I’m taking a brief spring break from blogging, but I’ll be back soon. Hope your week is a happy one!
I’m taking a brief spring break from blogging, but I’ll be back soon. Hope your week is a happy one!
I’m taking a brief spring break from blogging, but I’ll be back soon. Hope your week is a happy one!
So much of life is made up of the little things, the simple
pleasures and everyday adventures that form the main part of our existence. If
we can take pleasure in those little things (instead of waiting for some
distant “big thing”), we’ll find our day-to-day lives that much happier. Here
are five little things making me happy right now:
Singing. I love to sing—not for an audience,
but with the radio or CDs, in the shower, driving down the road, etc. I just
started doing it again lately, after falling silent for months.
Robins Eggs.
Every year when the Easter candy hits the shelves, I treat myself to a bag
(just one) of Robins Eggs. In order to be satisfying, they have to be made with
Whopper brand malted milk candies and they have to be the full size, not the
minis. I’m very particular about my junk food.
My dog. Scout
makes me happy nearly every day…except when she has to go potty at 4 in the
morning. I spend considerable time each day petting her, giving her treats,
loving her. Today’s her 14th birthday, and we’ve had her since she
was eight weeks old. She’s an integral member of the family, and we know that
since she’s aging she won’t be with us forever. I’m making the most of the time
we have.
Gardenias. I just
picked the first gardenia blossom from my plant and its gorgeous scent perfumes
my desk. Once picked, the flowers last only a day or two, but while they last,
they can make a whole room smell wonderful.
The Olive Grove, by Katherine Kizilos. I loved visiting Greece
a few years ago, and while I’d love to return someday, for now I have to make
do with other people’s trips. Kizilos makes me feel like I’m there when she
describes the blue of the Aegean , and the way the island
of Santorini
What’s making you happy right now?
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| Photo courtesy Wendy Domeni |
Each of the senses has a way of evoking time and place. In
this bittersweet poem by Jeffrey Harrison of Massachusetts ,
birdsong offers reassurance as the speaker copes with loss. [Introduction
by Ted Kooser.]
Visitation
Visitation
Walking past the open window, she is surprised
by the song of the white-throated sparrow
and stops to listen. She has been thinking of
the dead ones she loves--her father who lived
over a century, and her oldest son, suddenly gone
at forty-seven--and she can't help thinking
she has called them back, that they are calling her
in the voices of these birds passing through Ohio
on their spring migration. . . because, after years
of summers in upstate New York ,
the white-throat
has become something like the family bird.
Her father used to stop whatever he was doing
and point out its clear, whistling song. She hears it
again: "Poor Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody."
She tries not to think, "Poor Andy," but she
has already thought it, and now she is weeping.
But then she hears another, so clear, it's as if
the bird were in the room with her, or in her head,
telling her that everything will be all right.
She cannot see them from her second-story window--
they are hidden in the new leaves of the old maple,
or behind the white blossoms of the dogwood--
but she stands and listens, knowing they will stay
for only a few days before moving on.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine.
It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by Jeffrey Harrison. Reprinted from Incomplete
Knowledge, Four Way Books, 2006, with permission of the publisher. Introduction
copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser,
served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of
Congress from 2004-2006.
Feeling down?
Take one book and call me in the morning.
I don’t know about you, but I self-medicate with books. When
I’m enduring a difficult stretch, I often choose to read books that are funny,
or I’ll reach for a familiar comfort read. I’ll choose the simple and clear
over the more complex, simply because my mind is under strain already and I
want any input I have control over to be positive and uplifting.
Well, it turns out that my instinct for bibliotherapy is a
sound one: In several countries, including England ,
people with mild to moderate mental health issues, including anxiety, panic
attacks and depression, can be prescribed high-quality self help books they can
borrow from their local libraries. Miranda McKearney, chief executive of the
Reading Agency, a group that helped develop the list of books, told Mark Brown
of The Guardian, “There is a growing
evidence base that shows that self help reading can help people with certain
mental health conditions to get better.” The program is called Books on
Prescription, and the topics the books cover include anger, anxiety,
depression, binge eating and stress and worry, among others. (Please note that
this program is not intended for those with serious mental illness.) Click here
for a list of 30 of the most popular books used in Books on Prescription
programs.
But what if you don’t have a mental health condition—can
books still help you feel better? I certainly think so, and so does the Reading
Agency, which has also compiled a list of “mood boosting books”—books they
believe will generally provide uplifting reading. My favorite Barbara
Kingsolver book, Prodigal Summer, is
on this list, and a couple of books that are currently on my TBR list. I’ll explore some of the other titles because
I’m always looking for happy reads. Click here for the whole list. (If you have a book to suggest, they’re currently compiling
a new list for 2013. Tweet your recommendation using #moodboosting or email
them at moodboosting@readingagency.org.uk. Recommendations will be given to
reading groups who will decide which books make the cut for the list to be
released in May.)
If I were to make my own list of mood boosting books, in
addition to Prodigal Summer, it would
include:
I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson
Fifty Acres and a Poodle, Jeanne Marie Laskas
Guardians of Being—Spiritual Teaching from Our Dogs and Cats, Eckhart Tolle and Patrick McDonnell
Horse Heaven, Jane Smiley
The
A book from the Anne of Green Gables series, probably Anne of the Island (I don’t like the cover of this edition, but it’s the most recent), Anne of Windy Poplars or Anne’s House of Dreams. Or more likely, all three.
Something by Mary Stewart, most likely This Rough Magic, The Moon-Spinners, Madam, Will You Talk?or My Brother Michael.
A collection of Dave Barry’s newspaper columns, like Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up or Dave Barry Talks Back.
So what about you? I’m dying to know—what would your mood-boosting
books list include?
It started with a pair of socks. I needed a pair of socks to
ride in, and I found some cute ones at a tack store where I was having a repair
done. As with any specialized item, since the socks were “for riding” they cost
more than an equivalent pair of plain socks. I weighed my options: buy the
slightly-more-expensive-but-cute socks that are exactly the right length and
thickness for riding or save money, wait for a sale, buy another pair of socks
that will do but are not quite right.
You’d think that would be an easy decision, wouldn’t you? It was when I was
standing there holding the socks and debating with myself about buying them
that I realized just how stingy I can be with myself.
I’ve been thinking about this concept for quite some time.
Where is the line between common sense frugality and stinginess? Part of the way I think comes from how I grew up and most of my young adulthood. For a long
time, I did not have money for anything except true necessities. I remember carrying
a calculator to the grocery store when I was first married; once I hit a
certain amount, items were returned to the shelf. There simply was no extra
money in the budget.
But it’s not just money but time that I’m stingy with. I’ve begun
to feel that if I’m not working—either for pay or for the good of the family—I’m
wasting time. Add these beliefs to my naturally cautious and shy nature and you
have a recipe for a narrow, joyless life and a lot of guilt. I seem to take a
perverse pleasure in denying myself things I want, whether it’s a pair of socks
or a half hour to read *gasp* right in the middle of the day.
I don’t want to live like that. I want to be more generous,
loving and kind to myself. I believe that will make me happier as well as help
me be more generous and loving to others. So I came up with the concept of “a
week of yes”—a week where I followed my impulses, indulged my desires and
generally loosened up on myself. Three times I’ve set out to have a “week of
yes”—and three times I’ve started and stopped. I can’t seem to sustain the
concept of saying yes for more than a day or two. It’s hard! It’s scary. It
requires some serious attention and listening to myself.
Why don’t I say yes? Like too many things, it comes down to
fear: What if I say yes and something bad happens? What would other people
think? What options will I close off if I say yes? I’m a little afraid of what
I’ll get myself into by saying yes. I definitely don’t want a life that is
overloaded with too many activities and I don’t want yes to be indulgence for
indulgence’s sake.
To make things more confusing, sometimes saying no is really
saying yes! Saying no to lots of yummy-but-bad-for-me foods is really saying yes
to my bigger goals of being leaner and healthier. (However, saying no to all
delicious foods can lead to binge eating. Let’s not get too carried away here.)
Saying no to an $80 purse I don’t need and am not in love with means saying yes
to keeping that $80 for something else. (Here, a friend’s motto, “If it’s not an absolute yes, it’s a no” comes in handy.)
Instead of a week of yes, I’m slowly and gradually bringing
yes into my life in small ways. To start, I’ve come up with these basic
guidelines. I will say yes if:
- It costs less than $10.
- It’s something I’ve been wanting/wanting to do for a long time.
- It furthers my larger and most important goals: good health, loving relationships, fulfilling work.
- It’s an unexpected chance that might not come again.
And yes, I bought the socks.
 |
| The socks that started it all. |
Do you think you’re generous with yourself? What do you want
to say yes to?
“For happiness one needs security, but joy can
spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.”
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Are you ready for another installment of Field Trip Friday? This time, our wanderings took us to Le Mouton Noir (“the black sheep”) Bakehouse, because sometimes you just need to visit a gourmet bakery. Partner-in-adventure Laure and I made the trek to downtown
While our day was fun, we had a bit more adventure than we
planned, thanks to my own inattention to detail. My first mistake was to copy
only the rights and lefts of the Google Maps directions without the distances
between points, and my second mistake was assuming I knew where the place was
and walking confidently off in that direction after we’d parked. It was after
we’d walked several l-o-o-n-g blocks and the street numbers were going the
wrong direction that I remembered a bit about cross streets and Laure pulled
out her phone to locate it. Yup, we’d walked in the opposite direction.
We were lucky it was a gorgeous, cool-but-sunny day and the
extra walking made us feel that we could indulge, perhaps, in a pastry as well
as lunch. (What better way to celebrate 20 extra minutes of walking than by
inhaling 800 calories of sweet and sinful delight?)
By the time we reached the bakery, which we had actually driven past on our way to the parking
garage, we were more than ready for lunch.
What I ate:
 |
| Insalata caprese sandwich |
Our reward for the extra walking:
 |
| German chocolate cake |
Lunch was delicious and worth the drive and walk. Laure
sketched hers (she writes about it here)
and I took pictures. Perhaps a sketch will
appear in my sketchbook, but probably not, because I still haven’t finished the
sketches from Sunken Gardens
The moral of this Field Trip Friday is: when exploring new
places, go with the flow and don’t get too upset if things don’t go quite as
planned. Oh, and be sure to reward yourself with cake. Definitely, cake should
be involved.
Have you taken a field trip lately?
Eating: one of life’s great simple pleasures, but one that
can quickly get me into trouble. In my quest for tasty-yet-mostly-healthy snacks, I’ve
discovered the joy of flavored almonds. I started off with Blue Diamond butter
toffee flavor, and…yum! Slightly sweet, but still mostly healthy. Next, a
friend introduced me to the toasted coconut flavor, also tasty and just
slightly sweet. And then, well, another friend warned told me about the salt ’n vinegar flavor, which is now my favorite. The only downside is that you have to
be careful how many of these you eat, because one ounce weighs in at around 170
calories—no slugging down handfuls and expecting to retain (or regain) one’s
svelte figure.
Sure, plain almonds might be a bit healthier, and I do eat
and enjoy them also—but when I want to have something that feels like a treat
without totally derailing my health goals, I reach for one of these yummy
flavors. They make me happy. (And yes, I do see that “artificially flavored” on the label
of the salt ’n vinegar flavor—I admit they’re not perfect…but neither am I.)
What is your favorite healthy snack?
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| Photo courtesy rnhyppy |
When spring finally arrives, it can be fun to see what
winter left behind, and Jeffrey Harrison of Massachusetts
is doing just that in this amusing poem. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]
Mailboxes in Late Winter
Mailboxes in Late Winter
It’s a motley lot. A few still stand
at attention like sentries at the ends
of their driveways, but more lean
askance as if they’d just received a blow
to the head, and in fact they’ve received
many, all winter, from jets of wet snow
shooting off the curved, tapered blade
of the plow. Some look wobbly, cocked
at oddball angles or slumping forlornly
on precariously listing posts. One box
bows steeply forward, as if in disgrace, its door
lolling sideways, unhinged. Others are dented,
battered, streaked with rust, bandaged in duct tape,
crisscrossed with clothesline or bungee cords.
A few lie abashed in remnants of the very snow
that knocked them from their perches.
Another is wedged in the crook of a tree
like a birdhouse, its post shattered nearby.
I almost feel sorry for them, worn out
by the long winter, off-kilter, not knowing
what hit them, trying to hold themselves
together, as they wait for news from spring.
I cup my warm mug of coffee between both hands as I walk
back to my office. Is there anything better than that first sip of coffee in
the morning? I brew a mixture of half vanilla-flavored coffee and half plain
coffee, keeping both myself and my husband happy. (Guess who likes the flavored
coffee?) That first sip tastes so good, especially when followed up with a bit
of cranberry orange scone. I use the coffee pot’s timer so when I get up the
house smells like coffee and it’s ready for me to pour.
The sky over the trees gradually lightens, flushing pale
pink to salmon. I look around my office at the many things I love: books, art
supplies, pictures, little knick knacks. The birds begin to wake up, chattering
and chirping in the trees. A pair of cardinals takes turns at the bird feeder.
Everyone else is still asleep—even the dog. I sit in my
rocking chair—the one I’ve had since my son was an infant. How many hours did
we spend here together, while I fed him, read or sang to him as he lay cradled
in my arms or sleeping on my shoulder? He’s 18 and more than six feet tall now.
It feels like I’m all alone in the world. I watch the
Spanish moss sway in the slightest of breezes. I pick up the notebook I use for
morning pages, the cardboard cover smooth beneath my fingers. I like to use
composition books for morning pages. They’re a nice, portable size and sturdy
enough to be used for months at a time. And they now come in many pretty
designs—I usually stock up at the beginning of the school year when there’s
more to choose from. Some mornings words
flow unstoppable from my pen as I perform a sort of brain dump onto the page,
lightening myself for the day ahead, working through my plans, clearing out
emotional fogs, aches and pains, happinesses. After I fill my three pages, my
hand and arm ache pleasantly and I know that at least for today I’ve written something, even if no one else ever sees
it. (My husband says when I die he’s going to read all my notebooks and
journals. I say go right ahead—I won’t care at that point!)
I used to be a night person, loving to stay up past when
others went to sleep. Now I’m too tired by nightfall, and I’d have a hard time
staying up past when my son goes to bed (I think he’s nocturnal). I still love
the beautiful, quiet hours near midnight .
They still feel magical if I ever manage to stay awake that long. Perhaps I’ll
gravitate back towards being a night person again when I no longer need to get
up so early in the morning.
Both late night and early morning share something in common:
solitude. I have a great need for solitude and quiet which I struggle hard to
meet. My husband works at home and is always around. We still have our son at
home. I’m lucky to get an hour or two alone in my home each week. I try to make
up for that by getting up before everyone else in the morning.
Pretty soon, alarm clocks will go off, the dog will need to
be walked, my day’s work will start. But for right now, I’m enjoying my coffee
and the morning quiet.
What’s your favorite time of day?
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| Morning habit |
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then,
is not an
act, but a habit.”
—Aristotle
“Good habits, once established, are just as hard
to break as
are bad habits”
—Robert Fuller
“Motivation is what gets you started.
Habit is what keeps
you going.”
—Jim Rohn
Habits—good ones—can be our best friends. Research studies
have revealed that as much as 45 percent of what we do each day is
habitual—done automatically almost without thinking about it, driven by cues
such as a specific place or time of day, a series of actions, certain moods, or
the company of specific people. (Do we feel the need for a snack while watching
TV perhaps, or do we check email as soon as we come back from lunch?)
In the areas of my life that run smoothly, I’ve developed
good habits: I have a regular exercise schedule and a system for completing
household chores, for example. However, I also have habits that need to be
reassessed, like when and how I access email and Pinterest, and new habits I’d
like to build, like sketching 15 minutes a day. How can I begin to develop new good
habits and change bad ones?
The first step is simply to begin…somewhere, somehow. Since
I want to add sketching to my days, I can pull out the kitchen timer, set it
for 15 minutes and choose a time of day I feel will be conducive to that
activity. I may have to try different times of day until I find one that works.
I’m usually pretty good at this getting-started stage—it’s the sticking to it
that’s a problem for me.
And stick to it I must if I want to firmly establish a new
habit, and not just for 21 days, as we’ve often heard. Apparently, “21-days-to-a-new-habit”
is a myth. One study found that on average it took 66 days for a new habit to
form (so if you’re instituting a New Year’s resolution, you should be prepared
to keep at it until March 6 in order for it to become a habit). The time it took to form a habit depended on how
difficult the habit was (drinking a glass of water as opposed to doing 50
sit-ups, for example) and the individual him/herself. It seems some people
simply find it easier than others to form habits. (During the study, one person
took just 18 days to form a habit, while another was forecast to do so after
254 days, long after the study had ended.)
What if I want to change a bad habit? I found an interesting
little tidbit about that when I was reading up on habit research: “…habits are
responses to needs. This sounds obvious, but countless efforts at habit change
ignore its implications. If you eat badly, you might resolve to start eating
well, but if you’re eating burgers and ice cream to feel comforted, relaxed and
happy, trying to replace them with broccoli and carrot juice is like dealing
with a leaky bathroom tap by repainting the kitchen. What’s required isn’t a
better diet, but an alternative way to feel comforted and relaxed” (Oliver
Burkeman, “This Column Will Change Your Life: How Long Does It Really Take to
Change a Habit?” The Guardian).
When I check email or putter on Pinterest, I’m usually
looking for a way to relax or (I admit it) I’m avoiding doing something I don’t
really want to do. To relax, maybe I could try simply sitting in my rocking
chair with my eyes closed and taking a few deep breaths. I can also schedule
email checks at certain times of day, instead of randomly doing it when I’m
trying to avoid another task. Pinterest or other internet wanderings can be
used as rewards after I finish some
work, and I can pull out that timer again so that I won’t be completely sucked
into the internet abyss.
