Clearing ‘Stuff’ - March

One of my goals in 2013 is to develop more discipline when it comes to ‘stuff’. I am posting monthly document my progress on this year long project. It is not quite the forcing function that moving would provide but (hopefully) will be enough of a reminder to keep focused.

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I’ve added a few books to the pile in March…but the most obvious additions are blue bean bag chairs. We’ve had them for a long time and they never used that much. Recently we haven’t used them at all. So they’ve been added to the top of the heap

Another addition is some long handled rollers we used for painting years and years ago. I’m beginning to realize that some of the pile is in the freecycle category and may become trash if there are no takers. The stuff certainly does not need to be kept around the house.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - March 2013

Back in August 2012, I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and the habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are some ‘little celebrations’ I’ve noted this month:

A day at home. Even though I am not away from home as much as I was at the height of my career, there are still times that I welcome just being at home for a whole day. It is probably my favorite place to be.

A winter’s day at Brookside Gardens. The conservatories were pleasantly warm. And the brisk walk to look for signs of spring afterward was rewarded with sights of daffodils and witch hazel.

Up-to-date on course work. I got overwhelmed for a few days with the Aboriginal Worldviews and Education course (Coursera) and celebrated when I was finally able to catch up.

Snow day. We got enough snow to make snow ice cream! It ended up being more like a smoothie because the snow was so heavy (i.e. not the light fluffy stuff).

Great Horned Owl. I’d seen pictures and read about them but had never seen one in action until seeing the raptor presentation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The owl was well trained to swoop down for bits of food within easy viewing range of the crowd….until it spotted a bunny nearby and disappeared into the cactus and brush to enjoy its lunch.

Kratchner Caverns State Park. Kudos to the people who found it and owned the property for protecting it until the state and researchers could sustain it. This is the place to celebrate the beauty of caverns.

Airport art. Airports are often stressful places - lots of security and lines and hurry/wait flurry. Noticing the artwork helps. Mosaics…painting on glass….tiles…etchings…lights. They bring back the notion that airplane travel can be enjoyable.

Home again. After being away for a week, coming home is always a little celebration.

A clean house. My house is always reasonably clean but gets even more so when I am expecting guests. It’s worth a celebration after the work!

A warm day. Typical of spring, there was one warm day sandwiched with cold ones. It was nice to feel the warmth.

Early Spring in Maryland

Our spring weather has been a bit colder than usual; some plants are holding off their rush to spring blossoms and foliage. Others, like the hyacinth and daffodils, are blooming but a little worn looking from the cold. Usually they are more numerous and robust looking than they are this year.

The maple has appeared to be going red at the end of its branches several times….then seems to retreat back into a drab color of winter.

Surprisingly, the moss between the rain gutter and driveway seems to be fruiting more than usual.

And the cherry and plum trees are not bursting into bloom as they were this time last year. I hope the buds protect the flowers enough so that we will eventually have the blossoms that make spring extra special in this area.

Fear of Hunger

Is the fear of hunger a basic as instinct? Many people are never deprived of food for long but somehow always have an undercurrent of worry about what or when their next opportunity to eat will come. There are food related cultural ideals such as: 

• Eating everything on a plate
• Drinking something other than water
• Having a meat and several vegetables
• Expecting dessert after a meal, sometimes fruit but more likely something heavily laden with sugar 

And so we tend to eat when food is available even if we are not particularly hungry. If we are traveling or busy with work, we may eat while we work - munching on things available from a vending machine. By the day we are not particularly satisfied but we are not hungry either.

Recognizing that the fear of hunger comes to us down through the generations - it is part of the heredity of us all - may help. But it takes conscious effort to overcome the fear. Give yourself the gift of eating only foods of the amount and type your body truly needs.

The Room that is my Own

One of the assignments for the Aboriginal World Views and Education course I am taking on Coursera was to write about a meaningful place. I am posting what I wrote for the class below (after subitting it to the course's forum).

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The room that is my own is my most meaningful place. It is a place where favorite things collected over many years are enjoyed: Georgia O’Keeffe posters on the walls, a vase of 30 year old peacock feathers from my grandmother, some macramé wall hangings from my sister, windchimes from my mother-in-law, a dream catcher from my daughter, small keepsakes in the pockets of the window sheers (mismatched earrings, a cloisonné belt buckle, a tarnished metal rose from my mother, dried maple leaves, bookmarks). The large window reveals an edge of rooftop with a gutter where birds like doves and house finches come to get water and nesting material. Further way, there are maple and tulip poplars that are the edge of the forest. In the summer it is a wall of fluttering green. The winter a flock of blue jays visits almost every day. Sometimes I see deer. Last summer there was a doe with two fawns that visited regularly.

My computer is in this room - the window to the broader world. One of the two screens is usually running a slide show of collected images that I particularly like. I have a Swopper chair in front of the computer and bounce while I am thinking or reading. On a table to one side I have materials for doodling.

The meaning comes from the richness of perspective the room provides….my history through the items collected there…the outdoors through the window…the access to information out in the world via the internet…the creation of new things first through thought and then writing (journaling or this blog) or doodling. The integration of sedentary pursuits with some level of activity (the Swopper chair) over the past few years has been a positive experience from both a mental and physical perspective. It has been evolving for the past 20 years….fitting to what is happening in my life at the time. This place is one where I am alone but not too alone since it is ‘the room that is my own’ in my family home.

Around our (Maryland) Yard in March 2013

Early March is still winter this year but there are a few signs of spring. The hyacinths are up and their buds are showing, the tulips are just out of the ground -their leaves still spiraled and tipped with pink. The debris from last year’s lilies is protecting the tulips from the deer. The cairn is still tumbled. The buds on the maple and cherry are not quite as advanced as they were at this time last year although they are enlarging compared to last month. Only the very tips of the maple twigs are turning red so far. The aging self-fungus and moss add some welcome color among the browns of winter. The pine cones and tulip poplar shells lend texture but continue the brown theme of winter.

Fallen cairn

Tulip

Hyacinth

Shelf fungus

Moss

Pine Cone

Tulip Poplar shell

Cherry buds

What if gardens replaced grass yards?

What is the value of a grassy yard?  Why is it always in the picture of an ideal house? Do we really need grass to hold the place around the house between the street and other houses?

It has uses and advantages. Children can play there. Grass tends to have dense enough roots to hold soil firmly even if it dies back in winter.

But there are disadvantage too. Most grass needs to be mowed; depending on the type of grass and the amount of moisture, this can be a frequent chore. And to look good it needs to be fertilized and weeded. It is very easy to put more than enough fertilizer which then causes streams to receive the burst of nutrients after each rain (adding to the pollution from other sources they already carry). It is a lot of work and consequence for a grass yard.

Why aren’t more grassy areas being turned into gardens? Food prices are going up but they have not gone up enough to motivate many of us to become new gardeners. I am a small time gardener but I have big ideas. I’m not going to enlarge my garden bed this year but I am going to plant more food items than flowers like I have in previous years. And maybe I’ll get even more ambitious in 2014 and make a larger garden where the grass still grows in 2013.

Clearing ‘Stuff’ - February

One of my goals in 2013 is to develop more discipline when it comes to ‘stuff’. I am posting monthly document my progress on this year long project. It is not quite the forcing function that moving would provide but (hopefully) will be enough of a reminder to keep focused.

~~~~~

I procrastinated to the last possible day for the February post. The progress has not been all that great in the month. I do have a few more books in the pile. The most substantial new boxes are VHS tapes. My husband and I decided it was time to give away the ones we had accumulated since our VHS player is no longer reliable and we are spoiled by watching everything in HD now. So I cataloged the titles for future reference and loaded up the boxes. We’ll revisit our need for some of them when and if we have grandchildren.

What if….our clothes adjusted to always keep us at the most comfortable temperature?

Our clothing has evolved from skins to natural fiber fabrics to synthetic fabrics. We add layers and weight to be warmer; jettison layers and heavy fabrics when we want to be cooler. The changing external environment and our own internal heat (from increased activity or ‘hot flashes’) means that we may need to make changes to our clothing during the day or wake up during the night to throw off blankets. The basics of clothing have not really changed very much.

What if our clothing detected changes that indicated we were hot or cold and changed subtly to warm us up or release heat, perhaps even overtly cooling us? We might learn more detailed information about ourselves - as a population and as individuals - once we started experimenting with the new clothing. Maybe some of us prefer to be warmer than others…perhaps everyone instances of higher metabolism producing more heat but we have simply ignored the extra bit of warmth in the past because it was not significant enough to change clothes.

If we had the clothing to keep us at the temperature we preferred, would we stop heating and cooling our dwellings? That might imply that ‘clothing’ would cover us completely. Would it filter the air we breathed and the food we ate?

Would style of clothing be important enough that the technology would need to include the ability to shift into different ‘looks’? Would color be structural and thus be programmable? Would we choose to shimmer like butterfly wings or peacock feathers if we had that choice?

February 2013 Sunrise

The sunrise is creeping earlier but the trees are still bare so there is still a sunrise view from my front porch. By March it will be iffy.

I like the stark blackness of the branches against the brightening sky and the sun just peeking from a rooftop.

The morning I captured this picture seemed to be full of school buses coming through the neighborhood. I noticed the first one before 6:30 AM! That is an early morning for the students. And it was below freezing with the sun not yet contributing any warmth to the day.

Household Tools - Cleaning

The tools I use around the house for cleaning have not changed tremendously over the past 40 years. Scrub brushes are the constants. What I use with the scrub brush has changed more than the tool itself; I’m all for the ‘greener’ cleaners like soda and vinegar - always relying on the brush to get the cleaner to the scum on the shower base or the worn-in dirt from heavy traffic areas of the carpet. My favorite brush is one that has a handle that allows a comfortable grip and keeps my hand well above the fray of dirt and cleaner.

I have another brush with a long handle made out of recycled plastic that I use for scrubbing vegetables or getting the larger clumps of food off dishes going into the dishwasher. The brush itself goes through the dishwasher cycle as well.

I remember using steel wool and soap-filled pads in the past but I don’t seem to need them as much these days. We do our grilling on a gas grill and burn off the mess rather than scrubbing it off. Soaking and the dishwasher handles most of the other kitchen messes.

I’ve tried various kinds of mops for non-carpeted floors. I have an old sponge mop which I haven’t used in years. It’s been so long that the sponge is probably rotten. The bucket sees more action than the old mop. The Swiffer is my current choice although I do not like the idea of creating trash with the pads. On the plus side, I find that I don’t need to mop all that frequently since we take our shoes off at the door if they are messy.

And what about brooms? I found one that has a dust pan attached in my basement that I don’t remember having. Did my daughter leave it here when she moved cross country? I tend to use a vacuum cleaner - and this series of posts is steering clear of electronic tools - rather than a broom. The brooms we use are relegated to outdoor jobs like sweeping leaves from the garage or deck.

Vanishing Snow

Last week it snowed overnight. It wasn’t more than an inch and the streets had retained enough heat from the daytime to melt what fell on them. The snow was lumpy on the grass and bushes. It stuck to the trees. I went out to take pictures as the sun was coming up and then several times over the next couple of hours. It was just below freezing at sunrise then warmed up very quickly. Surprisingly the last walk around was the one that interested me the most - and not for photographic reasons. It was the sounds - 

• bits of snow falling from the oak and fracturing on the driveway and
• water running down the gutters

The snow was mostly gone by noon.

What if…the color in our homes was structural?

I am intrigued by the structural color of birds-of-paradise and peacock feathers. The colors are made by patterns of material instead of pigment. Link the basic research into structural colors to self-assembling nano-particles (here is an article of some recent work in that area)…and the future could hold ‘programmable’ color for our homes. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to change the color of a room - or maybe just one wall - during different times of the day? What if the surface also collected or radiated heat (depending on whether the area needed to be heated or cooled)? 

Or what about technology that puts more display glass on our walls with color and/or images appearing just as they do today on computer displays. The technology is probably already developed to do that - although the price is still too high. What about the power it would take to have all the walls of a house being glass displays? Corning Glass has several videos with this vision of the future.

Either scenario points to a world where our the color and surface of the walls of homes will become much more dynamic than they are today!

Household Tools - Office

I took a look around my office this morning and realized that many of the tools have to do with paper - staplers, binder clips, scissors, letter opener. Having those tools around has not changed in decades. But my use of them has declined considerably over the past 10 years because I am using less paper - keeping things electronically rather than printing them. 

• My grocery lists are done with the OurGroceries app. I check things off on my Kindle as I shop.
• I decided to not print things I write for proofreading or backup. Those activities can be done electronically - with no paper involved at all.
• More of what I read is online to begin with so I have links on a ‘favorites’ list (usually associated with my web browser) rather than pages torn from a magazine to file away.
  

I do still sometimes jot down something on a post-it note. I’ve noticed that my office paper recycle bag is mostly small pieces of colored paper these days rather than the 8.5x11 inches that used to spew out of the printer pretty frequently. Do I need these paper related tools….and others like rulers and highlighters? I do use them occasionally but I am approaching a time when I might decide to freecycle them all!

Household Tools - Kitchen (Part 2)

Yesterday I posted about knives and wooden spoons being the most frequently used tools in my kitchen. The whisk, potato peeler and can opener are not used every day - but frequently enough.

I find that I use the whisk when I previously used an egg beater or electric mixer or a fork. It does a better job of combining milk with eggs for scrambling or omelets. And it is a lot less mess and faster that an egg beater or electric mixer for creaming sugar, eggs, and butter for cookies or mixing the pancake ingredients. It’s appealing in its simplicity. The one I use most frequently is an inexpensive one that has lasted for years.

The same can be said of the potato peeler. It is over 30 years old. I don’t use it as frequently as I once did since we no longer are making homemade French fries every week (French fries are infrequent components of our meals now). The most frequent use is to peel sweet potatoes before I cut wedges to roast sprinkled with cinnamon.

The can opener is used much less frequently than when it was originally purchased. We don’t eat as many canned goods as we used to and some of the few that we still buy have flip tops. I still have the can opener in the drawer; its sharpness will last for years and years at the rate it gets used.

Household Tools - Kitchen (Part 1)

I have collected a large number of tools for cooking over the years. Some of them I use infrequently while there are a few that I use every day. Knives and wooden spoons are at the top of the list.

The knives that work best for me are those that are all one piece (i.e. the knife and handle are all one piece of metal). I’ve had too many wooden knife handles split over the years and recently I had a plastic handle crack. There are still some knives in the drawer with wooden and plastic handles - and I still have a butcher block knife set on the counter - but I will continue to put them in the dishwasher when I use them and not replace them when they break.

Wooden spoons last for a very long time. Some I am using are over 20 years old and have weathered the almost daily scrubbing in the dishwasher. I use them virtually every time I cook - on the stove top or in a mixing bowl. For a long time they were in a drawer, but now I have them in a tall tin next to the stove where I can grab one quickly when I cook.

What are your top kitchen tools?

Around our (Maryland) Yard in February 2013

There was a dusting of snow of fell after dark - that made the yard look cold and brittle on the morning I walked around to take the pictures for this post. The tumbled cairn of rocks and shells was almost covered. The neighbors’ blue spruce and pines still held tufts of snow as did the dried flowers of the hydrangea and onion. The old logs of the abandoned wood pile at the edge of the forest were buried under leaves and snow. I left muddy footprints in the pristine snow that had filled the dip in the yard that drains away the melt and rain water.

tumbled cairn

blue spruce

pine

hydrangea

onion

abandoned wood pile

Gluten Lite Diet

One of the ideas I’ve been applying to my diet this year is to reduce gluten. My goal is not to be ‘gluten free’ but to dramatically reduce the amount of gluten by  

• Almost eliminating packaged wheat bread and crackers
• When I bake - replacing half or more of the wheat flour with teff or buckwheat. This does not always work but the more highly flavored the recipe is, the more likely I will still enjoy it. Pumpkin or spice muffins and pancakes are my favorites.
• Replacing pasta with grains that do not include grain - like brown rice or quinoa or amaranth
• Replacing packaged breakfast cereals with oatmeal or quinoa or a mixed grain that does not include wheat.
  

I tried some gluten free pasta (it was made with corn instead of wheat). The flavor was fine but I decided that the other grains had more nutritional value and served the same role in my meal as the pasta. And it appealed to me to migrate to the less processed grains.

The results have been reasonably good so far. I’ve been staying on course toward my goal to take off some weight. An added benefit seems to be improved digestion of other foods that previously caused me some issues (beans and broccoli/cauliflower); it could be purely circumstantial but I am enjoying those foods more than I have in years.

The Magic of a Little Snow

We got a little over an inch of snow one of the days last week….and it made our yard a magical place:

The tracks of an animal (probably a cat) close to our front door; it didn’t stop to look in window.

The cedar holding a handful of snow - perfectly balanced until breeze should come along. 

The dried hydrangea looking almost like a cotton boll. 

The snowball held by pine needles.

And the deformed branches of the tulip poplar outlined by snow on every near horizontal branch.

Warmer with a Scarf

This last cold snap has raised my awareness about scarves: they can indeed help you feel more comfortably warm. This is not about scarf paired with coats for outdoor wear (although that is a good idea too); it’s about a scarf worn inside over normal indoor clothing - as shown at left over a sweater.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to make the discovery. I wore scarves for years to compliment the ‘business casual’ attire I wore every day. But those were tied loosely. The scarf needs to be snuggled up to the neck for warmth.

When I hiked the Grand Canyon over 30 years ago - I discovered that having a wet bandana around my neck helped me feel cooler - but missed the opportunity to make the correlation that the neck temperature leads in perception of comfortable temperature (for me, the feet are first….and then the neck).

But - it is a welcome discovery while we are in the 20s outdoors in Maryland and trying to conserve energy by not keeping our house overly warm!