Contemplating the things that matter when I step out of the dark
Solid in my hands,
Warmth passing from tea to mug to me
morning tea grounds me.
Open and inhale
Little Free careworn pages
The sweet smell of books.
Cool weather bike rides
These are days I like living.
Perfect balanced joy.
I’m writing this post as part of NaBloPoMo – click here to see who else is participating. You can also leave me questions for an upcoming “Ask me Anything” post via this link. Happy reading and writing everyone!
It’s been a beast of a tech week. I’m trying to eat and sleep and get outside when I can, though it’s not been a whole lot these past three days. I think I’ve missed a day of posting,for NaBloPoMo. Maybe I’ll catch up and double post at some point.
I’m trying to write more haikus rather than scroll on my phone while walking. As part of The Bored and Brilliant Challenge, I composed haikus in my head instead of taking pictures in an effort to stay off my phone. But sometimes something was worth having a picture and a haiku. Here are two from recently.
Pay attention here –
Someone took a highlighter
to mark the sky pink.
Fairy wings lit up,
We tramp through crisp fallen leaves
pursuing candy hauls.
I’m writing this post as part of NaBloPoMo – click on the icon below to see who else if participating. You can also leave me questions for an upcoming “Ask me Anything” post via this link. Happy reading and writing everyone!
We started rehearsals last Thursday. Starting mid week is always a little tough because you get the momentum of the first day excitement and then bam, you have a day off and it feels a little like letting the air out of your own tires. Oh well, it’s the schedule and I’ll take any days off that I can get.
Bored and Brilliant Challenge #2– No Photo Day. The point of this challenge was to force you to really look at the things you might be tempted to take a picture of, rather than taking your phone out to snap a picture. Studies show that taking a picture of something actually could lead you to remember it less. This challenge kind of hit home when I remembered how a few weeks ago, I wrote about the bright purple flowers in our front walk on a gloomy day. When I was writing that post, I looked for a picture to post of those flowers, but I couldn’t find one. “Surely, I took a photo of that moment,” I thought. “I remember that flower so vividly!” But I hadn’t taken a photo – I had just seen the purple aster popping out on a grey grey day and that memory had embedded itself in my brain. Would I have had such a vivid memory of that flower if I had taken a photo? I don’t know.
Last week, I took exactly three pictures:
And truth to tell, I had to look back at my camera roll to remember what pictures I had taken. on reflection, I think I took pictures to communicate something to someone else. These were not photos of things I wanted to remember for myself. I don’t know if this “No Photo” thing will stick. I do take a lot of pictures for practical reasons – to remember parking spots and grocery lists, to use at work when it is easier to take a picture than try to find the words to explain what I mean when I’m trying to give a note about a prop of some such. And I do like having photos of my family with me, capturing moments we have together. But I think because it is so easy to take photos, I have a higher expectation of these images I capture- I want them to be perfect, I want moments to be perfect. And some are. Sunsets, laughter, getting to the end of a hike. But also – I don’t need a million pictures of these things. I don’t need to take picture after picture, holding the camera between me and the things I want to capture. I can just take one, and maybe it’s imperfect, maybe not everyone is looking at the camera. But that’s the moment too. (Actually, the 7 year old is notorious for turning his back to the camera when I want to take a group picture – at least it’s honest of where we are.) Of course, when it comes to a family picture for the Christmas card, I reserve the right to try to get a nice one.
So last week, as part of the No Photo challenge, I challenged myself to write a haiku every time (well not every time) that I wanted to take a photo, as a way to think about why I’m struck by something. Here are some of the haikus I came up with:
This one is about those purple flowers on our front walk:
On a gloomy day
Purple asters line the walk.
Such bright drops of joy.
Inspired by the first signs of fall foliage that I saw:
Orange dappled leaves
Flaming amidst still green trees.
The first to welcome Fall.
Another one for fall:
Dropping temperatures
bring sartorial changes –
Cozy clothes season!
They play, chattering
Sharing imaginations.
Worlds only they see.
Full moon shines. The clouds
drift lie widow’s weeds across
transcendent beauty.
I will say, last week my phone pick ups did go down 21% from the week previous. (from 98 average pick ups per day to 78). And my daily screentime average was down 25% from the week before (2 h 42 m m vs. 3h 37 mins). I don’t think lower numbers is the ultimate goal in and of itself, but rather what I do with the time, that additional 55 minutes.
Bored and Brilliant Challenge #3 is to delete one app. I’m not sure which one that would be. I no longer check social media and I don’t play any phone games. My most used apps are text/messages, Feedly, and Safari. Safari is probably mostly reading blogs. So I guess that would mean deleting Feedly. Will report back.
Other goings ons–
-Speaking of phones. We got the 12 year old her first phone this week. It has been a huge decision and it’s actually a little earlier than I had wanted to give her a phone. Let’s be honest, if I could have waited until college, I would have. I’m kind of late to technology adoption and late to change. But with activities ramping up and with her being in a show this fall, I felt like for safety and communication, it was best to give her a phone so she could move around more independently. We got her a Bark Phone – the Husband did the research – and it seems like a low commitment way to get her a phone that had lots of parental controls on it. I had briefly contemplated a smart watch, but I wanted her to have something that she could leave in her locker and that wouldn’t be attached to her wrist and constantly monitoring her or sending her physical notifications. Before we got the phone, we all agreed to each come up with three rules about phone usage. If anyone else has guidelines or thoughts on phones and kids, I’d love to hear it. Right now we’re trying to figure out how we decide which apps she can download. I’m not opposed to her having some fun things to do on her phone, but I don’t want her to have so many apps that she is constantly switching between apps looking for that dopamine hit one gets when exposed to new and fresh things. Like you know when you constantly re-fresh apps looking for something new? Anyhow… lots to think about here.
-Soup Party at Work. This was a lot of fun. I make Chinese Corn and Egg Drop Soup. We also had Baked Potato Soup, Lasagna Soup, Sausage Kale Soup, Chicken and White Bean Soup, chicken orzo soup. Lots of bread and carbs too. It was a nice cozy way to gather. I want to have a soup party in the new year, maybe February? It seems like February would be a nice month to have a gathering.
-Family time on a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon. My days off are all over the place this month. I had last Sunday off. I took the 12 year old to buy fabric for her Hallowe’en costume then we were home. We had lunch together outside on our back patio and then later we went together to the park where we played basketball together. The 7 year old and the 5 year old are comically unskilled at basketball, and it made for a lopsided game with people changing sides on a whim. But it was a lot of fun for all five of us to be doing something together, and the weather was perfect.
-I’ve been thinking about NaBloWriMo. (Thanks, San, for organizing!). November is legit bonkers busy for me, but I love the idea of a collective flooding of the internet of good old fashioned blogging. Maybe I’ll write shorter posts? My weekly posts have four parts – life update, gratitude, anticipation, what we ate – maybe I can concentrate on writing/posting one part per day?
Grateful for:
-Hand me down winter coats. I have a friends who gives us all her kids’ outgrown winter coats. She has three kids and each kid always has two or three coats, so it’s a lot of coats. I think between the two little kids, I’ve only ever had to buy one or two winter coats since they were born. (The oldest always gets a new (or thrifted) winter coat.) One day last week it was quite chilly and I needed winter coats for the kids, and I was really grateful that I had a whole closet of winter coats to pull from. The first onset of cold weather is always a scramble for appropriate winter gear, and it’s nice to know that I’m covered on the coat front for a few more years at least.
-Fall apple season. I think apples might be my favorite part of fall. There are so many kinds of apples at the farmer’s market and every apple is a kind of adventure of discovery. Is there anything more satisfying than biting into a perfectly crisp, tart-sweet apple.
-Cookbooks on Libby. For the Soup Party, I wanted to make a recipe from a book I had borrowed from the library, but I didn’t have time to get it from the library, so I checked Libby, and there it was! I find that cookbooks on Libby aren’t always formatted to easy to browse and read, but when I’m just looking for a recipe, it’s a good way to find cookbooks.
Looking forward to:
I have to be honest the next few weeks look like kind of a grind of work and activities, so I don’t have anything fun planned. This all hit home when I tried to schedule dentist appointments for the kids and there was literally no weekday until mid December where I could take all three kids at once to the dentist. It was hard enough getting two kids to back to back appointments.
– Fall walks. I’m going to try to go on a walk every day at lunch. On days when I’m working an evening rehearsal, I’m going to try to fit in a run since I have 90 minutes between rehearsals. I’ve packed my running clothes and shoes and they are at my office right now, so hopefully it will prompt me to go run.
-2025 calendar. Our 2025 wall calendar arrived! Can I tell you how much I LOVE this wall calendar? It’s the At a Glance Move A Page Three Month Calendar. It’s designed so you move each month up as you go so that you can always see the next two months as well as the current one. A lot of 3 month calendars that I looked at were just four pages of three months each, so you’d have to flip back and forth to see adjacent months if you were on, say, March. Or they were all three months on one page, so you’d have to re-write future months as they became present months. There is no re-writing necessary with this calendar. Also – this calendar has lines in the date blocks so it makes writing in it neater. I bought several different 4 colour pens, so everyone in the family gets their own colour on the calendar.
-Free Day to run errands. I have a free say mid week, so I’m hoping to get some errands done. I’ve scheduled an oil change, want to return library books, run, lunch with the Husband, and visit a local consignment sale- the 7 year old is in dire need of pants.
-oh the most important thing I’m hoping to do on my free day is VOTE! Early voting starts this upcoming week. I have a little trepidation and a little hope about the elections. I don’t trust the polling so I feel like anything could happen. I feel like we’ve been here before- is it just me, or has every election seemed nail bitingly unpredictable?
What We Ate: it was soup week here! Partly because of fall weather, partly because it’s an easy thing to make ahead of time when things get busy.
Monday: Chicken rice soup. Made in the Instant Pot. I’m trying to use up things in the freezer, and we had a bunch of chicken breasts, so I put them in the Instant Pot with celery, onions, butternut squash, turnips, brown rice, and chicken broth. It was really tasty and there were leftovers for all week.
Tuesday: Corn and egg drop soup and dumplings. I made a double batch of the corn and egg drop soup so that I could bring to the Soup Party at work. I used the recipe from Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food by Hsiao-Ching Chou. It’s actually just a corn soup in the recipe, and I added the egg drop part to up the protein. The dumplings were pulled from the freezer – we had bought from the Farmer’s market last month.
Wednesday: Soup Party at work! I brought the Corn and Egg Drop Soup. It was even more ginger-y because I had added ginger slices and let them sit overnight.
Thursday: Chili- the Husband made this on Sunday night. It was super tasty.
Friday: Pizza (takeout) and IF. I had to work this night and had leftovers.
Saturday: I had to work, so I had leftovers. Not sure what the rest of the family ate.
Sunday: Toast and leftovers. Sunday is usually simple supper/ clean out the fridge night.
How is fall in your area? If you are in the States – are you voting in person or by mail? Early or on Election day? What’s the last photo you took? What’s the last photo you sent someone?
A couple of weeks ago, the kids had a half day of school. I was supposed to pick them up at the bus stop, but did the math wrong in my head and as I pulled into the bus stop, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach to see no other parents around. I called the school on the off chance that the bus hadn’t left yet- the bus is a little inconsistent- but was told that the bus had left on time. And my kid and his friend were sitting in the school office; when kids don’t get picked up at the bus stop, they are returned to the school. This was all horrifying and embarrassing for me.
Anyhow, I went to school and got the kids, feeling not so great about myself. I had one job and I messed it up.
I asked the six year old if he had been worried, and he said, “No. I just thought nice things. Like flowers, and cake and my family… things that make me happy.”
What wisdom there is in that… I suppose he knew that there wasn’t a lot he could do, so he decided to spend his time thinking about happy things.
There is something sweet and poetic about his happy things: flowers, cake, and family.
Speaking of which- some haikus from life lately:
Fingers in the pie
Imprints of her impatience
Craters from waiters.
Purple petals poke
Through the warm earth, early
Unexpected blooms
In his plush red vest
Hopping robin on my lawn.
A sentry for spring.
Petals drift like snow-
Fluffy flakes, not biting hail-
All the snow we’ll get.
The six year old’s favorite hat is this quilted topper that was a hand-me down from friends. It is white and has a furry inside, which means it gets all dirty and matted. I would wash it, but it’s his favorite hat, and I’d rather him wear a dirty hat, than no hat at all.
Okay, but the fuuuuuuuniest thing about this hat, the things that brings me so much joy, is that there are two enormous pompoms attached to the earflaps of his hat. The six year old is very particular that the pom poms get tucked into the coat when he puts his coat on. It’s a whole process, because the pompoms need to be tucked in before the coat can be zipped.
Which is why most mornings, as we are getting ready to go to school, I have a six year old yelling at me, “Mom! You need to tuck my balls in.”
It is very hard to comply with a straight face.
On to haikus….
There is a group, based in the UK called 64 Million Artists, and every January they send out a daily creative prompt. I don’t do all of them – this year I did 17 of the 31 challenges, but I liked having an invitation in my inbox every day to do something creative, either a bit of free journaling, or sketch, or a bit of poetry. So January’s Haikus are based on prompts form the January Challenge.
Prompt: Write an ode to ordinary things
Cup, pen, socks, water
The essential wonder
Of ordinary things
Prompt: Add a face to an ordinary object
Prompt: What is your pick me up?
Leave my desk. Go out.
The air lifts me just enough,
Over humps and bumps
Prompt: Use a spillage or stain or something imperfect to inspire your creativity
An orange beacon
Cheeto dust stains my fingers.
My sneaky snacking
Bonus Haiku for this strange non-wintery weather.
Flaky flurries blow
Evidence of chilly air
Quickly disappear
I’m looking for another creative challenge for February, maybe some drawing prompts. I find I like having a mini creative challenge every day. This one looks fun. Or this one. Or this random prompt generator. Or maybe a photography challenge since February looks to be a pretty full month for me and snapping a photo might be easier than sitting down to sketch.
What is ode-worth in your life these days? Have you created anything lately?
We put up our Christmas tree this week, something that takes several days to complete. We get the tree one day. Then the lights go on, often when the tree comes home, but sometimes not. Then the ornaments go on. Then a few days later we remember to put the ornaments from our wedding on.
Most of our ornaments come from the Husband’s family. My late mother-in-law loved Christmas ornaments, and the Husband and his sister would get a new ornament every year. When my in laws passed away, we inherited all the ornaments, mostly because his sister lived abroad and it would have been difficult to get the ornaments to her. We have two large bins of ornaments and they run the gamut from classic balls to Romulan War Ships that light up.
The process has not been with not without its casualties. The baby managed to break at least three ornaments so far. I hate that the breakage happens, but I suppose banning kids from tree trimming is not an option.
The morning after we hung ornaments, the five year old said to me:
“Decorating the Christmas tree is an activity for everyone, not just grown ups. That’s why the Christmas tree has high branches and low branches!”
I love his five year old brain.
Three Haikus from This Cold week:
Waiting for the bus
4pm. Winter dusk brings
Moonrise and pink skies.
“Can you touch the sky?”
He asks of the bare tree limbs
Poking at the clouds.
Drafty door, splinters.
It’s a little bit broken,
Pieces we call home.
The five year old, I think I’ve mentioned, is in a French immersion program at school. The teacher does not speak English to the children at all, and all the signage, and lessons, and what not are in French. Their specials are in English, but otherwise it’s full immersion. It’s been really interesting to see what bits of language he comes home with. They have learned numbers and and letters and colours. “Red” is “rouge”, as it should be, but “blue” is … “blue”, the difference between “blue” and “bleu” subtle enough not to register with him, especially when spoken. Interesting too, is when he comes home and asks me what certain phrases mean. Of course, to him, they are not separate words, but just a long string of syllables.
“What is ‘luvaylama’?” he asked me the other day.
“I’m not quite sure,” I say. And I ask him to say it more slowly. After several times, I finally get it: “Levez la main.” Raise your hand. I’m not a linguistic researcher, but I do find it fascinating that our brains must at some point learn to break down strings of syllables into separate components. When the baby was younger, I enrolled her in all sorts of language studies at the University, and one of them centered around when children started to differentiate forms of speech. They would play videos of various nonsense syllables and at some point, apparently, kids, even though they don’t know what a word specifically means, will recognize if something is an action word or a “thing” word.
And then there is the wonder of seeing how the five year old’s brain comes to understand things based on context.
Last week, he asks me, “Does ‘Pas maintenent’ mean ‘I don’t want to answer that question?'”
“Pas maintenant“, literally means “not now“, but in a way, the five year old’s understanding, if not literally correct, probably captured the spirit of the way he heard it. And in his interpretation, I could suddenly see clearly how the teacher might have used that phrase – I could picture her trying to get twenty-five kindergarteners to line up for lunch and one child trying doggedly to ask something, and the teacher telling that child, “Pas maintenant!”
Seeing the little guy grapple with language and puzzle it out in his brain really hits home the idea that language doesn’t operate in a vacuum.
Switching gears – Four Haikus for Thursday:
Chaotic morning
Multitasking results in
Scraping off burnt toast.
The hours are long
from 4pm til lights out,
Interminable.
This sick day, restful.
The invalid now restless
Clearly recovered.
The view was lovely
And briefly seen. Shivering.
Should have worn more clothes.
… because I fell asleep before I could hit post…. I used to write a lot of haikus here (see them here), and I thought I might try to make it a habit again. Anyhow, here are this week’s efforts.
My tooth brush, child prepped.
Everywhere, toothpaste is smeared.
Love amidst chaos.
Full Moon, spotlight bright
Wakes me like a bulb flicked on
Unexpectedly.
Fall’s brittle carpet,
A cacophony of leaves.
Sounds of a fall walk.
For January I signed up for 64 Million Artists’ January Challenge. Every day in January, they send out a prompt for a quick creative challenge. I’m posting some of my output here.
Find a flower. You might find it outside, inside, in a book, magazine or online.
Consider the colour, shapes and textures of the flower. Is it rough, soft, rotting, smooth…or anything else?
Capture the essence and colours of your flower in a picture, sketch or haiku.
January rose.
Blazing solitary pink
When will the snow come?
Snow mirroring clouds,
Soft white banks of fluff and cold
with blue sky between.
Leaves peeping shyly.
Crimson peering through the green,
afraid to be seen.
Baby and acorn
Small vessels of potential
What hopes lie inside!
Low sun at morning
A ray of warmth in the chill
Summer turns to fall.
Dusky ev’ning walk
Late summer meandering
even though it’s fall.
Her hair smells like me-
spicy from nestling in the
crook of my armpit.
Chilly autumn morning,
Misty air, dewy playgrounds
Wet bottoms down slides.
Face raised to the sun
He stands still, soaking the warmth.
Parking lot moment.
Sticky hands reaching
Smearing fruit on her plump chin
Blueberry Van Dyke.
This one is from today, but it feels too immediate to leave for the end of the month:
Window refreshing,
Reviving breathless hope
a shot at a shot.