Tag: 10minwri

Minimizing

September 11th, 2016

I once loved trinkets: tiny buddhas, smooth stones, small figurines that required dusting when we were settled, and careful packaging when we were on the move.

In my suitcase, I pack too many shoes. Along with three or four too-many pairs of shoes (slippers, flats, sandals, running shoes, ankle boots, casual sneakers), I fill half the luggage with a too-big camera bag, and belts, and shirts I never end up wearing.

My purses are never small. They are shoulder bags large enough to smuggle two bottles of water and giant-size candies bought at the gas station into the movie theater. They carry lip balm, hankies, glasses case and cleaner, pens, checkbook, Moleskine notebooks (medium and small), wallet, phone, band aids, Ibuprofen, hairbands, lip gloss, Trident (sweet mint), hand lotion, and fingernail clippers.

A thing my husband and I have daydreamed about for years is retiring on a sailboat, living aboard and cruising the Caribbean. When we vacationed in the Outer Banks, we talked about how we always talk about that dream, but if we want to make it a reality, we need to take actual steps. And we can start taking those steps now, like I dunno, learning how to sail?

Thinking about living in a small boat cabin both excites and terrifies me. We would strip our lives down to the bare essentials, and those essentials we would choose with care. No more cheap junk, no more skimping on quality so that we can buy more for less.

At the same time, what about my shoes?

It’s a long way away that we’d truly move onto a sailboat. Like, decades. But it’s in my mind now, what it would mean. The lifestyle changes it would require.

I didn’t realize how much these thoughts of stripping down were in my mind, embedded in my subconscious, until I started shopping for a purse. My original thought was “I sure do like the little purse I travel with — fits in my laptop bag in airports, and can carry all my essentials.” The problem was that it’s cheap and pleather. The zipper’s broken and it feels all plastic-y like the fake plastic leather that it is. Also, it was too small for my wallet.

So that was my intent when I first started shopping: find something like that little purse. Something that my wallet will fit in, that will fit in my laptop bag when I travel, and that will also last.

The smallest purse I could carry and still carry my essentials.

I took inventory of my essentials.

Lip balm? Essential.

Moleskine? Oof, that’s a hard one. Non-essential. I can take notes on my phone.

Checkbook? Non-essential. I’ll pull out one check and put it in my wallet for emergencies.

Wallet? Essential. I measured my wallet, which was one of those checkbook size wallets, and thought, wow, that’s big. I can get that smaller.

Phone? Essential. Do I really need a big clunky case though? I’ll get a slim one.

Keys? House and car essential. I don’t need all these stupid key chain cards for two grocery stores, the health food store, pharmacy, library. I can give my phone number and they can pull up my account.

As I did this — taking inventory, stripping down to essentials, and then minimizing those too — I realized this was a tiny exercise in what we’d need to do with our whole lives to move onto a boat.

I felt silly for putting so much effort into the simple act of buying a new purse, and then comparing such a small decision with what it would mean to liveaboard.

When I joked with my husband about practicing for moving onto a boat by moving to a small purse, he said simply, “It’s a lifestyle change.” He didn’t think it was a silly comparison at all. Minimizing requires a mindset shift. It’s not instant, and to go from living where we are now — a fully furnished three bedroom house — to living in a boat cabin is going to take thousands of small decisions.

Like getting rid of trinkets, packing only two pairs of shoes instead of six, and moving to a small purse.

I found exactly what I wanted, by the way. A small, undyed, cross-body purse from leather-crafters Love41. I’ve been using it for about a month now, and I’m in love. It’s everything I wanted — smooth, supple, small, real — and I don’t miss carrying all that extra junk around.

What I’m super excited about is that now that my travel purse and everyday purse are one and the same, when I travel to our company’s annual Grand Meetup this week, I won’t have to switch purses.
Quaker Meeting

September 10th, 2016

Photo credit Canned Muffins

When we lived in Maryland and I was a cyclist, a friend I bicycled with was a Quaker. We’d ride 40 or 50 miles together through the hills of rural Maryland, and she’d tell me about Quaker Meeting.

“There’s no central figure — no pastor, no sermon. Everyone is equal. We sit in benches in a square, all facing the center of the Meeting-house room. There’s no altar.”

This was unlike any religious service I’d been to or heard of.

“Nobody speaks,” she said. “The room is silent. If someone feels moved — by the Spirit, by God — they stand and share. Then they sit and the room is silent again.”

I liked the sound of this. Silent. Contemplative. Spiritual. Equal.

“We call each other Friend,” she said.

I liked the sound of this, too, and I told her so.

“You want to come with me some time?”

The following Sunday, I could barely breathe through my nose. My nasal passages were constricted, swollen, blocked. Otherwise I felt fine, and we splashed through puddles on our bikes on a dreary, rainy morning. The Meeting-house was warm and dry, and Shelly and I found a seat on a smooth pine bench. There was a piano next to us in the corner, and a mother and her children played lively hymns, plinking, singing, and laughing. The room was filled with the healthy chatter of Friends seeing each other again.

At the beginning of Meeting, which nobody announced, a silence fell on the room. The shift was swift and complete. I inhaled through my congested nose, and suddenly my passages cleared. In the silence, I could breathe — freely, clearly.

For several minutes I heard only the occasional creak of a bench. For several more I sat in contemplative silence. I lost track of time. Had we been sitting for ten minutes or forty? Through the window across the room, I watched evergreen boughs drip in the rain.

To my left, in the rows of benches against the wall adjacent to ours, a man stood.

“On our way to Meeting this morning, we rushed around, stressed about work from the week, about the laundry, the groceries, the muddy footprints in the hall. About getting to Meeting on time. My wife and I had short tempers as we tried to get out the door.”

The room waited. Quiet. Listening.

“On our way down the steps to the driveway, I saw a spiderweb. In the shrubs next to our porch. It glistened with raindrops. Its beauty, its slowness shut down the hurry in my brain. Full of imperfections – a torn thread here, a difference in spacing there — it was perfect.”

He paused, thinking of the spider web.

“A spider had slowly, and without distraction, built its home here, and the morning had decorated it with droplets that shone like diamonds. Straightforward and simple, an unfurnished home for a spider, its elegance stopped me in my tracks. It reminded me of the wonder of this world we live in, and to not be blind to it.”

And he sat down. I thought about what he said. About my own tendency to get caught up in details, tasks, to-dos that clutter my mind and my life. About moving too fast, juggling too many things that ultimately distract me from the business of living.

Meanwhile, spiders slowly spin webs of silk. Creatures find or make shelter. They eat. They reproduce. They exist in the world.

All around us, beautiful things are happening.

The remainder of the meeting we sat in silence. Shelly and I splashed through puddles again on the bike ride home. I listened to the splishing sound the water made when my tires swooshed through a puddle. I saw the beauty in the rain that dripped from my slicker visor. I breathed freely through my nose.

I liked these new Friends.
Summer evening (with kitties)

July 6th, 2016

It’s evening, after swim practice, and our daughter reads on the couch, smelling of swimming pool, while my husband grills chicken and blends fresh pesto. An Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong record plays on the turntable.

Our cat, Tubbles, loves chlorine, kid feet, laying on outstretched legs, and our daughter. She’s got all of those tonight. She has made our whole family happy by loving on our daughter’s feet. We giggled and snapped photos with our devices.

I had a productive day at work. Our house is clean. We ate at twilight on the porch. Our kitty made me laugh.

It’s been a perfect summer evening.
Summer with Windows open

July 2nd, 2016

It’s Saturday morning, 7:30. Early for a weekend day. I’ve already been to the grocery store and started laundry. My husband and daughter are en route to a swim meet, our near-teenaged son is still sleeping, and the kitties are lying in sunbeams, shedding fur in clumps now that summer is here.

I’m sitting in the lounge chair by our front windows, green smoothie on the sill, my bare feet up on the chaise cushion. Birds trill, insects buzz, and Bob Marley croons softly from the record my husband left spinning for me.

The early summer air is cool and fresh. It smells like green leaves, hay, and sunshine. Sunlight stretches across the garden. The butterfly plants — red, orange, white, and purple coneflowers — are already in full sun; the herb garden is in the shade of our neighbor’s dogwood. The morning shadows are long, but they’ll soon shorten.

In the time it took me to type the previous paragraph, the sun rose enough to drench the basil in light. Happily, our basil is thriving. We’ve already made two batches of homemade pesto this summer, and I bought pine nuts today so we can make more. We started in with the basil gin smashes last night as well, and I use the basil in a basic chick pea salad that’s been my staple lunch this week (chicks peas, lemon juice, olive oil, basil, salt). We will still have basil to spare, though. If you have favorite basil uses, please send them my way.

Summer Saturday mornings are lovely. Especially when enjoyed sitting by an open window with a soundtrack of reggae and birdsong. The day stretches before me. It will probably be filled cutting grass, pulling weeds, work I need to catch up on, laundry, heat and strong sun. Maybe a trip to the nursery to find some annuals to fill gaps in the garden.

But for now, it’s soft and cool, nothing but leisure time for me to practice writing blog posts on my phone.*

*More to come.
Morning in the garden

July 1st, 2016

When I left for WordCamp Europe, our garden was pregnant with plump flower buds: echinacea, milkweed, hydrangea. While I walked the streets of Vienna, admiring the red geraniums that spilled from window boxes, I wondered how my flowers at home were doing. We can never get our flower boxes looking as good as the ones I saw in Vienna, but that’s ok. I have my whole life to keep tinkering.

It was dark when I arrived home after 24 hours in trains, airplanes, airports, and cabs, but not so dark I couldn’t see the outline of a new purple coneflower when I dragged my suitcase into the garage.

Every morning since I’ve gotten home, I make a smoothie*, walk downstairs to the garage, slip my feet into green rubber boots, and walk out into the dewy grass. I inspect the milkweed, parsley, rue, and passionflower for caterpillars (none yet) and check out the progress of all the flower buds. I deadhead a few withered blossoms. Sip my smoothie. Listen to birds trill. Nobody in the neighborhood is outside. I have it all to myself.

I keep trying to get a good photo for y’all but I’ve had zero luck. Despite digging close to 200 holes and putting a plant in each one, there are still large open spaces in the beds. I know they’ll eventually fill in, but for now the garden is young and I just have to accept that. My husband said we can take our daughter to pick out some annuals this weekend to plunk them in the open spaces. She will be very excited.

Morning in the garden is my favorite way to start the day: beautiful, serene, full of life.

*For the smoothie-lovers, my smoothie usually has kale, banana, walnuts, flax seeds, frozen pineapple, frozen strawberries (or peaches or mangos), and pineapple juice.
Vienna

June 25th, 2016

Smooth flat stones, a cobbled alley to our hotel door. The stones are laid tidily underfoot, old and worn, between sunny walls. Neat herbs and flowers line the path.

On the afternoon walk to my room, I stroke leaves as I pass waist-high herb pots. This one’s leaves are long and flat like tarrogon, but the scent on my fingers is rosemary. I pluck another leaf and rub it between my fingers so I can keep smelling it.

Pink geraniums and yellow daisies spill from window boxes, and when the breeze is just right, I smell the almond scent of flowering trees along the nearby Landstrasse. I inhale deeply every perfumed breath.

Along the Landstrasse, on the walk from the underground, I hear the clatter of crockery as I pass the outdoor patios and open doors of cafés. I pass two, three, four gelato shops, each with a patchwork in shades of vanillas, chocolates, nut tones, and deep red berries. The frozen smooth creams glisten, cold and fresh, in the hot afternoon, and I nearly follow the sweet fragrance of freshly baked almond cookies into a pastry shop. Almond cookies are my favorite.

Yesterday, before my talk, I took the morning to myself. I walked the city blocks near our hotel, delighted over and over again by the cascade of greenery and bright flowers spilling from window sills. I drank coffee and ate a croissant at an outdoor café as I watched the Viennese morning go by: moms and dads standing behind their children on foot powered scooters, pushing off and gliding along sidewalks together; four men smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee a couple tables over — they were in no hurry on a Friday morning; the wait staff bustling around the patio, placing cushions on wooden slatted chairs before more guests arrived.

I love the pace of this city. It is relaxed but efficient, like the CAT train that arrived early at the airport, sat still, peaceful, and quiet in the station for several minutes while people boarded at their leisure, then left promptly at its scheduled time: 9 minutes after the hour.

I feel welcome here in Vienna. I feel comfortable. I regret I don’t have more time to explore.

Tag: 10minwri

Minimizing

Quaker Meeting

Summer evening (with kitties)

Summer with Windows open

Morning in the garden

Vienna