Creating a comfortable life one moment at a time
I finally learned how to tie a scarf so it looks decent and stays put. And, wouldn’t you know, my grandma’s the one who taught me. She learned the technique from a young woman at church and passed the info on to me. So if you’re looking for a quick and simple way to infuse some style in your life (aren’t we all?), here you go:
{ image from Dinner: A Love Story }
Last night I was feeling pretty good. I’d had a great lesson with a piano student. Inspired by that, I buckled down and taught three of my own kids. Who didn’t complain once. Lexie even asked when she could have her next lesson. Meanwhile, Tim set up a little ski shop on the kitchen island and figured out how to wax and tune skis. Which made me happy because it’ll save money. What made me even happier was how handsome he looked waxing the skis in his Nordic blue sweater and slightly long hair. I made dinner, we read The Hobbit, and I started knitting a new hat. All heads were above water and it was a nice evening.
Fast forward to this morning. One kid wipes out on the icy driveway and I kick myself for not remembering to send everyone out to scrape the ice away yesterday when the temperature warmed up. I snap at Tim for not reminding me to remember and then kick myself for snapping at him. I get on the scale and kick myself for letting everything go since getting Gunther’s diagnosis last week. I try to give him his pills but he clamps his jaws shut and I can’t pry them open. I try every healthy food I can think of to hide the pills in, but the only thing he’ll touch is a meat stick. Which I’m sure is great for his liver. So I kick myself for that, too.
I’m a little sore from all the kicking.
But don’t I deserve it? I mean, at this point I really should have my act together. For more than an hour or two at a time.
Then I remember something my friend Christina said the other day. We were talking on the phone and I was complaining about how I wasn’t eating great or working out as much as I should and I’m supposed to be a boot camp instructor, blah, blah, blah. After listening for a while, Christina said in her gentle, singer’s voice, “Shannon, you need to be kind to yourself.”
Those words, spoken with so much warmth and love, come back to me now. They remind me of the saying (you’ve probably heard it), “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Why oh why is it so much easier to be kind to others than ourselves? Imagine if we treated ourselves with the understanding and patience we show others, especially when they’re having a hard time.
Because the truth is that it takes a lot to sit on the floor and plead with the dog you adore to take his pills because they’re the only thing keeping him alive. Non-life-and-death-matters take a lot, too—eating healthy, keeping your house clean, paying your bills, navigating relationships. There are times when showering is a major challenge (hello, mothers of new babies). Life is a lot of work. But Tim is kind enough to remind me—often—that nobody has it all figured out.
So. I was going to write about my New Year’s resolutions today. But instead I’m throwing them all out the window and switching to just one. Be kind to myself.
How about you? Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?
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We had quite an exciting morning. To make a long story short, there was a very minor issue at our local nuclear power plant during the night. We got an early-morning phone call from the powers-that-be asking us to keep our kids home until we knew the problem had been fixed. Soon after, we got another phone call letting us know that everything was fine and school would start two hours late. I appreciate the cautiousness—it’s better to be safe than sorry, especially where our children are concerned.
But while I’m incredibly relieved that everything is fine, this experience pointed out how completely unprepared I am for emergencies. Do you have a plan in place if you had to drop everything, pile into the car, and head for safety?
I remember reading an article about disaster preparedness on FlyLady‘s website ages ago, so I asked for permission to reprint her evacuation plan. Here it is:
Life constantly hurls unexpected challenges our way and any moment we could be faced with the threat of evacuation from our homes. We never know when this could happen because of fire, tornadoes, storms, floods, or hurricanes. It is up to us to be prepared! Don’t wait and think this can’t happen to you. We have seen power outages from ice storms, thunderstorms, and raging fires. Please take this plan and pull it together to help you stay calm during any disaster.
Thank you, FlyLady! I’m going to print out the plan and start chipping away at the list. And then hope I never have to use it!
I started making tiramisu (tih-ruh-mee-SUE) for New Year’s Eve when Tim and I were first married. My love affair with this espresso-infused Italian dessert really began with frappuccinos. I hadn’t been a coffee drinker before we were married, but on a trip to Portland I discovered how good coffee could be if you add things like chocolate and sugar to it. Thank you, Starbucks.
At the same time, Sleepless in Seattle came out and we all learned about tiramisu. Do you remember the line where the Tom Hanks character, Sam, is talking about getting back into dating and his friend, played by Rob Reiner, asks him if he knows about tiramisu? And Sam says “some woman is gonna want me to do it to her, and I won’t know how to do it.” Soon after that, tiramisu started showing up on menus all across the country.
And so I started making this Italian version of the English trifle, but I’ve never been completely happy with any of the recipes I’ve tried. Most years, I’ve ended up combining the recipe from the Alessi Savoiardi (ladyfingers) package with a recipe from my friend’s mother, which worked fine but it was a little cumbersome. I tried a promising one from the internet once but couldn’t get the zabaglione (custard) to set. The dessert tasted okay, but it was pretty soupy. Last year I got too busy and just used this take-off on tiramisu from Real Simple magazine.
Yep, I let him cheat. To be honest, I was a little surprised that Andrew was even willing to sit down and play with Lexie and me in the first place. I should have known he wouldn’t bend to the rules of Scrabble. He tried to get away with proper names and abbreviations at first, and then finally he just started making things up.
Fine, I said. If you can use “quirt” in a poem or story, then it counts. So he did and of course it involved his younger brother getting attacked by a quirt. Or was he the quirt? I forget.
I wonder if Lewis Carroll’s mother had to go through this. “Frabjous is a word, Mummy. For reals.”
Tim had better luck in the puzzle department. We started the puzzle tradition a few years ago to give us something to do on January weekends and evenings when it’s too cold or dark to go outside. Before we put the furniture back in place after taking the tree down, we set up a card table and put out a 1,000-piece puzzle.
Tim can spend hours working on the puzzle, but the rest of us wander in and out, adding a piece here and there. I think last year’s puzzle took nearly the entire month to do, but this one is going very quickly. So Tim bought a couple more when he was at the calendar store yesterday. (I completely forgot to buy a new calendar, but the upside is that it—and the puzzles—were 50 percent off.)
How about you? How do you while away these long winter days and nights?