Happiness

Embracing Simple Pleasures

May 29, 2015



“The people who seem to be most content don’t focus on a time years ahead when they hope to have whatever they imagine it takes to be happy—money or time or a wonderful relationship. They live in the present and take their pleasure seriously. And they create their own pleasures.”—Simple Pleasures: Soothing Suggestions & Small Comforts for Living Well Year Round, compiled by Robert Taylor, Susannah Seton, and David Greer.

What gives you pleasure? A delicious meal, a vacation, spending time with family and friends, getting lost in a good book, or maybe a new high-tech gadget?  All of the above?  Pleasure comes in many forms, and sometimes we forget that it doesn’t have to involve a lot of expense, time, or complicated planning. Small, simple pleasures are more accessible, and taking time for them on a regular basis can increase our level of happiness.

If simple pleasures are so easy to find, what keeps us from enjoying them more often? In my experience, three things. First, we are too busy (or think we are). We simply don’t have time to incorporate pleasure, or we don’t notice the pleasures already around us. Second, we put off pleasure, waiting for a time in the future when we’ll be able to enjoy life more. We save our good china, don’t burn the scented candles, don’t buy the fresh flowers or the good wine. And last, we feel guilty. Who are we to spend time and energy enjoying life when there’s so much to do and/or so many people who are suffering?

If you’re like me, struggling with one or all of the above, here are some ways you can make incorporating simple pleasures into your life easier.


  1. Start and end your day with a simple pleasure. For me, it’s a cup of coffee and homemade mini scone in the morning, and reading in bed at night.
  2. Work simple pleasures into your day as rewards for completing your must-dos. I sit down with lunch and a book after a busy morning instead of eating at my desk (or worse still, while I unload the dishwasher). I listen to my iPod while vacuuming or pick up a coffee while running errands.
  3. Share your pleasures with someone else. My five-year-old self understood this. One of my biggest joys was buying a candy bar for each person in the family and putting it on the dinner table with the place settings. At the time, my mom and I lived with my uncle and aunt, and on my tiny allowance, I could just afford to buy four Hershey bars for us all every now and then. Sharing pleasure with someone else makes it even more…pleasurable.
I hope that when you make plans for your days you make time to notice and incorporate things that give you pleasure. And now, since I finished this blog post, I think I’ll reward myself with the simple pleasure of refilling my coffee cup and admiring my blooming orchids.

What simple pleasures will you enjoy this weekend?

Art

What's Inside You?

May 27, 2015


“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.”
 —Kurt Vonnegut

Instagram

If My Cat Had an Instagram Account...

May 22, 2015

I know I’m late to the party, but I recently joined Instagram (follow me here—and if you’re on Instagram, let me know so I can follow you!). I finally have a smartphone that takes decent pictures, and I’ve always thought Instagram sounded like a fun way to record simple pleasures and everyday adventures. I’m still figuring out how to use the features, making mistakes and bumbling around. I was lying in bed contemplating what I might post, when it crossed my mind that it would be amusing to see what my pets would share if they had their own Instagram accounts. I decided to take some pictures from their points of view and share them here.

First up, if Prudy had an Instagram account, this is what she would post (FYI, the following pictures were taken with my phone, but not actually posted to Instagram.):

First things first—a selfie.

My favorite: the ’nip.

I like to knock this in the pool every day—it doesn’t seem to know how to swim.

My nemesis.

Where I hone my razor-sharp, tree-climbing claws.


This is dinner. Where is the parsley garnish? Cretins.


I’m sure this is exactly what the inventors of Instagram had in mind…


Stay tuned for life as seen through Scout’s and Tank’s eyes. (I know you can hardly wait.)

Maryann Corbett

Finding the Lego

May 20, 2015


Introduction by Ted Kooser: No ideas but in things, said one of my favorite poets, William Carlos Williams, and here’s a fine poem by Maryann Corbett of St. Paul, Minnesota, about turning up one small object loaded with meaning.

Finding the Lego

You find it when you’re tearing up your life,
trying to make some sense of the old messes,
moving dressers, peering under beds.
Almost lost in cat hair and in cobwebs,
in dust you vaguely know was once your skin,
it shows up, isolated, fragmentary.
A tidy little solid. Tractable.
Knobbed to be fitted in a lock-step pattern
with others. Plastic: red or blue or yellow.
Out of the dark, undamaged, there it is,
as bright and primary colored and foursquare
as the family with two parents and two children
who moved in twenty years ago in a dream.
It makes no allowances, concedes no failures,
admits no knowledge of a little girl
who glared through tears, rubbing her slapped cheek.
Rigidity is its essential trait.
Likely as not, you leave it where it was.

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 ©2013 by Maryann Corbett, from her most recent book of poems, Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter, Able Muse Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Maryann Corbett and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 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. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Alexandra Johnson

Journaling Through Life--The Simple Pleasure of Keeping a Journal

May 15, 2015

You’re probably not surprised to learn that I keep a journal. (In my usual let’s-make-this-more-complicated-than-it-needs-to-be fashion, I actually have more than one type of journal, but that’s another story.) Journaling has accompanied me from high school to college, from my first full-time job, to getting married and moving cross-country to Florida—and beyond. There have been times when life kept me too busy or distracted for regular journal entries, and times when I wrote several pages every day.

The oldest journal I have (other than the pages I still have from my creative writing class) is from 1982, when I was a freshman in college. Part of that year I wrote in a battered black and white composition book, and part of the year I used a cloth-covered blank book. Those journal entries contain lots of exclamation points and underlining, and a palpable desire to grow up. I flipped through a couple of the journals pictured below, where I found entries from when I met the guy who was my “first love” and a brief mention of the first time I had a significant conversation with the girl who is still my best friend.  There were entries after we experienced a 6.1 earthquake, and after my husband asked me to marry him. (And plenty more, but I decided I needed to put down the journals and walk away or I might not be seen again. Reading old journal entries can be addictive.)



Choosing a journal or notebook and just the right pen is a source of pleasure as much as the actual writing. The best journals are just the right size and heft, but I’m also happy to use journals my friends give me, even if they aren’t quite ideal. Their love and thoughtfulness more than make up for any perceived imperfection in the book itself.

As a writer, I find my journals indispensable, but what about if you’re not a writer? Is there any value in keeping a journal? I think so. There are many reasons to keep a journal—as a way to remember important-to-you events, as a way to blow off steam, to clarify your thoughts, or to focus on something in particular (such as what you’re grateful for). Journals can be anything from a few lines written in a notebook now and then to a daily diary sort of document. You might keep a nature journal, an illustrated journal, a words-only journal, or something in between. As Alexandra Johnson wrote in Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal, “Keeping a journal is one of the few ways to remind oneself of life’s unnoticed gifts.” 

If you want to journal but don’t know where to start, you can always use those pristine pages to make lists, paste in ticket stubs, business cards, and other bits of daily life. You can examine questions like: how am I feeling? What do I want to accomplish today (this week, this year)? What do I like about myself? What would I like to change? Describe your surroundings, your family, your pets, yourself.

You can fill a journal with favorite quotes and bits of wisdom, record your dreams, write down your family history. Or treat it like a scratch pad, as author and photographer Karen Walrond does, and jot down phone messages, ideas, grocery lists, whatever you need to record during the day. Click here for a list of journal-keeping ideas.   (And if I haven’t convinced you, click here to read Leanne Sowul’s “Ten Ways Journaling Can Make Your Life Better.”) 

My journals have been friends to me, absorbing grief, anger, elation, and joy as need be. They contain my story, even if no one but me ever reads it. Memory can be false, but journals can reveal the truth (for instance, I don’t remember staying up until the wee hours on a regular basis when I was my son’s age, but my journals from that time reveal that I often did!). Writing things down helps me work through what I really think, before those thoughts get unleashed on the world, if they ever do. Journaling through life has made it that much deeper and sweeter—and happier.

If you keep a journal, what type is it? Do you ever go back to reread it? What have you learned from keeping it?


Hand Wash Cold

Happiness Is Simple

May 13, 2015

Photo courtesy Ryan McGuire

“Happiness is not a science, an art, or an outcome. It can’t be quantified, procured, or consumed. It’s not invented, but comes naturally from mud and honeysuckle, pitted olives, and doting granddads who hoist you into their laps for a bumpy ride on a secondhand tractor. It’s what we are when we are utterly ourselves in unaffected ease.

“Happiness is simple. Everything we do to find it is complicated.”
—Karen Maezen Miller, Hand Wash Cold

Delight

What I Have

May 08, 2015

What is it about human beings that makes us want—oh so much—what we don’t have, while discounting what we do have? I’ve been noticing this about myself lately, especially in relation to traveling. I love to travel, whether it’s a trip to visit family, a week in Georgia, a road trip in New England, or a dream trip to Greece. And due to life circumstances beyond my control, it’s unlikely that I’ll be doing any traveling for a while.  

Which stinks. Big time.

Unless…

Unless I take this time to notice the simple pleasures and everyday adventures within my reach, the delights that I would miss if I were traveling. After all, I love my home. I love reading, puttering, being with my animals, being with my family. I love sitting at my computer, eating oatmeal and playing Mahjong Titans. I love the way my morning coffee tastes, I love my library and its used bookstore. I love sleeping in my own, very comfortable bed. I love looking at these faces:




If I were traveling, I’d miss these things. Right now, it’s time to appreciate what I have instead of yearning for what I don’t have.

It’s also time to look for ways to infuse my daily life with some of the elements I most enjoy while traveling. There are plenty of things to sketch and take pictures of within driving distance, even walking distance, of my house. There are attractions people come to Florida to see, and when I get tired of that, there are books to whisk me away to foreign shores.

So I’m letting go of the frustrated feeling I’ve been carrying for the past couple of weeks. There will be a time when I can travel again. Until then, I’m going to try not to discount what I have—which is a very happy, interesting, full life.

What do you want that you do not have?

Birthdays

Husbands and Poems

May 06, 2015

Photo courtesy Todd Quakenbush

Today is my husband’s birthday. He’s very like the husband in this poem by Pauletta Hansel (though my father is not much like the father). When we were dating in college, my husband typed up and gave me a poem he felt applied to our relationship. I still have that poem, and it still applies. Wishing you a happy birthday, LJ!

Husbands

My mother likes a man who works. She likes
my husband’s muddy knees, grass stains on the cuffs.
She loved my father, though when weekends came
he’d sleep till nine and would not lift
his eyes up from the page to move the feet
she’d vacuum under. On Saturdays my husband
digs the holes for her new roses,
softening the clay with peat and compost.
He changes bulbs she can no longer reach
and understands the inside of her toaster.
My father’s feet would carry him from chair
to bookshelf, back again till Monday came.
My mother likes to tell my husband
sit down in this chair and put your feet up.

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 ©2011 by Pauletta Hansel from her most recent book of poems, The Lives We Live in Houses, (Wind Publications, 2011). Poem reprinted by permission of Pauletta Hansel and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 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. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Artist's dates

Picking Blueberries: An Artist's Date

May 04, 2015

A few minutes from my house, and just down the road from where I keep Tank, there is a blueberry farm that is now open for U-picking. After several weeks of unseasonably hot and humid weather, this weekend was fresh and spring like—the sun shining from a cobalt sky dotted with cottony clouds, so I decided to go blueberry picking for the first time. Here’s what happened:

Acres of blueberry bushes

After I park my car, the farm proprietor ties a white plastic bucket around my waist and tells me which sections were picked for market and which should have berries left. I walk down the grassy road between berry sections and choose my spot. There are other pickers scattered through the rows, a few with children in tow. U-picking with kids is popular, and this is one of the first weekends the farm is open. I see several generations of family members, from grandparents to toddlers, enjoying the experience.

And that’s why I’m here: to enjoy the experience. This is an artist’s date as well as a way to stock my freezer with fresh blueberries.

Once I choose my section, I begin slowly walking between the rows of shoulder- to head-high blueberry bushes. It takes me a few moments for my eyes to adjust to seeing the plump purple berries hidden in the foliage. I drop my first berries in my bucket with a thunk. While I search with my eyes, my ears listen to the sounds around me: the breeze flirting with berry bushes, the lady in the red t-shirt humming along with her iPod, the children calling out excitedly, and even the loud speakers periodically blaring screechy bird sounds to keep away other birds who would eat the berries. My mind is free to wander, but I find it mostly stays quiet, absorbed in the task of looking carefully for the ripe berries. I deliberately pick a few unripe berries to paint because they’re such pretty colors. I also remember and use Laure Ferlita’s advice to look up, look down, look all around.



As in life, in blueberry picking, it pays to go slowly, look carefully, and be gentle (so the fruit doesn’t fall on the ground instead of into your fingers). You need to look at the bushes from several different angles, and sometimes you will find perfect berries missed by others who have worked the same row. This is sort of like the process of creativity—good ideas, ripe for the picking are out there, waiting for the right person to come along.

It takes me about two hours to fill my bucket. I probably could have moved to a section with more berries per bush, but for once I’m not in a hurry. It is a pleasure to be doing one thing and one thing only. Once my bucket is full, I return to the entrance, pay my money, and carry a plastic grocery bag to my car filled with my bounty.


When I get home, I’ll have the work of drying out the berries (they don’t like to be wet), freezing them, and deciding what I want to do with the ones I won’t freeze. Blueberry muffins for my son, and lemon blueberry scones for me, I think.

This artist’s date was a huge success. I not only deeply enjoyed it while it was happening, but I also wrote about it in my journal and in this post, and I painted those berries! So far, I’ve only experimented with different colors for the berries, but I also want to do a full watercolor sketch page of various elements from the day.

 What did you do this weekend?

Everyday adventures

Field Trip Friday: The Fancy Flea

May 01, 2015


As promised, here’s a rundown on last week’s Field Trip Friday—Laure Ferlita and I checked out the Fancy Flea Vintage Home & Garden Market.

The Fancy Flea is an “upscale outdoor vintage show” that takes place twice a year at the Strawberry Festival grounds in Plant City, Florida (between Tampa and Orlando). The show featured booths filled with shabby chic items, garden art, plants, antiques, salvage, handmade jewelry and lots of other interesting bits and bobs. There was also music and a food truck rally.

The Fancy Flea booths were all out in a field at the Strawberry Festival grounds, and though there was some shade, we were very grateful for the cloudy skies, since it has been summer hot already, and neither Laure nor I felt 100% that day. But we’d planned this little excursion for weeks, so we were determined to complete it, even if conditions weren’t just right. We were both in need of playtime and creative well filling, so we hauled ourselves out of our comfortably air-conditioned homes. 

Neither of us had explored the Fancy Flea before so it was fun to see what types of vendors and merchandise would be there. Unlike Renninger’s, there were more arty/crafty/repurposed décor items than antiques or true flea market “junk.” It took us a couple of hours to slowly wander the aisles. Our only purchase was some little packets of cancelled stamps to use in future art projects. We both bought some and shared with each other.


This cute metal sculpture


reminded us of this guy we saw in John’s Pass during Winter Interrupted:


Laure asked me at lunch later if there was anything I regretted not buying. In thinking it over now, I regret not asking the price of a couple of shadow boxes that caught my fancy…at the time I was irritated that the prices weren’t marked, and I decided I didn’t care enough to track down the stall owner and ask. I don’t need anything, and I don’t even really want very much. I’m more concerned with getting stuff out of my house than in bringing more in. So I mostly just enjoyed looking at the bright colors and creativity demonstrated by the people selling there. My favorite things included mini succulent or herb gardens created using baskets and other unusual containers. (I didn’t take photos because I didn’t think the vendors would appreciate it—since I plan to duplicate their efforts with items I already own!)

This beauty was a prize—love the color:


So even though we came home mostly empty-handed, we enjoyed the chance to drink in the colorful creativity of others, to leave our desks and drawing tables and hopefully, spark some new creativity in ourselves. That’s all I ask of Field Trip Friday.

How have you filled your creative well lately?

Happiness

If This Isn't Nice...

April 29, 2015


“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”
—Kurt Vonnegut

Link love

Link Love XIII

April 24, 2015

Stress - What You See
Image courtesy Always Well Within

Guess what I’m doing today? I’m having a Field Trip Friday with my partner in adventure, Laure Ferlita. Come back to this here space next week for photos and details.

In the meantime, I leave you with the thirteenth edition of Link Love. I hope you find the following collection of Internet goodies as interesting as I did:

This article, “7 Cultural Concepts We Don’t Have in the U.S.,” intrigued me. I enjoy learning about what other cultures value. Personally, I’m a fan of gemütlichkeit, and I wrote about wabi-sabi here, and kaizen here. 

One thing U.S. culture does have is an obsession with personal appearance. As I get older, I’m becoming more interested in what’s on the inside rather than the outside (which, let’s be frank, is not what it once was and won’t be ever again). This article helped: “Aging With Grace: Myth or Reality?”

I often include posts from Dani DiPirro’s blog, Positively Present, in Link Love, and for good reason. She’s always got something interesting to say.  In this post, she writes: “Happiness in the general sense is what many people strive for, but what they should be striving for instead is to cultivate a positive mindset that will lead to more happy moments. Creating a positive mindset involves a lifestyle change and a complete shift in how you see the world…. Happy moments, on the other hand, can be created with small acts.”

I identify with many of Austin Kleon’s “33 Thoughts on Reading.” Especially numbers one, eight, 16 (sigh) and 18.

I especially like the first suggestion listed in “9 Mostly Free Ways to Spark Creativity and Fun.” 

Some stories seem simple but pack a huge punch. Click here to read “10 Lessons From the Story of the Mexican Fisherman.” 

What would constitute a perfect day for you? This video, by Brenden Burchard, discusses “How to Design the Perfect Day.”


Marriage

Not Let Go

April 22, 2015

Photo courtesy David Mao

Introduction by Ted Kooser: I don’t think I’ve ever sold anything that, later, I didn’t wish I had back, and I have a list of regrets as long as my arm. So this poem by Melissa Balmain really caught my attention. Balmain lives in New York State, and her most recent book is Walking in on People, from Able Muse Press.

Love Poem

The afternoon we left our first apartment,
we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet.
Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins?
It suddenly seemed nuts to move away.

The morning someone bought our station wagon,
it gleamed with wax and every piston purred.
That car looked like a centerfold in Hot Rod!
Too late, we saw that selling was absurd.

And then there was the freshly tuned piano
we passed along to neighbors with a wince.
We told ourselves we’d find one even better;
instead we’ve missed its timbre ever since.

So if, God help us, we are ever tempted
to ditch our marriage when it’s lost its glow,
let’s give the thing our finest spit and polish—
and, having learned our lesson, not let go.

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 ©2014 by Melissa Balmain, “Love Poem,” from Walking in on People, (Able Muse Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Melissa Balmain and Able Muse Press. Introduction copyright ©2015 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. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Cleaning

Mixed-Up Monday

April 20, 2015

Today we are having all our carpets cleaned. This means the whole house is torn apart, the animals are disturbed, it’s noisy, and my usual Monday routine has been upended. That’s the bad news.

The good news is: our carpets will look like new and I will feel like I got something major accomplished from my to do list (never mind that I’m not doing the actual cleaning).

I feel untethered—without my usual Monday activities performed in their usual order. Sometimes, untethered is good. Sometimes I narrow my vision too much, and become inflexible. Routines can become so ingrained that I lose all my creativity and joy in the doing.

I don’t want to throw all my routines to the wind, but maybe, just for today, I will. Maybe today I’ll binge read Janice MacLeod-Lik’s blog. Maybe today I’ll write a poem. Maybe today I’ll lounge around and finish reading Rex Stout’s Death of a Doxy. Maybe I won’t do one more blessed thing that could be considered productive.

After all, the carpets are clean… Isn’t that enough?

This is NOT what my office looks like right now...

Delight

Morning Walk

April 17, 2015


It poured last night, so I expected the air to be soupy this morning, but it’s surprisingly cool and fresh. As I walk, hear birds chirping, see cardinals, a catbird, and a blue jay flitting about. I also see a hawk glide silently to a perch high in tree.

Since I’m alone and not walking for exercise (i.e., fast), I notice things I frequently miss: the way the traffic along the main road near us hums almost harmoniously; the large shell ginger plants outside someone’s backyard, heavy with flowers; star jasmine scenting my own backyard. I see places where wild hogs have rooted through the woods looking for food. When I look up, I see spring green leaves forming a canopy over the path. Simple pleasures usually lost in the hurry of daily living.



I’m lucky enough to have a quiet, safe place to walk right in my community—I can walk right out my back gate onto a paved trail. I usually take it for granted. Even worse, when I do use it, I almost always only use it for exercise—making the loop as quickly as I can instead of taking it slowly, exploring, noticing. As part of my focus on delight this year, I plan to take more of these short, rambling walks. At least until the heat and humidity make it impossible to enjoy. I know that day is coming, and soon, but until then, I’ll indulge in a few more relaxed morning walks. Who knows what I might discover?

What delights do you take for granted?

A Moveable Feast

Spring Happiness

April 15, 2015


“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Books

Falling in Love With Paris Letters

April 13, 2015

Reading is like dating. There are the books you’re initially infatuated with, but become irritated by as the relationship progresses. There are the books you should love because they’re perfect for you, but you just can’t seem to connect. There are the books you love secretly because they’re no good, and you’d be embarrassed if your friends knew. There are the fix-ups, the “meet cutes,” the love-at-first-sights, and the long-term relationships that grow stronger over time. For me, Janice MacLeod’s Paris Letters was an immediate friendship that grew into love. However, it was a romance that almost never happened.

See below for downloadable stationery*

I initially requested Paris Letters from the library thinking it was a book of artwork, the painted letters from Paris referenced in the title. When it turned out to be memoir, I nearly took it back, because do I really need to read another story of a woman simplifying her life, jetting off to see the world, and finding herself and/or true love? I mean, I’ve read Eat, Pray, Love and many other stories both fictional and non- of that ilk. Still, I decided to read the first few pages just to see…and I connected with MacLeod immediately. I liked her turns of phrase and casual voice. She seemed approachable, down-to-earth, real.  Somehow, this story of a 30-something vegan copywriter who goes to Paris and unexpectedly falls in love with a French-speaking Polish butcher resonated with me.

For MacLeod, it all started with a New Year’s resolution in 2010. She wanted to become an artist, and began journaling nearly every day, following Julia Cameron’s instructions regarding Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way. “Really, I just wanted to create something that made me feel good, because what I was currently creating definitely did not,” MacLeod writes.  What was she creating? Junk mail.

After two months of journaling and complaining about her job, a question emerged: “How much money does it take to quit your job?” In discussing it with a friend, she chose the figure of $100 a day (partly because of the easy math!) multiplied by how many days she did not want to work (at least one year). She spent the next year selling, saving and being vigilant about where her money went, eventually saving $60,000! It helped that she had a good job and was successful investing in the stock market. She quit her job in December with the plan of traveling the world and writing about it. When her money ran out, she would decide what to do next.

The rest of the book follows her journey to Paris, the UK, Italy…and back to Paris to be with “the lovely Cristophe.” She writes humorously about her struggles to communicate with Cristophe, the daunting paperwork required for her visa, and the challenges of (spoiler alert) planning a wedding in a foreign country. The title of the book comes from her unique solution for refilling her dwindling bank account: she would write and illustrate an original letter from Paris, and make personalized copies to sell. (At the time the book was printed, she had sent out more than 10,000 painted letters about life in France.) Some chapters end with copies of her Paris letters, illustrated in black and white (an unfortunate decision made by her publisher). She also includes a list of 100 ways she saved or didn’t spend her $100 a day. You can see (and subscribe to) her illustrated letters here.

Paris Letters was a happy read—and so far, one of my favorite books of 2015.

Have you “dated” any good books lately?

*Click here to download the stationery pictured beneath the book.

April

A Thousand Things

April 08, 2015


Introduction by Ted Kooser: I was born in April and have never agreed with T.S. Eliot that it is “the cruellest month.” Why would I want to have been born from that? Here’s Robert Hedin, who lives in Minnesota, showing us what April can be like once Eliot is swept aside.

This Morning I Could Do
a Thousand Things

I could fix the leaky pipe
Under the sink, or wander over
And bother Jerry who’s lost
In the bog of his crankcase.
I could drive the half-mile down
To the local mall and browse
Through the bright stables
Of mowers, or maybe catch
The power-walkers puffing away
On their last laps. I could clean
The garage, weed the garden,
Or get out the shears and
Prune the rose bushes back.
Yes, a thousand things
This beautiful April morning
But I’ve decided to just lie
Here in this old hammock,
Rocking like a lazy metronome,
And wait for the day lilies
To open. The sun is barely
Over the trees, and already
The sprinklers are out,
Raining their immaculate
Bands of light over the lawns.

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 ©2013 by Robert Hedin from his most recent book of poems, Poems Prose Poems, Red Dragonfly Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Robert Hedin and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 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. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Daffodils

It's Not All Daffodils and Donuts

April 06, 2015


Friday I wrote about my trip to Georgia, and I realized after I posted that I had only included only what was positive during the trip. That’s what people usually want to read about, not necessarily a list of complaints about what went wrong, but it made me feel a little dishonest. The trip was excellent, and had very few bumps and bruises, but it did have a few. For example: just before we left, I got sick (with a cold) for the first time in at least two years. While I was gone, my husband had a rough week with our elderly dog and it worried me enough to consider coming home a day early. I got a cold sore part way through the trip, and Marianne got into some poison ivy that she’s still coping with. I tell you this to remind you (and myself) that few things are unadulteratedly perfect. Most experiences are a mix of good and bad, happy and sad, thrilling and annoying. It’s up to us to choose what to focus on. And when we choose to focus on the good, our memories usually, kindly, allow the bad to fade away.

Life isn’t all daffodils and donuts—sometimes it’s cold sores and poison ivy. So the next time you’re facing something that is not living up to your expectations or is more difficult or unpleasant than expected, there are a couple of ways to help yourself through. For instance, you can think about how you’ll enjoy having done whatever-it-is when you’re through (childbirth comes to mind here…) or how great the end result will be. (Again, childbirth comes to mind, but there are plenty of less extreme examples!)

The Georgia trip was filled by far with more delights than difficulties, but even if the balance had fallen the other way, I would have tried to look for the good. What good does it do to focus on the bad? That’s not what I want more of in my life. I much prefer the daffodils and donuts.

When you face difficulties, how do you focus on the positive?

Delight

Georgia On My Mind...and My Shoes

April 03, 2015


As promised, today’s post will detail some of the delights of my trip to Georgia last week.

My friend Marianne and her family own an old farmhouse on acreage in Georgia, and she invited me and two other friends for a week’s stay there. We all accepted happily...and then life intervened. Our two friends had to drop out, and what started out as four barn buddies on the road turned into an intimate, two-person trip. Marianne and I have been friends for years, but this is the first trip we’ve taken together.  I was confident we’d do well, and from my standpoint, we did.  (You’ll have to ask Marianne how she feels…) We talked about everything from awkward childhoods, first loves, how we met our husbands, how our college-age kids are doing, to what’s new with our horses. After two long drives and a week’s togetherness, we’re still friends!

Some trip highlights:

The first morning after we arrived, we drove to Blue Ridge, where we visited the Blue Ridge Art Center, and ate lunch at a little coffee shop/restaurant. We explored some of the charming shops, both of us reveling in the ability to browse without our male family members hurrying us along. We scoped out a used bookstore and wondered about the fluffy white trees blooming everywhere (anyone know what these are?).




After Blue Ridge, our next stop was Mercier Orchards, where we stocked up on essentials: cider donuts and cinnamon pecan bread.




We picked up some groceries and fortified ourselves at Starbucks, then hit the meadow for some quality rambling.





On day two, we packed up the camp chairs to sketch. No sooner had we settled ourselves on the hill than we felt sprinkles of rain, so we adjourned to the front porch, where we both sketched the corn crib (see my sketch below). It had stopped raining by the time we were done with our sketches, so we moved our chairs down by the creek. We sketched a bit more, read, or simply listened to the music of the water.



After lunch, we carried bucket and shovel down to the meadow to collect some daffodils for transplanting up near the house and corn crib. Marianne performed the labor (and I do mean labor) wrestling the bulbs from the thick Georgia clay, and digging holes for them in their new locations. I planted the bulbs and helped water them in. Our reward: a cold, hard cider on the front porch before taking a hike up the hill at the far edge of their property.




We enjoyed comfortable temperatures the first few days, but the weather turned cold and damp towards the end of the week…just in time for us to go trail riding! Suitably bundled up, we mounted our trail horses (Polly and Diesel), and proceeded to learn the outfitters were called Adventure Trail Rides for good reason. The trails wound mostly up and down hills, one so steep the horses had to take a running start to get up it! The trails themselves were thick, slippery clay laced with rocks, but our horses slithered surefooted through them anyway.  As long as I gave my horse his head and let him pick his way up and down, we did fine. It was fun riding in a completely different environment—at home we mostly ride in a ring or at the very “roughest,” on flat, sandy trails. We joked that our horses would take one look at these trails and go on strike. Yes, we have sissy horses. (We didn’t take cameras or phones on the ride, so I have no photos from this experience, unfortunately.)

We woke up Sunday to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, and a car covered with frost! Reluctantly, we said good-bye to the farmhouse and hit the road.




The farmhouse had wireless Internet but no TV, and I didn’t bring my computer, deliberately giving myself permission to disconnect. Without the distractions of TV and hours spent on the Internet, we had plenty of time every day to take long walks through the meadow and up the hill. Our meals were quiet and relaxed. I wrote in my journal nearly every day, and read whenever I got the chance. It occurred to me that at home I make myself artificially busy by thinking I have to read all my emails, keep up with umpteen bloggers, and do so many other little things that don’t really matter. As usual, I came home determined to tweak my daily routine to make it more fulfilling. I’ve started unsubscribing to email newsletters and skimming (or even skipping) blog posts in my feed reader. At the farmhouse, instead of TV, we played music from Marianne’s iPod (she’s the playlist queen!) and that’s something I want to do more here at home. I’ve started making my own playlists and I’m looking into getting an iPod dock with speakers so I can listen to music without using ear buds.

Travel, friendship, sketching, wandering outside, having precious time for doing nothing—these simple pleasures and everyday adventures mean so much to me. Thank you, Marianne, for giving them to me last week.


Beauty

Yes, You

April 01, 2015

Seen on the streets of Blue Ridge, GA:


What will you make today?

Delight

Reentry

March 30, 2015

I just got back last night from a week in Georgia with my friend Marianne, so bear with me while I unpack my suitcase and sort out my impressions. I’ll write about the trip later in the week (lots of delight: horses were ridden, hard cider was drunk, hikes were taken, daffodils were transplanted, and more!). I’ll also be responding to your comments here on my blog and catching up with yours! In the meantime, here’s a preview photo for you:
Georgia corn crib