Solstice Meditation

Walking and Solitude

I took this picture on a walk last week.

Near my home is the most wonderful nature preserve, Wintergarden Park. It has walking trails through a huge meadow and also a woods. On this day I picked the path around the meadow, and the stillness was comforting.

During this hustle and bustle time of year, I find there is nothing better than taking time to get out into nature.

Today, as the longest night of the year holds the Northern Hemisphere in darkness, I'm thinking about the year that is almost finished.

It is a good time for reflection. The quiet time of winter gives me many hours to read and write and contemplate how I can make the New Year that is coming the best year I've lived so far.

In the 60 plus years I've walked on this planet, I've accomplished quite a lot. I've raised a family, earned a Masters degree, been a teacher, an accountant, and now a grandmother. I've taught myself life skills that now in my slower, older days not only bring me many hours of entertainment, they also enhance my life. Things like knitting and crocheting, cooking and preserving foods I've grown or bought, sewing, quilting. When I was younger these skills were important to living a frugal life while raising a family, now I find them not only frugal pursuits, but enjoyable hobbies.

These old hobbies and new ones give me many hours of fun and entertainment during the long hours of darkness during winter. When I take walks like this, I find the solitude of nature - its blanketing quiet - is such a source for inspiration. The soft colors of nature, the sounds of birds singing and reeds rustling, the smell of damp earth all mingle together and open my mind to new ideas and inspire new pursuits.

Here's to walking and solitude and contemplation. Onward to the new year!

The Best Things In Life Are Free

This picture hung in my mom and dad's house always. I honestly can't remember a time when this picture did not hang in our house.

It reads:
The Best Things in Life Are Free

When we count our many blessings; it isn't hard to see that life's most valued treasures are the treasures that are free.
For it isn't what we own or buy that signifies our wealth.
It's the special gifts that have no price: our family, friends and health.


We've all seen a version of this all over Internet. But . . . How often in our world of uber-consumerism do we think about this seriously?

It's Saturday and of course I have a lot of choices of how to spend my day. Years ago, Saturday meant some kind of shopping trip. Today, I'm trying to figure out all the things I DON'T need and all the things I have right here to not only keep me busy but make my day fun and relaxing.

This little picture hangs in my hallway. I pass it several times a day. Sometimes I notice it and sometimes I don't. For some reason, today I did notice it, hanging quietly, but loudly encouraging me to find ways to not spend money. To spend my day in useful pursuits - reading, sewing (so many projects), knitting (ditto), making some good food, take a walk (it's cold, but a short one would be ok). Any of these things I can accomplish without spending money.

I think we have been so conditioned today that we must buy buy buy - coffee at the coffee house (don't forget your scone or muffin), more food than we need from the mega grocery store, clothes, shoes, stuff and more stuff. We forget that it is possible to find things to do in our homes. That we can pick up books that we have been meaning to read. That we could finish any number of projects that we have started. That we could take a walk. That we could change up our morning routine with yoga and tea instead of coffee and something sugary. Oh and don't forget popping in a DVD (does anyone still own these things besides me) and watching a couple of your favorite movies (while completing a knitting or quilting project) It's like giving yourself a spa day - a no consuming spa day.

Today I have committed to not spending money. I don't write about this for any kind of accolades or to even say that this is something everyone (or even anyone else) should embrace, but believe it or not it is the most empowering thing to do. I am always so amazed at the end of one of these days at how satisfied I feel. I look around at completed things, I am usually amazed at whatever meal I've been able to prepare without going to the store (because we all have lots of stuff in our cupboards), and how relaxed I feel after one of these days.

Happy Saturday, everyone! Enjoy a relaxing day if you can.

HOME SWEET HOME

This week I was reminded of how important a sense of home is, and how much I have strayed from the comfort of one place that I call home.

I'm sure I've written about this before, because I think about it a lot. In 2008, when so many people were losing their homes, I joined their ranks. I was divorced and struggling to hang on to a house that was too big and too expensive for one person. My sons were all grown, two of them were married and my youngest son had just graduated from college. I didn't need the house, but something made me hang on till the bitter end. What happened next has been a little hard to stop. 

I started running. Metaphorically. I moved from one apartment to the next over the next ten years, sometimes only staying a few months (oh yes, I've learned quite a bit about leases and dealing with unhappy landlords). I moved a total of 20 times. It seems unbelievable to write it, but it's true. 

About two years ago on my 60th birthday, I moved into a lovely little cottage in a quite neighborhood that reminds me of the house I was living in, when I first was married, when my boys were young. It is a yellow house (my dad's favorite color) and it's situated on a street that is a semi-circle with exits at both ends of the circle. It has its flaws, like any old house, but I love it.

I've been here for two years, and this week something terrible almost happened - I almost moved again. What the hell! I was preparing to leave behind my garage (what a blessing in bad weather to be able to walk just a few steps into a dry space to load and unload my car), and my laundry room (for five years I lived without a laundry in my apartment - what was I thinking?)

I wasn't thinking. I was running.  

I've been doing a lot of meditating on my blessings and learning to remain calm and stay put. I've been meditating on the joys of knowing what is in every corner, every closet, and not having unpacked boxes. I've been meditating on my garden and making this place work for me. And. Because I spoke up about the things that were making it hard for me to stay here (the giant yard and mowing and caring for it) my landlord stepped up and offered to help.

I've stopped running. I'm staying put. I'm going to embrace stability. I'm going to let go of the pain of losing my house - finally. 

This is my home sweet home. 

Oh . . . and I'm back here on Blogger - a more simple place for me to put down my thoughts. 

Contemplating Loss

Summer Sky

"It is not too uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living."

Eckhart Tolle 

Three weeks ago, on a sweltering summer afternoon, the day before my sister's birthday, my brother-in-law layed down for a nap, and side stepped off this plane.

He was tired after fighting a brave fight with kidney disease for the past six years. My sister, to state the obvious, is devasted. She is left a widow. She is left with a pretty big hole in her life. She is alone for the first time in her adult life, with no children to soften the blow of his leaving. While trying to deal with the emotional loss of her husband, she is also faced with the possessions he has left behind. My brother-in-law was a lover of a good auction, and he has the stuff to prove it. But his sudden passing (because it did seem sudden, even though we knew he was sick) has left in its wake a pretty big, heartbreaking mess for my sister to negotiate.

Hello April . . . You are so Fickle - Well Hello June . . .

"In spring I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside four and twenty hours."

Mark Twain

It has been many years since I remember this much snow in April. It was very beautiful though, and it has probably given me another two weeks without mowing lawn. Yah snow!

What a crazy beginning to our Spring here in Ohio.

I found this laying in my que - never pushed publish. It has been a busy spring. It must have been because it is now Summer. I planted a small herb garden in my huge backyard - we'll see how things go.

Newly Planted Herb Garden - May 2016

Herb Garden June 2016 - with a little lettuce

More updates to come. Happy Summer !!

Libraries: A Bibliophile Faces Her Minimalism

“You can never get a cup of tea big enough, or a book long enough for me.” 

C.S. Lewis

My current stack of library books (top shelf) my journals bottom shelf

                When I was young, we went to the library on a regular basis. The summers were particularly lovely because we could walk to the library in our neighborhood any time we wanted. I loved libraries then, and I still love them. I love the rows and rows of books. I love the chairs tucked into corners for reading. I love the dense hush of a library. It was my favorite place in college to escape.

Get Real

"Language most shows a man; speak so that I may see thee."  

 Ben Johnson (Poet b. 1572)

This post is about a couple of things. First (and not foremost), it is about boring repetition. Second it is about choosing our words carefully. And finally, it is about honesty.

The phrase first and foremost must fade away. Now. Writing both is a redundancy. If something is first - as in the first reason you do something, or the first of anything, you don't need foremost. Foremost means: leading, principal, FIRST, premier, top, best, and more. First means: FOREMOST, principal, top, and more. These words mean the same thing. That means that to always be using them together is redundant. Who started this? Someone has to stop it first. Let it be me and you; should you choose to take the challenge.  I challenge you to scour this phrase from your writing. Firstly, your writing will be more concise, but the foremost reason for cutting this phrase from your writing is that it is redundant. Lose redundancy in your writing, and your writing will be more enjoyable to read, and more understandable.

Stuff and Passion

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

I love to cook. I love to knit and sew. I love to garden. I love to entertain. I love to read. I love to listen to music and watch movies. But I am trying very hard to be a minimalist. And all of these things could lead me down a path of mass consumption. 

Laughter and Old Age

"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come."

 William Shakespeare

Today is my birthday. 60 years ago today my parents welcomed me into a postwar world of prosperity and seemingly unending growth. They had lost two babies before me, my brothers, so I became the oldest of what would eventually include three more siblings, my two sisters and my brother. 

GIVING UP MY DECORATING ADDICTION

"Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance." 

                                                                                                     Coco Chanel

Often times, addictions demand that we keep them secret. But decorating (or over decorating) has become an addiction that is lived out in the open all over America.

Not that there is anything wrong with having a neat, nicely appointed home, a well-kept garden, or clean sheets on your bed. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about filling a home to the brim with too much stuff, and spending more and more money on that stuff, maybe even spending when I should have been saving, just to have the latest and greatest thing being advertised.

ALL THE BOOKS

It is freezing cold here in Northwest Ohio, finally. We really can't complain. It has felt like spring up until now; we knew it couldn't last.

Freezing cold makes me want to stay in and hopefully not have to go out until spring, but alas I have to get up each morning and trek to work. When I get home the thing I enjoy doing the most is not watching T.V., it's reading.

MINIMALISM JOURNEY

"When walking, walk. When eating, eat."

Thich Nhat Hanh

A post about minimalism, or why I think possessions are too heavy (and maybe even prisons)

I'm writing "this post the day after what would have been my Mom's 90th birthday. She died suddenly at the end of the summer in 2005, just about the time Hurricane Katrina was making landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi. I hardly remember that devastating storm. I only mention it as a metaphor for the storm my family lived through losing my mom so quickly.

LETTING GO. MOVING ON.

Is this not the age old problem with trying to create a simple life. What can I let go? What can I live without? Where in my life is there excess?

In creating my own simple life I am constantly asking myself what I can edit next. As we come into the holiday season, and I read article after article about the billions of dollars people are spending on more stuff, to give to people who have lots of stuff, I am wondering when we can say we have enough.

THE ZEN OF HAND WASHING CLOTHES

The ordinary acts we practice everyday at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.        Thomas Moore

Five years ago, one of the simple things I started doing when I downsized and moved to my tiny apartment, was hand washing my clothes. 

I began doing this because schlepping my clothes to the laundromat once a week has never appealed to me. This is the first time in my life, since my early 20s, that I have been required to go to the laundromat, having always the luxury of a washer and dryer. A luxury I didn't fully appreciate until I didn't have it. And so it goes. 


When I downsized drastically five years ago, I knew I was going to have to sacrifice having my own washer and dryer for awhile. I would, as a dear friend calls it, have to "monk it out" for awhile. 


One of the ways I'm doing that is hand washing my clothes. On Sunday afternoons, I gather and sort my clothes into little piles, and prepare to wash them for the next week of work. The activity has become like a Zen practice for me. I almost like doing it. Really.

COMFORT FOOD

Comfort food is wonderful, is it not? Hot and delicious on a cold day, like a bowl of homemade soup or a roasted chicken or a steaming bowl of pasta, mmm, or warm cookies. Hungry yet?

I have some favorites, like everyone else, but many of my comfort foods are attached to memories - maybe that's why some foods are comforting to us, they remind us of happy times or people who are dear to us. Some foods, like mac and cheese, or meatloaf, or spaghetti, or even hot cocoa made from cocoa and sugar, have attached to them distinct memories of childhood, a great time we spent with a friend, or maybe the first meal we prepared of a boyfriend (girlfriend).

LIVING ALONE

"It's amazing living alone. I'm very luckey. It's like a refuge."   Paloma Faith

Living alone has taught me skills that I doubt I would have ever learned had I remained married or sought out a boyfriend. I've lived alone now for over ten years, twelve to be exact.

When my husband and I first divorced, I wondered how I was ever going to be able to live by myself and do all the things I enjoyed doing. I wondered if I would ever be able to sit and watch TV in the evenings by myself (turns out I discovered I didn't like TV that much), or if I would ever be able to go out to eat by myself (this as it turns out was pretty easy for me). I seem to enjoy all the things I used to do with him, but much more.

FALL SPRINT CHALLENGE

Set Goal
Make Plan
Get to Work
Stick To It
Reach Goal

For those of you following our Fall Sprint Challenge, we just had our second meeting.

It is really inspiring to work with friends to achieve goals. I cannot recommend this highly enough. In our second week meeting we all shared moments when we wondered why in our busy schedules we had tackled yet another project. The truth is, for all of us, we tackled our projects because they are important to us; we just needed that extra push to get them finished.

BUDGETWISE SUNDAY

Life is not always a matter of having good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.                                               Jack London

 All of us failed to match our dreams perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.      William Faulkner

You know, when I was younger I always thought I didn't like writers like Jack London and William Faulkner, but as I read these quotes, I thought that perhaps I should give them a second chance. These quotes reminded me of some of the lessons my mom tried to teach me. Like London and Faulkner My mom was a good survival teacher. 

FALL SPRINT CHALLENGE

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

 Simone de Beauvoir

The kick off meeting of my Fall Sprint Challenge went off on Thursday evening as scheduled, albeit with some glitches.

We had planned on meeting via Skype, but that couldn't happen. We just didn't seem to have everything set up right, or maybe computers were not compatible. We used my phone on speaker and had a conference call - circa 1995 - folks around a conference table talking into a box. But it was good.

CHALLENGES ARE GOOD! FALL SPRINT CHALLENGE

"You are not too old. And it is not too late to start."               Rainer Maria Rilke

As we get older, sometimes, not always, but sometimes, we fall into ruts and we can't seem to pull ourselves out. You know what I mean. If you are like me, you are at the end of your career, or maybe already retired. Some of us might be in the this rut, for example. We come home. Make a little something to eat. Drink a glass of wine, maybe. Go for a walk, maybe. And then we are in front of the T.V. until we fall asleep, later dragging ourselves to our beds to prepare for the next day.