her know that beauty can let her know. She is the one who knows what beauty is in the moment. Mistakes will be made. We can both trust that her heart and her life is strong enough to recover as she keeps reaching for the best brightest and most beautiful.

I thought I was done with cancer. I fought it and won. I hope I did

Last weekend I got a new series of tesst for my sweet cat Simon, and he has non-treatable lung cancer.
He is ten years old. We hoped he could live that much more. Now we are on cat hospice.
There are tears and survivors guilt. How is it that I could have recovered and he cannot?
He’s still with us. He is weak but still loves us and can play.
I am thinking of what love means from this small cat.
Pretty much the same thing as love means from anyone.

he’s glad to see me. He wants to be where I am. He gives a chirpy purr meow when I pet him unexpectantly. He has been our kitty for so long, it breaks my heart to think that he won’t be able to greet me this way much longer.

So we watch him, and check in on him often. He needs help to junp down from his usual places.

He doesn’t know that he shouldn’t. But if he does, his breath heaves and his heart races.

So we race to catch him before he jumps, and take him to his next favorite space.
I can remember all the ways that this cat made me feel good. Right now, this means that I race after him to make sure that he feels good.
It’s not about me getting from him.
It’s broken my heart open, and the whole family is cooperating to help him be as comfortable as he can be for however much time he has left.
We are considerate of one another far more than before.
Love is bigger than I can say.
I think I know. And then I realize I do not.

Archeologists found some ancient bones showing that humans have taken care of disables children, feeing and caring for them so that they could grow.
Why?
Love is strong. Love is more than what it gives. If I were strong only for myself, I could get lazy. Good enough is good enough.
But when a little helpless one needs me, I will make the effort. Scientist want to call that an advantage. Maybe it is.
Or maybe the practice of love is higher than human advantage. I don’t know.
I know we are all going to love our Simon cat as long as we can and even after.

The grass is dry and the leaves on the trees are dusty. The morning skies have been silent and too hot. It is the tired end of summer. Things are not growing around here, they are ripening to their end.  Seeds are scattering as the last fading will of the plants that once sprouted and grew green. They are done.

This Wonderblog and the Weeekly wonder was started more than twenty years ago. Could it be dried up? Have I reached the end of the life like those dried green grasses?

Does curiosity and wonder have an end?

Watching this change of season, oppressed by the heat I have stopped hearing the birds. The mornings have been hot and quiet.

Has my questioning and questing spirit gone silent too?

Just now

I heard a little peep.

A chirp

A bird has joined me to greet the morning.  The season has changed and what I missed has returned.

I wonder. Was that first bird was moved by curiousity? Was that how the migration started? That the environment—not too cool, not to hot– it was seeking was on the other side of the valley. What if it was a shift that led to more and more until then life changed for everyone?

I don’t have to stop seeking. I can quest a little longer.

Even the grass that I judged dead is scattering wide a ticket  to new possibilities. Those seeds could scatted ot nothings or they could turn jackpot with a hundredfold more seeds if they hit it just right.

The curiousity, the wonder which leads to the quest will be there. I am not willing to give it up yet.

When I wrote I my book The AV project manager handbook, I assumed some things. I didn’t stop to answer the fundamental question:

What is a project?

My friend Joe Way says everything is sales. I clap back “Everything is a project!”
But there is a demarcation. This is a project:
“A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.”
That sounds like lawyer talking. Let me pull out the dividing line. A project is something with an end, and it does something that isn’t already being done.

A project contrasts with operations. For an organization—whether a business, government or a household—there are the everyday systems that keep everything running.
In my household, I really want things to stay the same. We rely on a lot of systems. A really big one is our cars. We use our vehicles every day, and my daughter got her driver’s license recently. We are all zipping around for school, work and sports.

Making sure we park in the driveway in the right order so we can drive our cars in the order we are going to leave, keeping the gas tane full are folded into the week’s chores.

They are not a project. Nothing unique to see here. In fact, as far as my household is concerned, we want it to stay this way. Can I just go about my business please?

We can all get where we need.
UNTIL!
Disaster strikes: A car breaks
OR
Operational Upgrade! A new Vehicle purchase

Maybe my car breaks down and needs a new transmission. We would have to come up with a plan for the time and resources it will take to deal with this disruption in operations. The other drivers in the household might have to share their vehicles. The family would do decision analysis about the kind of repair we would do (repair or replace? What’s the budget? How old is my car? Etc.)


We would all weigh the opportunity and the cost in time and resources to make the best choice to restore the vehicle transportation system.
We could brainstorm ideas. Do we need three cars? How do the choices fit with our values and future plans?
The stakeholders –all of whom are still involved in operations—have their part to play in the project as it gets scoped, designed and executed.
In this case, all of them want to get back to operations as soon as possible.
For a professional services organization, a project is likely the source of revenue, Projects are the reason for operation, not an interruption of operations. The goal might be to define and execute as many project as possible, as quickly as possible.

Projects and Operations exist side by side, and the team would do well to understand the difference and right-size the effort and attention on both
All the stakeholders would be wise to identify which projects support their operations and which operations support their projects. It’s a changing continuum. What is the core value for the team? What things are always a NO? Communication, analysis and leadership will support success and progress.
Priorities, opportunities and disasters shift. Resources and attention can be distributed in response.

He couldn’t say I LOVE YOU

he didn’t have the words

yet he always came running

put himself in my way

here here he’s just gonna be here

Just gotta be here

Cause his eyes

his mind

His motion

all directed at me

Just gonna be here
Just gotta be here

Hey hey

No words and he always came running

‘by his contrivance, the most reasonable person at a reasonable charge and with a little bodily labor might write books in philosophy poetry, politics, laws, mathematics and theology  with the least assistance from genius or study”

The knowledge workier dominates business in creating value and money. Scientists and engineers have been working on labor saving devices for all of human history. The wheel remains a classic.

Even when we have no idea how to do something we are still dreaming of what we could do.

In Grek mythology It was the master craftsman Daedalus who made the wings out of feathers. He held  them in place with wax. He mae theme for his son Iarus. Daedulus warned him that the wax wouldn’t work if he didn’t do it right. Too close to the sun and the wax would melt. Too close to the ocean and the feathers would be too wet to fly

And what did Icarus do?

it wasn’t the damp seawater that was the problem.

He flew higher than was safe. He met his fate.

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence a, I also think, ‘didn’t we see how this movie ends?’ Sci Fi movies—as well as the novels—tend toward disastrous pessimism. Those kindly aliens show up with a book saying “How to Serve Man” and everyone welcomes them.

And then we learn IT IS A RECIPE BOOK!!!

That’s just a story though

Thia is real life.

I’ve been using AI and it is a useful tool. It is not really intelligence. The other term for AI is LLM or large language model.

Computer programs takes all the information we give it and provide the next most likely answer to a question. It’s a more sophisticated search engine. So sophisticated it sounds like it’s talking.

Of all places, Gulliver’s travels has this exact thing. One of the islands he visited, he found a place that had academies of learning that had come up with plans to solve every difficulity people experienced. They just needed to finish working out the kinks.

One academy had created a machine that mixed up all the words in the world, and strung them together so they would randomly arrange themselves into phrases. That is how books would be written.

As soon as they made the sentences make sense.

I approve of creating labor saving devices.But they have to save labor.

Before I put too much effort into a new technology, I have to make sure it does what it promised.

Last week We took a family trip to Knott’s berryfarm. Veronica invited a friend –Thank you Henry for being willing to ride the roller coasters!—and a good time was had by all. At the end Chris and Veronica went on the log ride one las time, so Henry and I kept each other company.
I told him I like to talk about books. He was interested and he had been in Veronica’s English class, so we talked about those. He said his dad loved Russian literature. By the end I was persuading him to read Crime and Punishment.
I said it was the story of how a loser young man persuaded himself that he was above the rules of regular people and could prove his own greatness by murdering someone. He talked himself into actually doing the crime in the most unheroic way possible and then had all the feelings of what he’d done. I told him I spoiled what the crime was, but the punishment was almost entirely what he inflicted on himself.
“That does sound interesting. My Dad would be so happy if I I read that book.”
This Sunday I played keyboard at church for a guest worship leader. As we exchanged stories I learned that he has been around music his whole life, and worked as part of the production crew for Earth Wind and Fire.
I told him how I was self-taught on the keys, and I started playing for church on the organ as a teenager.

“That’s one thing I never learned! I’d love to learn the organ.”
“I could show you!”
Walking away, I realized my presumption.

Who am I to teach this man who has been around world class musicians?
I am nothing special.
I spent some time playing with it, like a little kid.
And I suppose that is my point. I can share my love of music and books with people for whatever it’s worth to them. I’ll share my bit of heaven with you.

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. “
Matthew 18:3

“Would it be okay if I brought my keyboard?”

My friend was having a party. We’d met at the place where I do my open mic, but she always had to work on open mic night. As I was getting ready to go to the party that night it occurred to me that I could finally play for her.

After all, it was just a party at her house. I could do a song or two if it were quiet, and she’d finally get to hear me.

I was not ready to play FOR REAL. I’ve been practicing and learning songs, but no way was I ready to do a real show. I was not good enough, I didn’t have enough songs in a row—how many songs did I have? Not enough, and I even the ones I had I couldn’t play well enough.

I have been wanting to. I have a few places I could  play for, once I was ready.

So I got the idea to bring my keyboard to the party, that was a perfect fit. I wasn’t promising to be good or anything, I could play around, like it was a toy. Toys are welcome at a party.

I came in with my potluck dish, and said hello.

“Did you bring your keyboard?” she asked right away.

Oh! Sure, I’ll go get it.

I unpacked, setting up my cables and   I tried to make it background noise level.

That’s not what they wanted. The host turned it up.

And the guests clapped and called out requests.

I kept playing. I must have played for two hours.

I played the songs I didn’t really know. It didn’t matter like I thought it did.

It would seem the barriers were all in my mind.

If I can make music, and the people can enjoy it, that might be the highest quality that counts.

It’s halfway through the year, but more than a year since I butchered my left pointer finger. I caught it in a  spinning knife—an immersion blender is what they are called.

I was so horrified, I wrapped it in a bandadge as quickly as I could. It bled a LOT. Since I could move it, I chose to let that be enough.

it hurt a lot too.  Four deep scars are now part of my fingerprint. It was numb, and then it would hurt sometimes. I massaged it to try to get it to come back to life and spend hours worrying that I had done serious damage.

Being the stubborn woman I am, I learned to do what I needed or wanted to do by using other fingers. That finger was clumsy, so I started making new habits to accommodate how things seemed to work.

I got used to doing things in a different way. I found new ways of fastening necklaces.

I found other ways to play the piano. 

I wanted to sing and play. I had my goal to record 100 new songs.  And I found a way to make it happen. I am now at 112.

I cut the finger in June of 2025. And I found a way around it.

That was a year ago, and I’m pleased with what I did. I didn’t let a setback stop me.

And my finger has gotten a lot better, It’s not as clumsy or  painful.

I am seeing that my workarounds are now looking like bad habits. It that finger clumsy from the injury?

or am I clumsy because I stopped using it and now my finger is weak and stiff?

I had a good reason for changing how I used my hand. It seems like that reason remains in my habits but not in its essence.

I created a no-go zone that has lasted longer than the fence did.

What could I do now that I thought I couldn’t?

I’m going to go find out.

I am recording the audio files for the handbook I just published. This is the fifth book I’ve published, but the first one I’ve made into an audiobook.
When I published my first book 15 years ago, the new format choice was making sure it was an ebook. I got that published almost at the same time.
The current way to consume books is by listening. I understand. I have the habit of listening to books as I move around. I want to give my readers an audiobook in my own voice.
I have the equipment, and most of the skills to do that. To get the sound right, I drape a blanket over my head and microphone, reading in a level tone to get the audio quality just right.

I have worked hard on each of my books. This last one took a lot longer than I meant it to. With all the cancer and surgeries in the middle, I paused on getting it published. Then I through all caution out the window and passed go without collecting 200 dollars.
What that means is I didn’t do the quality check of hiring an editor to verify that the text was right. I have always been so careful of that, but not this time.

And unlike the other books, no one had come back to me to point out mistakes. I felt safe and shrugged that the first pass was good enough.
I am reading the chapters out loud. Those good enough chapters are showing my failings in naked embarrassing contrast.
Did I forget a period? AGAIN?
Mortified, I make corrections in my manuscript to read aloud. What is my error tolerance?

I have lowered my standards. Yet, this book is my most popular. But I rushed it to press without my usual attention to detail.
And now I see what I missed. That my readers have been forgiving.
I’m trying to forgive myself.
What is the balance between perfecting and presenting?
I’m happy with how my book has been received. And I’m not happy with its obvious and basic flaws.
And yet the book was so well received even with its flaws, I have to consider that good enough can be welcome when there is nothing else fill that need.
That’s what I’m telling myself. Done is better than perfect. That’s good because I can get it done and I’m not sure I’ll ever get it perfect.
Still I feel like I have my shoes untied. I’m going to update the book with my corrections after I finish the recordings.