Remembering When...

When I was a child, I dreamed simple dreams. I lived in a world of make believe, playing house, pretending and acting out what I imagined to become my future. 

Playing house utilized a lot of imagination when I was growing up. Pretend stoves, fridges, TV's and numerous household belongings were made from cardboard boxes or whatever one could find at hand. I dreamed of child sized furniture, miniature kitchens and doll furnishings and was grateful for anything that could be imagined into reality.

During my daycare days, I created my idyllic childhood dream for my daycare family. We had a Little Tykes kitchen, doll furniture and accessories galore, a little playhouse for the deck and a building, most would call a shed, that was dubbed "playhouse". Thanks to garage sales and second hand shopping, I created my dream come true for the little ones in my care.

As I grew out of playing house, my interest in TV was my second most favorite place to imagine myself. I wished I could be a witch like Samantha on Bewitched. I remember the elation of watching Bewitched, a favorite show of mine, and wishing another episode would play immediately. To have to wait one long week for a new episode felt like forever. 

Now, thanks to the multitude of streaming services and the vast amount of syndicated television programs, one can go back and watch old favorites. Just as I had dreamed - one show after another, no need to wait a week for the next episode. 

I am quite literally living the life of my childhood dreams. Child sized furniture has been replaced with real life furnishings and appliances. Live, breathing children replaced dolls and pretend babies. I can sit still and watch a favorite show as long as I can stay awake (never, in my wildest childhood dreams, did I ever think I would fall asleep at the speed I do in adulthood).

My life has become everything I dreamed. Minus a husband - I'm not quite sure why I never imagined that into my reality. I tried. It just didn't work out the way of my dreams ...

I sit here within my quiet, simple little life and am simply amazed. Life has become everything I had ever dreamed it could be.

Should I have dreamed of something bigger? Perhaps. But that would be someone else's dream. Not my own. I am content with what I have, what is real and the day I wake up to each morning.

As the world events of the day dominate the news and serve as a reminder to be grateful for the peaceful existence within our country, community and homes we have created ... I have slipped back into my childhood memories and am simply grateful.

Remember your dreams. Forget other people's expectations. Strive to create the world you hoped to live in when you were a child. 

Let there be peace. Within our hearts, minds and souls. And let that peacefulness embrace our family, friends and community. One peaceful heart at a time, may harmony dominate.

Please? 

The Gift of Choice

Ahhh, one of my most favorite long weekends of the year has arrived. There is nothing better than an extra day off during what, usually by now, feels like the longest winter. Ever. 

That long span of holiday-less-ness between New Year's Day and whenever Easter happened to fall in the spring always felt endless. A February long weekend still feels like a surprise gift bestowed upon me every year.

What to do? What to do?

Oh, to have a choice of how to spend one's time. Where? With whom? What activity of choice?

I am so very fortunate to have the gift of "choice". I have easy options. The decision will most likely be made by whatever feels right when I wake up in the morning.

To stay at home, a place that embraces me with every cat hair and welcoming favorite spot? Or to travel a little over an hour away to spend time in my little oasis on the prairie - my happy place, my potential retirement goal, my place to "just be" ...

What to do? I could opt to work. I could opt to play. Whatever feels best in the moment I'm in will rule the day. I have one extra day at my disposal. I could use it wisely or I could fritter it away.

There is a contentment within my little home so I don't feel the need to distance myself from where I am at. 

It is truly a gift to feel at peace anywhere. To have an option of where to "spend" that bliss? Priceless.

Finding your bliss where you may be is my February wish for you. 💕

Like Bailey's in My Coffee

"What will I blog about today?" were my closing thoughts of my three handwritten pages of morning thoughts. I can't remember what I thought at the end of that page. That was 2 hours and 12 minutes ago. 

Since that time, I've dipped my toes into my bookkeeping work day, balanced my credit card record books, paid a bill, wistfully wondered how I am spending my hard-earned pay cheques, listened to Glennon Doyle's "We Can Do Hard Things" podcast (accompanied by Glennon's sister, Amanda and her wife, Abby Wambach) ... (if you are interested, you can listen to it here: We Can Do Hard Things - My Hardest Thing).

I wish I could sit down in person with Glennon and simply listen. Listen, because only she holds her own answers. Listen, because that is what we most need - the need to be heard, when we are ready to put words to our thoughts. Listen, because that is where support is rooted. In the listening.

If Glennon was silent and looking towards me for input, I would guide her back to herself. I would say, "When I don't know where to turn I have, more often than not, found my answers in my own writing." Life has a way of repeating itself. In rereading one's own experience at a distance, one can feel the familiarity of someone you trust, who has been there. That someone is yourself.

Taking a step back and listening to your own words is the greatest gift of writing down your thoughts in the middle of the messy middle. It gives you the opportunity to pat yourself on the shoulder and say to yourself, "There, there my love. You've been here before. You've found your way through a similar fate. Take what you can from the lessons you've learned from the past. I know, I know ... it IS hard. It IS different. It IS easier to say than to do. But when you can, if you can, reread your words. Your answer is within, even if that answer is to look outside for the assistance you need to wade through and beyond the middle of the hard part."

I have not walked the walk another is going through. As much as I try, I cannot know what it feels like to be in someone else's shoes. 

Glennon has written, spoken and lived her way through some of her life experience. She has parented three children. In my imagination, I think of Glennon as being a valuable role model, teacher and a strong support to each of her children. One of her children (Tish) wrote the song "We Can Do Hard Things" which is played at the end of every Tuesday morning podcast. As I listened to Tish's song at the end of today's podcast, her words, the melody, the message of Glennon's teachings all wrapped up in four minutes and eighteen seconds broke my heart wide open. It felt like a soothing balm on an open wound.

Thank you, Glennon for your masterful artistry of putting words together to form sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters and books for us to read, absorb and instill in our lives.

Yes, we are the only ones who hold our own answers. But opening yourself up and finding those "I'm not the only one?" and "Me too!" moments within the world around you feels like a warm hug on a cold day (or "Like Bailey's in my coffee on a cool camping morning", a phrase stolen and badly paraphrased from a conversation I just heard).

P.S. It was only after I posted this, that I realized I couldn't have chose a more inappropriate title to a post that is honoring a recovering addict. Sorry, Glennon.

P.P.S. Also, please note that much of what I have written in today's post has been written and spoken of by Glennon herself. Glennon often puts words to a way I already think but is so easy to steal once a vocabulary on the topic has been formed. I discovered Glennon on March 23, 2013 (I wrote about it here - Climbing the Mountain of Life) as "proof" that I did have deep thoughts before I met Glennon through the interwebs)

Living the Dream

As my first thoughts of the morning found their way onto my "morning pages", they felt scrambled, disconnected, fragmented and torn. It is Monday morning and quite literally, I have one foot in my weekend-oasis-aspiring-retirement-place-of-residence and the other foot is packing up to go back home to my work-week and home-life responsibilities.

During my weekend, I get to take off all of my "responsibility hats" and simply exist. Fill myself up with whatever is needed, soak up some solitude and a fair dose of selfishness and simply live a life of ease.

My weekdays are consumed with bookkeeping, senior care, cat care, household tending and part-time-parenting my independently-dependent adult child who is living at home.

One foot into a hopeful retirement goal, one foot planted firmly in reality. Earning a living, paying the bills, taking care of the needs of our home and those who inhabit it. 

It is easy to dream the dream of retirement aspirations. But the road that must be travelled between where I am and where I aspire to be is unknown territory. A lot of things will change between where I am and where I want to go.

As I wound up the last sentence of my morning pages, I wistfully wrote "I may already be living the dream and I don't even know it".

We don't know what tomorrow will bring. We could be paving the way to a future we are anticipating but not realizing "this", where we are today, the "before" is truly the dream. 

Challenging as our days may be, it is good to remember life-as-we-know-it could change on a dime. Take a moment to think of what it may take to transition from one phase of life to the next. It could be a wonderful thing. Then again, it could be a set of dire circumstances that upset the status quo.

I will do my best to appreciate "what is", this week. I will not dwell on the "what ifs". I will glance towards the horizon and hope each forward step takes me one step closer to what I think it is I hope for. But not lose the gift of the present.

Who knows? We could already be living our dream. Dreams shift, evolve and morph in unexpected ways. Such is life. Let's just take it one forward step at a time.

Crash

It wasn't a collision. It was more like a slow slide on the ice into a soft snow embankment. No, I'm not speaking of a literal crash. Just a mental one.

I was flying high Friday morning. I felt so good, I stopped to write. Putting myself out into the world and outlining my small triumphs out loud exhausted me. It was as if a small dose of adrenaline was administered as I wrote. Then came the fall.

It was simply a slippery slope of having the ability to coast. I coasted through Friday and landed smack dab into Saturday with ease. I woke up an hour later than usual Saturday morning. I forgave myself but in the back of my mind, I mourned my lost hour.

"It's okay. It's Saturday. You worked for this. Coast. Just coast ..."

Coasting for me involves sitting still without eating or talking. Movement, chatting and a seemingly endless supply of chips is what keeps me awake. The moment I stopped all of the above, I was asleep.

"It's okay. If you are tired, sleep. It is all right."

So I did. I slept the afternoon away, woke up and had a frozen piece of cheesecake dessert which took the better part of three hours to chisel away at. Then I went to bed. 

"Just to get warm, comfortable and settle in to watch another old episode of 'This is Us'. I'll just nestle in for the night."

Then I woke up to Sunday. 

Where did the weekend go? I slept away a day. As I sit here and watch the blowing snow outside (43 km/h wind, with gusts up to 56 km/h), I just want to nestle in and hibernate for the day. I scroll the weather forecast and the headline "Whiteouts, dangerous travel possible ...", I wistfully wonder how I would feel if I was snowed in, at my favorite little oasis on the prairie.

Oh, to dream a little dream. It is a small thing but it feels so right. I love this soft place to land at the end of my week.

I wish you a soft slide into your most favorite place, activity or mental holiday. Happy Coasting!

Gift to Self

I fritter away time like no one's business. When asked what I do in a day, I may be hard pressed to recall. But lately I have been hyper-vigilant in tracking my time and it amazes even me. I spend an awful lot of time doing things of little value. Or do I???

I feel like this has been a week (okay, two days out of seven) of walking around with a screwdriver. Fixing things. Tightening things. Moving latches and screwing them back in place. Tis the season of "shifting". Doors and gates don't close the way they did a week ago. Having had a screwdriver in my hand, I tend to notice a wobbly stool, loose cupboard door handles and why the heck did that bifold door fall off the track (I did it - I accidentally closed a mop handle in the immovable side of the door flush to the wall but did not notice the handle in said location until after watching a YouTube video on how to fix a bifold door).

There went (perhaps) an hour, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes all tolled, of my week. Where did the rest go?

Cat hair. Can I just say the allure of a hairless cat is starting to appeal to me? Where does the hair on a hairless cat go? Do they grow it and shed it? Or to they simply have a chronic case of alopecia and baldness means no new hair growth at all? Vacuuming, picking up, lint-brushing cat hair off of any surface cat hair can waft onto is consuming more of my time (now that I have a 100% cat hair free zone in my little home-away-from-home, I tend to notice cat hair more than ever before). Even at that, on an average, I cannot claim that cat hair removal claims any more than a half hour ten minutes per day.

Podcasts. My newest favorite thing. I believe I spend that time wisely as I combine listening to fun, inspiring and thought provoking topics while I do what I have done every morning for years. I listen while I work on my morning puzzles, sip on my morning smoothie and have my second (often third) cup of coffee. Now there is a full hour of my day, not counting the time I spend prior to and after the podcast, tending to banking and other computerized chores (grocery shopping), where I need to concentrate too hard to listen to a podcast at the same time. Let's say I spend two hours of the morning at the computer.

Morning pages. I have recently discovered if I have a smooth writing pen and write really, really fast without interruption, I can speed through three, 8-1/2" X 11" pages in half an hour to 35 minutes. Add the prep time to make my coffee and make my way to my quiet little writing spot and the amount of distractions it takes to get me from pre-morning pages to post-morning pages and there is another hour gone. POOF!

Cat litter. A separate paragraph and a separate thought from cat hair. Daily. On-going. A chore my daughter was/is willing to share with me but my inane perfectionist mind has convinced me it is easier to do it myself. I can always find an extra chore to add onto the litter cleaning. A five minute job probably rounds up to fifteen minutes some days. But I take weekends off. So there!

Vacuuming, bathing, showering, taking out garbage/recycling, shoveling snow, preparing my supper-to-go, taking time to stop and "chew" (my morning smoothie and coffee only takes me to about 10:30 and then the need for solid sustenance intervenes). Mail-checking, email-checking, message-checking, message-responding ... 

Oh!!!! The many, many distractions I opt in on. I tend to call these distractions "cleansing my palate" in the midst of my work-from-home day. I get my head in a mathematical problem and tend to think I need to walk away for a moment. Yes! That ONE piece of paper needs to go to the recycling bin by the back door immediately. Yes! I need to quickly check in on Instagram to see if any of the "talking dogs/cats" (people actually train their dogs/cats to speak to them with buttons to cue their humans to what they want/need); groundhogs; and other human critters with less hair I choose to follow and entertain me.

Distractions quite easily eat up (possibly) two hours out of a day. One day when I'm really bored (or in the need of "cleansing my palate"), I should track the time I loose to my various distracting habits.

Oh yes, then there is work. My actual job! Amazingly, it eats up a fair chunk of my day too. I am getting much better at working smarter. Or is it just called "working one job per day" for five days, in the past three weeks. Oh, there is nothing like being able to JUST STAY HOME until the work one wants to complete in a day is done. I called in "work" (not sick) from my second form of income one day and it was so intoxicating, I asked for a few more days off the following week, followed by an offer of one final day off this week. It was the best un-holiday I've ever had. When I grow up, I hope to have only ONE job ...

Am I whining? Complaining? Making excuses? Not intentionally. It may sound like it, but I am grateful for this cat-hairy, distracted, work-filled, people-filled life I lead. How I choose to spend my hours IS a choice. 

I could opt to invest my hours very differently than I do. The miracle of waking up every morning is that each day is a bright new set of options. 

Today?? I gave myself a little gift. I have chosen to sit still with this little blog space I used to call home and write. Just write.

Nothing big, small or indifferent to say. No lessons, no ranting, no carrying on about the myriad of thoughts in this busy little brain of mine. Just the little stuff. The inane. The act of choosing my daily grind in various ways with lots of room to adapt with the flow of whatever life throws my way.

Sitting down and typing (verses hand writing my morning pages) feels like an entirely different experience. I have been using my "gift" of computer time to spreadsheets, work-related emails, tax & accounting programs during my work-day, with a side order of puzzles, podcasts and on-line grocery shopping/banking for fun. I forgot how much I once enjoyed just letting my fingers fly over the keyboard and seeing what they have to say.

Apparently my fingers had much to say about nothing. I wish you a day of following your choices and hoping it takes you where you most need to be.

Today, may you give yourself the gift of spending time doing something that brings you joy.