It's been a long time ....

Do you ever get part of a song stuck in your head, and have it live there for a day or so?


I've had one line of a song running through my brain for almost a week.  It's a song I hear at work when I'm half-listening to an online radio station.  I don't even know if I've got the right words - I just googled the line to see if I could find the lyrics, song or artist, and found nothing.  


Yet the line of the song - or what I think it is - runs through my head incessantly:  "It's been a long time since I've been grateful."


I have no idea in what context the line is used - it could be anything.  And it might not even be the right words.  Yet those are the words I hear - "It's been a long time since I've been grateful".  I feel like someone is trying to tell me something.


Maybe that's because there's some truth in it for me - it feels like it's been a long time since I've been truly grateful.  Yes, I'm grateful at Thanksgiving and on special occasions, just as anyone would be.  But truly, honestly, deeply grateful ... well, not so much lately.  Since the new year I've been focussing on the not-so-great things in my life - the loss of my pooch, what seems to be an endless number of health and physical ailments, how difficult a year it is at work, things I don't have.  I won't say I wallow in misery, but I can't say I've tried very hard to rise above.

And now I am haunted by the words "it's a long time since I've been grateful".  It's like a kick in the pants to start seeing all the good in my life - there is plenty of it and plenty to be grateful for.   It's definitely time to turn things around.  Maybe if I do, I'll get rid of that line running through my head and I get different background music for my thoughts.  

Happy anniversary to me

I just looked back through my blog and noticed that I wrote my very first post on March 30 of last year - almost exactly one year ago.  Wow - time passes very quickly.

In my first post I said one of the reasons I started this blog was to talk about what I'm learning as I grow up into the world as it is now.  Hmmm.  I'm not sure I really did much of that.  I railed against new technology which is now, to me, pretty ordinary.  I may be a late adopter, but I adopt.

I have learned things I haven't written about here.  I've learned about how differently business runs now than it did 20 years ago.  I've learned that people, on the whole, are always plugged in in some way.  No one is "off" anymore - smart phones have made people accessible 24/7, and it seems no one wants to be inaccessible.  (I am an exception, of course.  Why would I want to be available all the time?)  I'm learning to let go of "the way we used to do it" and now become impatient with people saying "but that's how we did it last year".  I've learned that I can't sit at my desk - or anywhere else, for that matter - for an hour or two and expect to get up without some complaint from stiff joints.  

I was also going to use this blog to write, and not have to use anyone else's voice but mine.  I've found that because I write so much at work, I often can't face writing even more when I get home and have the chance to write here.   I have no intention of changing jobs so that will continue to be a problem for me, but I really do want to post more often ... this is a great outlet for me.

What I didn't want this blog to be is a place to just complain, complain, complain.  Oh, I know I've gone on about a few things, but I never want to get to the point where that's all I do.  It's easy enough to get into that rut especially as I'm turning positively grouchy and more intolerant as I get on in years.

Now I'm going into my seond year with this blog.  Here's what I want to be writing about in the next year.  I want to write more about food.  I love food.  As I've been going through recipes, I've been getting more interested in trying new things again.  I also want to touch more on what's happening in the world.  There is so much to talk about - crazy things, important things.  And I'd really like this to be a place where readers would feel free to comment or add to the discussion.  It would be nice if this was more a conversation than a monologue.

So happy anniversary to me, and thanks for checking in.

Darkness returns for another few weeks

Thanks to Daylight Saving Time, my morning walk is once again done in darkness.  Until this past Sunday, it was almost light when I left the house for my 6 a.m. walk and pretty much completely light when I returned at 6:30.  It was lovely.  I heard the first birdsongs of the day;** I felt the first stirring of the breeze.  It was the best part of the day.

Then the clocks were changed, and now it’s dark and quiet and makes me feel as though spring is months away rather than just a few weeks.

I was reminded this morning, as I saw a streak of white disappear under a bush, that in my concern over seeing Ralph the coyote in the dark, I had completely forgotten to watch for skunks.  There seem to be fewer skunks than there used to be (do coyotes eat them, I wonder?) so they’ve been totally off my radar.  Until this morning.

Luckily the skunk saw me and decided retreat was the best option, and I was thankful he did.  My mind wasn’t at all on where I was walking and what was around me, so it could have been an unhappy meeting if we had surprised each other.

So – now I must watch out for skunks again.  Somehow, after the worry about Ralph and my old dog, the occasional skunk doesn’t seem like such a big deal.  I’ll just have to be more watchful and give the skunk wide berth so we can both happily go our separate ways.

Speaking of Ralph, I haven’t seen him for a long time, and now that our pooch has gone to doggy heaven, I don’t even worry about him – I have no fear for myself.  I haven’t heard of anyone meeting up with him lately, either.  I wonder if Ralph is still lurking, or if he’s gone to happier hunting grounds…or the final happy hunting ground.

** Note for anyone who knows me and knows I don’t much care for birds:   while I’m not a fan of their beady eyes, long skinny claws and impossibly light little bodies, I do appreciate their songs.  I will ignore the fact that it’s mostly the boy birds doing their territorial thing and just appreciate the variety and loveliness of the sounds they produce.   Oh yes, I like their feathers, too.

Hallelujah!

On Saturday, Jim and I watched YouTube videos for a good part of the evening.  It started because I was looking for a video of the Notting Hillbillies “Feel Like Going Home”.  It’s one of the saddest songs I have ever heard – not the sad story songs of country music, but an achingly sad song from someone totally beaten by life.  It’s wonderfully done on the album, and I wanted to see a performance of it. 

Then I wanted to see if there was a video of Patricia O’Callaghan’s rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.  I remember seeing a video of it a long time ago, and it was what turned me on to the song (long before the song became “the” song) and Patricia O’Callaghan.  We found a few videos (one of which I really liked), and then we started watching other artists’ versions of the same song.  There are so many versions of the song, but few really good ones.  Here are the ones I liked best, in no particular order.

Patricia O’Callaghan - love her voice.  Her version is perhaps a bit pristine and over-controlled, but it’s the voice that does it for me.  I could listen to her over and over again.  (And did!)

Jeff Buckley – I was told that Jeff Buckley had the definitive version.  After watching his unadorned, emotionally raw performance, I can’t say I liked it best, but it certainly is a powerful performance.

K.D. Lang – love her voice.  The best video was of her performance at the induction of Leonard Cohen into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and Leonard Cohen was sitting in the front row of the auditorium – talk about pressure!  K.D. Lang has such a fabulous voice - it seems so effortless. 

Jon Bon Jovi (unplugged) – a surprising performance.  Not great, but interesting and obviously emotional for him.  I first heard this version with the tv volume low and wasn’t too impressed – it really shines, though, with the volume higher. 

Those are my top four.  I’d be interested to know if there are others I didn’t get to that I should have.

By the way, here’s the link to the Notting Hillbillies’ “Feel Like Going Home” that started the evening – it’s worth watching even though the video recording isn’t very good.

Oops

Okay, so this isn't a real post ... I hit the wrong button when I logged in and ended up publishing a blank page.  It just looked weird, so I thought I would offer an explanation.

If this is any indication of how this day is going to go ....

The great cookbook cull

In an effort to get rid of the some of the clutter around our house, I have been going through the cookbooks and cooking magazines I have been accumulating over the years.  I have a ridiculous number of books - there's a bookcase in the kitchen, piles of magazines beside the bookcase and then a few shelves of books downstairs as well.  

I love cookbooks and recipes.  Everytime I bring a new one home, I go through each recipe and decide if it's something I would make.  I think about whether I have the ingredients or if I'd have to go out and buy ingredients I'd never use again.  I think about whether it's a week-day dish or something I'd save for a weekend meal - something that takes a bit more effort.  And I wonder why I bother buying new magazines because, lately, there's not much in them that's new or different or something I would make.

Time was, I would spend hours making dinner.  When we were first married and entertained a lot, Jim and I would spend an entire day getting ready for dinner - planning several courses, buying fresh ingredients, making bread to go with the meal, setting a more formal table ... the works.  We'd spend hours at the table over dinner, our guests were appreciative and we thought it was time well spent.  

Then came the kid.  Like most parents of picky eaters (and aren't most kids picky eaters?) I found it a struggle to put a meal on the table that would be eaten and enjoyed by everyone.  I refused to make a separate meal for said kid, but did provide different veggies that I knew he would eat, or a less spicy version of what I'd made.  I was spending an hour preparing a meal that would get wolfed down in 10 minutes.  That was not the most gratifying experience, so I changed the way I cooked.  I learned to throw things together in 10 or 20 minutes, and to spend 20 minutes putting something together earlier in the day so I could just throw it in the oven before dinner.  

This kind of cooking doesn't take a lot of thought or much in the way of recipes.  I would look at a recipe, decide what ingredients I needed or wanted to change and how to cook it faster or slower, depending on the dish.  The final product had a vague resemblance to the orginal recipe, but was usually something quite different. 

I started cooking that way for company, too.  If it took longer than an hour of my time to prepare an entire meal, including appetizers, I didn't make it.  I found out that our friends are just as happy to eat a stew or pasta or grilled meat, veggies and salad as they are something that takes much longer to prepare.  

Of course there are exceptions - every once in awhile it's nice to spend a good chunk of the afternoon on a weekend preparing something special, something new.  Sometimes there's a recipe that's calling out to be made, and I'll answer that call.  Special holiday meals are worthwhile, too - turkey and dressing, ham with scalloped potatoes; they are definitely worth spending the hours of preparation.  But those are all special cases.

Despite my pared-down cooking, I have continued buying and saving cookbooks and magazines through the years.  I'm always on the lookout for something that appeals. 

One of my favourite magazines is the LCBO's Food and Drink magazine - it's full of interesting recipes, and it's free.   I pick them up, read through them, identify a few recipes I'd like to make then put the magazine aside with the rest of the cookbooks.  Rarely do I go back and actually make one of the recipes.   Same with food magazines I buy at the grocery store, or the occasional cookbook I buy - I go through them, enjoy reading the recipes and imagine making or eating them, mark them then put them aside.

So now that I've been going through all these accumulated books, I'm finding recipes I marked.  Sometimes I wonder what appealed to me at the time, because they aren't all that appealing to me now.  And sometimes I find other recipes that are appealing but on thinking about it, I probably won't make because I already make something similar or I'm already substituting ingredients in my head and it's turning into something different altogether.   I'm also finding recipes I passed over before but are now calling out to me.  I have ripped out a few pages and kept a few of the magazines because there are multiple recipes I'd like to try, but for the most part they are going out the door and to the curb.

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the cookbooks when I get to them.  There are some I haven't touched in years and should probably turf right off the bat.  There are others from which I use two or three recipes ... is that enough to keep the book and assume or hope I'll find other recipes I'll use?  I'll have to be ruthless if I want to pare down this collection into something I actually use.  And of course I need to leave room for the books and magazines I know I'll be bringing home in the future.

Is it contagious?

There's something going around that's affecting drivers in the Golden Horseshoe and it's reaching epidemic proportions.  Whatever it is seems to render the left hand useless, with the result that drivers are unable to use that  hand to switch on their turn signal when they are changing lanes. 

What's that you say?  The left hand is being used to hold the cell phone or shove food in the mouth or is sitting on the driver's lap, unused?  It's not a dread disease?  It's just .... stupidity?  Disregard for the safety of others?  Lack of courtesy?  Poor driving habits?

Oh.  I'll put away my bottle of vitamins - I was afraid of catching something.  Luckily stupidity isn't contagious.