July 26th, 2010
Our family is in the midst of a major crisis. We don’t actually know whether it’s the “midst” or near the end, or if we’re only at the beginning. Though we can’t change the big event, I seek every opportunity to wrap myself in small comforts.
When I’m blue, bright sunshine does not cheer me up. I want blankets and soft cushions against a chilly breeze. Today the fog has stayed with us all day and that calls for all of these, plus hot coffee with lots of cream.
Yesterday, friends cooked brunch and we ate it on their deck in Sonoma County, surrounded by everything they’re growing – vegetables, fruit trees, flowers in all colors. Scrambled eggs and rolls and good conversation, with a view of green and lavender and roses and ripening pears and nectarines and apples and baby grapes on the vine, comfort in all colors.
Today a local radio station is playing Christmas music in July. Unexpectedly, I hear children’s voices singing “Silver Bells.”
No solace can be found in the big issue, so we pare down our expectations and find there’s no such thing as small comfort. Comfort is comforting in any size.
Ó Anita Garner 2010
Tags: coffee, comfort, cozy, Friends, gardens, Sonoma County, weather
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April 20th, 2010
Whenever I’m someplace I don’t want to be or doing something I don’t want to do, I daydream about the chores I’d be doing if only I were home. Pitiful, huh? I hate being bored, so even doing chores seems preferable, that is when I’m not actually able to do them.
I think to myself, if I were home, or if I weren’t doing this boring project, I’d be scrubbing that bathroom, cleaning that stove, stripping the old paint off that…
Then I get home and there are so many other things I’d rather be doing or not doing, so I put off the chore list. The trouble with continuing to postpone stuff is that eventually a bit of guilt can creep in and guilt takes some of the fun out of goofing off.
One solution is to stop making such detailed “to do” lists. I just saw a product that solves this problem. I would re-name this item “Sticky notes for procrastinators.” They only have room for one thing a day. Here’s where to order them. “I will do one thing today”
I’m going to order some soon. In a little while. Maybe after I read this new magazine that just came. I’ll be right back.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: chores, guilt, procrastination, To do list
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March 6th, 2010
My anger tells me more about myself than just about any other emotion. Maybe not specifically anger, because I’m not a very angry person, but certainly impatience. And that tone of voice we get when we’re annoyed? One of my least favorite things when I hear it coming out of my mouth. After going through a series of trials, minor and major, I realize this behavior refutes what I think I know about what kind of person I am.
What kind of person is that, exactly? Why, of course the kind who sometimes gives others the benefit of the doubt. The kind who keeps a civil tone. A peacemaker, maybe? At least that’s the kind of person I wish lived inside here all the time.
Just for kicks, I kept track for about a week, of what kinds of annoyances brought out the worst in me. It would come as no surprise to astute observers of human nature, that the things other people do to push my buttons are the same things I like least about me. It’s back to the competing theories: Do everyday events shape/determine our behavior, causing us, eventually, to become the way we’re acting? Or do we demonstrate who we really are by the way we handle everyday annoyances?
If so, yesterday’s hours-long verbal wrestling match with Comcast and my new computer programs and the service technicians in another country aren’t demonstrating very many nice things about me. The stuff that makes me wince when others do it - that’s the same stuff that embarrasses me when I hear myself doing/saying it. By last night, I’d heard a lot of it. Not from them. From me. Must. Try. Harder.
Ó Anita Garner 2010
Tags: attitude, Behavior, character, Comcast, Computer, technology
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February 28th, 2010
I just saw a story on ”Sunday Morning” about the man who founded Tom’s Shoes. His name isn’t Tom, it’s Blake Mycoskie. (If his name sounds familiar, Blake was a contestant on “The Amazing Race.”) “Tom’s,” stands for “shoes for tomorrow.” Cameras followed Blake while he gave children their first-ever pair of shoes. I’ve always loved watching a man tie shoes for a child, and today’s show explained how that simple act represents much more. Blake happened to be donating shoes in a country where a soil condition causes painful swelling of the feet and because so many kids there don’t have shoes, they can’t walk far. There he is, putting shoes on the kids, finding the right size, and when he ties them on, the pride of ownership lights up their faces. Those smiles - lordy!
Blake founded the company with the promise, “With every pair you purchase, Tom’s will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. ”One for One.” Love that formula. Buy a pair - give a pair. Tom’s website has more videos and news updates. I went online and it took a while to load - I like to think it’s because millions of people saw the show this morning and immediately went to buy a pair. Here’s the link:
http://www.tomsshoes.com/default.asp
Now I’m going back there to buy shoes, which I won’t be able to wear, because I have impossible-to-fit feet-with-issues. I like the knowledge that a child will get shoes because I got some. I’ll give the new ones away too.
“CBS Sunday Morning” feels like church to me. Today’s show is their “money issue” which is a sermon, with chapter and verse about how we got into this predicament. Tom’s Shoes is one of the uplifting songs we get to sing at the end of the service as we leave to go out and try to do better in the coming week.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: aid for children, Blake Mycoskie, CBS Sunday Morning, one for one donation, The Amazing Race, Tom's Shoes
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February 25th, 2010
I’ve worried for a long time about animals in captivity being forced to perform. It feels morally wrong. This time, the whale killing the trainer decided it for me. I’ve also been increasingly uncomfortable at zoos. Now I believe we shouldn’t have them. Perhaps the extent of human involvement in the lives of wild creatures should be only to provide help for healing them.
Maybe we do owe it to the universe to encourage endangered species to breed and survive, because we’ve had a crucial impact on their natural surroundings, but after doing what we can to help, at a private habitat, we could try to make sure they don’t bond with humans any more than necessary and work toward re-releasing them. If they must be kept, let’s stop crowds from watching. If humans are necessary to maintain their lives, we can make sure only essential personnel interrupt their patterns.
(I’m not talking about domestic dogs and cats, which have been bred for generations to need humans.)
Our children can learn about wild creatures and their habitats the way they’re learning many things today, via unobtrusive cameras. We don’t need zoos to teach kids respect for other living things. In fact we may right now be teaching them the opposite - by demonstrating that ownership is our right. We can start teaching them hands-off except for health interventions.
Yesterday, near Lake Tahoe, a ranger shot a 600 pound bear that had burrowed under a condo. Bears lived in those woods before condo builders came.
Killing their keepers may be part of a whale’s natural defense mechanism. I have compassion for the loss of the trainer’s life, and I hope the children in the stands didn’t witness the horror, but that was the deciding event for me. I don’t think we should own them, and I won’t visit a zoo again.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: Killer whale, LakeTahoe bear, wild habitats, zoos
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February 19th, 2010
The power of place turns out to be more important than I could have imagined at this time of life. I have friends who say they’d like to live somewhere else but they stay where they are because family is near. I’m the oddball then, because the place where I’m content for now is not the same place where the people I love the most are located.
Maybe it was inevitable because of the work I’ve done for so many years - broadcasting. We’ve all moved a lot and worked odd hours, yet we’re expected to jump into each new community with a big splash - immediately. Or maybe it’s the way I was raised, touring the revival circuit as a gospel gypsy with my parents. We kids were always changing schools, never expecting to keep a best friend for very long. Through all of this, the eventual goal was to find one place that felt like home. I’m as surprised as anyone that place isn’t where my family is. I miss them every day.
My daughter and grandaughter live 400 miles away. I’d be happy if they lived next door. The little girl’s parents are generous about sharing her with me, so I go often and stay for a week at a time and we make our own silly jokes and sing our songs and after I leave, I can still hear her voice for days afterward.
Then I drive north and, approaching the bridge over the bay, I see the ships and then San Quentin huddled out there on those rocks, then the statue of Sir Francis Drake, then the ferries, and it feels like home.
Have you ever visited a town where within hours of arriving, you walk down a particular street or stop in a coffee shop or a store, soaking in the local flavor, and something lets you know you’d be okay there, that this is a place you could move to right now? That happened to me decades ago when I first visited here.
A sense of place turns out to be crucial to my happiness. I’m not saying I couldn’t live anywhere else, because of course I’ve lived many other places. But for right now, this place fills me up. It defines my days and nights, it enhances my work and my leisure pursuits, to the extent that I’m willing to commute to see family and friends. Because when I’m on my way home, I feel like I am on my way home.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: ferries, gospel music, Home, radio, SanQuentin, Sir Francis Drake
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February 9th, 2010
You know those picket fence headboards? Pottery Barn and others sell them for kids’ rooms. I want one for my bed. Queen size. Painted white. I said this to a friend a few days ago, while we were at breakfast. He’s 86 and recovering from his second eye surgery. He’s not adjusting well to the fact that parts of his body have to be mended, repaired, medicated. He’s used to running up and down his own hill, carrying his own heavy equipment. Now he’s depressed. A couple of us call every day to see how he feels or to ask him to go out for a while.
I’m still unpacking in this hundred-year-old-new-to-me house and loving the farmhouse look of a few rustic pieces. I told him I’ve decided on a picket fence headboard. He quickly said ”I’ll build it!” He said to let him know how high and how wide and do I want the pickets flush or with space between? Stained or painted? I went online to find do-it-yourself designs, printed them out and gave them to him yesterday over lunch. I also mentioned that one website said it’s easiest just to go to Home Depot, buy a section of picket fence, and call it a done deal. He insisted he’d rather build it. He called last night to say that (even with the one blurry eye) he enjoyed reading about all the different styles of picket fence furniture. He sounded like himself again.
I wonder what 86 feels like. I’m quite sure that I do want to be 86. Today feels to me like too much to do in too short a time, and yet here’s my friend brightening up for days over something as simple as a new project to take into his workshop. It’ll be interesting to see how long this takes and how it turns out and whether the process remains interesting to him. I’ll take pictures of the new headboard and post them here when it’s attached to my bed in this old house.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: aging, carpenter, eye surgery, farmhouse, headboard, Home Depot, Pottery Barn, rustic, workshop
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February 3rd, 2010
The second month of the new year is a better time to affect positive change. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anybody can make a New Year’s resolution that promises changes will begin on January 1st, but some of us know we’re doomed to fail with those expectations hanging heavily right there on the nearby calendar.
Some things around here do need to change though, and I’m wondering which methods work best. I’ve already forgotten the reasoning about how long it actually takes to form a new habit, so I’m moving along to the ways we’re supposed to start our new thinking.
Take dieting for instance. One health expert says variety is the salvation of the dieter, that having several different options keeps us motivated. But then another expert says variety sabotages a diet. The thinking here is to eliminate choice and eat the same thing every day. Same breakfast, same lunch, same dinner if we’re trying to lose weight. This is supposed to form a new, better habit. This is also meant to help us return food to the category of “necessity” instead of ”treat.”
I’m wondering which way works best. And if it’s even possible to break a lifelong habit of considering food a treat. And does this habit have to last forever, or only until the desired result is achieved? Just wondering.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: diet, new habits, resolutions
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January 25th, 2010
Too many public apologies lately. Too many explanations and excuses, and many of them include some variation on this theme: “I wasn’t acting like myself. That was out of character for me. That’s not who I am.” As so many public figures, all at the same time, say they are acting ”out of character,” up pops #1 on Amy Bloom’s list entitled, ”10 Truths I Wish I’d Known Sooner.” #2 is also dynamite. I’m not linking to this list just because I agree with it, but because I find most of what Amy Bloom writes truly enlightening. Here it is in Real Simple magazine’s December, ‘09 issue.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: 10 Truths I Wish I'd Known Sooner, Amy Bloom, Real Simple magazine
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January 23rd, 2010
I’m not fond of shopping but I’m crazy about thrift shops. When I visit a new town, it’s one of the side trips I always take. I ask locals to point me in the direction of as many thrift shops as I can fit into a schedule.
I’m not a good retail browser. Here’s my idea of shopping for new items: 1) Need a thing. 2) See a thing. 3) Ask do you have that thing in my color, size, price? 4) If yes, I’m out of there in minutes. 5) If not, I can live without it.
None of this applies in thrift shops (and sometimes, also consignment centers and second hand furniture stores.) I could stay in there all day. I don’t go for the clothes, though in passing, I have noticed a particular store has a donor who is shaped like me and has my exact taste in clothes. If I needed any of the stuff on the clothing rack, I’d fare better at that thrift shop than a department store. “Editing,” it’s called. Someone at that thrift shop has already edited to my taste.
Thrift shops don’t feel like stores to me. They feel like stories. Someone’s history is attached to every item. I’m fascinated, no spellbound, by stories and occasionally I leave a thrift shop with a piece of somebody else’s history in my hand or in the back seat of my car. Then when it finds a place in my house, it’s these pass-alongs that I enjoy more than something new.
In accordance with my new pact with myself, I must find two things to donate in exchange for each one I buy. I’m aiming to create more stories in my future and less storage.
© Anita Garner 2010
Tags: browsing, consignment center, second-hand store, shopping, stories, thrift shop
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