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It’s on a Loop

Random thoughts February 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Recently, I went to go see August: Osage County with a friend and there are moments from the film that are still with me. The main one that is looping around in my head is about trying to find a generous place in the heart for another person. It feels as though Tracy Letts is speaking to me.

Couldn’t we all benefit from a bit more generosity of feeling toward each other? Both offering it and hoping to receive it.

Valentine’s Day is looming – a time to think of love in all its various forms, though the day seems to be mostly devoted to romantic love. Love and a generosity of heart can be one and the same or not related at all except stemming from feelings. It is possible to love someone and yet not have generous feelings toward that person – think of sibling relationships in childhood particularly.

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I’ve ascribed this idea of a generous place in the heart as benefit of the doubt, but I like this more poetic and visual notion much better. Am I open to another person, are others open to me – do we identify with each other as fellow humans and not just a means to an end. We are each certainly aware when we feel that our own needs, our own humanity are overlooked or ignored. How often do we look into our own hearts to measure the generosity that we hold there – even what steps to we take to replenish it?

This is one of those things, like mindfulness, that can hold great benefit but require vigilance to review and maintain. Or at least periodic thought, no recriminations with a slip into a stingier mode, but a redoubling of energy toward generosity.

The fine thing about enacting generosity in this manner is that it is easy to start. I can let the person with fewer items in front of me in a checkout line. Or send empathetic thoughts toward the parent with the unruly child in a restaurant. I can ask someone I know to explain their reasoning before I assign one to them. And so on.

There is a great deal about relationships in this movie that I will continue to think about while I test out this idea of a generous place in the heart.

Poetic to Prosaic

Random thoughts February 3, 2014 Comments: 4

Prosaic is one of those words that I come upon infrequently and in such context that I never bothered to look it up in the dictionary. So I never had a clear understanding of its meaning, only gleaned it from the situations where I found it used. I’ve recently discovered that I had the wrong idea of this word all along.

In gleaning a meaning, I give weight to the way that the word sounds to me and prosaic has a pleasant little lilt to it. But it means the same as mundane – which sounds as it is intended, stodgy and dull. In enjoying the way that prosaic sounded, I was uplifting it to be similar in meaning to poetic instead of its opposite. Being a word in the periphery of my awareness, I never thought about the origin; its direct relationship to the word prose. A word which encompasses all of my efforts on this blog, a cousin of my chosen word essay. Around 1746 the dictionary says prosaic’s meaning was “having the character of prose (in contrast to the feeling of poetry)”. This was almost 100 years after the word came into being.

I love the huge variety of words that we have at our disposal (and yet we still have so much difficulty expressing ourselves at times), some of which have been with us for centuries. With such a vast selection, is it odd or understandable that most of us use so very few words repeatedly and some words become so overused as to be akin to nails on a chalkboard? (Think of just about any buzz word, which I wrote about on my old blog last year, Buzzspeak, Hmmm.)

It seems understandable to me that we become familiar with a narrow selection of words and then use what is most familiar. In our constant search for meaning and value, we cling to the things that are comfortable and familiar. Regardless of how prosaic they may be.

A Jumbled Approach

Random thoughts January 31, 2014 Comments: 2

I said that I would bring a treat in to work this morning. I said it on Monday, so I had time to plan – sort of. Other than being at work most of each day in between, sleep, eating, household chores and so on. And it doesn’t help that I haven’t really been to the store in over a week so some supplies are short. A few challenges.

On the plus side, I have been baking for a lot of years – since I worked on my Girl Scout cooking badge and realized that I liked to bake. And I’ve been a parent for more than a few years, so I know how to make do in a pinch. I do like structure, but I have learned how to take the structure I can find and make new connections to get where I want to be.

Butterscotch chocolate chip bars are the result. Baking requires more precision than other kinds of cooking, true enough – but experience in combinations and an understanding of the different ingredients means that a recipe isn’t absolutely rigid. A calculated risk or two can lead to success.

Substitutions need to have similar properties to account for consistency of the batter and the potential for flavor changes has to be considered as well. After looking around the kitchen and thinking about recipes I actually had a couple of choices. Since my energy level remains low thanks to the ongoing winter, I opted for a simple recipe even though I’ve never made it before. (A word to non-bakers and cooks – it is almost never a good idea to try out a recipe for an audience the first time.)

The bars smelled fabulous while baking, but that isn’t necessarily a good indicator. My son hovered ready to be my first taste tester, but he has inherited my sweet tooth so also not a good indicator of success.

I have had my share of spectacular failures as a baker. Mainly due to an excess of hutzpah and a glaring lack of experience plus knowledge. But I learned more from those flops than I would have if I had taken a more conservative route in my baking past. I think this is true in most aspects of my life.

Now it remains to be seen what my team thinks of my approach.

Favorite Ways to While Away a Winter Day

Random thoughts January 29, 2014 Comments: 2

I think that my brain might be freezing up this long winter. I’ve tried to start a few new posts and they are all now waiting for me to find a way to finish the ones that are worthy and dispose of the ones that aren’t.

So perhaps I can at least conjure up a list of pleasant things to while (or wile, if you prefer) away some hours rather than wishing them away for some better weather:

A good book, a mug of tea, and my cozy fleece throw (in a fine shade of green to remind me of seasons to come)
A marathon session of Sherlock on Netflix
A leisurely soup and sandwich lunch with a friend
Slowly and calmly putting a space to rights (and not thinking about how long it may stay that way)
Learning something new, or getting better at something
Perusing a map or atlas – to remember a trip, plan one or trace a historical event
A game with my sons and daughter-in-law, perhaps Settlers of Catan
A hot as I can stand it bath with great scents, some music and a good book or magazine
Normally, writing would fit on this list…
A look through old photo albums

Wikipedia snip-it of Sherlock

I think that I need to add a new craft to this list perhaps, or revisit an old one. Maybe getting some ideas from people in the blogosphere will help me out. What would go on your list? If you put any outdoor activity on the list, do give a compelling argument why, please.

In the Grip of Winter Exhaustion

Random thoughts January 25, 2014 Comments: 8

When I was about 12 and enamored with the idea of love, my mom told me about a book that she had enjoyed which had a love story but so much more. The book was Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman and I still remember the depictions of isolation in winter. That feeling struck me when I read the Little House series by Laura Ingles Wilder, too.

Most of us humans weren’t built for winter endurance – mentally or physically. Oh, we smile about how pretty and sparkly the snow and ice is around Christmas because its new and fresh and we’ve had ages to forget that there will be months of the stuff to slog through. And some people have a passion for skiing, skating, or snowboarding; perhaps sledding and a bit of snowman building that gives them reason to hope for the stuff. Not to mention school-child wishes for snow days.

The majority of us just push through and try not to give in to winter exhaustion. The simplest task – an errand to the store, say – becomes a greater chore and drains more energy than necessary after wrapping up in layers, scraping the car, fighting through all the other drivers who’ve forgotten how to navigate this white stuff, finding one of the few remaining parking spots that hasn’t become a snow mountain, only to find that the items that you need are among the new shipment that is stuck on a truck up some impassable mountain pass or other and due who-knows-when.

Quite a distance from that isolation that I read in those books, but still in our modern way greatly affected by the elements. We control so much in our modern world, but nature rules in these months and we humans find our way through. And we fight to keep our schedule the same regardless of the season or weather, where those earlier folk adjusted their activities to accommodate the calendar.

The objective of this Daily Prompt was to teach, but sometimes the most important aspect of teaching is to get us to stop and think. Why do we do what we do?

This post is written in response to The Daily Prompt: Teaching.

Catching Up, Keeping Up, Staying Ahead of Things

Random thoughts January 8, 2014 Comments: 2

A New Year starts a fresh calendar, but the slate isn’t wiped entirely clean. There is much that gets carried over, all of the open tasks on your lists – wherever you keep them. And snow. We are having a much snowier winter than last year here in the Midwest and perhaps even snowier than average.

Whatever you thought you might do on a given day, show removal gets added in – almost every day of this New Year. This also means adding in longer travel times, altered routes, changes in plans. Instead of ticking something off of the endless lists, snow might mean moving it back days or weeks so that it lurks undone instead of smartly checked off. Harder to catch up, keep up or stay ahead.

In our house this year, it is my son who is taking point on snow removal here and for an older neighbor. He is both happy to help her out and weary that it has been so frequent. Snow and cold make me want to hibernate. I am happy to live in modern times with central heating, wicking fabrics, and the internet.

But home isn’t entirely solace and a cozy den from the cold. I have once again neglected to pour treatments down the drain regularly so that the main drain that is meant to efficiently and silently whisk used water from our house is calling attention to itself. I haven’t ever had this problem with any previous house so I can’t help but wonder if there is a design flaw in this particular drain layout – an awkward spot that narrows too quickly or bends too sharply and allows for difficulties if not given regular attention.

A few years ago, at great expense, I discovered that collusion between the long ago builder and some housing inspector allowed for the brilliant installation of heavy coated cardboard – called Orangeburg pipe, I believe – as the piping which connected all the houses in my neighborhood to the city sewer. Not surprisingly, this pipe fails to stand the test of time. The pipe for my house had lasted amazingly well, the house being in its 40^th decade. Lucky me, I was the lottery winner with a prize to pay out and new pipe to dig and lay out. With the bonus of a messed up front lawn for a year as things settled and grass reestablished itself.

Sometimes I feel like a maintenance person with a push broom. Push this personal thing along, push that household thing along, push this professional thing along. Go back to the beginning and start again. Replace the broom with a shovel and push that snow out of the way.

As thankful as I am for modern conveniences, is it an illusion that life was simpler and therefore easier to keep up with things in past generations?

Getting to ‘Normal’

Random thoughts January 6, 2014 Leave a comment

I usually keep Christmas décor up until on or about January 6^th, so now I am in the process of taking it down. Getting back to ‘normal’. In our house this often means this pile up of Christmas that you see in the picture. Almost every piece tells a story – of the person who gave it to me, or the shopping trip when I found it, or a family member no longer with us. Sometimes I need an interim period before I’m ready to pack everything away until next year.

The rest of the house looks a bit spare and bare now stripped back to its standard decorations. Normal. Not festive.

Outside the snow blows and looks bleak. Normal January. No green except tiny spots of evergreens waiting under snow mounds.

I used to briskly put away Christmas items in one fell swoop, the boys would leave for school a day or two after winter break ended seeing Christmas and come home to regular, every day house. Festive to normal in a few frenzied hours. Now I put out less of our Christmas bounty and take much longer to bring myself to store it.

I think more about what normal means. All of its definitions and connotations. How normal shifts all of the time, even while we think it is safe and steady. Normal is sturdy, utilitarian – without sparkle – background expected to support effectively without attention or effort. Certainly not expected to crack, break or suddenly alter to something unfamiliar.

Here in Illinois, Normal is actually a place on the map that you can visit or live if you choose. For a little while The New Normal was a show that we could all watch on TV, though I don’t think that it lasted. ‘You’re not normal’ probably still shoots around schools as an effective epithet, meant to lance an offender, real or imagined, to the quick.

How do you feel about normal?

Procrastinating Resolution Planning

Personal Growth, Random thoughts, Work Life January 3, 2014 1 Comment

Do you make New Year Resolutions? Do you plan them, or are they usually spur of the moment ideas? Do you make the same one every year? Do you make progress on it? Sorry, I don’t mean to seem like I am grilling – you have someone in your life for that, I have no doubt. I am merely curious, really.

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I remember in my childhood that we spent plenty of time at the dinner table talking about New Year Resolutions this time of year. My mom would be captured by the idea of renewal and self-improvement on a mass scale for the first few weeks of each year and want to get us involved. I don’t remember any of the actual resolutions that any of us made, of course. The resolutions themselves were rather secondary to the intrigue of so many people embarking on new plans at the same time.

This was of course long before today’s media fascination, or should I say obsession, with Resolutions. Maybe the media has just picked up on mom’s drum beat.

Dad was the list maker, and the head down, plow forward, get your chores done before fun kind of person. He didn’t want to talk about getting things done, he wanted to get to it. I’m pretty sure he mostly just listened to these conversations about resolutions.

I stopped making resolutions when I started to realize the repetitiveness involved and how few resolutions are actually acted upon. I had a friend resolve last year to sparkle – I do hope that she came through on that one. And I have a couple of other friends who have made big changes like healthier lifestyles and I admire their success.

It isn’t that I don’t have any need to improve aspects of my life, just that I don’t use resolutions to create progress on those fronts. I have plenty of room for improvement. I regularly resolve to keep on top of things, particularly finding ways to get myself to do the ones that I don’t like. I just don’t do it around New Year with a capital R.

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Short Term Planning

Random thoughts December 30, 2013 Leave a comment

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I know this is the time of year to hatch grand ideas, named Resolutions, not a time to be thinking small. Well, the fellow who normally cuts my hair was stricken with pneumonia right before Christmas and my haircut appointment and while I do hope that he is ok, this leaves me with a shaggy dilemma.

I can’t remember the last time that I felt truly pleased about my hair – the style, the color – and I am the kind of person who only pays marginal attention to any sort of style. I do understand that appearance it important because it is part of people’s perception of a person. And I can appreciate when someone else looks well put together, I just have a hard time figuring out how they managed the effect.

Anyway, my need to resolve my overgrown locks has me thinking about short term planning at this almost New Year stage. It often seems as if we just do whatever is in front of us. Get it done, move to the next thing, get it done, move to the next thing. Periodically check the list, if you keep one, to make sure things aren’t missed.

My sister, brother, sister-in-law and I went to the grocery store the weekend before Christmas. Life has been a bit hectic so while we had made plans to be together for the holiday, those plans hadn’t gotten specific enough to cover little things like food. We put together a menu plan before we got in the car and only my sister thought to write it all down. She had a handful of lists, actually, including general things that she needed for her household since she was hosting.

It was fun to go to the store together, despite the number of other shoppers. It was out of the norm, and I couldn’t help but remember back on our childhood shopping trips plus other shared shopping experiences over the years that occurred during other family gathering times. But it was haphazard with different members of our team wandering off in search of this or that and only my sister keeping track of the items that had made it onto our list.

We had quite tasty meals, with shared cooking responsibilities and shared clean up, too. Perhaps it would have benefitted from more rigorous pre-planning – it certainly helped that we have had enough previous family gatherings that parts could be done without much discussion. It would probably have been rather a disaster for a group of unfamiliar people.

I’m going to keep thinking about short term planning while I find someplace to get a haircut. I’d love to know your thoughts on planning – short, long, or resolution type.

Identifying Connections

Personal Growth, Random thoughts, Work Life December 27, 2013 Leave a comment

When I am fully alert, aware and focused in my current moment (instead of running through the constant lists in my head of what should be done, and where else I must go, etc.) I remind myself to look for connections and not distinctions between myself and the people around me. There are plenty of things that separate us from all the people around us, even those who should be closest. We often tend to focus on these differences.

We have more similarities with all of other people on this Earth than we recognize, sometimes we have to look deeper and sometimes just think more simply. We could be worlds apart ideologically, but both appreciate a hug or a kind word when we are hurting, say. And back before we were quite so global, sociologists did studies that nearly all people named facial expressions of basic emotions the same – sadness, anger, happiness and such.

Closer to home, and having just celebrated Christmas, the connection between my almost 24 year old son and his 6 year old cousin makes me smile. Other than being part of the same family and both male, they have very little context that aligns on the surface. But they have a mutual interest in Legos. And since my son was willing to pull out a few boxes containing a portion of the million Legos that he owns to sit with his cousin for a couple of hours they have found other things that they can talk about together and enjoy.

I don’t know you and all the joys and challenges that you encounter, but I imagine that we could quickly find some means to bond if we started to talk. We don’t have to be friends forever, or even ever see each other again to have a moment of connection.