Posts of ideas and memories to share appear here as they roll in, with the most recent posted at the top. Enjoy. Feel free to comment (with kindness) or to share your memory that any post might spark for you.
If you visit my blog and the first lines look crazy, you might have caught me updating LIVE and adding a story, and you might be seeing it in progress. Sorry, the magic is in the editing. 🙂 Hang in or come back! Or scroll down, wayyyy down, to read earlier posts.
Newest blog first…
Next installment will be on Walking Tall, model school, bannisters, backward walking
LISTS R US
Today, April 8, is as good a day as any to list my lists.
True, most of our passwords are memorized, if we allow our browsers to do so, but a hard copy list must exist somewhere as backup and for its portability.
Then there are all the lists, beyond the To Do, which today carries this one.
I have to find a Canadian web host. In part for economic patriotism, and apparently, Canada has more privacy legislation. Does privacy even exist in a world where software follows our keystrokes, eyeballs, search patterns, and purchase patterns? Handy and a harbinger of free will lost.
My lists list also includes financial lists, from assets to accounts to places I can tighten my metaphorical belt. So much uncertainty all over the world. Some of it is systemic flaws coming to roost but mostly emanating from one mercurial source. The silver lining is the massive review and reflection that is going on in an arena that was previously populated and driven by numbers.
Bring back the stories. They infuse memories that might help as well as humanity now.
There will be more on the need for lists, I just gotta get started on the first set on the Ruby Choose’day. My fave day of the week and often very productive.
Scents of the City
One of the advantages of living on the ‘Left Coast’ of Canada, in Vancouver, BC is the early arrival, in terms relative to the praries I am transplanted from or Eastern Canada where my siblings live, of the blossoms. First, the snowdrops peep out of the ground so low and so improbably during still the official winter weeks and dusting of snow.
Not long after, various other hardy blooms come, and soon the cherry blossoms in pale pink and the magnolia also in pink, but sightings of fuscia trees in other neighbourhoods. They burst forth when ready from elongated and tipped pods, all grey and fuzz-covered, looking like baby antler buds.
Anticipating the inevitable profusion of colours, yellow, scarlet, purple and pinks and greens of both the foliage and some blossoms helps get us all through the gloom of why the city has been nicknamed Raincouver and the region, the Wet Coast.
Death, Dying, Discounts, and Dignity and Planning….
It was on one such Thursday in the first week of April that I came out for information at a little ‘fair’ about advanced care planning – an umbrella term for death, dying, burial information and it being both Vancouver and 2025 and safe to feature – care for our diverse population be it ethnic or gender.
I took away brochures and single pages. They were meant to add information to what still needed to be gone and to confirm what I had, mostly, accomplished in setting up my will. THAT is an entirely separate chapter for me to write. And I will. See what I did there?
The location was lovely, but the bus situation home was confusing. I took a taxi there to eliminate guesswork and exhaustion on my part, as either transfers or a lot of walking to get to the one bus were required. So many blocks would need to be walked to go home that I chose to simply walk. It was a glorious day. And, as has been my strong feeling of life and gratitude for it when leaving funerals since my youth, it was the same wholehearted embrace of all my abilities to walk away from a place of death information.
With only my urban walking poles and not the walker, I stepped a total of 6,500 steps. More than any day, possibly two days combined in the past 1.5 years. Granted, the first leg down Burrard’s beautiful even sidewalks and cars on the 4 lane road took me to sit to rest between the Shoppers pharmacy counter and the blood pressure machine.
Always on a time limit to the next bathroom, I didn’t tarry. Scouting the prices and items suitable for my 20% senior discount, I came away with only mushrooms. Fine. Chocolate was outrageously priced, and so were my other snacks, pistachios and certain chips, and 2x a year, Hawkins’ Canadian family produced excessive salt and orange sprayed on cheese coating from the same plant in the Maritimes and long-term employees.. Cheezies.
I went home contemplating the best choice of colour for my Olympian effort medal.
In the evening, I went out for an item up 4th Avenue to another Shopper’s Drug Mart, to wheel a heavier item home using my Mercedes, as I refer to my black walker with cushioned seats and functional basket below.
And so, I managed to pack in 6,500 steps heroic on the first count and supported on the 2nd. The pitfall was wearing my rigid Birkenstock sandals with white socks. Fashonistas, avert your eyes. The truly missing bit was that tiny layer that makes a big difference – orthotics – and my ankles paid for that in weakness the next days.
Voting with My Feet
My feet made their presence known most on the trek to vote in the city’s by-election. A walk 2x as long as Google promised even on a day I was rested and took my walker for speed and ease while secure.
It was important that I vote. Tensions are super high due to uncertainty about housing and development in the city of Vancouver and the precarious pecuniary (money) situation many of us face. We live in one of the world’s most expensive cities. The times demanded I make even Herculian efforts to get out and vote TEAM,
Luckily, I was told by 3 people, at intervals blocks apart on my journey to fulfill my civic duty and privilege, to go into the express line for seniors and the disabled. Family also. I was prepared to limp and drool if my gray hair and heavy breathing while clutching my walk were not enough to get me to the VIP ramp.
People were patient, accommodating, and kind as I quietly said, ‘rolling up behind you’. Unfortunately for many others, they joined the line snaking around the block for 1-3 hours to vote before getting just inside the building and seeing an 8×11 sign taped to the glass saying there was this special care option.
4,500 steps that day and some questionable items in my grocery purchase on the way home. No light Saturday Night out for me!
To Write or Not to Write? The fortitude in the first words…
Dreamt of writing? Beginning can be natural and easy. You can write what you dream for your life and keep it private so what you imagine is not vulnerable to comment or crushing before you are ready to bring it to the public world. You can record the past to capture bright moments or diffuse difficult ones by putting them into print to see clearly in front of you.
Committing your first words to paper or a page on the screen is your first decision. Fail to follow through at the risk of having the disembodied spirits of your thoughts stumble about aimlessly in your head and heart. All else flows from that first word you put down.
It is bold to ‘just begin,’ and it begets the attention of the universe to help you. I am told this any time I get stuck – not for words- but the fortitude to ‘put myself out there’. Starting and sending in finished work for clients was never as great an issue as writing my own experiences.
Your next steps are simply to add words and create a sentence. When you get to the end of that first sentence, uncensored, you lay down another sentence until you have formed a paragraph.
Repeat.
To begin the process of pulling out your unique message first to yourself and then the world, you need only to master the physical ability to hold an instrument of expression. A pencil, pen, or, for fun, a tool that emits colours as your thoughts take form on the page. I sometimes use voice dictation to send myself a note in an email, as I am fortunate that the software accepts my voice and intonation fairly accurately.
At the very least, it is more legible this way but it is not my preferred way of writing.
Here is a link to some love written by me in April 2012 for the practice of writing by hand and the boost it and doodling give, free of charge to your brain and soul!
I am a big believer in the beautiful and collaborative communication between the physical movement of a hand transcribing the thoughts and inspirations between it, the arm, and the mind at the other end. One fuels the other’s energy and stokes creativity.
Writers sometimes don’t fully know what we are thinking until we see it.
So, feel free to explore and to pour your expressions onto any size paper you like. I like a big paper canvas so I can use colour or markers and if I am having a messy handwriting day I write larger for clarity and I use all of the space as if it was a painting. It helps me discover yet more – be it boundaries or bold new thoughts!
As always, there is more to come, so stay tuned.
Share a thought or a special tip for others to use.
I’m in the Kitchen a Lot (1st course entry on cuisine)
Movies I grew up with set in army or shipboard kitchens, and possibly prisons, often had someone sent to KP or kitchen patrol. The scene usually included a man hunched over a pile of potatoes, wielding a peeler. It was a demotion from regular duties and military life because it was a lesser use of someone’s time, despite Napoleon saying, ‘An army marches on its stomach.”
I find myself now in the kitchen a lot. Why?
As a single senior, I am solely responsible for my care and feeding. A lot about my well-being, body, and spirit revolves around nutrition. During the lockdowns, a good friend, a bit older than me, used to her husband doing all the cooking (he passed quite a while ago), and she found it hard to get into the kitchen and produce very much that was satisfying. She always said, “You eat more healthfully than I am.”
The truth of it is that I liked food. I like it clean, quality, fresh, and simple. Organic is a nice to have, unless we are talking the ‘dirty dozen’. I fork over (see what I did there) the cash for those choices, beginning with my beloved berries.
I don’t mind touching my food, which is good because there are many steps repeated daily unless you want to buy ready chopped foods whose origins, age, and sanitary status are unknown. They are often in bacteria-laden bags. All summarized by a former friend from Stuartburn, Manitoba, when she pronounced in a kind of frenemy way decades ago, “I’ve never known anyone as devoted to fresh food as you. Where I grew up, even the cans on the shelves were often past their best before date.”
Many ‘eaters’, as I call those who consume but do not produce our food, don’t like the times it takes to select at the store (and some don’t even know the name of most of the produce or how to pick good ones), schlep it home, unpack, the clean and prep, the cooking if needed, and then the clean-up. Let’s not forget the last step – the compost bin.
It gave me great pleasure to feed people at my table over the years, and I would still love to be feeding people, but in person. Circumstances have changed. Service is not the problem. I sold a big and expensive set of Lagostina stainless steel cookware with lids from little pots to a Dutch oven for a song. I now can do anything with only 2 Wolfgang Puck stainless steel saucepans with see through lids and chrome knobs. They produce soups to stews, boil water for tea, and even turn out steaks direct from the freezer perfectly, as well as toast made with radiant heat.
For silverware, “tfu tfu tfu” as my silly mother-in-law (now 2x Ex due to my divorce and her death) would say to ward off the evil eye before she bragged. I do have the Birks silver plate set she started for me both as a lovely bonding tradition and the suspicion that I needed an introduction to social status. The first couple sets for the marriage (no wedding or registry) and then one pricey set each Chanukkah after that,. So, I am ready with 12 place settings. Emily Post etiquette devotees can have the right piece from appetizer to dessert and butter knives and tinier tea spoons as my guests.
If you know of anyone in need of a beautiful, not overly ornate (making it hard to clean and polish) set, let them know it is on offer. Cheap!
Why not use them? The new generation has their taste and money to buy what they prefer, and many only spend big on ‘vintage’ when it is someone else’s, not their own family.
Plus, the secret to solo food service and living life well in general is to treat yourself like a guest, so I use 4 of those place settings. No need for elaborate serving pieces.
I will leave my culinary conquests here for now. I have already jumped up from the desk multiple times to get my reward ready: a 6-ingredient salad using whatever was in the fridge, Bulletproof Brain Fuel as the oil and ACV, plus Celtic gray salt, nuts and seeds from ‘the larder’ nearby. Low salt canned Sockey salmon salad with chopped celery and green onion on heavy European organic rye. I will be paying for the rye gut wise as it is a grain…but woman can’t live by gluten-free alone. Plus, it is one of my ancestral foods. More on all this on the next course served up some time in the future.
I’ll share the secrets of Rose Kennedy, my mother’s kitchen love, and the foods of ‘my people’.
Please leave any comments, questions, suggestions, or your stories. I will relish them. See what I did there?
Bouncing into basketball memories…..
It was high school in the 70s, and I had the fun and duty of representing as part of an all-girls team playing basketball in a small league of private schools. Today, I’d like to share that experience with you.
Hoops of Hope – A social media summit followed by b-ball court time [Continue reading]
