Clump #142: Begin Flippin February Paper Pile Purge.  (As in, I just want to flip the calendar page over and make it March.)

A friend described a conversation he once had with a brilliant guy who worked for NASA.  One concept the guy talked about stayed with him:  to launch a space ship, you are essentially lifting a sky scraper off the ground and into the air.  Who would ever think such a thing possible?!  It takes a tremendous amount of fuel, most of the ship’s weight, to accomplish the flight … and seventy percent of it is required for just the first three inches.   Good thing to remember whenever I am starting something, especially something I’m pulling against like gravity on a sky scraper.

An example would be getting back to blogging yesterday.  When I am not blogging daily, I really get to a place where I forget what it’s like; I have no confidence in my ability to put thoughts together and I realize how audacious it is to think that people might care.

Here’s the fuel I used to get moving yesterday: a timer set for fifteen minutes and People Magazine as a reward for sticking out the fifteen minutes (my version of three inches).  I know I have a problem with magazines and should be in a 12-step program, but there are worse vices.

Now, an aside here: Give. Me. A. Break. Christie. Brinkley.  A mom of three?  Sixty?  What unrealistic expectations you are inflicting upon woman-kind … this is not progress!

The article surrounding the unbelievable photos ends with Ms. Brinkley saying, “Even when I’ll be sitting here with gray hair and Georgia O’Keeffe wrinkles, people are going to say, ‘There is just something youthful about her.'”  Youth above all!  Let me just say that we need more pictures of beautiful older women like Georgia O’Keeffe on magazine covers.  As much as it is a feat worthy of NASA to defy gravity and age, the way Christie Brinkley has ( and it’s so totally not a case of sour grapes, of course), I sense a feeling of desperation in a woman who has to forever live up to her 1979 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover.

Artist Georgia O’Keeffe had her share of sexy photos, notably ones, like this one below, taken by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

I will be very surprised if we ever see a former super model photographed with deep wrinkles like these.

Okay, back to the point of this post.  I made a claim to process, purge, expunge a pile a day of paper in our house every day in February.  I took a count of the piles my younger daughter so generously sorted for me, and … (drum-roll) … there are exactly 28!  I’m not kidding.

Pile number one: vanquished.  I’ll leave you with a much more pleasing sight, a sample of Georgia O’Keeffe’s art:

(By the way, if you Google “Georgia O’Keefe Art Images,” be prepared for a riot of color and sexy forms, perfect for a drab Winter’s day.)