I think that it’s easy to forget that what you see every day is not what everyone else sees every day. We all live such different lives.
So a couple of weeks ago I took my camera with me one day as I ran errands around here. It was an exceptionally pretty + quiet late summer day. Nothing much was going on anywhere that I went, but I took photos anyway.
Here are a few of them… just so you can see what I see almost every day.
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{september – monday – morning}
√ Saturday afternoon we spent driving around the city, going grocery store to grocery store, looking for one particular ingredient. We both had a hankering for Thai curried chicken & vegetables– which, logically enough, requires Thai green curry paste. It’s such a basic ingredient for Thai cooking, yet it turned out to be almost impossible to get.
Eventually we found it in grocery store #6. You’d think that we would have been annoyed by this whim turned bona fide expotition, but the day was so pretty outside that wandering around the city together was interesting. I forget how large this area is– and that what seems normal to one person is something unique & fascinating to another person.
Sometimes searching for the treasure is all that I need to be happy.
√ Over the weekend we planted some flowers in colors that we’ve not used before. Out front by the sidewalk leading up to the front door we planted true blue pansies. And by the side of the house where we’ll see them when we drive up to the garage we planted some coral-colored roses.
Once upon a time our garden had a tightly controlled color scheme, but those days are long gone. Now we have a confetti garden; that is, flowers of various colors growing wherever they will grow. It’s not what I initially envisioned, but that’s okay. I like to see flowers around the outside the house and if multi-color is what works, it works.
Go Team Eclectic.
√ We were outside doing yard work yesterday morning. The weather was cool & clear so the sky was blue. We heard the plane before we saw it– and when we saw it we both stopped doing what we were doing. Overhead, flying at a low altitude, was a B-17. Just moseying along in a straight line going somewhere. Over our subdivision on a Sunday morning. In 2012.
Kind of cool to see it. Definitely unexpected.
√ Zen-Den went camping [cabining?] by a lake in Canada over Labor Day weekend with some friends. He does this every few years & always comes back with tales to tell. This year, besides his stories of middle-aged boys’ antics, he brought back a new radio station for us to listen to: CBC Radio2 [Eastern]. It’s good.
I won’t try to explain it to you because playlists & music appreciation are topics that I leave to those who care deeply about being surrounded by music. Me? I just like to hear something that doesn’t set my teeth on edge in the background. And this new-to-us station pleases me– enough so that it’s giving Radio Paradise a bit of competition.
‘Tis music that doth soothe the suburban beast. 😉
The weather was supposed to be clear and warm over the weekend. THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID. So I planned accordingly. I thought that we’d take the weekend off from our usual home improvement projects and goof-off instead… but that was not to be.
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I thought that we’d go to a rural county park on the other side of the city. We go there a couple of times a year. We like to walk the trails which take you through groves of wildflowers + into farmlands + beside horse paths + near a stream. But we didn’t do that.
Then on Saturday night I thought that we’d have a cookout for the two of us with burgers + grilled veggies, cold beer and perfectly toasted marshmallows courtesy of moi. I figured that we’d kick back and enjoy our deck for a few hours. But we didn’t do that.
On Sunday morning I thought that we’d go to an outdoor antique show (which is more flea market than an antique show) at a county fair grounds. We like going there because it’s filled with all sorts of old stuff and costs only $3.00 per person. It’s a fun way to get lost in time. But we didn’t do that.
Then on Sunday afternoon I thought that we’d spend some time sitting down in The Spoon [the lowest level of our terraced forest backyard]. I figured that we could just do nothing or read our books or play some backgammon or whatever. But we didn’t do that.
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All of which leads me to the real point of this post that: PLANS CHANGE OFTEN. And that instead of grumbling about this truth, I’d do well to remember the following Rules of Life by Robin Patricia Williams that I keep on a sticky note on my desktop because, well— they are the rules of life. And because, clearly, I need to refer to them often.
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As some of you have figured out already, I’ve had quite a bit of difficulty getting the following to show up here on this post. I’m going to try it one. more. time. Then if it doesn’t work, I’m going to go drown my sorrows in a cold adult beverage. Of course, if it does work, there’s a good chance that I’m going to go celebrate my victory with a cold adult beverage. From my point of view, this last attempt at posting The [Revised] Rules of Life is a no-lose proposition.
Zen-Den knows me well.
He was sitting in our study, shopping on the Williams-Sonoma website with the purpose of buying the Breville Electric Pie Maker, which I had decided we needed. [More on the Pie Maker after it gets here & we use it a few times.] I was in another room but he called for me to come into the study to see what he described as: “this is what you’d buy if you won the lottery.”
And what he showed me was, indeed, EXACTLY what I’d buy if I won the lottery. I’d buy a Kitchen-Aid Mixer in a different color for every month of the year. Heck, if the payout was large enough, I’d buy a different one for every week of the year!
Just because I could.
So, here’s my question to you:
if you won the lottery, what would you buy for yourself that your pre-lottery-winning-self would call an extravagance?
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 