Water Rights

Yesterday the water was shut off. 

Only in my building and

Only for the bulk of the day

No preparations the day before

My tea kettle empty from morning coffee

I scrambled and found 

A few cups of water here and there

Drinking water in the fridge, 

Cooking water on the stove

Water for misting my hair in a spray bottle

Enough to satisfy morning ablutions.

When the water is shut off 

For an entire town or vast population

When a ‘boil water’ advisory

Drags across weeks and months and years

Any bit of water is precious

While our rights are satisfied

Each day with ease

The rights of others are ignored.

“The air, the water and the ground are free gifts to man and no one 

has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink and 

breathe and walk and therefore each man has a right to his share of each.”

~ James Fennimore Cooper

An InDepth Survey

This morning’s post is a writing assignment for this afternoon’s writing group. I thought long and hard about this piece. Having left it to the last minute, I struggled and pulled my hair out to write it. An unfortunate habit of mine. It was kind of fun though. My laptop is still on stress leave so the picture I have chosen will only show on my Facebook page. Here is: 

An InDepth Survey

I conducted a research project this morning. There was no control group. In fact there was no group. The only subject of this research was myself. I challenged myself to listen to one of my music CD’s to prove my theory. There were actually two potential topics to write about for today. Bounce and/or your favourite song. Thinking about a favourite song, the voice of my favourite musician, Louis

Armstrong, echos in my mind. His throaty, yet soft voice. The song? What a Wonderful World, the song that opens his CD, All-time Greatest Hits, is far from bouncy. Instead it is gentle, flowing  and hopeful. It smooths any frazzled fragments in my mind poking holes in even the sunniest of days. 

I’ve never been a great dancer, except at home when no one is there to watch. My home dance steps moved from a flowing waltz to a bouncy rhythm with each song. Imagined costuming for each dance was important, changing from a pastel Ginger Rogers satin gown to a sparkling, flowing Carmen Miranda gown complete with elaborate head dress! My research was complete. I had proven definitively that my favourite song is What a Wonderful World, followed by any other Louis Armstrong songs. An unexpected finding from this survey is the bounce and rhythm of my other favourite singer, Bing Crosby, in a duet with Louis singing ‘Gone Fishin’. Their music, and most other music genres, are the ribbons woven through our lives with rhythm and colour.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. 

Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

~ Albert Einstein

Creatively Listing

One of the qualities for my Daily Planning is flexibility. Not the wet noodle kind of flexibility, but bending to the moment. This morning as I was mentally reviewing my day - weather included - there were just too, too many details in my head. There seemed so many, in fact that they were tripping over each other just creating a pile of wet noodles! So, I gave in. One more list can’t hurt.

One more challenge. Not a huge one, but I’d just like to get on with things and not have to fuss about all this stuff. I didn’t want another little scrap of paper jammed in my pocket or cluttering up my already cluttered cell phone. It’s raining, windy outside, and for Victoria cold! How do I do this day!? I stood in the middle of my bedroom by my small writing desk and thought. Aha! A solution. For years, a dry erase board has been incredibly useful for mind mapping. Two of them sit patiently on my piano. (Pianos make great easels, for things besides piano books.) Getting things out of my head and down on paper - or in this case a dry erase board - creates a sorting place for the jumble in my head. 

Now I have three lists (plus the one on my cell phone). All of my lists are in specific, visual places. They are not scrunchable. This new/old one is big and I get to use coloured dry erase markers. Being erasable is especially important on this new ‘list’. At night before bed, I’ll take the eraser to it, smudging all the colours so it vanishes just like all the events of the day. Each morning a new daily plan may be outlined if my head is all a-jumble with a busy day.

This ‘solution’ takes me back a bit ago to black or green chalkboards and coloured chalk. Cleaner and definitely not as dusty. Old ways of doing things, upgraded to this year’s models, are still very valuable. In this world of technology using hands on solutions with what you have at your finger tips (or on your piano) seems more difficult. Or maybe just forgotten. Literally unheard of for younger generations, especially the youngest.

“The best solutions are often simple yet unexpected.”

~ Julian Casablanca

A Simple Life - Sort Of..

I love lists. But they are rapidly going out of favour with me. I find them in drawers, under the dining room table, scrunched up in a pocket (sometimes fresh from the laundry) and in corners I never knew existed. I’ve seen other people’s lists on sidewalks - did the wind blow it out of someone’s hand? And left behind in grocery carts - I do hope the grocery shopping was done.

At the beginning of going in depth about life and everything involved, I immediately thought of lists. Not just grocery lists, but which closet should be cleaned first, which days would be best for digging about in the detritus around me (makes me sound like a hoarder!). But making the lists took up too much time. It turned out that was one of the first things to go! Lists! 

I do have one list though.  Here it is:

1. Writing project(s)
2. Household: (groceries, cooking, laundry)
3. Money issues (cash to high finance)
4. Appointments

That’s it. An article I read in these last three months - sorry I didn’t write it down and can’t find it now - talked about establishing a Daily Plan. That sounded like a superb idea so I set about making a list. That’s before the one above. So I re-read the article. It was suggested that part of a daily plan be the qualities of the plan. So here is my second list, which I started talking about in a previous blog post from March 3rd, 2018 (Two Plans and Many Details)

Qualities for Daily Planning

1. Be prepared
2. Flexibility
3. Balance
4. Engagement
5. Timing

Those are the only two lists that should be in my home. I do keep a list on my cell phone for grocery items, but if I follow the two lists above there is no need to check it as I shop for very few items at a time. If I try and scrunch that one up I’ll wind up making a weird phone call or take a picture of the inside of my jacket pocket! 

Looking at my lists today, I pulled from memory my Daily Plan. Taking information from within my own depths rather than depending on a scrunched up wad of paper. Freeing up the time used for list making, I can fill that time creatively and productively. (But I’m not perfect.)

“A little simplification would be the first step

 toward rational living, I think.”

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

**Update (July 28, 2023): I've learned that lists and memory are intricately linked. That may be because writing something down imprints it in one's brain. The clutter of little coloured stickie notes annoys me. So a few years ago, I bought a notebook with a pretty colour. Each morning I make a list of the most important things that need done; my physical routines and the rest my writing projects. The others can be any/all from meal planning, bill paying, outings, appointments and bus times. I can, too easily, get too involved in any of one of them and neglect the rest of my day. **

Self-Parenting

On January 2 of this year, I began in earnest to dig deeply into my life, my style of living and a writing project. What I know for sure after just over three months is that, going in depth is not for the faint of heart. I can tell you that there have been many, many days I have felt very faint! For those of you out there that are friend’s of Bill W. or have been Twelve Steppers for any reason, this going in depth is much like the inventory of the fourth Step.

Cleaning out closets and drawers is easy compared to personal depth work. Paring away those excesses of reactions, false beliefs or insubstantial activities means one has to be ~ I think the word is ~ mature. Mature enough to be their own parent. For those of us whose children are themselves no longer children, one would think this would be easy. Not so. At least not in my experience of the last three months. Definitely more life experience to fall back on, but that inner child! That inner child still wants what she wants when she wants it, just hangs onto my shirt tail with a grubby little hand whimpering softly that I just don’t understand. (She really is quite sweet most of the time.)

So if this is so difficult why do I continue? Why have I come to believe in its value? Because of all the space it is creating in my life for me to engage with my home the way I want to. The space in my life for further deep work. Looking hard at how I have been responsible for maintaining stressful situations. I have worked diligently to avoid pesky grand Mal seizures, the result of epilepsy, by learning how to manage stressful situations. An unexpected side effect is minimizing my own stress responses. Stuffing them into a back pocket where they become forgotten by my conscious mind, but not my subconscious mind.

“The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing 

in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool 

of subconscious from which it rises.”

~ Sigmund Freud

Night Lights

Sequinned office buildings.     

Stalwart in the blackness of night

Stand tall over spangled homes while

Streetlights joust with the stars

“What hath night to do with sleep?”

~ John Milton, Paradise Lost

Creation ~ 1

This little poem is one I was going to post this morning before going to work. However the world of technology, and possibly the planets misaligned. I ran out of time and thus was prevented my contribution to the world of words until this evening. As I am working on my iPad, I am also unable to organize my page the way I prefer.  Regardless, here is my poem ~ Creation.

Creation

Pushing aside 
wandering worries

Listening to 
quizzical questions

Challenging 
fizzling fears

Creates space 
for down-to-earth decision making.

“Decisions are the frequent fabric of our daily design.”

~ Don Yeager