Wednesday afternoon, my Power Lunch reading buddy bobbed her way through the school lunch line, a smiling whirl of braids and barettes, and presented me with an orange tissue paper flower attached to a popsicle stick.
The flower looked like the type you'd find adorning a platter of sweet & sour chicken at a Chinese food buffet. It's the sort of thing I would have slipped into my pocket and brought home with me when I, too, was 8 years old. In fact, I still hold on to pretty scraps of this and that. Colorful strips of satin ribbon and lightly creased slips of pretty tissue paper dominate my collection of gift wrap. Odds and ends that make their way to me among the everyday jumble.
"Did you see the news?" she asked me as we climbed the stairs to the library. I had, of course--and knew the exact story she was referring to: the major earthquake that hit her family's native home of Haiti just the day before. I'd seen the coverage online. The wreckage and chaos. An immense amount of sadness. The phone lines were all down, so her parents weren't able to get through to their relatives. I cannot imagine.
When I got back to the office, I spent some time online reading about the aftermath and the relief efforts and the countless people who had risen to the occasion, helping in whatever way they can. Indeed, beauty has a way of presenting itself in heartfelt gestures among the ruins.
"And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers." --Leonard Cohen
_________________________________________________________________________ © 2010 Good Karma Housekeeping. Making the space--one heartfelt gesture at a time--to live happily ever after.
It has been a week of simple pleasures--the type of things that, all too often, I take for granted. Such as . . .
One of my least favorite topics of conversation is the weather--only because it's usually riddled with complaints. Too hot, too cold, too sunny, too grey. I do my best to avoid ganging up on Mother Nature, even though she can be a tempramental lady sometimes. Occasionally though, she's a saint--delivering us an unexpected, gorgeous day.
I've been attending a weekly Kundalini yoga class for the last two months. It's a style of yoga that's very different from the power/vinyasa flow I am used to. The poses are dynamic (i.e., you're moving) but you do the same pose for several minutes. It might look easy on the surface, but I can attest--this stuff is intense!
In the car on the way home from work this evening, in the middle of our how are yous and how was your days, Andrew announced that he had a gift for me. He reached into his coat pocket and handed me a piece of paper. It was a coupon for a dollar off on Sargento cheese. Actually, it was two coupons. "One for now, one for later," he proudly reported.
One of my favorite things to do is to take back-to-back yoga classes. The first a flowing, moderately challenging vinyasa class; the second a tranquil and restorative yin class. Together, they recharge me. And since I'm not able to get to a studio class as often as I'd like, I'm all about optimization.
I have a to-do list that's a mile and a half long--and an I want to-do list twice that length. I have lists at work and and at home, about the pets, about my writing, and about yoga. About decluttering and simplifying. Healthy stuff, us time, the holidays, and volunteering. As a result, I start a lot of sentences with the words "I have to."
