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| ... waiting for the maple syrup candy to cool ... |
2. This is the year everything quit: my old car, my stove, my washing machine, my dryer ... and I gave up on my dream to continue walking outside in the winter. With regret, I acknowledged I am too old to be slipping on the ice and I bought a treadmill. That last purchase ended my discretionary funds for 2013 and beyond.
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| ... Wyona, watching the sail out ... |
Wyona and Greg created the opportunity.
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| ... pedestrian walk in Kobe, Japan ... |
4. 2013 was my year of film and music. I watched film series and Great Performance Concerts on T.V. I took advantage of the HD Live presentations, attended the Roots and Blue Festival, and I hooked in to the Shuswap Film Festival.
Regretfully, I had no time to take courses at the university. That was the downside of enjoying all that other entertainment.
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| ... blue eyed Alice Margaret at 5 months ... |
When a child begins her life in the same city as her grandmother and then lives next door? I count that as an event to be treasured.
6. I enjoyed the fall and some winter in B.C. I thought I would spend time in Janet’s and Moiya’s hot tubs, but by the time night came, I was always too tired to walk down to either house. I love having more to do every day than I can manage in B.C. Still, I would have liked at least one hot tub event. But to be fair, I have tried hot tubing it in the morning. And that is so relaxing that I can’t get any other kind of work done all day.
7. I gathered some of Moiya’s tomatoes in the late summer when she had to leave the lake. The ones I took home were so delicious that just to talk about them makes me stop typing, rest my hands on the keyboard, close my eyes and see if I can bring that intense flavour of vine ripened tomatoes back to mind. Yes. I can do it. Delicious.
8. I have done more singing this year than in past years. David Camps and Michael Johnson have been my targets. They don’t know how much thinking and preparing I have to do before I break out into what seems like spontaneous song. If they knew, they might resist my melodies less. Those old lyrics aren’t in my head anymore and I have to do some serious memorizing to get the words back and make them seem like they have been mine forever.
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| ... Mati, in Victoria, photographing a sculpture in the back of a truck ... |
I have not been grieving their leaving.
I have focused, instead, on the treasure of having known them.
10. Good health for the year! – more the treasure when it seems threatened. I remember again the joy of waking every morning to a new day of promise. Every day, 365 of them, still a wonder.
Arta
What a wonderful list. I am sure you have another 100 or so swimming around in your head... just no time to type them up. Love that you got 10 down. I wonder if I will find time to type up 3.
ReplyDeleteHi Mary,
ReplyDeleteI was trapped into making that list by looking back at the blog and discovering I had made such a list in 2009. I remembered that list as being quite easy to type up. I think because I was new to blogging then and just whipped up a laundry list -- no trying to get the very best things that had happened.
This list was harder. I went through the months, trying to find something in each month. That didn't work. I tried the laundry list method and nothing came to mind. What stumped me is that now I can find 10 things every day to be grateful for. Watch this about today and it won't take more than a couple of minutes. I shall call this "10 Moments to Remember on January 4, 2014."
1. Eating a handful of Swiss Delice individually wrapped piece of chocolate. Yum, I shouldn't have eaten them, but darn, they were good.
2. Finding coupons for $150 off at Moores Men's shop that had to be used by today or they would have expired.
3. Walking over to the North Hill Shopping Centre to use those coupons.
4. Finding out that one man's shirt can cost as much as $100.
5. Enjoying the nip in the lungs of -20 below weather as I walked. And also being aware that many layers can keep a person so warm that they don't even know it is cold outside.
6. Knowing the Rogers will send over a cable guy on Monday to fix the signal on our transmitter so that we can see T.V. again.
7. Cutting a fresh pineapple up -- and knowing that the place where it is over-ripe will have that little tingle to it when I eat it.
8. Having a boarder tell me that we should clean out the junk drawer. Then going through it with him piece by piece to see which items we should toss and having him tell me, "You know what we should really do? Make a list of everything in this drawer and put the list on our smart phones so that we will know what treasurers are really in this drawer." We only found one thing to toss, by the way. It was a plastic scoop for powdered milk. I haven't used powdered milk for years.
9. Having another boarder say thiat making a list for the smart phone won't work for him, for he has no smart phone anymore. His went down with him when he tipped over in the canoe at the Shuswap last month and his smart phone is now a dumb phone.
10. Getting to fire off comments like this one in response to you -- what a gift is that. So easy to do. A dream I would never have had when I was a pre-teen. The ease of this would have seemed like something out of a science fiction movie.
Now take care. Working moms are lucky that they even have time to read. Those women should have no expectation that they will have time to write until their kids are grown up and gone from home. Not that I think you should wait that long. But I know it will be that long before you will have any discretionary time. Hugs to you.