QMusings

When you spot a penny on the street, do you pick it up?

I do.

Well, I do if it doesn’t look icky. Based on how many pennies I’ve picked up off the ground over the years, not many people pick up pennies. Pennies aren’t worth the effort.

Pennies must not be worth the effort of pocketing as I’ve seen as many as seven scattered together.

I feel a bit self-conscious picking up the pennies but invariably that extra penny allows me to even out my change when I pay in cash. I like being able to give $10.02 for something that costs $9.77 and get a quarter back instead of 2 dimes and 3 pennies.

This brings me to the topic of dimes.

If you saw a dime on the street, would you pick it up?

I certainly would.  Unless it were covered in goo.

This past Sunday I was buying bread at the Farmers Market. The bread stand usually has a line snaking around it.

As I reached over to pay for the bread, I noticed a dime on the white cloth covered display. The dime wasn’t hidden amongst the folds; it shone in bright new dimeness. Since it wasn’t covered in goo, I took it.

I ended up using the dime soon after to pay for something that involved 35 cents. I only had 27 cents so the dime was perfect.

The next day I spotted a dime as I was leaving the train station on the way to work. People were streaming along with me.

It was not far from the little coffee shack where people paused to buy a cup. You’d think they’d have picked it up then.

It’s not like it was covered in goo.

As I stooped to pick it up, I wondered if people thought a dime wasn’t worth anything. If a penny is thought to be worth nothing, were dimes valued at next to nothing?

Are dimes the new penny?

I was also struck by the fact that I found a dime 2 days in a row. A penny I can understand, they are uh, a dime a dozen on the street. I wondered if this was merely coincidence.

I found out that I’m not the only one finding dimes.

I also found a site that wasn’t about coins but about change.

You may not want to pick up those pennies and dimes lying on the ground but small (positive) change is a good thing.

Keep Your Coins I Want Change

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“A girl with good looks is like a guy with money.”

So sayeth my mom.

“Beauty is like social currency, the more you have, and the more popular you are.”

My mom was quite the hottie in her day.  She’s still pretty cute but when she was younger?

Dang.

My mom is like most attractive women – she feels her worth it tied to her looks: the prettier you are, the more you are worth.

Beauty fades.

My mom is struggling with aging.

But it’s more than the aches and pains that she struggles with, it’s her feeling that she’s no longer attractive.

Aging ain’t pretty: the body slows down, the skin sags, and parts start to break down.

When beauty is your currency, you’re going to run out of cash.

Mom feels poor and there’s nothing I can do to make her feel rich.

She thrusts out her arms, showing me the back of her hands. Her hands are slender and traced with pale green veins, the fingers slightly bent from arthritis.

“Look at this! All dried up!” she tells me.

“I’m no longer juicy, ” she says, pointing to the delicate bones in her hand.

“Young folks are juicy. When you’re young you’re a grape. When you’re old, you’re a raisin.”

According to mom, it’s better to be juicy; life is good as a grape.

My mom is creative and funny and observant and oddly wise.

She drives me nuts and I love her.

Beauty comes at a cost and yet we all want to pay the price.

I admit – it’s easier to be rich than it is to be poor.

At 44, I’m not as juicy as I used to be.

I don’t want to be poor and I struggle with my loss of social currency.

But I also realize it’s only money.

If beauty if only skin deep, then loving yourself seems the better investment.

Loving yourself goes down to the soul.

What better way to be rich?

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How little free time I have these days – time when I’m free to do anything or nothing.

Which isn’t to say I’m not having any fun, that I’m not kicking back occasionally, it’s just that there is always something that I have to do.

We all seem to have this mental “To Do” list that never goes away.

There’s the Do Right Now List: fill up the gas tank, pack lunch for the kids, Yikes! Rent’s due!

Then there’s the Get To It Soon List: Change the oil, return a phone call, make a dentist’s appointment and mow the lawn.

There’s the Should Do This List: Write a will, plan for retirement, exercise, eat more vegetables, spend more time with the family, remove the clutter, and recycle.

The Nobody But Us Thinks We Should Do This List: Catalog Grandpa’s 38 years of newspaper clippings, return the library book that somehow was packed up when you moved out of state 3 years ago, restore your deceased aunt’s 1971 Pinto to its former glory.

The Why Is This Always On the List of Things To Do List: Taxes, organize the closet, clean the refrigerator.

There always seems to be something that we have to do. If we don’t have to do it now, we have to do it soon.

The thing with soon is that sooner or later, it becomes Now.

I hear so many people say that they need more time to “catch up.”

Why do so many of us feel slightly guilty or lazy for enjoying some Free Time?

Why do so many of us feel we have To Do something with our time?

Free Time is Free to do anything time – it’s all open, unplanned, I could do 15 things or nothing at all.

I could use a little more Free Time.

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