Mama's Hands Are Never Empty

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

~Spanish Proverb

Inspirational Song

Simple Gifts

Dianne Schneider

All She Had

Mom stayed an extra night so she could give me her full day yesterday. You can now see the floor of my closet! Sounds like I'm 8 years old, doesn't it? Who else could I count on to come help me sort a messy closet, but my mother? She also ironed some of my jackets. We were so tired that we ate smoothies for dinner!

I called Mom at the end my work day today to tell her how my lunch of Butternut Squash & Mushroom Risotto was with my side of Broccoli Rabe (good!) and for us to exchange once again to each other our thanks for the weekend.

After dinner I called my sister. My sister doesn't drive. She drove until my niece was born 26 years ago, but she stopped then and hasn't driven since. Every now and then she needs my mom to pick her up from school (she's a teacher's aid). Today was one of those days.

As I was talking to my Sis, she said, "You know mom can't see me without bringing me something." Do I ever know this! "So when I got in the car, do you know what she handed me?"

"What?" I said.

"A baked sweet potato." I started howling.

"What?!"

"She said she looked around and didn't have anything else but a sweet potato, so she baked it for me."

I was still laughing--loudly. "Did you eat it?"

"No, she said it was to add to my dinner."

"I bet she thought you'd eat it right there in the car. You should have eaten it!" I said.

"Only you would think this was funny." She told me. I think it's delightfully funny, guffawing til you cry funny.

And the sweetest thing ever.

Cookin', Cleanin', & Poodles

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

The family - that dear

octopus from whose tentacles we

never quite escape, nor, in

our inmost hearts, ever

quite wish to.

~Dodie Smith

Inspirational Song

Sweet Southern Comfort
Buddy Jewel

Cookin' With Mama
My mom came to spend Halloween night with us. She only lives 45 minutes away but it's kind of unusual for her to come to our house without an occasion. It wasn't Halloween that brought her, though, it was the fact that she felt like I needed help. She knows I work late (I sometimes call her from my car when I'm leaving working after 7) and she said she wished she lived closer so she could help me cook ahead and bring me food.

So on Thurs. she called to see if I "wanted" her to come up and help me cook some meals ahead for the week.

Now many, many times Mama's idea of meals doesn't sync with what I need to stay on track. But this time she was really trying. She brought this sheet that a doctor had given her of meals for a week to stay on 1800 calories/day and we picked a dinner recipe that she liked.

We haven't eaten it yet (we will Monday or Tues.) but it looks good and it wasn't hard (not just because Mom basically made it!).

Asian Chicken & Cabbage

Heat 2 tsp of peanut oil and saute chicken breast strips (we just cut 2 small breast halves into pieces) until cooked through.
Remove chicken.
Add ~2 cups loosely packed napa cabbage (or savory or regular green cabbage) to the heated skilled with ~1 cup pea pods (I prefer sugar snap peas over snow peas), add 1 small can water chestnuts (drained), salt & pepper, and 2 cut scallions.
Saute until cabbage is wilted.
Add chicken back to veggies.
Add light soy salt to taste.
Add 1 small can mandarin oranges. Heat through.
Serve over brown rice.

I also roasted some beets. I'm going to heat some OJ & other items from a recipe later to put them in. And I bought broccolini, Brussels Sprouts, and asparagus, along with 5 kinds of winter squash: delicata, acorn, butternut, an orange one that had "red" something in the name, and a funny shaped green one that I can't remember the name of --starts with a K. When I cook 'em, I'll let you know.

My plan is to bring 2 or 3 vegetables for my lunch during the week. Last week I cooked some Brussels Sprouts with shallots & bacon & a tad of vinegar & brought small amounts as a "side" to my lunch--they were yummy. I know a lot of people don't like them, and I've gone through spells where I don't either. But if you cook them right (don't boil them or overcook them), they are good.

Cleanin'
Mom wants to help me sort my unbelievable messy closet, which I've complained to her about. Part of its disasterousness is because I can't fit into things and I already have tons of clothes I can't fit in in the attic in 2 big "hanging" boxes and also in the "TV room" closet. It's funny how quickly we want to get rid of fat clothes but how long we will hang on to smaller clothes.

I've been putting off the closet organizing because a) takes forever and b) it's a way to deny how huge I am. I'd show you pictures but it's unfathomable even to me.

Poodles
Mom brought her miniature poodle, Buddy. He looks like the "before" to our goldendoodle, Yeats. Buddy is ~7 years old, so the old guy, but the little guy. It's a hoot to watch Yeats lie on her belly to try to entice Buddy to play. She hops all around him, but she kind of "nips" at the top of his neck a lot which worries us a bit, but Buddy doesn't seem to react. I think they are having fun, but Mom & Hubby get concerned if either of them make noise. Sounds like playing noise to me. . .

I may try to get some pics later. . .I'm not sure I'll be able to capture the most delightful part of their antics.

(I love waking up with light outside! But don't talk to me around 4:30!)

[I just realized if I changed the order of the words of this title. . . it would sound some kind of horrible Halloween witch's brew!]

GoodBye Summer, Hello Fall

This wreath came down








And this one went up

Part 2: Local Living Means Letting the Day Count

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

To sit
with a dog on a hillside
on a glorious afternoon
is to be back in Eden,
where doing nothing was not boring -
it was peace.
~Milan Kundera

Inspirational Song

I Love My Old Bird Dog (and I Love You)

Local Living = Making a Life of the the Daily Events

This is a continuation of the last post I made about Living and Loving Locally.

Part of Local Living seems to me to be about becoming aware of and being satisfied with the little teeny tiny successes and accomplishments and interactions in each day.

I don't know how some people do it. Like look at Sean Anderson of The Daily Diary of a Winning Loser? Each of his days are packed with events. Of course his job is one that gets him out there with the public and and at events that are at least interesting to hear about. But he can make even the most mundane of things--the things you just have to do to sustaining yourself each day--like eating breakfast, sleeping, and talking a walk interesting to read through. I congratulate him on this. . . .my life seems so quietly uneventful next to his.

Another person who does this beautifully--and very consciously--is Maria of Little Things Are Big. She gets joy and satisfaction from taking a walk with her dog and noticing the leaves changing.

I want their kind of energy and optimism about the little makings of our lives!

I'm afraid I spend a lot of my life in "stew"--in my head a lot, tumbling worries and ideas and plans around like so many chopped vegetables, so that they all that simmering blends them together in one big brown, unidentifiable melting pot.

Even as a kid, I thought of myself as too smart and too worthwhile to lose any of my time on petty day-to-day tasks like making my bed. Making the bed, in my mind, was for less creative folk. I had things to do! Books to read! People to talk to! Journals to write!

In some ways, it was a similar argument with myself in terms of deciding not to have children (not just this, but it was a factor)--who had time to spend the evening making & monitoring meals so that kids ate nutritiously or giving them bathes or taking them to piano lessons? I had my own life to tend to! My own piano lessons to take! My own worries about nutrition to solve! Of course, I'm past the child bearing years now and I'm still fretting and stewing about the same issues sans the loving connection of kids. (Thank goodness for my "steps" --all of them--kids & grandkids!)

Recently my aunt gave me a huge bunch of clothes (26's, that fit, if that tells you anything)--and she included freshly laundered--barely worn, like new-underwear. After my initial thought of gross; I found myself thinking, I wish I could fold underwear so neatly and aligned--the very kind of thing I snobbishly have placed myself above spending time on! I neglected to realize that coming in the room to see a nicely made bed or opening a draw to nicely stacked undies gives you that mini boosting surge of happiness. . . and sometimes, that is enough.

John Lennon & the Bhutanese

John Lennon said, "Life happens while you're making other plans." I've started reading The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World again (I displaced it under the car seat during a recent road trip). The writer, Eric Weiner, goes on an international search looking for places that are the most happy. While in Bhutan, he meets with a happiness expert appropriately named Karma. I found this scene memorable and thought provoking:

"Karma, are you happy?"

"Looking back at my life, I find that the answer is yes. I have achieved happiness because I don't have unrealistic expectations."

This strikes me as an odd explanation. In America, high expectations are the engines that drive us, the gas in our tanks, the force behind our dreams and, by extension, our pursuit of happiness.

"My way of thinking is completely different," he says, "I have no such mountains to scale; basically, I find that living itself is a struggle, if I am satisfied, if I have done just that, lived well, in the evening I sigh and say, 'It was okay.'"

"Do you have bad days?"

"Yes, but it's important to put them in the perspective of insignificance. Even if you have achieved great things, it is a sort of theater playing in your mind. You think it is so important, but actually you have not made such a difference to anyone's life."

"So you're saying, Karma, that both our greatest achievements and our greatest failures are equally insignificant?"

"Yes. We like to think we really made a difference. Okay, in the week's scale, it may have been interesting. Take another 40 years, I'm not so sure. Take three generations, and you will be forgotten without a trace."

"And you find this a source of comfort? I find it terribly depressing."

"No, as we say in Buddhism, there is nothing greater than compassion. If you have done something good, then in the moment, you should feel satisfied."

I had a manager once who told me that she wished that I valued more what a great skill I had communicating with people (I didn't want to be promoted in the customer service aspects of my job; I wanted the path that led to editorial promotion so I could strengthen my editing and writing skills).

Another manager told me once I was "gifted" managing other people.

I hired someone once who later gave me a card with a picture of a drop of water hitting the surface of a lake and showing the concentric circles; she said I had no idea how much my faith in her had an ongoing impact on her life and confidence in herself.

In my current job, no one is falling over themselves to compliment me in such ways, but I like to think that I make my direct report's lives just a tad more fulfilling just by thanking them for their work and respecting their contributions and putting their lackadaisical moments and errors in perspective--like I try to do with my own.

Doing that at work comes easier than doing it with the personal stuff--feeling satisfied with a day filled with the mundane . . .the mundane that basically adds up to life.

Part 1: Live & Love Local--For Tomorrow You May Die

TODAY's INSPIRATION
I know the answer!
The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!

The answer is 12?

I think I'm in the wrong building.

Charles Schulz (Lucy Van Pelt in Peanuts)

Inspirational Song
Charlie Brown Theme
Vince Guaraldi

A Case for Local Living?

I got this in an e-mail from a friend and I don't know if it is really attributable to Charles Schultz or not, but it struck me as true in a bittersweet sort of way.

Charles Schultz Philosophy
The following is the philosophy of Charles Schultz, the creator of the 'Peanuts' comic strip. You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just read the e-mail straight through, and you'll get the point.

1. Name the 5 wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last 5 Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last 5 winners of the Miss America.
4. Name 10 people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name 3 friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name 5 people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of 5 people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.

'Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia (These last 2 lines are attributable to Schultz for sure.)

--Charles Schultz

Local Loving = Work Second, Family First
Of course what this means is the reverse is also true. All our attempts and dream to find immortality through fame and power are likely to result in a small poof--our real value is what we do and give and how we live on in those around us whose lives we touch.

It feels like our whole societal structure was not set up properly for this. We spend at least--and more like 10 or 12 hours a day preparing ourselves for work, getting there, and using our brain work and energy to make someone else's desires come true.

I'm even lucky enough to truly like my job. My career is my life in many ways. . .but I also see the pointlessness of it. I've left enough jobs to know that people start to downplay your value and contribution before you even get all your belongings out the door if you decide to leave (or if they decide to lay you off), and even the people who you share most of your life with now--all the day's ins and outs, the laughs, the inside jokes--they most likely do nothing to keep in touch either after the work connection is gone.

So there we are, giving our families the bits of energy we have left, struggling to re-energize ourselves to connect with them and laugh with them make a significant contribution to their spirits and psyches, without it just being a re-hash of our work day.

To remember each time we speak to them that they are the people we love most in the world. . . let them hear it in our voice.

Day 105: I'm an Art on Metal Kind of Gal

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy.

Dan Castellaneta

Inspirational Song

Your Funeral & My Trial

Sonny Boy Williamson

Artwork Admiration

I saw this artist's work--Fleetwood Covington--at both Atlanta's Folk Fest and Northport's Kentuck Festival. His expressions are amazing. I really like his work oils on metals--huge big colored metal pieces. . . I'm note sure it's the kind of art that Hubby would choose to live with.

White Harp
Fleetwood Covington,
Oil on Metal

Little Walter Fleetwood Covington
Oil on Metal Blowin'
Fleetwood Covington,
Oil on Metal

Day 101: Pleasingly Pumped

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

Habit is habit and

not to be flung

out of the window

by any man but

coaxed downstairs

a step at a time.

Mark Twain

Inspirational Song

Life Is a Highway

Rascal Flatts

Appreciating the Little Things

I've been doing pretty well with my food. Bringing my lunches--even when I have to punt like today. This AM I "fried" an egg and heated it up at lunch with a piece of veggie sausage and ate it on one of those Pepperidge Farm Sandwich Thins. I've had a few days where I'm a bit over my 1500 calories (because I lag on the calculations), but I am so much more on track and in charge. And I came home tonight really hungry and ate a 90 calorie bag of baked Doritos instead of just randomly munching on whatever I could grab out of the fridge. It feels good.

Exercise Ponderings
As I am planning my exercise habits. . . getting my arms around likely having to get up earlier. . . argh. . .I'm thinking about climbing a flight of stairs after every time I take a break to pee. . . got to fit it in sometime. . .

First thing to do this weekend. . .get a new battery for my pedometer.

Discipline Before Affection
Yesterday my friend--who's way more dog savvy than I am--told me I needed to get more forceful with our 10 month old goldendoodle, Yeats, and be way way more consistent to keep her off me and to not let her bite at me (it's play, but it's still teeth). And I swear I thought I did sound like I meant it before when I said off and no, but I got down more in her face and concentrated on saying it more like I meant it, and she really is listening! I feel so much more hopeful that I will be able to get her respect instead of being her romping partner. It's really annoying to not be able to walk through the gate (we still gate her off in our family room and kitchen) without her leaping on me or walking while trying to hook my toes in her ring toys! I feel so much more empowered after Christine's little speech! Thanks, Christine!

There is a brisk coolness in the air today. I love fall.

Artwork Admiration
This weekend we go to Kentuck--a folk art fest near Tuscaloosa AL. My friend, Pat, who I saw a few weeks ago with my sister called and said she wanted to see me again while I was nearby because she'd had such fun with my sister and me. And it sounds silly but her wanting to be with me made me feel so normal and healthy and pleasant. We're going to go gallery hopping together. I'm psyched.

I'm hoping at Kentuck I'll be as intrigued by the interesting pieces like these I saw at Atlanta's Folk Fest, by Robin Anne Cooper.

She does sculptures and paintings using what she calls painted canvas collage. My favorites are her dogs.