A new high

Last night in my rush to get the cats wet food treated and locked inside for the night so I could make it to Toastmasters, was the night that Napoleon decided to climb up on the roof. Since the allure of his treat food was so great, he did eventually find his own way down before I could get out the ladder and I did make it to my meeting on time.

I was quite surprised, both by the delay, which caused me to go looking in the first place, and by where I saw him. I didn't see him go up or down so can only imagine where he might have done so. I have seen Humphrey climb the willow tree and get every bit as high as the roof. I was just glad that he did either remember where he went up and used that path back down or forged a new trail down in time. Unlike a tree, there should be very little traction for his claws, at least I hope there isn't especially hoping he didn't make some.

I got up this morning and got busy outside with watering and fertilizing the potted plants, and the in ground fuchsias. This is what allowed me to learn that the piercing smoke detector battery low sound that caused me to replace batteries was actually a bird. With daylight savings time now being most of the year, I no longer have a good six month rule of thumb replacement date and wasn't smart enough to label or record my last replacement.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on a particular bit of wisdom that I got from a Peach Oo-la-long Honest Tea cap. I don't drink it all the time for two reasons: every once in a while I stop drinking caffeine, and at $1.69 at the local store it is expensive. However, I do enjoy the tea and the caps. In fact, I have a collection of them.

This particular thought provoking cap says: "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I still like quotes, particularly those from caps, based on the quote itself not the names of the sources. After using a quote in one of my justifications at work for the words, my supervisor at the time looked up the source and advised me that the source no longer had any credibility and would not advance my purpose. So now, I do look up the source and use the quotes anyway.

Antoine was the third of five children born in 1900 to a French provincial noble family. He was an author, commercial pilot, and a WWII pilot for the Free French. He died in 1944 on a flight to collect information on German troop movements in preparation for the Allied invasion. More details are available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exupéry.

But it is really the words. For most of my life I have been adding things that now I realize limit what I can be and do. More, it seems that everything I want to do requires the addition of something else to enable it. I have a storage shed and a garage full of stuff that I rarely, if ever, use. (Although some of the stuff in the garage I would like to "take away.") When is it enough? Why can't it be now?