Simple Pleasures

I've written kind of a lot about what I've given up, quit doing, don't do, avoid. I thought it might be useful to write, instead, about what I've found: things to try, things to make time for, things in which to luxuriate. I hope maybe to make it a series of posts, as I explore further. To start, here are some from now~~

~~Drinking.
Ha! No, I am not confessing to yet another Issue. I mean, literally, drinking. Taking in fluid. Whether it's learned or genetic, it's tough for me to get enough liquid. I could no more drink a glass of water from the tap than I could eat a gopher. My mother was the same: water made her nauseated. She drank 1) coffee (black, caffeinated) and cokes (generic, Southern cokes (i.e., any soda) but also Real Cokes. None of that New Coke crap for her). She drank these all day long, and in the last couple decades of her life, she suffered a series of bladder infections that, gradually, became chronic and made her miserable. I can go all day without drinking anything, and when we travel, I do that just so I can avoid, as much as possible, The Horror Of Public Restrooms. I don't realize I'm thirsty until my mouth is dry and my lips are cracking. As I've gotten older, I can tell because I'll just generally feel weird.

Not wanting to be like my mother, of course, I've set out to figure out a way to make sure I drink more. Coffee in the morning is easy (more on that pleasure below), and wine in the evening doesn't really count. I gave up sodas years ago. I don't like fruit juice or energy drinks or sports drinks. I don't consume artificial sweeteners of any kind. But! Years ago I discovered fizzy water. Carbonated water, but Fizzy Water sounds so much better (just a cheap grocery store brand, not anything fancy). And then last year in Benecia, Sharon Payne Bolton introduced me to OMIGOD! La Croix Coconut Fizzy Water, and let me tell you, I ADORE this stuff. Coconut is like heaven to me, and the idea of no sweeteners, no artificial anything, no calories, no nothing except COCONUT—well. There's nothing in it but carbonated water and "essence of coconut," which we think means they put some oil in there or maybe cut open a coconut and waved it over the vat or something, just so you can smell coconut and think you're tasting it. Hold your nose and it's just fizzy water. Then I found out I also like the lemon flavor and the berry flavor, and so I make kind of a big deal out of drinking a can of each of those three throughout the day. I keep a funky (kind of lumpy and handmade looking, although it's just a glass) glass in the freezer, so it's nice and frosty, and I pour the water in there and go and sit somewhere, taking a break from whatever I was doing and making it into a treat. It started out as something I had to do: drink. more. water. but it's become something I really look forward to, stopping and walking out to the storage building to get a can out of the refrigerator out there and getting the frosty glass and then sitting down somewhere, reading a book, maybe, or taking it outside to sit with Duchess in the backyard. In the winter I try to drink herbal tea, even though they mostly taste like lawn clippings to me. I make a ritual of it, as well, and work on pretending it's something I actually like. A good book helps.

~~Coffee
Ahhh, coffee. I love coffee. I love everything about it: the way it smells and the heat and the flavor and the companionship of sitting with someone over coffee. Never mind that the odor often reminds me of cigarettes and cat pee. Never mind that! And never mind that bad coffee is worse than the juice of boiled sweat socks. No, don't think about that! I grew up on a Party Crew, a group of families of exploration geophysicists who traveled from town to town. There were morning coffees and bridge parties and whatever else adults have where they all get together and someone puts on one of those gigantinormous urns of coffee: there was always someone who had one of those that could make enough coffee for an army. My parents drank copious amounts of coffee, brewing it as soon as they got out of bed (to go with that first cigarette), and those were the first odors I smelled every morning. The thing about coffee was that it was an odor that meant everything was all right: your parents were up and about, or all their friends were in the living room, or there were bridge games under way, whatever. Even when something bad happened, the first thing was someone putting on the coffee: it meant that no matter what was going on, everything would be OK because there would be Coffee. So coffee it is, even when it smells and tastes less than lovely. I have a Keurig coffee brewer because you can't drink Midland water unless you want your liver to fall out (fracking, although that's not what they tell us; they tell us only that they've detected high levels of

Anyway, anyway: you use bottled or RO water for everything you're going to eat or drink and just keep your fingers crossed. Or move. So: Keurig allows me to use safe water for one cup at a time and not waste any, and I've got one of those converters so I can use regular coffee in it instead of those pods.

Duchess, the old neighborhood cat who now lives in our backyard, has gotten progressively more tame and affectionate, so on the days she's loose in the yard (every other day), I go out and have coffee with her. I sit in a lawn chair, and she comes and, sometimes, jumps in the chair with me. Other times she sits underneath and waits for me to dangle a hand or foot within attacking distance. There are birds, an amazing variety for the desert. Mockingbirds, doves, grackles, sparrows, hummers. They're very vocal, and you can shut your eyes and imagine you're in the woods somewhere, surrounded by, as Monk would say, A Lot of Nature.

In short, I make little Drinking Rituals throughout the day, shared, almost always, by at least one cat: in the morning I get up, make a cup of coffee, collect whatever stitching project I'm working on, and call Lennie Lulu. We walk down the hall to the door to The Voodoo Lounge, and she chirps and I tell her to open the door, and she reaches up (horrendously cutely, of course) and taps the door knob, and I open the door where (almost always) the sun is streaming in the windows. She chirps again and crams herself up against the window, and the other cats join us. If The EGE is home, he might come in, too, and we all sit in the sun. There's a bird feeder right outside the windows, and he'll fill that, and doves and sparrows go nuts. An hour, two hours—I stay until there's something else that calls me.
In the afternoon when The EGE is home, we usually stop and have a drink: one of those bottled frappuccinos, usually, but sometimes, in the summer, a glass of white wine or, in the winter, hot cocoa. Or he'll go get iced lattes. And then we'll find a place inside or outside, depending on the weather, and just hang out.

~~Reading
At some point I decided reading during the day was decadent and lazy. Now I know that "decadent" and "lazy" are just concepts that I can buy into or not, and I'm making time to read during the day. It's tough for me: I feel "lazy," and then I get irritated at myself for feeling that way, and then I just go do something else. But I'm working on it. I hope to be able to sit down for at least an hour with a book and feel completely good about it.
~~Walking. I love to walk, and I try to get in two miles every day. Unfortunately, there is no beach here, no woods or lakes or streams. The leafiest, greenest place is our funky old neighborhood, and this year it's been rainy enough so that things are actually green again. You just have to pretend, mostly, that you're somewhere beautiful. I stick to a one-mile loop in the immediate neighborhood, walking along the greenest streets and avoiding the uglier ones. It's boring, sure, walking the exact same route twice every day for 25 years, so I'm working on being Zen about it, about being mindful (trees! birds! fox poop!) and actively appreciating things like leaves and blue skies and my ability to get out and walk.

~~Yoga
Not any formal kind, but stretching, paying a lot of attention to my neck and back, doing some poses that seem to work to keep me mobile. I'd like to have a yoga class to go to, but I haven't had much luck. Some are competitive, which I avoid. Some instructors were insistent drill sergeants, and there are things I'm just not going to do. My favorite class was, sadly, filled with seriously conservative wives, the wives of oil guys and lawyers and stuff, and their comments about, well, you can imagine, so we won't go there. It harshed my yoga squee. Lennie is thrilled I stay at home; she adores the yoga mat and thinks my getting down on the floor is just for her. When I roll out the mat, she runs on and immediately down down dog and up dog, and what could be cuter than that? Gah.

~~Meditation
I'm easing my way back in and really want to do a lot more. I was doing well and loving it a lot until my mother's final illness and death, and after that I just couldn't do it; my brain would fill with horrid images and tell me horrid stories, and it's so easy to get out of the habit of something that requires work. For a while I went to a couple different meditation groups. I love sitting with other people in silence; there's just something wonderful about it, as if you're collectively filling the world with peace and good vibes. But other people like things I don't, like chanting and incense and walking meditation and talking, talking, talking. I tried, I really did. Nonjudgement and all that. But it just didn't work for me. Perhaps someday there'll be a group that just sits companionably, but for now, I'm working at getting back in the habit on my own. It's slow; when I sit on the floor, I'm obviously down there to keep the cats company. If I go in a room and shut the door, they cry pitifully and stick their paws under as if they're trapped and only I can save them from immediate and horribly painful death by wolves.  Plus I'm working on being mindful, so sitting and being mindful of the cats' presence is a good thing. Right? Well, I'm working on it.

I'm also finding actual joy in doing stuff like vacuuming and washing dishes. No, I haven't gone all Stepford Wife. The EGE has always done most of this stuff, but since I'm slowing down and working less, I'm trying to do more. And since I've cleared out stuff, it's easier. That's the plan: to figure out how to keep things clean and clutter-free even as it eventually gets more difficult to do stuff. Bending over and lifting stuff is hard on the neck, so I'm figuring out ways around that. I got a couple electric brooms and leave them plugged in and tucked in corners, and I can turn them on (one in the living room that will reach all the way into The Voodoo Lounge and one for the dining room/kitchen) and I can just turn it on and clean the floors. Washing dishes is usually kind of painful, but I figure the hot water is a good thing, so I try to do it mindfully. I like having fewer dishes: I love using a spoon, washing it off, drying it and putting it back with the two other spoons where it belongs. I love that dishes aren't stacked in the cabinet and that each one has a specific place to go where it's not touching anything else, so you can reach up and get it and put it back easily, with nothing falling over or having to be moved. It's a tiny thing, but it seems so peaceful, you know? I have found a new (probably pathetic) joy in using stuff and putting it exactly back in the place I've made for it: the iron goes on the end of the new shelf, the ironing board goes by the refrigerator, the electric broom goes in that corner right there. I don't have to hunt for things, move things to put other things away, climb up to reach things. Very best of all, I don't have to spend forever going through the house, digging through stuff (drawers, piles of projects, stacks of books) looking for something I've misplaced. It was always something small enough to get lost—a specific pair of tiny scissors, a letter opener, whatever—and there were just so many places it could be. Now there are many fewer things, and they all have a specific place to stay and, even if they're not in that place, there aren't a lot of other places they could be. It's marvelous, it really is.

And then of course there is the stitching, a constant joy. I'll write more about it later. For now, it's time to go take that walk before it gets hot. Thanks for coming by. If there's something you'd like to hear more about, just ask.  XO