Simple pleasures -- Friday, chai day

The first time I ever tasted chai, my friend Mina's mom, Mrudula, made it for me. Who knew how good black pepper, cardamom, ginger, and other spices could be when steeped with Taj Mahal tea and scalded milk? Some years later, Mrudula shared her masala recipe with me, and ever since, whenever I've wanted a more nourishing cup of tea than you can make with just a tea bag, I make MMMMM Chai... Mina's Mom Mrudula's Marvelous Masala Chai. 

A few years back, I did a bit of research into chai and discovered that it has a bit of rebellion in it. When England colonized India, the British decided that the top grade teas grown in the country would be labelled "English Breakfast Tea," and the lower grade, more bitter teas were left to the people of India, at prices that were unfair. 

But the people of India improved their own special ways of turning any tea into chai that rivalled that English Breakfast stuff by making rich, frothy, spicy, and flavourful blends with spices unheard of by the Brits, who pooh-poohed the culinary wizardry of chai wallahs. The colonizers clearly didn't know what they were missing! And their variety of tea has never been as popular on the whole as chai.

My daughter loves chai as much as I do, so we've decided that every Friday is chai day. Of late, she's been taking a course, so I have to pour her sweet and spicy chai into a travel mug to go with her, while I sip mine in peace while sitting in my prayer chair on Friday mornings.

If you're interested in a good chai masala recipe, I have one. All you have to do is ask -- Mrudula doesn't mind if I share it with friends.

Simple Pleasures: Nature's tenacity

Yesterday, the sky was full of thousands upon thousands of sandhill cranes migrating north, sometimes playing in the thermals overhead, flying in spiralling clouds that looked as though they might crash into each other. Can you see them? I wish I had a better camera and could capture the sound that makes me look up every time!

Violas also appeared this week, pushing through a crack in the sidewalk.

And the scille that were eaten by some small critter in my yard? Well, a small patch of them survived!

In these days when human news seems to be going from bad to worse and I'm struggling to keep my chin up sometimes, there's nothing like nature's tenacity to remind me that greater forces are at work than human plans and economies.

Things are always changing, and that calls for adaptation. The cranes will adjust their flight paths, the flowers will bloom earlier or later, and wise human beings will find ways to work together for the common good.

Nature's tenacity is in all living things no matter what we two-leggeds do. These days, I'm finding that tenacity everywhere, and delighting in it. It's better than letting the news get me down.

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Simple Pleasures: a hot "cuppa"

I don't remember much about Grade Seven, but Mrs. Pisesky, my Home Economics teacher, comes to mind whenever I make a pot of Orange Pekoe tea. It seems to me that when she taught us the basics of baking soda biscuits or whatever Home Ec meant in those Grade Seven days, she had us make tea, too.

Coming from a family of coffee drinkers, tea was rather exotic to me. But I learned to like Orange Pekoe because of Home Ec. To this day, a cup of it wakes happy olfactory memories, somehow. I suspect Mrs. Pisesky bought good old-fashioned Red Rose tea, and I learned to drink it with a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of milk in her Home Ec class once a week, long before I became a coffee drinker.

When I reached High School, my friend Mina introduced me to her mom's spicy-milky chai. Who knew how good black pepper, cardamom, ginger, and other spices could be when steeped with Taj Mahal tea and scalded milk? Some years later, Mrudula shared her masala recipe with me, and ever since, whenever I've wanted a more nourishing cup of tea, I make MMMMM Chai... Mina's Mom Mrudula's Marvelous Masala Chai. My daughter loves it, too.

After becoming a Second Cup coffee addict during university, tea left my consciousness for quite a while. But a 2016 January High Tea at Jenny Butchart's Residence in the gardens named after her (near the staunch High Tea city of Victoria B.C.) started me on a slow but steady turn toward a morning cuppa. Coffee's caffeine was getting to be too much for my inherited Essential Tremor, and during that visit, my best friend introduced me to a world of teas made from all sorts of blends of lovely organic herbs and spices. I owe Cathy a debt of gratitude for that!

And some of those teas have such lovely names. Pink Pearl (Green and White) Tea. Bachelor Button (Black) Tea (from Butchart Gardens). Gingerbread (Rooibos) Tea. And there were many others. My favourite at the moment is called White Divine, which has a light blueberry flavour and comes from a local coffee shop.

And then there are the backyard teas -- mint, and lemon balm, and raspberry leaf to settle an upset stomach. I've never been a big fan of the super-fruity commercial herbal teas, but they are a nice change once in a while. The teas mentioned above are just the shallowest end of the pond... there are thousands, if not millions of varieties, and more and more people inventing their own blends, which I would like to learn to do myself.

Don't get me wrong -- I haven't completely given up on coffee -- I drink decaf quite regularly, and still love my Lidia espresso once a week. That's a simple pleasure, too.

But after a weekend of feeling under the weather (no thanks to Spring Allergies that masqueraded as potential covid-19 and spoiled Easter plans with family) and several "restorative" cups of tea, I just want to draw attention to the simple pleasure of a good hot "cuppa" whatever kind of tea you prefer.

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Simple Pleasures: Cloud watching

My favourite cloud of 2021

With the return of Spring, we're back to that time of year when the sky moves into focus -- or maybe my perspective does. Probably the latter, because as the seasons change, I find myself spending more time outside when the air is warmer, the light is brighter, the winds are softer, and the skies are bluer.

I don't know about you, but my eyes are drawn more often to clouds in warmer seasons. In days of deep-freeze, I'm so huddled into my furry-fringed hooded jacket that it's hard to really look around. But on warm blue-sky days, clouds steal the show.

I have always loved the fluffy masses of mist that float across the sky, and trying to see things in them. Being born and raised on the prairies, I somehow feel sky in my bones, if that makes any sense, probably because it was the biggest thing around when my family lived in a very flat place during my childhood. 

Sky is still the biggest thing around, but when our focus is this earth-bound dimension in which we live, sometimes we forget to look up to see those white cotton puffs, undulating grey waves edged with pink/purple/silver/gold, or towering dark cumulonimbus monsters with tongues of lightning. And really, that's a pity. There's so much to see!

My cousin Charlotte is a cloud watcher. Every so often she posts her own images of clouds that take my breath away, with the tag #cloudsarefrequentlyawesome (you won't find that on twitter, because it's a special Charlotte thing). How I love her posts and appreciate her tendency to notice the extraordinary beauty in ordinary things that, too often, we take for granted. Especially a sky full of clouds.

Clouds are poems just waiting to be noticed, as the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society expresses so well in this video below. Having our heads in the clouds now and then is good for the soul, for sure. 

Enjoy the clouds today, and if you can't get outdoors, check out the ones highlighted in this lovely eleven minute video. Some of them are quite amusing!

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Simple Pleasures: Green growing things (a.k.a. houseplants)

Meet Rex. Rex has been with me in one form or another for four or five years. My husband and kids call Rex "the ugly plant," but I think she is incredibly gorgeous, especially when the sun strikes her in certain ways.

I have my friend Jocelyne to thank for introducing me to her a few years ago. I had never seen anything like her, but she was sitting in Jocelyne's window with sunlight shimmering on her fuzzy leaves, and I was drawn to her shapes and colours as though she was a magnet. Pictures just don't do her justice. 

I asked Jocelyne if she would give me a cutting, and she promised me that when the time was right, she would share some of her plant's progeny. And here we are, maybe five years later.

What's funny is that I didn't know Rex's official name until yesterday. When people (who are not my family members and have no biases against Rex) visited and commented on her beauty, I would inevitably ask them if they could identify my plant. No one could.

So yesterday, I finally solved the mystery. I web-searched "houseplants with purple veins." No go. I tried "purple-veined houseplants with long stemmed leaves." That got me a little closer. I tried "plants with red markings." I don't remember what finally worked, but eventually I found a picture of a plant similar to mine, and that led me to a whole page about Rex Begonias, which vary in colour and size. 

My mom grows beautiful flowering begonias every summer -- you'd think I might have recognized the shape of Rex's leaves as similar to Mom's plants! But Rex has never bloomed, though apparently she can put out small flowers if conditions are right. However, according to the webpage, those small flowers can't compete with the beauty of the plant's leaves.

If you haven't yet guessed, houseplants are one of the simple pleasures in my life. A friend of mine recently discovered the joy of green growing things in her home, and she's suddenly the proud mom of over 100 of them because Canadian Tire had a sale! 

I have a quarter that many, accumulated one at a time, many of them gifts, and most are surviving quite nicely, though they are often somewhat neglected during outdoor gardening season. We recently had an annoying fungus gnat infestation, but even that didn't diminish my joy much. (As much as I abhor pesticides, Lee picked up some Dr. Doom pyrethrin powder made from some sort of chrysanthemum compound, and the tiny fly-up-your-nose flies are down to a dull roar once again).

In places where winter is long and dark, houseplants are a simple pleasure that can enliven any room with a spot of colour and better air quality due to plant-filtered oxygen. I used to keep my plants all in one area, afraid I would forget to water somebody, but now they're spread around the house, and I haven't lost anyone yet. Lee has appreciated the plant companions in his work-from-home office during the pandemic, too. He says the air quality is better. 

Not all of my plants have names, but I have named a few that came to me because of special people:

Mary-John (from Lee's Polish grandparents)

Ruthie (from a cutting snitched
from the hospice where her
final journey took place five years ago)

Gaby (my dear Belgian host-dad)

Jay (our youngest)

Lidia (my Italian kaffee-klatsch friend)

and Louis (my father-in-law).

Just so you don't think I'm totally off my rocker, the rest of my plants are nameless, and the ones mentioned above have their names mostly in my head because of the loved ones connected with them. By all rights, Rex's true name is Jocelyne, because I think of her whenever her plant catches my attention. But I am delighted by the name Rex, too, because I've often thought a plant like her may have been around long enough to witness the tyrannosaur's era. She has that look about her, somehow.

Are there plants in your life that bring you joy? It's a question worth thinking about. If you like, send me pictures and I'll share them... The more we can be aware of our Simple Pleasures, the more gratitude floods our lives and reminds us of the good that surrounds us even in these challenging times, and I don't know anyone who can't use more goodness and gratitude. 

Thanks, Jocelyne, for sharing some simple pleasure with me through your Rex Begonia!  Even though I will never convince my family of her beauty, I love this plant, especially when I remember who gave her to me...

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Simple pleasures: sheets dried in the sun

Happy St. Patrick's Day, dear readers!

The birds are singing "it's almost spring!" and there's some good, solid warmth from the sun today. There's still a good 2 feet (60 cm) of snow, but with temps getting up to 9 degrees C (48 degrees F) this afternoon, I decided to wash and hang our bedsheets on the line. There's nothing like crawling into a fresh air-ed bed at the end of a long day!

With war constantly in the news, and local political shenanigans/divisions, I haven't felt particularly inspired to moodle lately, but today I signed up for Monday Night Write Night with a favourite local author through our public library, and I've decided it might be fun to do a little series of moodlings on life's simple pleasures. So if you have any favourites that you'd like to see here, let me know. Otherwise, you'll simply be subjected to mine.

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Fresh sheets seem to be a great place to start, and I suspect St. Paddy would agree. Enjoy your day, wherever you may be!

A sun dog of a different kind

When it's so cold that the sun has little snatches of rainbow around it, we call those glowing prismatic spots sun dogs. But here's a sun dog of a different kind...

I'm so happy to see the sun rising in the sky. Every day, it gets a little higher, and Shadow has noticed, too. He's finally able to enjoy his sunbeam on the dining room floor again...

Mmmm, this is good...

Were you talking to me?

No? Oh, good.

Life's simple pleasures. Ahhh....

Simple Suggestion #131... Read some classic literature

Here's my crinkled-covered, ancient copy of Don Quixote. I've been working on reading it for more years than I can determine. For a long while, anyway. The reason I'm moodling about it today is that I was recently reminded of it. On a Sunday morning radio program last weekend, there was an interview with a young woman who was reporting on her plan to read classic literature this summer. You know, Great Expectations, Moby Dick, Sense and Sensibility, and others of that ilk. She went on about how her generation missed out on so much classic lit in school, and as a result, doesn't understand how The Classics have influenced society. For example, after reading The Count of Monte Cristo, she suddenly understood that a television program she'd been watching was modeled on it! Something called Revenge.

The interview made me smile. By the time I was her age, I had managed to read a few classics, and had plans to read more. Mr. Brown, a gentle old soul who lived down the block when I was growing up and did many oil paintings of dairy cows (maybe he was from the Isle of Guernsey??) insisted that I read the the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. I did, just to make my neighbour happy, but he never did talk me into reading Beowulf after that -- it was a bit much. In High School we had to read Jane Eyre, which I didn't like, and Pride and Prejudice, which I did. I've read a pretty decent number of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets thanks to Prof. Deluna's university Shakespeare course, and I must admit I enjoyed it, though she and I almost had a fist fight over the spelling of Goneril (how was I supposed to know that my copy of King Lear (which wasn't the one she had had ordered for the University Bookstore because I got mine at Coles) consistently spelled Gonerill incorrectly? My essay went from a 35% to a 90% once she forgave me for using my book's misspelling). I had a fantastic time reading Les Miserables on a tour through Europe, and last summer I finally read (and loved!) Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. There are a lot more classics on my list that will likely go unread simply because life is too short, and there are great new books coming out all the time with contemporary language and stories that are easier for modern minds to follow.

Even so, Don Quixote and I have a long-standing relationship that I can't abandon. I suspect I picked my copy up about a dozen years ago, around the time that I happened upon a Man of La Mancha video at the library. Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren, 1972. Talk about a classic movie! I had seen the musical at the Citadel sometime in my early twenties, and loved it then, and even though you can't beat live theatre, the movie didn't disappoint. So that's probably when I decided to pick up Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's book and see how the Knight-errant came off the page.

My copy of Don Quixote is 785 pages of tiny, tiny print and I soon discovered that the Wordsworth translation I chose requires a lot of patience. So much so, that if I happen upon another interesting book, it's sure to be read before I return to Sancho Panza and his master. Last year, a new fourth-centenary translation came out, and a friend who knows that it's taken me so many years to plough through my copy suggested that maybe the new version would be easier to read. At that point, the Knight of La Mancha had been sitting idle on my night table for over a year. I signed out the new translation, and returned it to the library when my time was up. It's just one of those books that's going to take time, I guess.

If you're reading this, you might be wondering why I don't just give up already. Well, the problem is, I've written a book of my own, and Don Quixote figures in it rather prominently -- his story impacts my tale, and one of its main characters reads Cervantes, unabridged. And hey, if she can do it, so can I. After all, it's a classic.

Besides that, when I do sit down, determined to get through a few chapters of Don Quixote's misadventures, I am always amazed by the slapstick comedy, the witty satire, and the poignant moments of true chivalry or friendship within. It takes more than the usual effort to read it, but when I have the patience (as I have had over the years while sitting through my three daughters' swimming lessons) it's more than worthwhile. I find myself smiling at the mad knight with his heart of gold, and especially his squire, Sancho, who has a cliche or proverb for every occasion. They far outshine the sensible, uncrazy people in the book, to the point where they come off wiser than all those who call them mad. Really, it's great stuff!

So lately Don Quixote and I have been going to swimming lessons together again. If you want to bring your own book and join me in the bleachers, you're most welcome.

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Simple Suggestion #114... Sing a song

I'm still really enjoying Edward Hays' Chasing Joy: Musings on Life in a Bittersweet World (Ave Maria Press 2007, ISBN 13: 978-0-939516-78-0). Today I had to go back a few chapters to reread the ones about singing, just because they made me feel happy when I read them the first time.

Fr. Edward writes about how music is one of the best motivators for living a good and generous life, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. So often it's only taken the simple power of a good piece of music (the He's a Pirate Theme from the Pirates of the Caribbean really gives me a rush!) or a lively song like Phil Collins' You Can't Hurry Love to lift my spirits... and I can recall many times when work that seemed like drudgery somehow became more pleasurable because one bored person in the group decided to sing. It happens in our kitchen as our girls do the dishes sometimes. We also have videos of summer holidays where we were rowing a long stretch down a windy mountain lake and someone started singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Before we knew it, there were several additional harmonies and side versions and we had reached the far shore... in much better spirits than before we sang.

In ages past, people sang all the time. Soldiers sang as they marched... do they still? People in the civil rights movement sang to encourage one another in their rallies against injustice, and labourers sang as they worked. One of my favourite saints, Vincent de Paul, who had been sold into slavery (because a ship he was on had been captured by pirates), sang until the lady of the plantation noticed him in the fields and made him her "house servant" instead... a considerably cushier job. He eventually won his freedom.

Unfortunately, in our world of music videos, cable radio and iTunes, a lot of us have forgotten about the joy of singing, alone or in a group. We've become passive listeners a lot of the time because it's Adele who has the pipes, not us. But by denigrating our own talents, great or small, we're doing ourselves a huge disservice. I'm not saying that we should all leave our homes in the morning as though we were the stars of our own version of Hairspray or any other hit musical you care to name. I'm just suggesting that adding a little more homemade music to our lives can't be a bad thing. It costs us and the planet nothing if we sing a few songs to lift our spirits. Few things make me happier than seeing someone singing in the car on their way to work. It's almost as good as listening to a little child un-self-consciously inventing her own words to a pop song!

Fr. Hays also reminds me that singing has healing power. He mentions how Alzheimer patients respond well when their caregivers sing... perhaps because the subconscious feels that if someone is singing, everything is alright somehow. And I suspect he's right when he says that "a song a day keeps the blues away."

So here's another one of my favourite tunes, from my favourite Coen Brothers movie, O Brother Where Art Thou. It's been stuck in my soul lately, so I've been singing aloud even though I don't have Allison Krauss' sweet voice. Why fight ear-worm music, I figure -- I might as well sing it until another piece comes along and takes its place. This one makes me happy in ways that I can't explain... maybe because it brings back memories of the first time I saw and heard it in the movie theatre, and felt like I was standing in the forest with the hilarious Soggy Bottom Boys, surrounded by the choir -- goosebumps time. A good, singable piece. Your secret mission today is to sing it aloud, or choose one you prefer, and see if it doesn't raise your spirits, and maybe even the spirits of those around you!

P.S. Happy Birthday, Cathy! Thanks for the many times we have walked and sung together, whether people were listening or not! "When I first came to this land..."

P.S. Again: Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Holiday happiness is...

...sleeping in.
...singing my favourite psalm, in harmony with my daughter, at church on Christmas eve.
...giggling at "Telestrations" at 1 a.m. Dracula's teeth couldn't have been drawn any longer, I don't think!
...sleeping in again.
...watching White Christmas and/or reading books with family on a quiet Christmas afternoon.
...Christmas dinner (and that yummy jello confection I told you about a while back)!

...taking a long drive to see our far away family in Southern Alberta.
...having good conversations, catching up on the news, and watching The King's Speech and My Big Fat Greek Wedding with them.
...sleeping in yet again.
...driving out to Dad's land to pick up one seriously heavy memento that is now waiting at our back door, to be situated in our garden in the spring (solid white granite).

...finding a pair of new pajamas at a boxing week sale.
...reading Anne Patchett's lovely and heartbreaking book, Bel Canto, a Christmas present from my dearest friend.
...watching my girls out in the playground, playing.
...listening to Cold Play and Christmas carols as we drive home.
...enjoying a cup of coffee -- in a new Sam Uhlick mug! -- with a bit of Mary Anne's homemade Baileys, and doing a HUMUNGOUS crossword puzzle.

I hope you're enjoying your Christmas week, too! Here's a little something just for your enjoyment, that my sister sent my way. Amazing!

Simple Suggestion #29/100... Listen for songbirds

There's a finch in the neighbourhood these days. What a warbler he is! Such pretty songs that delight me, with so many variations Glenn Gould would be jealous. If life is too busy to appreciate the song of a bird, it's time to simplify!

Enough said. I'm going to take the time to go outside and listen.

(In the meantime, if you've never heard of Glenn Gould, have a look at this little video).

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Do yourself a favour...

Please, on the next sunny Spring morning at about 8 a.m., step outside and have a listen. I highly recommend spending at least five minutes paying attention to the birds. This morning their love songs were just incredible!

Especially these guys. I guarantee that their music, in symphony with all the other Spring songsters, will give your spirits a lift and get your day off to a great start.

I'll be moodling about more simple Spring pleasures over the next weeks, no doubt...

Slowing down to appreciate the simple things

When we live in haste, we end up taking so many things for granted. As a result, we miss out completely on a lot of the best things in life.

Here's a lovely little video from Greece that wins Maria's Appreciation Award for the week. As with last Sunday's video (which has since become my favourite song) this one deserves some sort of prize -- especially with the little twist at the end. Slow down, and enjoy.

Simple pleasures... and letters

On Friday, I received a bona fide letter from my auntie Kay. I can't begin to tell you how happy it made me. Not that she was sending me amazing anecdotes, incredible insights or wondrous wisdom -- she was just connecting with me using one of my favourite methods of all time. I also liked the little newspaper joke clippings she tucked into her card. One of them made me laugh out loud. I'll post it at the bottom, I promise.

When my children were small, I was a stay-home-mom who hovered in the living room watching for the letter carrier, exulting when George brought me a letter (we were on a first name basis). Email was in its infancy, so when babes were napping, I often pulled out some stationery and wrote a card or letter to friends who weren't yet internet savvy, and then I watched George for responses. In those days, he didn't often disappoint, as I had quite a few penpals, and even though my dearest penpal/friend lived in the same city at the time, we still wrote quite a few letters beyond our weekly Wednesday coffee visits. Now she's 1, 296 km away, but we still use pen and paper occasionally even though we also use email, Facebook and Skype.

Of course, we are the odd women out, as are my aunties, who still use snail mail. Though I'm well aware that hardly anyone writes letters anymore, I was a little bit shocked last week when my youngest daughter asked me to teach her how to write. She had brief lessons in grade three, and has forgotten every bit of them because "no one writes anymore, Mom. We type, or we print." I quizzed my older girls about their handwriting habits and learned that Fourteen-year-old never writes, and can't remember how to form capital letters, while Seventeen-year-old writes more often than printing because "it's faster." Of course, that handwriting is only when she isn't typing. My husband, being a computer guy, has never used handwriting much at all, other than in the love letters I have stashed in a special place.

In my books, there's nothing as satisfying as sitting down with a few blank sheets of paper and a good pen, the kind that flows perfectly with just the right amount of pressure on the page, and filling an envelope with an ink moodling dialogue about daily life for a far away friend who may reply on a similarly lazy afternoon. Letters have a unique way of capturing a moment in time through the expressive loops and lines of cursive writing. They seem to be more thoughtful and considered than rapidly typed emails and text messages, because rarely does a sentence end the way it was begun in a person's mind. I edit as I write, choosing just the right words, adjusting phrases before they become permanent on paper, adding words with a ^ here and there, underlining for emphasis. It's a pleasure I don't allow myself often enough.

And receiving a letter, a written record, a moment from someone else's lifetime, is like receiving a treasure. The paper bears the imprint of someone special at a particular moment -- a moment they chose to spend sharing thoughts across the miles. I've kept a few treasured letters from my grandmothers, and two boxes of "growing up letters" exchanged with the above mentioned dearest penpal/friend. I suppose it can be argued that email does the same thing as letters do, but most of the emails I receive are forwarded jokes, inspirational anecdotes and prayers that don't hold the same sort of thoughtful care that handwritten letters like my auntie's do. I do appreciate personal email messages, but their computer fonts just don't warm the heart the way handwriting does, no matter how messy it can get. It's rare for me to get a handwritten letter and not have the immediate urge to respond. I temper that, though, because I don't want to be like a golden retriever puppy, all paws and tongue, bowling people over with my enthusiastic response and expectation for another letter treat.

So, Auntie Kay, I've checked my "immediate reply" impulse, but I want you to know that your letter was a joy to receive, and I promise I'll give it a couple of weeks and then reply. Thanks for your news, and for the jokes. As promised, here's the one that made me chuckle:

There was a very self-sufficient blind man, who did a lot of traveling alone. He was making his first trip to Texas and happened to be seated next to a Texan on the flight. The Texan spent a lot of time telling him how everything is bigger and better in Texas. By the time the blind man had reached his destination, a large resort hotel, he was very excited about being in Texas. The long trip had worn him out a little so he decided to stop at the bar for a small soda and a light snack before going up to his room to unpack his clothes. When the waitress set down his drink, it was in a huge mug. "Wow, I had heard everything in Texas is bigger," he told her. "That's right," she replied. The blind man ate his snack and finished his drink. After drinking such a large amount, it was only natural his next stop was going to have to be the restroom. He asked the waitress for directions. She told him to turn left at the register and it would be the second door on the right. He reached the first door and continued down the hall. A few steps later he stumbled slightly and missed the second door altogether and ended up going through the third door instead. Not realising he had entered the swimming area, he walked forward and immediately fell into the swimming pool. Remembering everything he had heard about things being bigger in Texas, as soon as he had his head above water he started shouting, "Don't flush! Don't flush!"

Simple pleasures... and walking

I've been going to work almost daily for the past week and a half. While I've been missing my quiet thinking time at home, and seeing my friend, Charleen, on Tuesdays, and going to the SSVP clothing room on Thursdays, I have enjoyed the work I've been doing and my time with my L'Arche friends. I've also really appreciated walking home.

I'm not a morning person, so getting my kids out the door to school and hustling the twenty-one blocks to work isn't really an option -- especially on the icy morning sidewalks. After the girls leave the house, I have just enough time to make myself a lunch and head down the alley to catch the 8:15 bus. I'm starting to know the faces of the passengers, and seem to have regular conversations about our Novemberish weather with a woman from Finland as we get off the bus at the mall. Then I walk the last four blocks to work, arriving at 8:30 on the button most mornings.

After a day in front of a computer screen in a stuffy office, the walk home is really wonderful. I keep a fairly good pace so that I can feel my muscles complaining just a little by the time I'm within a block of home. I love to take careful steps where there's ice and then to stride along where the sidewalks are clear, to breathe deeply, to feel the weight of my backpack and the slight perspiration between it and my back. I revel in the endorphins and the healthy feeling of a good walk, where I can moodle about things as I go, say hello to the people I pass, and appreciate that I'm not contributing to climate change though I am contributing to my cardiovascular stamina. When I see an elderly woman gingerly walking her dog, I am suddenly reminded that I will not always be able to swing along like this, unconcerned about the threat of slick ice beneath a skiff of snow, and I am grateful for present solidity of bone and strength of sinew. I appreciate it even moreso when I think of a friend my age who is awaiting a hip replacement because she was born with hip dysplasia. Cristina, I'm walking for you, too. I hope that surgery comes soon!

Walking has become such a marvelous simple pleasure, it's getting so that I hate to drive. Unsurprisingly, I don't hear the planet complaining...

Simple pleasures... and bedtime stories

Youngest child is home with a cold this week, and I'm grateful for the perks of being a mostly-stay-home-mom with a very flexible part-time boss. I worked yesterday morning while my mom stayed with Jay. After Grandma went home and we had lunch, we went to the bookshelf and sorted through old favourite children's books, and Jay spent the afternoon in bed surrounded with book characters they grew up with -- woolly wombats and happy hippopotami, Skippyjon Jones and Diary of a Worm, Sesame Street monsters and fairy tale princesses (not of the Disney variety). When they got tired of reading to themself, we read a couple of chapters of The Borrowers together, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were lounging in bed at the moment reading on by themself.

I have always loved to read to children. When I was teaching, the last 20 minutes of every school day were Miss P.'s reading time, and my students would relax, doodle at their desks, or sit rapt as we shared stories by E. B. White or Ursula K. Le Guin or Farley Mowat. We traversed African savannahs, American prairies, and the Land of Oz. When I left teaching to start my own family, I looked forward to reading to my own little ones, and have fond memories even of the books we knew backwards and forwards -- those repetitive, participatory stories like the Berenstains' "Big Brown Bear, Blue Bull, Beautiful Baboon, blowing bubbles, bicycling backwards..." and Sandra Boynton's hilarious little board book that had us all shouting, "But NOT the hippopotamus!" until we reached, "but NOT the armadillo!" at the end. And Hop on Pop... and Goodnight Moon... and how many chunks of stories can you still recite?

For years we lugged large bags of books back and forth from the local library, and discovered many favourites that sometimes still make their way back to us if my kids happen to spot them as they walk through the children's section. This week, in keeping with Valentine's Day, it's Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson, illustrated by Kevin O' Malley, in which Marylou, a very shy slug, keeps leaving little slime-trail love letters for Herbie, her chosen slug, but Herbie keeps getting conflicting reports about which of the garden slugs is Marylou. "I think she's the brownish one." "I think she's the pinkish one." It tells you something when even an avid gardener like me has a soft spot for these funny little slugs, but the humour of Herbie's ball cap (worn between his eyes), and Marylou's eye-ribbons and love poems completely won me over (though I still can't stand having slugs in my lettuce, and cover the patch with eggshells to keep them out).

Unfortunately, the bedtime story ritual has almost run its course with Jay only 18 months away from Junior High School (I try not to think about how fast they're growing up). These days, the only time I get to read with them is when they're not feeling great and it's a comfort to lean their head against Mom's shoulder and listen. Our other two kids are into thick young adult novels that it would take anyone half a day to read aloud, and they're such speed readers, they'd never be patient enough to listen since they could finish the book themselves in less than half the time. My husband and I read The Da Vinci Code together the spring that I had vertigo. I wasn't good for doing much else, so I read a couple of chapters every night until one Saturday afternoon when I sat in a lawnchair and read to him while he was painting our garage doors. Seems to me we ended up finishing the book at 1 a.m., and I was rather hoarse. It was fun, but not likely to be repeated.

I wonder, with all the changes coming via the e-book publishing industry, what will happen to future bedtime story rituals? Will children's libraries continue to exist? Will the powers that be come up with a larger Kindle (or whatever brand name you know) for the big glossy illustrations that little kids and parents love? How will they replace the chewable board book? Will we have to shop garage sales for the satisfaction of turning a page to find Waldo in a different situation?

Whatever happens, I hope to have more opportunities to share beloved stories with little ones, and that our children will be able to do the same. The bedtime story is a sacred thing, a sign that big people care about little people and want to share the best things with them, along with a cuddle. I'm so grateful to have had that opportunity for almost half my life.

Jay's up. Maybe we'll go read a few more chapters of The Borrowers together.

More on writing

I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, --no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. I know that. Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.        -- Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit (1987, Gray Wolf, ISBN 1-55597-260-8, p 15.)

My first moodling back in September made mention of Brenda Ueland by way of her being the woman who coined the word "moodle." Her book makes its home on my writing desk. It's my permanent reminder that writing is a good thing, something that I forget from time to time.

Being a writer since my first and only "book" was published in grade two, I've never stopped. I wrote myself through many journals in my angsty adolescence; into friendship with Cathy, my longterm penpal, who gave me Ueland's book and our very own writing club; into lifelong romance with my husband via loveletters that flew fast and furious across a hundred kilometres; and out of something I laughingly dubbed "semantic what-cha-ma-call-it" (aka the inability to recall and use more than two syllable words) when my daughters were small. Writing has been a joy to me all my life. It has helped me sort things out, find meaning, and share stories.

Unfortunately, it hasn't always been easy to believe in writing as something essential, even though it brings me so much pleasure. I have always had to fight the feeling that writing is a waste of time that could be spent doing other, more important things, whether it was studying for an exam, marking papers, doing the housework that never seems to go away, or getting a real job. There is always an excuse to avoid that which makes us happy, some duty that calls and keeps calling. But Brenda Ueland was right. No writing is a waste of time. I treasure my journals, letters, and stories from years gone by. As I have grown older, I've come to realize that getting the dust off the top of the refrigerator isn't nearly as satisfying as crafting a novel (or a moodling), and besides, the dust will still be there when I'm done, whereas, if I don't get an idea down quickly, it tends to disappear.

The other thing that makes it hard for an amateur writer to believe that her writing is important is the big box book store. If having a book on the shelf is a sign of success, I'm anything but a successful writer, so why continue -- especially if it isn't actually my lifelong goal to have a book on one of those shelves? The fact that I've written a novel that wouldn't fit on one shelf or another as far as genre goes gives me a rather hopeless feeling... until I remember that the person I wrote the book for quite enjoyed it, so I have succeeded, and who cares about the bookstore? If my novel should, by some miracle, end up published, that wouldn't make it any more successful, really. What matters is that I experienced the joy of completing a story that took seven years to somehow write itself, a story with a climax that took my best friend completely by surprise even though we'd discussed its possibility at one point. That in itself made the whole effort worthwhile.

For most of my life I've tried to write while my family was otherwise engaged. It hasn't always worked out very well in that I'd start as soon as the girls were in bed and end up writing until the wee hours when Lee was away on business trips, and inevitably be a cranky single parent the next day. Or there were the times that I'd just gotten rolling on a writer's block inducing section of novel, and it was time to pick up some child or other from someplace or other. When my novel neared its end, my poor family was basically ignored as I wrote like a madwoman, muttering to myself or giggling with glee.  Lee joked that he was a writing widower, and my kids complained that I couldn't hear them over the characters in my head as I wrote to the finish line.

Fortunately, moodling doesn't require the same intense concentration. My burning writing is behind me, unless I start the next novel that's bumping around in my brain. I'm trying to hold off on that until our girls have left home or are otherwise occupied so that they won't feel ignored by their mother. Until then, I'm enjoying my quick moodling jaunts in that they keep my writer's awareness sharp and "semantic what-cha-ma-call-it" at bay without removing me from the really important things that are happening at home.

I'm going on about writing here because it's my thing, but there are so many simple ways to find joy through creativity, like knitting, dancing, singing, refinishing antiques, building rockets, baking, or a thousand other things I don't have time to list. Writing, as a creative outlet, has made me a happier person. I have learned a lot from the process of letting characters develop and story lines progress. It's been almost as good as watching a garden grow, or a child. For the record, I'm still hoping my novel will be published somehow, as I think the story can do some good for a particular social agency in my hometown. I'll be sure to let you know when something happens in that regard.

The point is, it's wonderful to exercise creativity. It may even be essential to happiness. As I'm not actually a great or accomplished writer, I'm going to let Brenda Ueland end this moodling with a little piece of her wisdom:

...Why should we all use our creative power and write or paint or play music, or whatever it tells us to do?
     Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Because the best way to know Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth or beauty and express it, ie. share it with others? (p.179.)

A spot of Spring

I don't know about you, but by the end of January, I like to have a few fresh growing things in my life. These pretty little narcissi often find their way onto my kitchen table this time of year. They come from Burnaby Lake Greenhouses in BC, and they make me happy. With all the grey winter skies we've been putting up with lately, they're a spot of Spring sunshine, good for the soul. Once they've died back, I cut them down and save the bulbs to be planted in the fall, often forgetting where they've been planted until they surprise me the next spring.

Today I'm also thinking about the seventy tulip bulbs I planted in October, imagining them slowly spreading their roots under over two feet of snow and four inches of soil. God did a great thing, creating spring bulbs!

A simple hello

I've been walking to work more often since my moodling about Convenience vs. saving the planet (http://simplemoodlings.blogspot.com/2010/10/convenience-vs-saving-planet.html). For me, it's more pleasant to walk than drive anyday, though walking takes 35 minutes one way. It's even longer when the sidewalks are snowy and the path through the schoolyard of Vimy Ridge Academy is like a one-way mountain goat trail.

Unfortunately, as I walk, I often end up thinking about how unfriendly we urbanites have become. Where did we lose that little sign of civility known as "Hello"? Inevitably, I pass people on the streets, and I'm beginning to suspect that most of them think me a little strange for calling out a friendly, "Good morning." I try to greet everyone I pass, including the kids I overtake on their way to school, even if they have ipod cords running into their ears. Usually, I'll get a grudging "hi" back from the teenagers, but some of them keep plodding along, heads down, unreachable. I'm always delighted to meet one particular boy, maybe eleven years old, who greets me first. It's nice to see that some people are still inclined to smile and acknowledge a fellow traveller.

This morning I passed five people on my way to work, four of whom completely ignored my greetings. They had me wondering if perhaps they're unfriendly because of the shopping mall mentality that has taken over my city. No one greets a stranger at the mall unless they're trying to sell something, and I often get the feeling that when I salute people as I walk to work, they're ready to bolt the other way. Do they think I might ask something of them if they reply? Perhaps many of us have become skittish in our street civility because we've been approached by too many salespeople, telemarketers, panhandlers, petitioners, and politicians. But is that any reason to give up on simple courtesy?

As I reached my workplace, I came across a fellow shoveling the sidewalk in the schoolyard next door. After being ignored by the last four passersby, did I dare try again?

"Good morning," I called.

His face lit up. "Good morning! How are you?" he replied.

"I'm fine. And you?" I asked.

"I'm fine too. Isn't it a beautiful day?"

I stopped and looked across the chainlink fence at the one person who more than made up for the four-out-of-five who refused to respond. "It is definitely a beautiful day," I replied. Especially when a simple hello can make us both smile.

Simple pleasures... and making music

One of my favourite things in this world is making music, doesn't matter what kind of music it is. Singing a round, playing guitar, beating a drum, it's all good. What's better is when there's a whole group of people playing and singing together. I'm not one to sing solo, but I love duets and harmonies. Did you ever notice that participation is way more fun than just listening? My favourite musicians are those who come up with easily singable choruses, or leave spaces in their harmony lines for people like me to sing, or who invite their audiences to sing along.

Music is good for the soul in more ways than I can count. It carries emotion, memory and joy like nothing else. My parents both came from musical families, and they've never stopped making music. Some of my early memories include "sing songs" with rooms full of people and my mom's brothers playing piano and guitar. I remember asking them and my dad to sing "Blue Spanish Eyes" for my decidedly un-Spanish dollie! And they did!

When Mom and Dad gave my sister and me 12-string guitars for Christmas 30 years ago, we didn't know that we would enter into the sing-a-long tradition. My youngest sister plays piano, and the three of us have played for a few dozen sing songs over the last fifteen years. Recently, my daughter requested a sing song for her birthday, and a half dozen of her school chums were initiated into the tradition. Will it continue with the next generation? I hope so.

It doesn't take much to make music. I'm not a very talented guitarist as I never took lessons, can't play a bar chord to save my life, and rarely practice, but in a pinch I can lead a group of kids or adults in singing "I am a Pizza," or "Let It Be," and thoroughly enjoy the process. A lot of us sing in the shower with only the sound of water as accompaniment and enjoy that, too. Unfortunately, somewhere along our lives, too many of us lose the small child's ability to sing completely un-self-consciously -- and the joy that goes with it.

Making music is magic, an endorphin-producing pleasure that should happen more frequently than it does. A European cell phone company capitalized on this idea, and invited a crowd of people to raise their voices in Trafalgar Square -- a mega sing song. I love how everyone enters into the spirit! Why not sing along and up your endorphins on this winter day?