I haven’t explained my philosophical interest in the physical aspect of this quest, that is, the giving up of material things. That may seem a trivial concern when we are talking about, say, a pink-and-purple beaded skipping rope with one handle missing, but, wait a minute - is that trivial? When we are so quick to throw or give away something less-than-perfect? Is it trivial, that we may soon feel the urge to fill the empty space with something else, a newer toy perhaps? I'm not so sure.
And here is something else: Is it possible to live in a house and not fill it to the brim with stuff? Does nature really abhor a vacuum? Must it – or we, as nature’s creatures - always rush in to fill the void, the vacant shelf, the half-filled cupboard, the empty hanger? Can a wall just be blank? (Note to self: not if my husband has anything to do with it.)
If the answers to those questions are 'no', ‘yes’,‘yes’ 'no', then can we defeat nature? Can we bend the laws of the universe, persuade our innate natures otherwise? Train ourselves out of the hoarding instinct that, once upon a time, ensured our survival, but now is outmoded and may very well lead to our extinction (if you believe Wall-e).
And what of the consequences of re-arranging our physical space? I don’t want to get all feng shui here (out of respect for its practitioners and in an acknowledgement of my own ignorance of the subject), but what happens to the energy in a space when clutter is swept away? When unused objects are put to good use elsewhere? When we are freed from the tyranny of memorabilia and the judgment of projects left undone. What happens when we deal with all those deferred decisions, like “I’ll just put these Thai scarves here on the desk until I figure out what to do with them”. And then two years pass. So what if we decided instead of living in so much limbo?
This is what I’m after here. Part of it anyway. These are the questions that interest me. It is not just stuff. Nothing in this universe is ever just stuff. Don't believe me? Go ask a molecular physicist. Go ask a Tibetan buddhist monk. Go ask, a professional organizer, for pete's sakes. I don't know what they'd tell you, but I'm pretty sure it would be interesting.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
How to Burn the Bottom Off a Stainless Steel Pot
Did you know that you can actually burn the bottom right off of a stainless steel pot? Really! It’s pretty amazing! If you, too, would like to try this experiment at home, this article will tell you all you need to know.
First, while in the midst of your office paper-work, realize that it is 3:10 pm (where does the time go?) and dash out the door to pick-up children from school. Never mind that you are leaving off a letter mid-sentence, just go! Once you return home, do not – repeat do not ¬ return to the home office. You must start dinner – roast chicken - immediately upon return from school because it is cheerleading night and that translates into a 5:30 departure for the gym, a forty-five minute drive away (the things we do for our kids, no?)
By the way, choose flattened chicken, it cooks faster, and no, I don’t mean one that has been hit by a car. Go to Wal-mart, you’ll find it.
Once the chicken is in the oven, quick, dash back to your office and try to finish that letter before you start on the potatoes (we have to eat healthy, people!) Now, you’ve only got an hour to get dinner cooked, so be quick about it. When you’re finished drafting the letter – or after 5 minutes, whichever expires first – walk, no, run back to the kitchen and scrub the potoatoes. Now, for pete’s sakes, get your apron on if you haven’t already done so. We don’t need any unnecessary trips to the laundry room in the midst of this operation.
Stop! For heaven’s sakes, do not put the potatoes, or any other vegetable, on any surface touched by – or within a 1 meter radius of – the raw poultry. You risk cross-contamination and certain shame for the rest of your life. You need to immediately sterilize the entire area with the spray bottle of bleach that you stow conveniently under the counter for this very purpose. Put rubber gloves on while your at it.
OK, place the just-scrubbed-and-chopped pototoes into a saucepan of water and turn the burner to high. Put a second saucepan of water on the stove, with a vegetable steamer insert, and turn burner to high as well. There should be just enough water in the bottom to peek out of the steamer insert. Do not overfill the pot with water. We do no want to drown the vegetables and risk having all their nutrients leach out into the steaming water because that would defeat the whole purpose. OK, got that? Two pots with water, two burners on high.
Now leave the room.
Head back to the office. Finish your letter. Take the rubber gloves off first, otherwise you get garble. Attach letter to an email, hit send. Check incoming email. Lose track of time. At this point, you may notice an odd odor coming from the kitchen. Alarmed, you may find yourself sprinting back to the kitchen, where you realize, with horror, that the pot you were preparing to steam vegetables in has now boiled dry. You snap the burner to ‘off’ and remove the pot from the burner. Well, part of the pot. Strangely, there is a larger burner-size steel disk left behind. Don’t believe me? Check out this picture:
Yeah, that is the bottom of the pot on the left. I wish I was kidding.
Lesson? Give up multi-tasking before you burn the whole house down.
First, while in the midst of your office paper-work, realize that it is 3:10 pm (where does the time go?) and dash out the door to pick-up children from school. Never mind that you are leaving off a letter mid-sentence, just go! Once you return home, do not – repeat do not ¬ return to the home office. You must start dinner – roast chicken - immediately upon return from school because it is cheerleading night and that translates into a 5:30 departure for the gym, a forty-five minute drive away (the things we do for our kids, no?)
By the way, choose flattened chicken, it cooks faster, and no, I don’t mean one that has been hit by a car. Go to Wal-mart, you’ll find it.
Once the chicken is in the oven, quick, dash back to your office and try to finish that letter before you start on the potatoes (we have to eat healthy, people!) Now, you’ve only got an hour to get dinner cooked, so be quick about it. When you’re finished drafting the letter – or after 5 minutes, whichever expires first – walk, no, run back to the kitchen and scrub the potoatoes. Now, for pete’s sakes, get your apron on if you haven’t already done so. We don’t need any unnecessary trips to the laundry room in the midst of this operation.
Stop! For heaven’s sakes, do not put the potatoes, or any other vegetable, on any surface touched by – or within a 1 meter radius of – the raw poultry. You risk cross-contamination and certain shame for the rest of your life. You need to immediately sterilize the entire area with the spray bottle of bleach that you stow conveniently under the counter for this very purpose. Put rubber gloves on while your at it.
OK, place the just-scrubbed-and-chopped pototoes into a saucepan of water and turn the burner to high. Put a second saucepan of water on the stove, with a vegetable steamer insert, and turn burner to high as well. There should be just enough water in the bottom to peek out of the steamer insert. Do not overfill the pot with water. We do no want to drown the vegetables and risk having all their nutrients leach out into the steaming water because that would defeat the whole purpose. OK, got that? Two pots with water, two burners on high.
Now leave the room.
Head back to the office. Finish your letter. Take the rubber gloves off first, otherwise you get garble. Attach letter to an email, hit send. Check incoming email. Lose track of time. At this point, you may notice an odd odor coming from the kitchen. Alarmed, you may find yourself sprinting back to the kitchen, where you realize, with horror, that the pot you were preparing to steam vegetables in has now boiled dry. You snap the burner to ‘off’ and remove the pot from the burner. Well, part of the pot. Strangely, there is a larger burner-size steel disk left behind. Don’t believe me? Check out this picture:
Yeah, that is the bottom of the pot on the left. I wish I was kidding.
Lesson? Give up multi-tasking before you burn the whole house down.
Things I Gave Away: Today's Shortlist
- to the Goodwill:
- a bagful of my clothes including some distinctly unsexy flannette pajamas (I think I can hear my husband cheering somewhere off in the background);
- a bagful of kids' clothes, unexamined by myself, chosen and gathered by my older daughter -- thus energized, she then went on to rout out and re-organizer her younger sibling's homework binder (must be genetic...)
- 3 magazines and 2 catalogues that I will never get around to reading, along with a stack of books that I don't value enough to read again (that's the 'keeper' rule)
- a stack of fridge charts reminding me to drink 8 glasses of water and take my vitamins (this would be mothering-thyself-via-checklist)
- a beautifully mounted gymnastics poster, graciously accepted by our local gym club
Monday, April 5, 2010
Prayer Beads & the Pursuit of Happiness
About a year ago, I bought some prayer beads from a little shop downtown. I don’t recall what prompted this acquisition, no doubt it was inspired by some article I’d read, a theory I’d latched onto. The beads are lovely, an irregular rainbow, copper next to coal-black next to mustard, pale mauve, Caribbean green. They have weight, like tiny marbles and they’re cool to the touch. The loop is finished with a tassel of multi-coloured threads.
Once home, I didn’t know what to do with my newly-acquired beads, and so draped them around the neck of a laughing Buddha that sits on a side-table in my bedroom. I see them every morning when I wake.
I was reminded lately that such beads are often used in meditation, or prayer, to assist the meditator in staying on mantra. It struck me then, an image of myself, sitting contentedly, facing east and cross-legged in an easy lotus position, eyes lightly closed (but not to napping), fingering each bead and saying to myself: I am a writer now. A sort of Steven Covey-meets-Elizabeth-Gilbert approach to morning ritual. (To those who I’ve offended by my contemplated use of such beads for, arguably, non-secular, non-spiritual purposes, my apologies).
I should do this, I tell myself. Really, I should. It would, you know, help.
When I opened my eyes this morning, there he stood, the jovial Buddha with the prayer beads round his neck. I sat up, stretched and slipped out of bed, trying not to wake my husband who had slept fitfully, vexed by a sore back and, from the sounds of it, the beginnings of a head cold.
I tip-toe to the table and pull the beads from Buddha’s neck, making a snapping, clattering racket as I do. I hadn’t realized how loud they were. I seat myself in a plum-coloured armchair in the corner of the room, but feel ridiculous. I’ll go downstairs, I think, where there is quiet and privacy. I put the beads around my own neck, feeling sillier still, and slip out the bedroom door, closing it carefully behind me.
Once in the kitchen, I settle in a favourite chair, look out the bay window. I don’t need to close my eyes. I can contemplate the waking world outside instead. I slide the beads from my neck and finger them tentatively, repeat the mantra in my head: I am a writer now.... At bead number six, our grey tabby, Miley, interrupts me. This is her job: should I enter the kitchen, she is obligated to remind me, multiple times, that she enjoys a good brushing and she will meow, repeatedly, to get her point across. I set the beads down on the table and follow her to where the brush sits. Once she is satisfied, I return to my station, sit down and start again. I am a writer now… I am a..
No sooner do I begin then our tortoise shell appears at the back door, an expectant look on her face. I sigh, get up and open the door. I could use a cup of coffee about now, I think, and cross the kitchen to start a pot. And since there is no sense trying again before the coffee’s ready, I head to the powder room, only to notice that the Christmas soap dispenser needs retiring and the towels need to be changed. This, inevitably, leads to contemplation of all things laundry.
I give up on the beads. Well, not exactly, because all this while there has been an idea percolating quietly in back of my mind. A theory. It started last night as I closed the cover of “the Happiness Project”. I abandon all thoughts of laundry, and grab my lap-top instead. I pour a cup of steaming coffee while I wait for it to boot-up.
I picked up Gretchen Rubin’s book, “the Happiness Project” in an airport bookstore about a month ago. I love a good story from the front-lines of working motherhood and was drawn by the concept: can we act ourselves happier? I read the first two chapters with a sense of anticipation, and then something in the tone started to irritate me, a niggling feeling that something was not right in Happy-ville, at least not for me. I took another chapter or two of slugging to identify what was chafing me so.
It was the underlying whisper of “should”.
I should lighten up. Clean my closets. Sing in the morning. She’s right, I don’t deny it. My interior coach weighed in, too: I should home-school my kids, take on that new client, drink eight glasses of water a day. Floss. My shoulders tense just thinking about it. Nope. Nope. Nope.
I should really sit still for five minutes, repeat my mantra and tweedle those beads.
Nope.
By the time I reached “Lighten Up” in April, I started to skip passages because it had begun to take on the cast of yet another self-help book. I skipped parts that sounded screechily like advice or reproach and skittered instead through the anecdotal tales of Gretchen’s life as a wife, mom, friend and writer. Those, I loved.
I grant Gretchen much credit here because she did aptly capture an earlier period in my life, a time when I, too, was mired in home life and young children and somehow felt like I wasn’t doing it all well enough. If I had been, I felt at the time, I would have been happier. I didn’t eat well or exercise regularly. I didn’t work hard enough at new directions in my career (let’s be honest: I couldn’t have cared less about my career). There were so many things that I should have been doing.
That kind of ‘should’ thinking just about sunk me. Several years later – my kids are now 12 and 14 – I understand this. I have quit the Should Brigade. Mostly. But at the time, in my early thirties, I just felt like a big fat failure.
The beads sit on the table as I type this. I like their presence, their reminder. I also like the fact that instead of my sitting, stiff-necked, praying, I knew enough to let it alone. I took up the call, sat down at my computer and eked out this essay. My coffee has gone cold. The cats’ meows have gone unheeded. The laundry is undone. The prayer beads did help, just not in the way I expected.
Once home, I didn’t know what to do with my newly-acquired beads, and so draped them around the neck of a laughing Buddha that sits on a side-table in my bedroom. I see them every morning when I wake.
I was reminded lately that such beads are often used in meditation, or prayer, to assist the meditator in staying on mantra. It struck me then, an image of myself, sitting contentedly, facing east and cross-legged in an easy lotus position, eyes lightly closed (but not to napping), fingering each bead and saying to myself: I am a writer now. A sort of Steven Covey-meets-Elizabeth-Gilbert approach to morning ritual. (To those who I’ve offended by my contemplated use of such beads for, arguably, non-secular, non-spiritual purposes, my apologies).
I should do this, I tell myself. Really, I should. It would, you know, help.
When I opened my eyes this morning, there he stood, the jovial Buddha with the prayer beads round his neck. I sat up, stretched and slipped out of bed, trying not to wake my husband who had slept fitfully, vexed by a sore back and, from the sounds of it, the beginnings of a head cold.
I tip-toe to the table and pull the beads from Buddha’s neck, making a snapping, clattering racket as I do. I hadn’t realized how loud they were. I seat myself in a plum-coloured armchair in the corner of the room, but feel ridiculous. I’ll go downstairs, I think, where there is quiet and privacy. I put the beads around my own neck, feeling sillier still, and slip out the bedroom door, closing it carefully behind me.
Once in the kitchen, I settle in a favourite chair, look out the bay window. I don’t need to close my eyes. I can contemplate the waking world outside instead. I slide the beads from my neck and finger them tentatively, repeat the mantra in my head: I am a writer now.... At bead number six, our grey tabby, Miley, interrupts me. This is her job: should I enter the kitchen, she is obligated to remind me, multiple times, that she enjoys a good brushing and she will meow, repeatedly, to get her point across. I set the beads down on the table and follow her to where the brush sits. Once she is satisfied, I return to my station, sit down and start again. I am a writer now… I am a..
No sooner do I begin then our tortoise shell appears at the back door, an expectant look on her face. I sigh, get up and open the door. I could use a cup of coffee about now, I think, and cross the kitchen to start a pot. And since there is no sense trying again before the coffee’s ready, I head to the powder room, only to notice that the Christmas soap dispenser needs retiring and the towels need to be changed. This, inevitably, leads to contemplation of all things laundry.
I give up on the beads. Well, not exactly, because all this while there has been an idea percolating quietly in back of my mind. A theory. It started last night as I closed the cover of “the Happiness Project”. I abandon all thoughts of laundry, and grab my lap-top instead. I pour a cup of steaming coffee while I wait for it to boot-up.
I picked up Gretchen Rubin’s book, “the Happiness Project” in an airport bookstore about a month ago. I love a good story from the front-lines of working motherhood and was drawn by the concept: can we act ourselves happier? I read the first two chapters with a sense of anticipation, and then something in the tone started to irritate me, a niggling feeling that something was not right in Happy-ville, at least not for me. I took another chapter or two of slugging to identify what was chafing me so.
It was the underlying whisper of “should”.
I should lighten up. Clean my closets. Sing in the morning. She’s right, I don’t deny it. My interior coach weighed in, too: I should home-school my kids, take on that new client, drink eight glasses of water a day. Floss. My shoulders tense just thinking about it. Nope. Nope. Nope.
I should really sit still for five minutes, repeat my mantra and tweedle those beads.
Nope.
By the time I reached “Lighten Up” in April, I started to skip passages because it had begun to take on the cast of yet another self-help book. I skipped parts that sounded screechily like advice or reproach and skittered instead through the anecdotal tales of Gretchen’s life as a wife, mom, friend and writer. Those, I loved.
I grant Gretchen much credit here because she did aptly capture an earlier period in my life, a time when I, too, was mired in home life and young children and somehow felt like I wasn’t doing it all well enough. If I had been, I felt at the time, I would have been happier. I didn’t eat well or exercise regularly. I didn’t work hard enough at new directions in my career (let’s be honest: I couldn’t have cared less about my career). There were so many things that I should have been doing.
That kind of ‘should’ thinking just about sunk me. Several years later – my kids are now 12 and 14 – I understand this. I have quit the Should Brigade. Mostly. But at the time, in my early thirties, I just felt like a big fat failure.
The beads sit on the table as I type this. I like their presence, their reminder. I also like the fact that instead of my sitting, stiff-necked, praying, I knew enough to let it alone. I took up the call, sat down at my computer and eked out this essay. My coffee has gone cold. The cats’ meows have gone unheeded. The laundry is undone. The prayer beads did help, just not in the way I expected.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Dumping Superwoman
I am restless, today, irritated, like there’s a sliver in my thumb that I can’t extract. I feel pulled in too many directions, overwhelmed. No matter where I am in the house I see a task that needs attention: a stack of clothes to be mended, memorabilia to be sorted, laundry to be washed, dried, folded and put away.
There are so many ‘little jobs’ that need doing. I don’t know which one to take on first: the legal work I’m behind on? The yard? The house?
I’ve already hosted an Easter Sunday lunch and egg hunt today and - fun though it was - I’m tired. I try to nap, but can’t. Outside, the lawn begs to be raked, the gardens need cleaning up, the garage needs to be swept. Outside, it is also eighty degrees and sunny, miraculous weather for April 4th. Right. I pull on my old work clothes and head out the door.
I start on the side garden, a skinny strip of dirt running the length of the garage. I clear away the dead foliage, see raw hosta shoots poking out of the soil. Iris will soon follow, then bleeding hearts, purple balloon flowers and later, black-eyed susan. It takes no time at all to clear this little patch. I feel better. I dump the dried leavings in the compost pile. My spirits bolstered, I decide to take on the boulevard (that is, the lawn that begs to be raked).
Now understand something: my lawn is huge. Huge. The boulevard alone is probably 1800 square feet. Undeterred, I set to work with a fan rake, thinking that I can defeat this if I go at in sessions. The grass is dry and densely thatched. I cover a twelve by twelve patch before I come to my senses and give up.
Usually I know better. I enjoy working in the yard because it gives me a reason to be outside, to listen to the birds (none of whom I can identify), to breathe deeply of fresh air. The minute it becomes a goal-oriented activity, I am done for. I know this.
Sometimes I forget.
What I need to remember is this: We live in the country. Sort-of. The yard doesn’t have to be perfect. It is fine as it is. So either I need to accept that or I need to hire some help. I am not Superwoman, for heaven’s sakes. The thought stops me in my tracks: I am not Superwoman. And no one is asking me to be. The thousand other jobs awaiting me suddenly seem doable. Share-able. Delegatable. This is something I need to learn, no, to actually do: To Give Away a Job. I put down my rake. I remember a hand-made sign posted at the mail-box – “Spring Yard Clean-up” with little tear-away phone numbers. Right.
There are so many ‘little jobs’ that need doing. I don’t know which one to take on first: the legal work I’m behind on? The yard? The house?
I’ve already hosted an Easter Sunday lunch and egg hunt today and - fun though it was - I’m tired. I try to nap, but can’t. Outside, the lawn begs to be raked, the gardens need cleaning up, the garage needs to be swept. Outside, it is also eighty degrees and sunny, miraculous weather for April 4th. Right. I pull on my old work clothes and head out the door.
I start on the side garden, a skinny strip of dirt running the length of the garage. I clear away the dead foliage, see raw hosta shoots poking out of the soil. Iris will soon follow, then bleeding hearts, purple balloon flowers and later, black-eyed susan. It takes no time at all to clear this little patch. I feel better. I dump the dried leavings in the compost pile. My spirits bolstered, I decide to take on the boulevard (that is, the lawn that begs to be raked).
Now understand something: my lawn is huge. Huge. The boulevard alone is probably 1800 square feet. Undeterred, I set to work with a fan rake, thinking that I can defeat this if I go at in sessions. The grass is dry and densely thatched. I cover a twelve by twelve patch before I come to my senses and give up.
Usually I know better. I enjoy working in the yard because it gives me a reason to be outside, to listen to the birds (none of whom I can identify), to breathe deeply of fresh air. The minute it becomes a goal-oriented activity, I am done for. I know this.
Sometimes I forget.
What I need to remember is this: We live in the country. Sort-of. The yard doesn’t have to be perfect. It is fine as it is. So either I need to accept that or I need to hire some help. I am not Superwoman, for heaven’s sakes. The thought stops me in my tracks: I am not Superwoman. And no one is asking me to be. The thousand other jobs awaiting me suddenly seem doable. Share-able. Delegatable. This is something I need to learn, no, to actually do: To Give Away a Job. I put down my rake. I remember a hand-made sign posted at the mail-box – “Spring Yard Clean-up” with little tear-away phone numbers. Right.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Trophies to Give Away, Memories to Keep
It’s funny how memory works.
Last fall, in a fit of de-cluttering, I came across a storage bin full of old trophies: awards from various run/bike/swim events I’d competed in, cross-country ski loppets, mountain bike races. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, endurance sports were a big part of my life. There were academic awards, too, my Ontario scholar plaque, a couple of prizes from the short time I spent as a Toastmaster.
I had to ask myself what I was keeping all this stuff for. In comparison to the richness of my memories, this ‘hardware’ looked cheap and ridiculous. Knick-knacks. They weren’t even on display, they were sitting out here in the damp.
I picked up a trophy and read the plaque: Scanlon Creek Mountain Bike Race 1995, 1st place. The plastic cyclist perched on top was now riding a little askew. 1995. That would have been the summer we bought our first house, this house, the summer when I became pregnant with my first child. I remember one particular day during that time with absolute clarity. I was pedaling my road bike up a steep hill on a back-country road, something I was very good at. I was inexplicably short of breath, not able to get enough air in, and suddenly it occurred to me: “Could I be.. is it possible... am I pregnant?” This epiphany, this life-altering moment, came while I was on a bike, doing something I did well, powering a bike straight uphill. I put the trophy back down.
My husband helped me take photos of my collection – and his, too. We chose a handful of trophies to keep and trashed the rest. There is more work to do here, more paring down perhaps, and still the question of what to do with this stuff. But there is also this: the power of tangible reminders. What happens when you pick up an object from another time in your life and hold it in your hand.
Last fall, in a fit of de-cluttering, I came across a storage bin full of old trophies: awards from various run/bike/swim events I’d competed in, cross-country ski loppets, mountain bike races. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, endurance sports were a big part of my life. There were academic awards, too, my Ontario scholar plaque, a couple of prizes from the short time I spent as a Toastmaster.
I had to ask myself what I was keeping all this stuff for. In comparison to the richness of my memories, this ‘hardware’ looked cheap and ridiculous. Knick-knacks. They weren’t even on display, they were sitting out here in the damp.
I picked up a trophy and read the plaque: Scanlon Creek Mountain Bike Race 1995, 1st place. The plastic cyclist perched on top was now riding a little askew. 1995. That would have been the summer we bought our first house, this house, the summer when I became pregnant with my first child. I remember one particular day during that time with absolute clarity. I was pedaling my road bike up a steep hill on a back-country road, something I was very good at. I was inexplicably short of breath, not able to get enough air in, and suddenly it occurred to me: “Could I be.. is it possible... am I pregnant?” This epiphany, this life-altering moment, came while I was on a bike, doing something I did well, powering a bike straight uphill. I put the trophy back down.
My husband helped me take photos of my collection – and his, too. We chose a handful of trophies to keep and trashed the rest. There is more work to do here, more paring down perhaps, and still the question of what to do with this stuff. But there is also this: the power of tangible reminders. What happens when you pick up an object from another time in your life and hold it in your hand.
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