The Happier Podcast, with hosts Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft, suggests that to live in an atmosphere of growth, one trick is to pick a “word of the year”. It has always sounded too Pollyanna-cutesy to me, so I’ve always resisted this exercise. This year I thought I’d try it, because, heck, at this point, what do I have to lose? It’s January 2021, we’re mid-pandemic, and the word I’ve picked to inspire me all the year long is “Expand”. The word Expand seems to have a raft of possibilities. Since I’ll be starting a new path in my life...
Abundance, or, what you find when you clean out your cupboards
Ants in the house in January?? I didn’t think it was possible for ants to infest your house during the winter. The summer, of course; the autumn, sure, since they try to escape the cold, but inevitably they peter out and that’s it until spring. Not this year. As the weather grew colder, the ants continued to appear, not in hordes, but in ones and twos. Still, I started to think maybe they had set up an anthill in the walls somehow. It turns out, I wasn’t far wrong. I finally googled “why do I have ants in the winter?”...
“Panny” Fashion, or, Comfort wear for the end times
I’m assuming the fashion industry, amongst many others, has been hard hit by the pandemic. I can’t imagine that there’s been a huge demand for high fashion during the past ten months. Perhaps the 1% are still wearing the latest outfits and stilettos, but down in the trenches, it’s another story. The new office wear de rigueur is sweats (or leggings when you’re feeling fancy) on the bottom with a tailored shirt, earrings and a dash of lipstick for the zoom meetings. Slippers complete the outfit. Though my orchestra is actually playing recorded concerts, I’m still at home an awful...
Site Maintenance news!
I thought if I put an exclamation point at the end of the title it would attract more readers?! I have spent today working on my site!! All I did was create categories for my posts, which are available on the righthand side of each page. I thought it would be fun if people could check out the subjects they’re most interested in and look back at some of the (wonderful!) posts I’ve written over the years. This site started out of my enthusiasm for gardening (and writing), well before 2013, which is when I started this incarnation of...
21 for 2021, a Tutorial
A lot of people (let’s call them “fans of the blog”) have asked me (and I’m hearing a touch of derision in their voices, if I’m honest) about this idea of writing a list of 21 goals for 2021 and why you would bother in the first place if they’re all going by the wayside pretty much immediately. So, in order to make it clear I thought I’d write a cautionary, hypothetical list for you today on the blog. These are ideas one might naturally think about putting on such a list, and why they won’t work. Here we go:...
21 (goals) for 2121
The end of this gawdawful year is fast approaching. We can start 2021 with the hope that the vaccines will make a difference to our quality of lives. We can look forward to hanging out with our friends, going to restaurants and generally enjoying close proximity with people. For many of us it’s that hope that keeps us from falling into despair, keeps us wearing our masks and being careful. We can do this for however long it takes as long as we know it won’t be forever. I just had a milestone birthday, my sixtieth! It seems fitting that...
Why does an atheist celebrate Christmas?
I’m an atheist, but I celebrate Christmas. Recently I started wondering why I don’t simply fess up that I’m not a Christian, therefore I ought to stop pretending to celebrate the (purported) birth of Christ. Of course, I’m not alone; many, many people who never go to church and have little to no Christian faith continue to celebrate Christmas. So, why is it completely okay for this to continue? Should we not feel hypocritical? I mean, yes, probably, and sometimes I do. Whether you celebrate one of the mid-winter holidays or not, and many religions seems to have one, we...
A Limbo of Grief
I’m living a surreal week. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever planned ahead to end the life of another living being. Before your mind immediately jumps to axe murder, be assured that I’m talking about my dog, Monty. Life for Monty has become a trial. He’s approximately 15 years old and incontinent and not very mobile. He’s deaf and mostly blind. He has stopped eating his usual food and will only eat treats and human food. (Fried eggs and raw hamburger are among his favourites). Despite all that, he doesn’t seem to be in terrible...
Gratitude and Mourning
The pandemic has made most of us realize how much of “normal” life we took for granted. In retrospect I’m grateful for the things that I mourn the loss of: casual dinners with friends, birthday parties, Thanksgiving with 12 guests for dinner, all of whom decide to congregate in the overheated kitchen, and the list goes on. We all miss the ease of normal life. The pandemic has also given me a chance to become aware of things that I never thought I’d miss about my job as an orchestral musician. In September the orchestra was given permission by the...
To Sleep or not to sleep, (Part 2 in an ongoing series)
If you’ve read my previous post on this issue, you know that I’ve had recurring sleep issues at various times in my life and since perimenopause (i.e. around age 45) they’ve been pretty consistent. Consistently inconsistent, you might say. In this post I want to discuss the challenges of following what the sleep experts say will help me get a good night’s sleep. Most of the prevailing wisdom I’ve read many times, so I don’t have to look these up. Here they are: Have a consistent bed time. I’m not doing all that badly with this on the whole. I...