New Year’s Eve… For me, it’s an afternoon for reflections, mostly about the people we love, the places we’ve been, and what I’ve learned in the past year.
With family spread out literally from coast-to-coast and across two nations…
… there will always be some precious moments we miss in person (thanks, Helen Overholt, Kate’s friend on Facebook, for all your wonderful photo sharing of the past year) …
… and some that we’re there for.
The trick to it all is to be where you are…
… and enjoy who you’re with…
… and cherish ALL the loving moments that come your way as they unfold.
Give back to your community when you can.
… be grateful for mind-bending, world-changing work when it comes your way…
… and travel for as long as you’re able…
…with as many loved ones as are willing, and especially those who enjoy a big fat martini at the end of a long day.
I still have many stories left to tell of 2016, of travels to Alaska…
… and more moments in India…
… but also of travels closer to home…
… and of those right in our own back yard. (Hint: brilliant green ferns, fresh snow, and majestic cascading waterfalls probably mean we’re somewhere within an hour of our house on Vancouver Island.)
I could write more about all the amazing dining out we experienced this year…
… or blab on further about all the fresh delights that came out of our own kitchen…
… or how this was the year that all grandmothers everywhere discovered the latest fountain of youth: Snapchat filters…
… or remind us all about the nasty consequences of poodles believing they can fly. (He’s better now.)
But my biggest lesson of 2016 was what it takes for me to witness and harvest opportunities for beauty…
… and creation…
… and peace.
May 2017 bring blessings to you and your household that will make you blink twice.
I can tell you exactly when it happened: November 26, 2016, at 11:52:14 AM. (Says so right in the time stamp of the photo.)
It was a Saturday morning in downtown Courtenay on 5th St. at the world’s best bakery/chocolate store, Cakebread.
We had stopped in for a latte and a baguette, and got smacked upside the head with the Christmas spirit.
Full blown, just like that. Boom! Merry Christmas.
No idea what was on this wall before the this adorable 3D mural appeared, but now I can’t imagine anything else there.
Yes, many things were the same: the amazing olive oil sampling wall was still there…
… as were the lovely ladies waiting on the line up for artisan breads and monster sandwiches…
… and the generally talented buskers who are almost always somewhere on the block.
But there really was this penguin-induced “Joy to the World” vibe in the air that was even more delicious than the latte and warm classic palmier cookie we shared.
So that was the start of it.
This year we had enough time to slow things down and savor each element as its own Christmas treat.
Finding just the right place for each decoration was like seasoning our home with a wash of family, sweet memories, and an earnest prayer for Peace on Earth.
BTW, the Santas have now finally been tweaked into their final position in front of Rick’s painting, unless he’s been poking away at them again.
I even learned how to wrap a gift like a grown up, AND enjoy the process. (Tip: buy the wrapping paper that has the grid lines on the reverse side to help with planning how much paper you’ll need and how to cut in a straight line.)
A great Christmas playlist, some fun new (to us) music by The Good Lovelies, and a wrapping buddy helped make the season bright.
There was leisure to futz with the fiddly bits and plenty of bandwidth to luxuriate in ALL the smells.
We even took time for a puzzle or two along the way when the parcels were ready.
We spent more time out in our extended community this year as well, with a couple of nights in magical Victoria, window-shopping fabulous Ford St. after the sun went down.
There’s nothing like a train set running in a hobby store window at Christmas to whet the appetite for what might be under the tree.
Our nautical neighbors are enthusiastic about the season as well.
Even the unadorned trees, heavy still with fruit to keep the birds going through the winter, speak kindness and optimism into the expectant calm.
I don’t know from whence the winds of Christmas cheer blow, but this year, I know for sure where they landed: in our hearts. We’re so grateful for each other, our wonderful family and friends, this beautiful world, and of course, all of you.
Merry Christmas, and here’s hoping you have a Most Amazing New Year!
It was an ordinary day, in the way that all our ordinary days are filled with small miracles (SMs) and screw ups (SUs) we hope no one notices.
It started with Rick serving orange juice, toast, and eggs sunnyside up on authentic (Costco) home-baked hash brown patties: piping hot and as if McDonalds had recently changed their deep fat fryer oil.
Not that we’d know about such things. Just guessing.
The bread (SM) was from my baking yesterday.
It was not ordinary.
I’m embarrassed to say because I feel I’m a more humble baker than this, but it was FREAKING perfect. Crust 18 layers deep but only 1/8th of an inch thick. Crumb to make Mrs. Patmore weep. Able to absorb triple its weight in butter.
Give us this day our daily bread, hallowed be your name, etc.
Amen.
The eggs weren’t ordinary, either, unless you live in a world where fresh duck eggs, bought yesterday from the hobby farmer neighbour and almost 75% bigger and twice as nutritious (SM) as chicken eggs are normal fare at your breakfast table.
How have we lived this long (collectively, almost 120 years!) and not once have either of us eaten a duck egg until this morning? Rick was a little worried he wouldn’t care for them, as he doesn’t like goat products.
This will make perfect sense to those of you who like some (but not all) foods to be consistent with the standard bearers of their grocery aisles.
Un-friggin-believable.
Creamy, intensely flavorful in a non-goatlike manner… They were the Rolls-Royces of breakfast eggs, and calorie for calorie, about half the price as their free-roaming happy chicken counterparts.
Like all ordinary days, not everything rolls out with edges as smooth as a well-deserved Kahlua and cream after the last dishes are done on Christmas Eve.
We decided to paint the top of our little table for our north deck so it matched (more or less) our red Adirondack (Costco!) chairs with their gray-black-and red striped cushion. We had some snappy red marine-grade polyurethane paint left over from the canoe repaint this summer, so why not?
Let’s just jump right in to this thing!!
SU alert…
Apparently, sometimes a good sanding and coat of primer are advised between mixing two completely different furniture finishes.
Ironically, it looks sort of cool, in a distressed, couldn’t-have-done-that-in-a-million-years-if-we’d-tried kind of way.
Looking for input here: leave it as is, with maybe a second light coating to smooth the divots, or acknowledge the total fail and start over after inquiring into recommended steps? Leave a comment if you’d care to weigh in.
I didn’t mean to create Farah Fawcett hair (SU), either, although I am pleased that in case the style ever returns to planet Earth, I have finally mastered the look.
SM: Aforementioned bread, neighbour Rob Sawyer’s grilled artisanal hand-crafted frankfurters, Rick’s home-made wine sauerkraut, and French’s mustard for lunch.
Best. Frankfurter. Ever.
We’re considering initiating a Kickstarter fund to finance a consultant to help us figure out, for the good of humanity, how to coerce Rob into going into the processed meat business full-time.
Went for a walk with the dog (SM, how beautiful everything is in a rain forest community in the middle of September), chatted with neighbours, cleaned the bathroom sink…
Then in a transition moment, I drifted to the north porch to gaze into the woods beside our house for a moment, looking for inspiration on how to spend the rest of the day. I leaned my head around the huge post on the corner of our new deck.
It was weeping.
My first thought was “Huh! Sap.”
My second thought was, “Wow. It looks like it’s crying. I wonder if the wood is homesick?”
And my third thought was, “I wonder if buildings and the ground they stand on hold the essences of where their materials have come from, or what they’ve collectively become, or the memories that are created within them?”
And then I remembered today is September 11, and I remembered the buildings, and the numb horror, and the tears, and the sorrow and gratitude and resolve resonating at Ground Zero in New York City today.
Note: this post has almost nothing to do with India and everything to do with how to survive the first 48-hours with two little kids once you get there.
India will come later.
Say what you will about the insane spread and strange austerity of the Frankfurt airport…
... any airport that provides multiple football field-lengths of full-sized cots clearly understands its mission as an international jet lag way station.
Note to prospective traveling grannies: 30 hours of travel, plus a 13.5 hour time difference, plus the chaotic pace of Bangalore, multiplied by highly active two- and five-year old sleep needs = a serious need for a Jet Lag Plan.
Thankfully, Kate was all over it in the packing department.
Pool time!
For some, good hydration and a little yoga is key to a quick recovery.
For others, exercise and some hand-eye coordination flexing is the ticket.
Personally, I found a little adoring lens therapy went a long way to getting my head, heart and travel-hormones back in synch.
A little volunteer gardening also helped to get things grounded. While I’m not sure the chlorinated water was exactly what the poolside vegetation craved, it worked for J for at least 20 minutes.
Kate found that working on her recreational improv skills pulled things together…
… and J discovered you might as well work on your technique while you’re at it.
Football is tougher than it looks, you know.
Fortunately, things drifted back to where they belonged fairly quickly, or at least it has seemed that way to me.
I don’t know, though. Adults get jet lag too, and it fogs the brain.
Finally, for pushing the “please stay awake for just one more hour” envelope, an iPad, headphone splitter, and Shaun the Sheep cannot be recommended highly enough.
It’s now seven days later, and we’re all finally almost in the groove, just in time to have left Bangalore and land in the coastal resort area of Varkala. It’s so stinkin’ blissfully hot and humid here that Bangalore was balmy in comparison, and I feel like I’ve entered a Bikram vacation zone.
But who knows? Maybe the languid, slo-mo mojo will improve my writing skills as I actually write about India next.
It happens spontaneously when one of us does or says something, and then the other one makes a play on it, and… let the games begin!
We were sitting on our little cliff deck when the cormorants decided it was time to air out their collective pits. There was only space for one pair of outstretched wings on the buoy, so there was some vigorous feather wrestling over how many minutes constitutes a “proper turn,” and who was up next.
“Quick! Get the camera!”
We passed our beloved Nikon D1500 back and forth, trying different angles, focal lengths, and compositions. Once the birds took off in search of a more spacious perch, our attention wandered to what else might be interesting through the lens without getting our butts out of our really comfy Adirondacks.
Quite a bit, apparently.
“Hey! Wanna try shooting the same thing, and see what happens?” We often see the same thing through quite different creative perspectives.
It’s a huge positive in our relationship: we double our fun when we get to enjoy the other guy’s experience of beauty and life, in addition to our own.
It’s like the “find the animal in the clouds” game. The first fun is finding the seahorse all on your own. The second fun is the challenge of finding the right words to guide the other guy into seeing it, too.
All I could see was the question mark, asking where the seahorse was.
The game taught us anew that clouds don’t have a monopoly on having worlds hidden in their textures.
Frankly, this was a bit freaky once Rick pointed out the gnarly old man staring at us from the bark.
In the warm afternoon sun, we found ourselves composing around the pools of golden light that dappled our lightly wooded shoreline.
Is “dappled” a verb? Yes.
It was camera therapy, with a buddy.
Life tip: when stressed, go zen behind the lens with a friend. Shadow play was fun…
… as was playing upside-down.
And no, we did not experience any nasty surprises via large perching birds with an excellent sense of timing.
Taking time to let your focus drift to things just beneath the surface is a wonderful tonic.
Just ask Winston.
P.S. There’s another fun rickandkathy.com made up game coming your way shortly! Stay tuned for WWF_WTF (Words With Friends_Written by Two Friends).
Even though we post a LOT of photography of everything from bugs to bakeware to bunnies, we’re not immune to the lure of the birthday date photo.
Even though we don’t usually post them anywhere, they’re still cherished memory triggers of happy times.
On occasion, we’ll even take the oh-so-cliche photo of what we’re eating or drinking when dining in public so we will remember the glow of the moment in a decade or two.
Truth be told, I’m happy to comply with Rick’s frequent requests to take my photo when I a) am freshly showered and tidied up, b) am in low light and shot from above, and c) have time to strategically pose my hands where my neck is most comfortable.
“Hey! You look wonderful to me right now. Let me take your picture.”
It’s another way to say “I love you.”
But I especially love the photos, often shot without the other one knowing, that explain why.
Being specific and expressive about what, exactly, draws you to another has been scientifically proven to cause people to fall in love with one another.
Here is a short list of what I’m thankful for today, including but not limited to:
Ordinary moments that wash over me with a wave of “I love our life” when I’m not expecting it, like when I catch Winston staring down the door handle in an intense attempt to open the back door through his impressive telepathic powers.
(Also, I’m grateful for opposable thumbs, and for the ability to grow big fat heads of lettuce in the middle of October.)
Second-hand special moments via Instagram…
… and Facebook…
... and even old-fashioned email that delivers ground-breaking news.
Fresh and daily: food, water, mercies, news sources, inspiration, and reminders that I am loved.
That life-time loyalty and trust and great cheekbones are alive and well in the world.
Good genes of elegance, graciousness, and wisdom…
… and the propensity to be happy almost all the time.
Tribal know-how and the opportunity and time to learn it first hand…
… and technology that opens the possibilities for new perspectives…
… including the miracle of being able to freeze a moment in time to enjoy forever.
And I’m thankful for Hank and Erma who coo us gently into the world every morning at whatever time suits their pointy little heads.
