Reserved Tea Time

Most every day, some time between clearing the dinner dishes and heading into the bedroom for the night, I fill my silver tea kettle and put it on the stove to boil. My tea kettle is huge and it whistles marvelously. It sounds just like you would imagine it should, cartoonishly perfect. I leave it to sing long enough to enjoy the sound, yet not long enough to cause the rest of the household to start shouting at me, then I pour the steaming water into my Lore coffee mug. Selecting from my stash of coveted herbal tea bags, I unwrap one, dip dip dip, and I wait.

I stand there in my kitchen waiting for the tea to steep, and I can already feel my body and mind relaxing in anticipation. (Is that possible, or does anticipation automatically mean tension? I don’t think so.) I remove the tea bag and squeeze out every last drop by wrapping the string around the bag against my favorite teaspoon, the one with the scrolled “N” on the handle that I bought for a nickel at Goodwill, and I’m almost ready. Almost.

While the entire tea making process is ritualistic, my favorite part I share with the small honey bear that lives on the second shelf of my “beverage cupboard” where I store my teas, coffees, creamers and biscottis. I flip his top open and upend him over my steaming mug, then I squeeze his tummy as I swirl the thick stream of honey around and around, watching as it disappears into the hot amber liquid. A couple clinkety clinks of my N spoon, and I’m ready.

I may not have had a moment for myself the entire day, but that’s fine. Now, here with my fingers wrapped tightly around my hot mug of fragrant tea, this is my time. Until this cup is empty, nothing else is important. Nothing can get to me, and the chaos in my head starts to softly and gently click into some sort of order. My thoughts are so clear and my body so relaxed, more so than any other time of the day. The ritual and the tea can do this for me, and it is so freeing to know I can bring myself to this place any time I like with the simple ritual of making myself a cup of tea.

All Things to All People

Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.
-Colleen C. Barrett

I work from home in an office environment where the phone rings constantly, and where Al Gore would surely pitch a fit at the small forest under which my desk is buried. My days consist of repetitive tasks and many unhappy people, so some days it’s tempting to let the negativity and monotony drag me down. Today was one of those days.

Around noon I found myself staring out the window directly behind my monitor and ignoring the ringing phone. I could feel the tug as a gloomy melancholy tried to snake around me and pull me down into some dark place and have its way with me. I was tired, and it was enticing to just give in. It was at that moment my little dog waddled into my line of sight and plopped her little butt in a patch of sunshine on the sidewalk.  She closed her eyes and raised her head towards the light, soaking it in as if fueled by the stuff… and I couldn’t help but smile.

My Gilly, short for Ghirardelli, is almost six years old, and her favorite things in the world are sunshine, me and food (in that order). If she can have one of those things at any one time, life is fantastic! Given two or (God help us) all three at once, she’s nearly apoplectic. I envied her so much at that moment, so happy with just a few rays of sunshine on her face, but then I thought, “Why shouldn’t she be happy with just that? Isn’t sunshine the whole reason you moved south in the first place?” And in fact it was.

Growing up in the frozen tundra that is northern Michigan, my fondest dream was to move south. It didn’t matter where, as long as it never snowed, and the sun shone all year long. (At 8 years old this seemed like such a fantasy, but then I realized there are places where this actually happens!)  So why shouldn’t a bit of sun on my face make me just as happy as it was making Gilly right that minute? So I left the phone in the house and took my tea with me out to the back yard for a good fifteen minutes. I called Gilly over, and we lay swinging quietly together in the hammock, eyes closed, soaking in the sun and sounds around us. It was the best fifteen minutes of the past two weeks, and I plan to revisit it again tomorrow, because I can.

I hope each of you can take time out today to go sit outside, away from the computers and phones, TVs and radios, and listen for awhile to the world. It’s an amazing place.

Blogging vs. Journaling

I virtually surround myself with people I aspire to be like. Done it for years. Maybe we all do it. Most recently I’ve added several bloggers to my immediate internet circle, and while I just show up once in a while as a blip in their periphery, I do interact here and there. I’m not a blogger, but I enjoy bloggers very much. Hell, I’m not even a writer, but I play one in my mind. Maybe, by writing more often and surrounding myself with these inspiring folks (most discovered via the crafty Men with Pens), I’ll get better at this. I know one thing.. I’m enjoying it so far!

As it is, I just blurt a post out here and there, because let’s be honest, all this is is my personal journal. It’s not a blog by any means. It has no focus. It’s… practice, if you will. I’m dipping a toe into the waters and deciding if I really want to go swimming. I love swimming, but it may not be what I want to do right this moment. Time will tell. In the meantime I’m going to expend some effort and do some actual design work for myself. A new feel for this site is definitely on the list, which apparently means a WP upgrade, so stay tuned!

Making the Most of It

Since September 2007 I have been keeping tabs on one Mr. Randy Pausch who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer the year before.  On September 18, 2007 he gave a “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University, where he had been a professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design since 1988.

If you’ve not seen this 76 minute video, I recommend it. It’s inspiring, sad, funny and uplifting all at once. I can’t say how many times I’ve watched it, but it never fails to remind me, not only how precious life is, but how there are so many different ways to handle your troubles. I want to handle mine like Randy Pausch is handling his. I can try, but quite honestly, I can only aspire to be the kind of person that he is. Still I watch, I listen and I try.

Little Pink Jake

I received my birthday present from M&D this morning, and spent part of the day settling in with it.  It’s an 8GB iPod Nano to replace my now defunct 30GB iPod.  I debated awhile between black (again), pink or red.  Finally decided I was tired of black and the red made me think of U2 ads, so pink it was!  No soft petal pink this, but a bright, flashy pink!  Pink just the color of my raincoat and matching umbrella.  Pink that you just can’t find in nature.  PINK!  It makes me happy just to look at it.  :)

I’ve named it Jake.  Engraved on its flip side it says:

M&D – April 13, 2008
Not hardly…

No one else in the entire world can appreciate my total amusement factor based on those two small words as much as my Mum & Dad.  We all laughed like fools as soon as I said, “I called it Jake”.

(No, I don’t know anyone named Jake.)  But still… Jake!  FTW!