Category: Trying New Things

Destination Unknown

The boys and I last July 20th…a day when we woke up with no plans and landed at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

I don’t often take the time to watch videos on YouTube, but when my friend Kim posted a link today to a commencement address delivered by Maria Shriver entitled The Power of the Pause, it seemed like something that might be worth 20 minutes of my time. It was. Maria, addressing the graduating class at the USC Annenberg School of Communication, spoke to the graduates not about how they could fast forward themselves into a promising and exciting career in journalism but rather about the need to press the pause button occasionally and focus on the present. Far too often in life the questions we receive are about what we will be doing next rather than where we are now and how we are doing in the moment. We miss the present while talking about and planning for the future.

Today was the last full day of school this year for my boys. This day is bittersweet for me each year. On the one hand, I’m mourning the lost of my freedom, my opportunities to have quiet time to myself or chances to meet with friends without noisy boys in tow. On the other hand, though, the last day of school means the last day of waking up early, the last day of making lunches, and the last day of being homework coach…all things I do not miss for the three months they are not part of my life. So, what do I do with all the extra time I garner with the end of school and my school year responsibilities? For years now it’s been my modus operandi to busily plan out a whole slew of events for the boys and I for their vacation. Heaven forbid we waste one moment of glorious summer.

Listening to Maria’s speech today, though, as I was compiling yet another list of activities and was focused again on future events, I pressed the pause button and stopped to reflect. I spend an awful lot of time in my house each summer planning out excursions for the boys and myself when I could simply go with the flow and live in the moment. Instead of concocting outings days or weeks in advance, I could just wake up, grab some gear, tell the boys to get in the car, and see where we end up. It might be a refreshing change if instead of rushing off to one thing or another we just decided on a moment by moment basis how to make the best use of our summer. My parents used to do this with my sisters and I when we were kids. They would throw us in the car and when we’d ask where we were going they would tell us, “Wherever the spirit leads us.” Sometimes we would end up nowhere but back in our driveway. Sometimes we’d end up having ice cream in a park. We never knew the ending until it was over. There’s something so freeing in that.

I know it’s unrealistic to think that I would ever be able to get out of my head entirely. I’m a thinker, and certain things must be planned because this is modern life and modern life includes schedules and appointments. But, I like this idea of pressing the pause button occasionally to make sure you’re not messing up the present by worrying too much about what comes next. Maybe it would do the boys and I some good to be human beings this summer rather than human doings? I don’t know. I guess we’ll see. I’m going to leave a lot of blank days on our calendar so the boys and I can see where the spirit leads us. Summer starts tomorrow and, for once, our destination is unknown.

Posted on by Me 1

All I Know About Art I Learned From DrawSomething

I am no artist, especially not on an iPhone with my fat finger as the artistic implement, but being creative is fun.

At the request of my husband, I downloaded the DrawSomething app, which is kind of like Pictionary for your phone. You’re given a choice of words to draw, each with different possible points to accumulate based on the potential difficulty of the word. For the record, I did not want to download this app because I’ve been banned from playing Pictionary with my family. They believe I become too competitive and then belligerent. Truth is, my mom and I would always end up as partners while my sisters would be partners. My mother is an artistic soul and while she was busy creating a work of art, my sister Julie would get three lines into a stick figure horse, my sister Kathy would guess the clue, and my mother and I would go down in a ball of flames. I hate to lose. I do. But losing to three lines of a stick figure horse while my mother sketches the outline of her equine masterpiece was more than I could bear. Lesson #1: The truly artistic should never play timed drawing games with people who like to win. They should play DrawSomething instead.

Although my spouse (the one who begged me to download the app so we could play) never plays with me, other friends have started games with me and gotten me addicted. Now, I have friends who are infinitely more gifted than I am with artistic skills. Some of them create miniature works of art on their phone or iPad and make it easy for me to guess the answer. Other friends are a bit more like me, and I have to employ my creative mind to guess what in the holy hell they just drew. I suppose the thing that keeps me going when a friend draws a Scotty dog that looks like it’s a black unicorn wearing a ugly sweater is that this is a cooperative game, not a competitive one. I don’t want my friend to think that her drawing was indecipherable, so I work hard to envision her thought process. Sometimes, it’s not easy. Lesson #2: Sometimes art truly is in the eyes of the beholder.

It’s interesting to see the different ways unique individuals try to bring a clue to life. What works for one person in a guessing game does not always work for the next person. One person might choose the term “blizzard” and try to convey a snowstorm. Another person might choose a Dairy Queen treat to convey that same idea. You never know what the person guessing your clue might have in their mental arsenal to help them solve your drawing. You just do the best you can with what you have and leave the rest to interpretation. And in the end, you hope the friend you’re playing with doesn’t start to wonder about you too much when the word you choose to draw is “poop” because you know exactly how to depict an appropriate, steaming pile of doggie do. Lesson #3: Art is subjective. Sometimes a person’s best work of art might be a representation of canine feces, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Some of us are Rembrandts and some of us are Picassos. We can’t all create a flawless work of artistic realism. Some of us look at things a bit differently and put our eyeballs in the wrong spot. I’m glad hubby begged me to download that silly app. It has reminded me how fun it is to draw like I did when I was a kid. Getting back to my inner child has been a trip. I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve saved some of my iPhone artistic creations because I was so proud of them. Now, I just need to figure out how to put them on a virtual fridge using virtual magnets.

Posted on by Me

I Am A Dirty Girl

A columbine that has a new home in our yard.

Gardening is about as interesting as watching golf (which is akin to watching paint dry), which is why, I suppose, that I ended up with a half of a whiskey barrel “planter” buried in our backyard for nearly a year. I greatly disdain any sort of yard work. It’s tedious. It’s messy. It involves bugs. And, in the end, stuff you plant and pour hours of time into will just wither and leave you with a stark, white landscape in winter anyway. Bah humbug.

A thought occurred to me recently. Perhaps hubby planted that barrel in the yard to persuade me he should not be trusted with the landscaping. There are two ways to get a woman to do anything: 1) to do it the wrong way or 2) to make her think it’s what she really wants. Steve must be a genius because with that horrific barrel he convinced me that he is incapable of making wise decisions in the yard when left to his own devices and he somehow got me outside willingly working in the yard without him. Check hell because it might have frozen over.

Yesterday, I moved rock so I could find the spots where a drip system is already in place for planting. With a little investment of my time, I found five such spots. Today I drove to a locally owned nursery to begin the correction process. I perused the aisles of plants and selected ones that seemed right for their new homes. With soil, new plants, and garden gloves in hand, this afternoon I started the arduous task of giving our yard a face lift. Somewhat miraculously, I enjoyed it. I even purposely picked up a couple worms (with gloves on because they are still gross) and examined them carefully, just to prove I could do it.  I think I might understand now what people see in gardening as a hobby. There is something peaceful there. It is slow, methodical, quiet, and life-affirming. In our backyard with the meadowlark’s song trilling through the air and the smell of the grass becoming green, I was able to live in the present for a few, very zen moments. And, when it was all done, I was able to step back, see what I had accomplished, and feel truly good about giving something back to the earth in my own miniscule way.

It’s highly unlikely that today’s experience will foster a new hobby for me. I am perfectly well aware that the dreaded wolf spider makes its home in our yard, and that is enough to keep me from digging around too much. But at least my attempt at gardening taught me that on occasion it’s good to get outside and get my hands (or at least my gloves) messy. I guess I’m something of a dirty girl after all.

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” ~Gerry Spence

 

Posted on by Me

Fasten Your Seatbelts

I feel like today is the first day of the rest of my life.

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”         ~Lao Tzu

You know that thing? The one you’ve always thought you should do but it seemed so daunting, so arduous, so clearly out of left field that you couldn’t bring yourself to attempt it? Well, I’ve made a decision about that thing. I’m going to do it. Today I started the wheels in motion and now there’s no turning back. Everything I’ve done up until now has led me to this point, and that’s how I know this is what I am supposed to do.

Today I made a commitment to myself to start writing with an end-goal in mind. For as long as I can remember, I’ve known I would eventually try to write something “real” and, by “real,” I mean publishable. Yes. I publish these words on my blog on the Internet, but I’m talking about something more substantial, like a book of some sort. Yes. I have a bound Master’s Thesis collecting dust on a shelf at Illinois State University, but that’s not the type of book I’m referring to either. I’m talking about something even more substantial than that 80-page paper. The idea has been germinating in my head for a year and I’ve been rolling it around on my tongue to get used to the sound of it, and today I decided I can’t put it off any longer.

On the advice of a friend, I’ve registered for a one-day, informational seminar and networking opportunity for current and prospective authors. It’s going to be my jumping off point, the official launch into my future. And, I can’t tell you how much I am filled with terror right now, facing the thing I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to attempt. Whether I will walk away from this event with useful information or merely with the experience itself, I’m taking a step in a direction I’ve been meaning to head in for a while. It could be a bumpy ride. I sort of feel like I’m in that incredibly creepy, psychedelic scene from the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the one where Willy Wonka sings about not knowing exactly where they’re going. For a while there, the passengers are nervous and fearful, but I figure if they came out of the tunnel just fine, with Willy Wonka at the helm no less, then I should be fine too.

 

Posted on by Me 1

Food Fight

Hubby and I have a fundamental disagreement about food. I don’t get excited about it and he does. To me, food is sustenance. If it happens to taste good, all the better. Generally speaking, however, I don’t care enough about it to work particularly hard for it. I’m just as happy with a bowl of cereal or cold pizza as I am with Chateaubriand. Steve, however, comes from a family where food is an event. His mother is an accomplished cook who loves to read cookbooks, find new recipes, and experiment. She truly enjoys preparing elaborate meals. I’d rather ride my bike and get Thai takeout.

Now, before you go feeling bad for Steve, you should know that I am a capable cook. I know my way around the kitchen. I’ve been cooking meals since I was about thirteen. Not only can I follow a recipe, but I’m also completely adept at improvising and throwing together something tasty out of a pile of random ingredients in the fridge. I can cook but, not unlike the title character in Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, I would prefer not to. It’s just such a lot of work for something I simply do not care about.

In a not-so-covert attempt to encourage finer dining in our house, we’ve mysteriously been receiving Cuisine at Home magazine for at least six years now. (I suspect my husband mentioned he liked it and his parents got us a perpetually renewing subscription.) Hubby drools while he drags new issues around the house with him and puts dog ears on pages he’s interested in. I usually pretend I don’t see it and then when he’s not looking I add the latest issue to the big pile of back issues.

The most recent issue, however, had a recipe that intrigued me. It was for crab and goat cheese ravioli with lemon cream sauce. In terms of flavors and ingredients, all my favorites were there wrapped in little raviolis, which I adore. The idea of pairing the pasta with snow peas intrigued me too. So, I stared at the recipe for a week, trying to decide if I should actually attempt to make such a thing. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me. I made it for dinner tonight. It took a while to prepare (as you might imagine raviolis would), but the cook time was quick. When I finally got it plated, it looked almost like the magazine photo. Yay, me. Then I took my first bite. Holy hell. Now I know why the magazine is called Cuisine at Home. It was fabulous. I paired it with a fruity yet dry Torrontés from Argentina, and Steve and I enjoyed a blissful, restaurant-quality meal in our own house. It was borderline miraculous.

When dinner was over, I surveyed the damage to the kitchen with a smile. Years ago to encourage me to cook more, hubby made me a deal…if I cook, he will do the dishes. So, the colossal mess in the kitchen, achieved by a ton of prep time and three pans on the stove simultaneously to perfectly time the ravioli, snow peas, and lemon cream sauce, was not my problem. I grabbed my glass of wine and headed upstairs and out of view of the destruction to hide out. I’d upheld my end of the bargain. I had cooked. My job was finished.

I asked Steve later if the meal was honestly worth the clean up. He emphatically replied, “Yes.” Clearly he is setting me up for more cooking time. Maybe I will throw him a bone once in a while. Perhaps once every month I can acquiesce and prepare a time-consuming but elegant meal for him. Perhaps he’ll eventually tire of the novelty of it. I’ll just have to make sure that the next meal I cook requires more dishes…a lot more dishes.

 

Posted on by Me 1