New Blog Topic: She’s NEAT

November 27, 2012 at 5:56 PM (Aesthetics, decorating, Feng Shui, home decor, Personal Organizer, Uncategorized, Wellness)
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In addition to musings and ramblings about the world of Tarot, comedy clubs, and yard sales, you’re apt to be seeing some posts here about a new business I’ve got going called She’s NEAT.

I’ve come to understand that not everyone desires — or is able to — be neat … be organized … know where to find things in the house … provide compartments for various types of screwdrivers .. make sure their spices are lined up in alphabetical order.

OK, I don’t do those last two things, but I wish I had a dollar for every time someone remarked on my tidy home and/or my organizational skills. I’ve decided to put this surely-genetic trait to some good use and am offering it up as She’s NEAT: a personal organization service offering practical esthetics for home and office.

The business will provide de-cluttering services, space clearing, furniture placement and rearrangement, closet overhauls,  functionalization of work spaces, and in essence, find ways to create a functional and harmonious environment in which you can go about your business.

It might not be readily apparent, but this new business has a great many similarities to the Tarot work.

A Tarot reading de-clutters the mind. A Tarot reading clears the air of misconceptions; it rearranges and compartmentalizes thoughts, feelings, and plans. A good Tarot reading paves the way for more intentional action and decision-making, and creates space for a more functional and harmonious life.

What I’ve been doing for chakras 3-7 will now also take place in the first and second.

An essential principle of feng shui is that a neat house is a lucky house. In the same way that we can’t  make a good decision when our heart and head is spinning with confusing and sometimes conflicting agendas, we can’t get out of the house in the morning if we can’t find our car keys. Turns out, neatness counts.

I work in the Southern Maine area, but even those of you who live “away” can send along your 2-minute videos! Send me the pics of your chaotic or inefficient spaces and we’ll cook up ways to get your everyday environment working more effectively for you.

Jeanne Fiorini is congenitally neat and organized, as is evident by the She’s NEAT Facebook page and the TarotWorks web site. So much to organize, so little time.

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2012 Yard Sale Documentation Project: Final Accounting

November 21, 2012 at 9:53 AM (Antiques, art, bargains, decorating, Estate Sales, Garage Sales, Goodwill, home decor, Tag Sales, Thrifting, Yard sales)
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And so we say goodbye to another yard sale season. Although it is a sad aspect of the turning of the seasons, 2012’s yard sale scene was one of the best in recent memory!

The sale-ing season was stellar in part because it was an abundant and fruitful affair, but also due to the fact that this weekly report added a real measure of pleasure to the whole thing. THANK YOU for paying attention to these weekly escapades!

As promised  the beginning, here’s the final tally: a record of the kinds of items that were purchased, and the not-so-grand total expenditure. To tell you the truth, I was surprised at how little money was spent during a season that spans three-quarters of the calendar year.

We’ll start with the types of items that came home with me, and the number of “pieces” in each category:

Furniture: Chairs, tables, rugs …..  6
Holiday Items: String lights, candles, décor …..  8
Prints and Paintings: Real art!   …..   7
Things for Vera: Books, toys, puzzles ….. 11
Utilitarian Goods: Stationary, office supplies,  kitchen utensils, baskets, plates, vacuum cleaners, smoke alarms, and a Hamilton Beach food processor  …..  27
Decorative Goods: Frames, mirrors, pottery, pillows, etc. …..   26
Clothing: Jackets, scarves, sweaters, purses, shoes ….. 7
Lawn and Garden: a mixed bag of garden ornaments, a barrel of straw,
and a free beach umbrella ….. 11
Jewelry: necklaces, bracelets, earrings  ….. 11
Books: including cook books …..  5

Total number of different items: 119. Where in this house did I put all this stuff?!

A few observations: I’m proud of the fact that Utilitarian purchases edged out my penchant for pretty things. That Hamilton Beach processor might be the single best buy of the season, especially if none of my paintings or pottery turn out to be valuable.

Clearly I’m not a book hound, with those items ranking last on the list. But my dear Ms. Vera did score pretty well from grammie’s little addiction. And that free beach umbrella, used on the back porch as well as the beach, was greatly appreciated for its form and function.

Now for the cash outlay for the entire season…..drum roll, please!

Care to make a stab at it? It might be fun to offer up a quiet personal guess before the big reveal….. scroll down a bit to see the final amount.

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$158.75. Total. For the whole season. For all that stuff. I am amazed and I lived through it!

Now who thinks I’m a crazy B with too much time on her hands?

Jeanne Fiorini is a crazy B, but not because she lives for yard sales. She’s just started a new local business in South Portland Maine called “She’s NEAT,” a personal organizing service creating orderly and efficient environments. With all this stuff she got at yard sales you have to be organized! Find us on Facebook: ShesNeatCreatingOrder

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Yard Sale Documentation Project: 11-10- 2012

November 11, 2012 at 9:59 AM (Antiques, art, bargains, books, Estate Sales, Garage Sales, Gardening, humor, Tag Sales, Thrifting, Uncategorized, Yard sales)
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Let’s see, where did we leave off?

October 20th

Rained out. Just as well, I was feeling uninspired i.e. lazy.

October 27th

We’re at the point in the season where the “just wander around and look for signs” approach is no longer effective. This is now a targeted effort. And while the number of sales in the classifieds for this Saturday is down to a mere 22, there are some tempting listings.

Although there was quite a bit of stuff out there today, I didn’t come home with much, and for two very good reasons:

1.  The “I really don’t need that even though it’s totally cute” mantra that still is cycling through my head.
2.  Severe price delusions by young’un’s who think granny’s stuff is valuable just because it’s old. They’ll get the message when the end of the day comes and they’re faced with a mountain of old pine and rusty tools and outdated junk.

But I did score a new stick vac (I don’t need a sincere vacuum since I only have throw rugs at my house) and a set of “Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf” finger puppets for little Ms. Vera.

Total outlay: $6, plus I was home in time to ready the house for hurricane Sandy who is supposed to show up on Monday. We had an earthquake here in Maine a few weeks ago; what gives, Mother Nature?


November 3rd
I worked this day, co-facilitating a Jung and Tarot workshop. A great group of inspiring and enthusiastic participants made it so that I only thought a couple of times about what I might be missing in YardSale Land on this sunny Saturday.

November 10th

The Portland Press Herald’s classified section declared on Friday that the yard sale season has ended.

I beg to differ. Despite clumps of snow and chilly temps, people were selling and people were buying on this second weekend in November. And, by some sort of fortuitous yard sale telepathy, several decent sales were clustered around a well-to-do area in neighboring Scarborough.

This “well-to-do” aspect can work in your favor and sometimes it bites you in the butt. Sometimes it means there’s high quality bargains in them thar hills; sometimes it’s a pre-cognition of the relativity of money and that the realization that the word “bargain” means different things to different people.

Kate and I operate under “the 10% rule.” If the yard sale price is 10% (or less) of what the item would cost new, a purchase is worth considering. Much more over that constitutes price delusion and we’re apt to be headed toward the car mumbling and grumbling.

It was amusing to me, but not surprising, to see again those same young’un’s referred to on October 27th, still tied to their imagined value of grannie’s junk. I picked up a pair of dessert dishes, marked $2, and asked the girl if she’d take $1 for them.

“Yes, $1 each,” with a glare she replied.

I could have done without the attitude. Back on the shelf they went, and I hope she enjoyed packing them up at the end of the day.

At a different sale, I observed a man drop $100 cash on two different piles of art prints. Both the seller and the buyer were thrilled with the transaction, and I have no doubt that the buyer got a good deal there; the prints were authentic and lovely.

As I said, money means different things to different people.

When it was all said and done, and it was done fairly quickly today, an eclectic and useful mix of things did come home with me. Here’s the tally:

1. Two funky cookbooks (I love that title, Lode of Vittles!) for my brother Bill who owns a B&B in the Adirondack Mountains, white Pfaltzgraff bowl, and two small notepads …. from the “Free” pile
2. Fisherman’s cross-stitch for my other brother Mike    …..$2
3. Five pieces of arty-crafty materials, always useful for my New Year’s Intention Map Workshop and the upcoming “Make your Own Holiday Ornament” event …..$1
4. Tall glass vase and Waverly Garden mug ……$1
5. Garden Scissors and heavy brass pine cone (from a coo-coo clock?) ….. $1
6. Three yards of burlap… any gardener knows you can always use burlap. …..   $1
7. Biographical fiction about the life of the Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, dated 1914 …..$1

Total expenses for the day: $7

Stay tuned for the final installment of the 2012 Yard Sale Documentation Project coming soon, where the full season’s accounting will be posted!

How much did she spend? What did she buy? Was it worth the time and effort? Does this woman need a new hobby? Does she need an intervention?

See you next time when you can decide for yourself.

 

Jeanne Fiorini is a Tarot professional and a yard sale addict who can stop any time she wants. Visit the TarotWorks website to see what Jeanne does when she’s not rummaging through other people’s stuff.

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It’s Me … No, It’s You

November 6, 2012 at 3:24 PM (metaphysics, Personal Coaching, Personal Growth, Wellness)
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Some of life’s great truths are, by their very nature, enigmatic …
simple on the surface but complex underneath …
contradictory …
aggravating.

Here’s one I’ve been mulling over lately.

Life Truth #2849: It’s always about you and it’s never about you.

We all are familiar with, and some of us have probably implemented, the classic break-up line, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Whether it’s said to simply to soften the blow and whether or not we know it to be true, it is.

How could it be any different? Whose eyeballs do you look through each and every waking minute? Whose skin have you occupied for as many years as you’ve been on this earth? Whose thought patterns and belief systems have been built up inside you, over your entire existence, to such a degree that you believe them to be who you are?

You are the receptor for all the information that is in the universe. You are the satellite dish for all your experiences. Your physical body is the antenna and the mother board for all that surrounds you. And your mind is the computer program processing it all. To add an extra layer of complexity, much of this happens without your conscious permission or awareness.

Of course it’s about you!

And then there’s the opposite yet also-true side of the story: The Other. So many times lately I’ve observed how a person’s reaction to something (a story, a movie, a comment, an experience) says more about them than about the initiator of or the experience itself.

“She hurt my feelings when she said I looked tired.” Do you have expectations about how you need to look? Is being tired something you don’t allow yourself to feel … or show? Do you think the person was being critical of you when she said that? If so, why is that?

Another: “I caught Richard in a lie.” Are you looking for ways that people lie? Why are you so quick to believe someone is lying? Is telling lies something that is familiar to you? Do you think everyone lies?

Maybe this is why one of The Four Agreements is to not take anything personally.

Our reactions are never really about the experience itself, but our perception of that experience. In some ways we could say this is the simple difference between, “Isn’t wintertime wonderful?” and “Winter sucks.” (Those of us who live in the northeastern US have learned that we can’t take the weather personally.)

But on a deeper level, this is the conundrum with which quantum physics confronts us: the proven truth that the observer creates the reality. Without an observer there is no experience.  As “The Oracle” in The Matrix movies says, “That will really bake your noodle.”

As far as I can tell, there’s no resolving the ambiguity of this truth. This particular human quandary makes it essential that each one of us be responsible for our own *&%# as deliberately and intentionally as possible. We all must try our darndest to be honest, centered, present, and authentic.

And, in this computer’s opinion, that’s a lot.

Jeanne Fiorini is a human program navigating the ropes course of existence. Check out the TarotWorks website for tips on how the Tarot can help guide and support you along your personal trapeze act.

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I Need To Get Out More Often

November 2, 2012 at 10:12 AM (Entertainment, humor, Personal Growth)
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My friend Margo has been testing out the local comedy club scene lately.
Portland Maine offers lots of venues for artists of all kinds, I suppose I wouldn’t have a Tarot business at all if this area wasn’t amenable to various sorts of
self-expression.

I do know Margo to be funny. We watch Patriot football together on Sunday afternoons and her comments on the players “outfits” keep me amused:  “I’d never root for a team that wears those ugly pants” or “Who designed that helmet with that tiny bird on the side, what were they thinking?”  This and a few beers goes a long way on a cold November afternoon.

Last night was open-mike night at a local bar, and since Margo’s been looking for a new place to strut her material in the future, we headed out. (Aside from having opinions about the fashion choices of the NFL, she has taken comedy classes locally and is a member of Toastmasters International, so she does have some sense of what she’s doing up there.)

We arrive around 7:30pm, the event scheduled to start at 8pm. Aside from the bartender, we’re the only ones in the place. Margo quizzes the bartender as to how many people usually attend, since this “Open Mike Night” is on their weekly schedule, and he assures us that 40 or so people will soon be walking through the door. We get a drink and stake out a table in the back row of the front section near the mike.

The small dark space does fill up by 8:30 or so. Margo and I are front and center to the comedian on stage, all the other patrons and participants sit or stand in the shadows behind us. We don’t yet realize it, but Margo and I are sitting ducks.

Six or seven comedians take their turn at the mike. There are a few laughs from the crowd, but mostly it’s painful. Ten minutes can be a very long time when all eyes are on you and you’re supposed to come up with something witty, pithy, raunchy, timely, hilarious, or otherwise entertaining. Most of what we had observed up to this point was wrenchingly protracted.

Contestant #7 arrives at the mike, beer in hand, shakes his head and says, “OK, I’ve got to ask… what are you two doing here? What, was knitting class over early tonight? Are you in here trying to justify the choices your children have made: ‘Oh well, as least little Amanda didn’t become a comedian.’ What gives with you two?”

It was then that I realized a few things:

  1. We were the oldest people in the joint. Everyone else was in the 20’s-30’s range and mostly dressed in black.
  2. Most of who was in attendance were comedians themselves, awaiting their turn at the mike. There might have been some friends and onlookers amid this gaggle, but for the most part, whoever was there had been there on a weekly basis and they all knew each other.
  3. I really didn’t like being called “old.
  4. I wanted to get up there and show them how to do it!

For instance, during her monologue an attractive red-headed woman touched on the name-branding of condoms, Trojans specifically, as a misnomer, since the famous Trojan horse spilled its manliness all over the place and created a big chaotic mess. Then she dropped it. This was a perfect opportunity to go into what does make an effective brand name for a condom, since the possibilites there are endless.

She also seemed to think that simply using the word “vagina” would get some laughs. I would have taken that ball and run with it: “That’s no vagina, that’s my love canal; my stairway to heaven, baby; my pink Cadillac; this here’s a man-eater; my tourist trap; my penis squeegee; ET: the  Erection Terminator. Look out, here it comes!” Hip movements and wide-eyed facial expressions would be mandatory.

Old knitter my ass.

I’m not putting these people down, mind you. I give them tons of credit for getting up there and exposing themselves in this way. It’s just that they could learn a thing or two from two old broads like Margo and me.

 

Jeanne Fiorini is now looking at ways to blend her new career of stand-up comedian with her passion for the Tarot. Visit the TarotWorks website to see how Tarot can bring integration into your life.

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The Tower Card’s “Plus One”

November 1, 2012 at 8:05 AM (astrology, metaphysics, Personal Coaching, Personal Growth, Tarot, Tarot Tips, Wellness)
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The Tarot’s Tower is a card that needs its “plus one” in order for its full meaning to emerge. As a single card all on its own, this image– no matter how forceful and dynamic — does not provide enough information to complete the sentence.

This card indicates sudden shifts in the status quo, perhaps unforeseen and shocking changes. But when The Tower card appears in a class discussion or in the context of a reading, I’m always going to be asking the question, “What is coming out of the Tower?”

Enter The Tower’s “Plus One.” The information this second card provides will tell us whether the shifting sands are busting us out of prison and lifting us onto a shiny new shore or plunging us into the depths of confusion and despair.

We’ve had to get used to the presence of Tower energy of late. I’m confident that there is not one among us who has not experienced radical changes, complex challenges, and unexpected shifts in life’s landscape during the past year or two.

From what I understand astrologically, November offers us another turn at bat with whatever is yet to be hit from the personal and collective ballpark.

Because I like my astrological forecasts clear and to the point, I’ve been following Carl Boudreau’s videos on YouTube. Invariably his words resound in my ears as I sit with people at the Tarot table, and I find his wise thoughts to be insightful and empowering.

Lucky me, I get to pass along this wisdom to my clients! Lucky clients, too, to benefit from Carl’s understanding of the Big Picture.

As we enter a new month, I’d like to pass along a single tidbit from Carl’s November forecast, a portion of his broadcast that rang through as a clear and present piece of guidance. Here it is, partially quoted directly and also lightly paraphrased:

People are going to be acting on the need for newer levels of personal freedom and self-expression. We’ll be asking for looser interpersonal bonds in order to achieve this different kind of relationship [with friends, lovers, relatives, co-workers]. We must stay away from abstract principles and dogma and instead, work things out afresh, concretely, in the face of new and emerging realities.

Apparently “Gimme Shelter” is out; “Gimme Space” is in.

As I understand it, this isn’t about jettisoning the people in your life and becoming an island unto yourself, but establishing a new sense of personhood, of individual freedom and choice.

No more “shoulds,”  or “need to do thus and so or so and so won’t like me anymore.” Whoa. Did some of you just start skipping around the room, or did you mutter “Oh crap.”

Apparently the Big U thinks we’re grown-up enough to cast off extrinsic behavioral guidelines and set our own parameters.

What do you think?

Jeanne Fiorini is a silly human trying to make sense of this existence. Visit the TarotWorks website to see all the ways the Tarot can help you make some sense of your existence.

 

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