Happy Today

Today I've made a decision to be happy. Let's face it, I am addicted to anxiety. Worrying about my son at college, my backlog of work, the never-ending household chores, my relationships with family, friends and acquaintances keeps me on the treadmill of anxiety. Just for right now, I'm stepping off the treadmill and declaring, "I'm happy."

I have a cushy job. Let's face it, how many people get to set their own hours, roll out of bed, and stroll into their office (in my jammies, if I want). So, maybe it's not my dream job. But it's valuable work.

I have a husband that still adores me after 20 years. Not every minute or even every day, but often enough, he looks at me with caring and desire. How lucky am I!

I have two amazing sons. My oldest is on a wonderful journey of self-discovery, is polite, handsome, smart and kind. My youngest shares his days with me and fills my world with his thoughts and ideas, bringing a unique perspective from his Asperger's mind.

I have a beautiful home with space and color and filled with the things that I love, and then some. I am very blessed to have plenty and enough again to share.

One of my very favorite things to do, play with color and texture, is fulfilled by my collection of fabrics. My younger son noticed me cutting scraps into strips and squares the other day and commented, "That makes you fell peaceful, doesn't it." You're darn right!

So, just for a few minutes, let me stop grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw, squinching my shoulders and forgetting to breathe. Right this minute, I am happy.

Who Do You Know?

(Image Copyright Sharon Lam)
When do we ever tell “the whole truth” to any one person? Bits of our past, our hopes and dreams, are scattered about, confided piecemeal to our friends, co-workers, therapists, even strangers. When can we ever truly say, “I really know him.”?

Last night, sharing our mutual feelings of longing for our son, I discovered something new, something big, about the time my husband came to the U.S. His original plan was to accompany his sister across the border, see her off on her journey to Florida, and then go back home. 23 years later, he’s still here.

How could I have missed this? How did this tiny little detail that is so absolutely crucial to our life and present circumstances never have come up in conversation before?

Isn’t Cheo’s present longing for a best friend actually a longing for someone to know him, to share his hopes with, to see the whole of him, and not just that face he presents to the casual world? I absolutely understand that longing.

PBS is a Major Distraction

No, not Public Broadcasting System, but PaperBack Swap. I signed up for this free service a little over a month ago and its been more than a little distracting. It works like this: you go through your bookshelf, pull out books you want to get rid of, you post them on you PBS Bookshelf, other members request them from you, and you send them off and receive 1 trading point for each completed transaction.

Initially I thought this would be a quick and easy way to get rid of my excess of paperback books. The thought of trading books I'd read for those that I want was just too tempting. But then, after an initial surge of requests for my newly posted books, I stopped getting requests. So, after a little trial and error, I discovered that I could purchase points and get the books I wanted that way. Hey, wait a minute! Wasn't I supposed to be getting rid of books?

Here's what I've learned - For the cost of shipping one paperback book from my bookshelf, $2.02, I get a fresh copy of a (much desired) book that would have cost me $7.00 or more from Books-A-Million or Amazon. That's a good deal. And I can purchase a point for $3.45, which is still half the cost of buying new. However, if I shop garage sales or library book sales, I can purchase more commonly available books for as little as 25 cents each. So, I save my points for those books which are hard to find used (like those of favorite authors Charlaine Harris or Piers Anthony) and that I plan to keep. Otherwise, I request books from the library.

In the meantime, I still have a box of books in my office. Anyone interested in a trade?

Seesaw Wheat Oof

It's a wonderful feeling when something you've been patiently, albeit sporadically trying to learn, starts to show results. It could be anything from learning to drive a standard transmission car (which I've been teaching my oldest) to a new quilting technique to studying a foreign language.

For a few years now, I've been teaching myself French with the help of books, videos and some coaching from my son, whose studied three years of French. Periodically, I visit websites that have mini French lessons, and I practice my pronunciation. French is very similar to English in that the pronunciation has little or nothing to do with what is written.

I was following a link to the Paris newspaper, Le Figaro's, website with an article (in French) about a contest judging the best flan of Paris. There is also a short video showing the judging process, so I watched and listened to see what I could pick up. I picked out "texture" "cream" "color" "golden" "bakery" and "food store". Then I heard this phrase "Seesaw Wheat Oof". I knew I recognized those sounds. What could it be? I kept repeating it to myself. Sees - that's six. Wheat aka huit - that's eight. And Oof is ouef - egg. Six a huit ouefs! Six to eight eggs! I have a lightbulb going off over my head moment and it feels awesome!

Water, water everywhere

When I was in France, I drank a lot of water. Coming from the humidity of Florida's climate, the naturally drier climate of France in September had us sucking on bottled water pretty much all day long. Like everything in France, the water was expensive. Whenever we sat down to eat in a restaurant, we would order the complementary "carafe d'eau" - a pitcher of cold water, to save the $4.00 bottled water charge.

One day in Lyons, I got separated from our group after I made an extended stop at the post office. Since I was on my own for the next six hours, I decided to make the best of it and stopped to have lunch at the outdoor seating area of a cafe on the central square. I was able to order the special, a pork chop with cauliflower gratin, without any problem and I asked for the pitcher of "d'eau" (pronounced DOH). The waitress looked at me quizzically and asked me "a pitcher of what?" "D'eau", I replied, "D'eau, d'eau, d'eau." Which made me feel like a Doh (Homer Simpson style.)

I ended up ordering lemonade.

And to this day, I still don't know what I was saying so incorrectly that the waitress couldn't understand me. C'est la vie.

Camellia weather

It's definitely not a usual plant for our hot and wet summers, but we have managed to keep a few camellia plants thriving in our heavily shaded side yard for three years now. Here at the cusp of spring, the gorgeous rose-like blossoms are a welcome sight in comparison to our heavily front-burnt bottle palms and Christmas palm. This is the first year in about seven that we've had such low, sustained temperatures and, like many homeowners and landscapers, we had become complacent about the risk of a freeze. We all cavalierly planted palms and tender perennials better suited for zone 10 and sometimes even zone 11.

So, we now have burnt Hawaiian Ti, Crotons, Ixora and palms. On the "making lemonade" side, my "employer" has been getting calls from homeowners that need the dead plants torn out and replaced with hardier varieties. Would they like to try camellias, do you think?

World Nutella Day

How fascinating for a snack food to have it's own day - who declared this anyway?

It doesn't really matter because Nutella really does deserve it's own day. After all, it's hard not to love the wonderfully chocolaty, creamy, hazelnutty stuff. Thumbs up to the Italians who combine hazelnuts and chocolate in wonderful ways.

I was well into adulthood when I discovered Nutella. I'd always considered it price prohibitive - more than $4.00 for stuff that gets thrown in with the peanut butter selection at the grocery store? How good could it be, anyway. When it was on sale one day at Publix, I decided to give it a whirl. Boy was I in for a treat.

As soon as I realized how delicious it was straight out of the jar, I went on a journey to find what surface it was best spread upon. For me, Nutella on toast or baguette just didn't cut it. I tried it on various cookies and crackers and fruit and decided upon my favorite - cheap little butter cookies. These are flower shaped, hole-in-the-middle cookies you find at bakery thrift stores and drug stores, never in the grocery store, and they usually sell for about $1.00 a pack. Sometimes they are studied with bits of chocolate in an imitation of chocolate chip cookies. Try it and you'll see what I mean. My second choice is Bimbo Pan Tostado, but that's a little bit more difficult to find outside of a Mexican specialty shop. I suppose Rusk Toasts might be close. Pan Tostado has a slightly sweet taste that plain old toast doesn't have and I think that's why it combines so well with Nutella.

My favorite Nutella memory - It was our last day in Paris and I had taken the Metro by myself to Montmartre, home of the Moulin Rouge, many African immigrants and the fabric stores of Paris. I was shopping my little heart out and filling my shopping bags to the brim when it finally occurred to me that I was starving. The cafes were all full to the brim with tourists and locals taking in the view, along with their coffee, of Sacre Couer on the hill above. A corner takeout window was selling warm crepes filled with a choice of toppings, from plain butter to strawberry preserves to (you guessed it) Nutella. I tucked my crepe into my purse and found a somewhat secluded door step behind a rack of fabric and there I dined, basking in the afterglow of fabric shopping, Paris on a September afternoon and two weeks of French bliss.