Day 14 of Write a Poem a Day Month:
Newspaper (Photo credit: NS Newsflash)
Day Breaks
A quiet Sunday morning
Punctuated with crisped sausages
And pancakes drowned in syrup.
A second cup of coffee
Poured to enjoy with yesterday’s paper
That we were “too busy” to read.
A lovely start to a day that promises not stay quiet~
But the tranquility has not been broken
yet……………….
Do you find your bliss as the day breaks?
Today is a gift (Photo credit: wildphotons)
Sunday in a box
Kept safe from the outside world
Until tomorrow.
BLISS………….
A whiter shade of pale (Photo credit: franziskas garten)
Quiet Sunday bliss
Unassumingly discreet
Inaudible peace
Cover of Thinking About Memoir (AARP)
Some days this bliss journey gets a little long and twisted and I am baffled as to whether I can keep it up. As anyone who reads this blog on a somewhat regular basis knows, my 2013 resolution is to find my bliss. Some days I want to pack it in; some days finding my bliss is pretty….blissful.
Cover via Amazon
Before I run out of things to say about bliss, I really must address the thing that has given me bliss since I was about six years old. The thing that has stood me in good stead all of these years, through thick and thin, through good times and bad, through…..okay you get the clichéd gist.
Quite simply, I love to read. I can depend on reading to provide bliss. Even before I could read, I was read to—so the magic of the written word has been with me all my life.
Today I am going to share with you a few of my favourite books and authors—just off the top of my head, because I am feeling lazy (so lazy I put the Sunday roast in the crock pot with potatoes cause I am too lazy to pay attention to it).
Cover of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
My favourite authors are Margaret Atwood, Alistair McLeod, Elizabeth Berg, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, Annie Lamont, Ray Bradbury, Abigail Thomas, Stephen King, Ina Garten, Chef Michael Smith, and a whole lot of other people. I do not like everything these people have ever written, but I like a great deal of what they have written. I am a voracious reader of non-fiction but the only name that comes to mind right now is Rabbi Harold Kushner.
My favourite book from childhood is Little Women—I loved Jo, and grew up to be a writer precisely because of her. My favourite character from my preteen years is Trixie Belden—she was smart and independent, and I read every one of her books several times.
My favourite books on memoir are by Natalie Goldberg and Abigail Thomas. I suggest that if you like this genre you should rush out and buy, or put on hold at your library, Goldberg’s “Old Friend from Far Away” and Thomas’ “Thinking About Memoir”.
If you could only read three books on writing—these are my picks: Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones”; Annie Lamont’s “Bird by Bird”; and Stephen King’s “On Writing”. My fourth pick is one I am re-reading right now, Jack Hart’s “Storycraft” which is “The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction.” He has reinvigorated my newspaper writing.
Cover of Writing down the Bones
So for the record, just in case this bliss thing comes to an end—I need it stated that reading is my bliss.
Off the top of your head—what are your favourite books or authors. Don’t think too hard (it is Sunday after all)—you will miss some as I most certainly have.
Sudden Loud Noises (Photo credit: STML)
In the last twenty years I have probably seen about five movies at a theatre that were not animated. Yes, I have kids. And for a while I saw every animated movie there was. And then I just lost interest in going to the movies—you can rent, buy, or see most stuff on television if you wait long enough or have the desire.
On Sunday, I went to the movies with my husband, and we saw “Guilt Trip” with Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen. We were given passes to a movie with two drinks and regular popcorn for Christmas, so we thought we would make use of them. We scoured the paper to see what movies were being offered, and it being just past the holiday season, there were lots to choose from. But I did not want to see an adventure movie, or the Hobbit movie (sorry Cindy), or a sad movie….I wanted to see something light that would not break my resolution of finding my bliss.
So, we settled on “Guilt Trip”. Or actually my husband settled. I was quite happy to find a movie that was not shoot ‘em up, depressing, or a fantasy.
Well I just loved it. It was in a word: charming. The humour was gentle, the story heart-warming, and the ending happy. Smultzy? Not really. It was pleasant; indeed, it was storytelling at its best. There was conflict, but it was resolved. There were laughs, but also some serious everyday stuff that happens in all of our lives. It was just a good movie. A son and his mother on a road trip. But the son had an agenda, and that is what the whole movie was about. In the end. It was a worthwhile trip for the movie goer.
The only unblissful part of the movie date was the trailers that came on before the movie. We were inundated with probably about eight trailers—and the cacophony of noise blast at us and around us was an assault to the senses. It was too loud—so loud that it reverberated thunderously through the body almost to the point of shutting down. Bliss came when the trailers ended and the movie we had signed on to see came on the screen.
Sometimes bliss is relief in disguise.
Have you ever found bliss when something stopped?
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sunday bliss is:
Cindy from photosfromtheloonybin:
Sitting on the couch with my feet up after a great supper, checking my emails, watching TV with my hubby and smiling as I look around at my clean house = total bliss 
Give me an example of your total bliss.
A small country church (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Remember when Sundays were a “day of rest” and the only stores open were… hmm…well pretty much nothing was open. Of course this was in my small town which was very WASP-Y (white Anglo-Saxon protestant) and dry until the early 1960’s (though this is not something I remember, as I was not much of an imbiber at nine years old).
Sundays when I was young was a day when the kids went to church (for some reason my parents did not go, but the four of us kids did—we went to Sunday school, then when we got older, we went to church and joined the choir, and Young Peoples—a group for teenagers). For me church was more of a community/social thing. Of course God and Jesus played a role, but at the time God was a male father figure, and Jesus apparently “loved the little children”.
Today my beliefs are a little more complex, but I no longer go to church. I do miss “visiting” though. People tended to visit friends and neighbours and family on Sunday afternoon after church. Without calling ahead. They would just drop in. And that was totally socially acceptable.
I remember when people used to have “parlours” set aside for just these visits, and if the minister should happen by. I think it was kind of like the good “living room” that was always neat and no one used it unless they had company. This makes perfect sense to me, with the type of housekeeping I do.
The home I grew up in was not big enough to have a parlour—we lived in the whole house—though because my mom was so neat and clean, it was almost always company ready. But today, I need a parlour—a room set aside that I can go into that will always be neat and clean and not subject to muddy boots, and coats thrown over chairs, and newspapers gloriously spread all over the floor. I try to keep my living room in good shape “just in case”, but this does not always work out.
Back to Sundays of my childhood~
Every Sunday we would have a roast of some kind—pork or beef or roasted chicken, and on occasion fried chicken. The entrée would generally include mashed potatoes, gravy, coleslaw and a couple of vegetables I would try to avoid eating. I remember spending what felt like two weeks at the dinner table with cold squash in front of me—I was free to leave the table once I had eaten it. I must have eaten it, because today I am not still at the table, but memories of that cold squash still haunt me. It does not affect my grown up penchant for it though, which is strange.
And we always, always, always had a special dessert – most of the time homemade pie or cake and ice cream. In those days we had dessert at every meal, but some were very simple. Sundays were different—no Jell-O, or pudding, or a little syrup in a bowl with a cookie.
I like the freedom of Sundays today—I like that the whole town does not close down. But I do remember the days when visiting was the thing to do on Sunday afternoon, followed by a wonderful meal, then unfortunately as I got older, homework—because of course, I never did it ahead of time.
What are some of your Sunday memories—are they similar to mine, or did you have a totally different “day of rest”?
Thanksgiving postcard circa 1900 showing a turkey and football player. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Turkey Day is a term coined by my youngest son, Tyler, referring of course to Thanksgiving Day—but it really does synthesize what the day means to him. He has used this term for about twelve years now, first utilizing it one Thanksgiving weekend when he was about nine. We decided to go apple picking on this now infamous Thanksgiving Day twelve years ago for a “fun family outing”. (For those of you who are not Canadian, and from the looks of my stats—that is many of you, Thanksgiving is the second Monday of October in our country.)
For some reason, many Canadians have their Thanksgiving meal on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, which leaves us time to do other things on Thanksgiving Day besides eat leftovers (which in my books is one of the most wonderful meals there is ~ I think I like noshing on Thanksgiving leftovers as much as the original meal.)
So, on this day in the year 2000, we decided to go apple picking, and while we were there we picked up a few pumpkins from the orange grove (just seeing if you are paying attention—of course it was a pumpkin patch, and no we did not see Linus there looking for the Great Pumpkin—it was too early).
Since it was late in the apple season, our wagon ride to the apple trees that still had apples was rather lengthy—and Tyler, in great spirits that day, kept wishing everyone a Happy Turkey Day. This garnered all kinds of interest, which he just ate up. He was a pixyish looking little guy, so he got a lot of waves and smiles with his exuberance.
To this day, he loves turkey—and Thanksgiving is just not Thanksgiving without turkey at our house. Before he grew to realize his love for the big bird, I would serve other meals I was just as thankful for (like prime rib or lamb or ham) and were much easier to contend with. Since he has made this realization, we serve turkey every Thanksgiving.
After lo these many years of thawing turkeys, stuffing turkeys, and complaining about thawing and stuffing turkeys, I have come upon a foolproof Thanksgiving meal. I get one of those turkeys that come already stuffed and that you can take out of the freezer and stick into your oven with just some minor preparations. I stumbled upon this solution at the advice of a friend who I think may have been tired of me complaining about the thawing and stuffing of the bird that stars in a proper Thanksgiving meal. And to that end the search for the perfect turkey commences today.
The search entails buying one of these guys on sale. They are an arm and a leg if not on sale. As we speak, they are purported to be on sale at my local grocery store—so as soon as I get this post done, I shall be hightailing it out of here to get one that is affordable. Last time they were on sale (a couple of weeks ago) they had all been scooped up and only the regular turkeys were there biding their time in the frozen food bins.
I know that some people are suspicious of these already stuffed birds, but I cook mine until there is no mistaking that it is done—and truly the stuffing is delicious and there is a generous amount. And I do not have to thaw the dumb thing. In the past, I have taken turkeys out of my freezer and crowded my fridge for a full seven days and still the thing wasn’t completely thawed out.
Turkey Day is only a couple of weeks away, but I will not be satisfied until I have one nestled in my freezer among the corn and peas, and ready to be taken out just before I have to throw him in the oven (or place him ever so gently, let’s not get violent here.)
O happy day—this is me doing the Snoopy dance—Turkey Day is going to be easy peasy this year and every year hereafter.
Sunday Morning (Photo credit: jspaw)
“Nothing is worth more than this day.” ~ Goethe
Go gently into this good Sunday. That is what I am going to try to do. It is early—4:21 a.m. and it is moving day. I am going to go gently into this day, knowing that it is going to be a long, busy, trying and emotional day. In a few hours we will be loading up the truck and finding our way back to my youngest son’s home away from home. His house is only two blocks from his college—so today these are the things I am grateful for:
1. Tyler is just a hop, skip and a jump from his front door to the college, which means he can get up a half hour before classes, get ready and get to school on time (unless of course he has to wash his hair).
2. He bought himself a new bike for $40 from a charity store—so not only did he help someone out with his purchase, if something happens to his bike then he is not out much. And it is a pretty darn good bike, though not shiny and new.
3. He will be fulfilling a challenge and reaching a goal. How can I complain about that?
Yes, I will miss him. But this is just one more journey of life. I do not always like the bumpy roads on our journey, but I respect the fact that they have to be traversed.
Day of rest declared
Be it today, tomorrow
Even yesterday
I call my haikus “haikuish” because there are so many out there who write them so beautifully that I do not think I should sully their creativity. I do love the form and to play with words though.
