Someday Syndrome

Too Much Fun?

Cate has booked her flight, so it's now official: I will have a Canadian visitor here in my new home and I can show off Raul to someone!

In deciding when Cate should come I had to go through what plans we had for the weekends through the summer. We have something happening at least one day on the weekends from now until the middle of August.

I wold love to be more spontaneous, to not make plans and let the mood guide us, but then again, Raul and I are both a bit control-freakish so not having plans would drive us both crazy.

Starting tomorrow, here are our next eleven weekends:

1. Friends over for dinner
2. Parentsitting Raul's dad (and a beach picnic with my Euro-cousins?)
3. A work dinner (just me)
4. A wedding near Girona (Catalonia)
5. The San Sebastian Pride Party (and our anniversary)
6. Madrid Pride
7. A friend's birthday in Barcelona
8. Friends from France visiting
9. My birthday/Cate's visit
10. A long weekend away, likely camping
11. And friends visiting from Madrid for a week (and a visit to the World Expo in Zaragoza).

Someday Lessons:

• Don't wish to be something you're not – accept your nature and enjoy it.
• Surround yourself with friends and family – no matter where they are.

Shoes in Drawers

Yesterday I finished organizing my wardrobe. I had more luck getting rid of t-shirts and jeans than dress shirts, but then again I've always had a thing for fancy shirts.

The drawers in the wardrobe are shallow – a good thing because I can't stack clothes too deeply – a bad thing because jeans and sweaters don't fit well and my shorts not at all. As well, I had extra shoes, and some papers at the bottom of the main part of the wardrobe that kept disorganizing themselves no matter what I did. I had planned on organizing the clothes on Tuesday but I had no idea what to do with the two spaces.

Then the next day on the bus to work, I changed my thinking and switched the two groups of things. My shoes, shorts and papers fit perfectly in the drawer while the pants and sweaters stack beautifully in the bottom part of the wardrobe.

If I hadn't been stuck in the mindset that shoes don't belong in drawers, then I'm sure the solution would have presented itself my sooner.

Someday Lessons:

• When you remove assumptions, many new possibilities will appear.
• What assumptions block you from making life easier?

A Visitor! (I think)

No update today because I found out my friend and traveling companion Cate is probably coming to visit the end of July - and will be here for my birthday!

Instead of writing a decent blog post, I spent the evening surfing the web wondering what we'll do when she's here.

See you all tomorrow!

My Creativity Pattern

That's it. I definitely have a one day productive, one day not habit. For the last few weeks if I've worked hard on a project one day, the next day I'm unable to be creative. Yesterday I wrote a script for the Organizing Connection, and today I only had enough energy to add my contributions to an online writing workshop.

I even lack creativity for this blog post – it took me fifteen minutes to write the above paragraph and it still feels boring.

For a while I've been thinking that when the new school year starts in September I'll ask for four to six hours a day Tuesday and Thursday and keep the rest of the week open for writing. Given my emerging creativity pattern, that'll be perfect.

Someday Lessons:

• Sometimes no matter how hard you try to make something happen, your body/brain just won't do it.
• Be aware of how your brain and body function. If possible adjust your life to maximize your natural rhythms.

A Shift in Perspective

When I left France last year for six months of traveling, I had pared my wardrobe down to the bare necessities. Now that I'm in one place, however, I've collected a lot more clothes again, cramping the space in my closet, which is only wardrobe that also holds my shoes, books for work, my outerwear and has two drawers underneath it for t-shirts and pants.

So today I reorganized my shirts and outwear. I wanted to get rid of clothes I don't wear, but got rid of only two shirts and a torn winter coat. I like the idea of having few clothes, but then I see a great shirt and can't resist. Plus there are more occasions to go out and I don't want to wear the same clothes all the time – that would just be socially embarrassing.

At least it's all neat and sorted, even if the shirts do double up on the hangers. After finishing, every time I walked past the wardrobe I peeked inside just to admire my work.

Tomorrow I'm tacking shoes and t-shirts.

Someday Lessons:

• Take time to appreciate your achievements after you complete them.
• Needs change over time, so reevaluate your life periodically.

Silliness for Its Own Sake

This morning I watched the season finale of Ugly Betty. I enjoyed it very much and wanted to share the experience but I was alone, so I went to read the forums on TelevisionWithoutPity where I found nothing but snarks!

The forum participants had judged the show on its literary and storytelling merits, mainly complaining about the show's use of TV cliché and one-dimensional characters. Some people even complained that the show had ventured too close to its telenovela roots.

Hello! The show is a comedic soap-opera! That's what I love about it – the complete implausibility of almost everything that happens!

This past winter I read Hemingway's Fiesta – actually I forced my way through it – because it's set in this area of Spain. Once I started examining the novel in detail, I understood why it's considered a piece of literary genius. I wouldn't however examine in any depth another recent read: Dragonskin Slippers by Jessica Day George which, thoroughly delightful from beginning to end, wouldn't stand up to the same scrutiny Hemingway requires.

Ugly Betty isn't Hemingway – it's a nice light summer on-the-beach read. And I prefer it that way.

Someday Lessons:

• Some things just need to be enjoyed, not analyzed.
• It's important to know when to turn the brain on or off.

Taking the non-Plastic Plunge

I spent most of the day thinking about abandoning plastic – thanks for all the comments for a great day of productive procrastination! I'm definitely going to start making yoghurt, especially yoghurt cheese. I also read an article on fresh (tap) versus canned (bottled) water, so I've decided to go back to tap water, only drinking the bottled stuff when it's rained really hard and they've added more chlorine to the water.

I'm not sure, however, that I'll implement taking my containers to the butcher. And why not? Because it's different and no one else does it.

Say what?!? Alex embarrassed by being different? (Can you feel the chill of hell freezing over?)

I usually shop at the supermarket because I can pick my meat and vegetables I want without having to talk to anyone. Perfectionist-Alex won't let me talk when I'm out in stores because since I can't communicate well, I won't communicate at all.

Completely idiotic, I know. And now that I've written it down, I'm totally going to start buying my meat and veggies from local market stores. And yes, I'll talk to people and I might even take my own containers.

Someday Lessons:

• Telling others your reason for (not) doing something is often enough to prompt a change.
• Don't let your perfectionist self take over – you'll never get anything done!

Reducing the Recycling

The amount of plastic we go through horrifies me. Roughly every other day I take a grocery bag of plastic containers, aluminum cans, styrofoam and plastic-coated deli paper down to the recycling bin.

I could choose to reduce my plastic consumption lower expenses sit higher on my list of priorities, so cutting out the plastic isn't going to happen. However, just to make sure I'm doing the best I can, here's an inventory of the usual suspects.

• Yogurt cups: Stores here only sell yogurt in single 125ml servings. Unless I'm willing to spend about six times more for natural yogurt in glass bottles, the single serving size is my only option.
• Water bottles: Water is drinkable here but it usually tastes of chlorine and Brita filters require putting the water in the fridge, which makes my teeth ache, so the alternative is bottled water.
• Meat styrofoam and plastic: I could stop going to the supermarket and buy my meat from butchers, but they use the plastic-coated deli-paper so it's not worth the extra money.
• Beer/soft-drink cans: we use these so rarely that cans make the most sense – we'd waste too much otherwise.
• Snack, bread and rice cake packaging: Unfortunately there's no other way to buy these things.

I'm doing well for the most part – there really isn't much I can do about my plastic use. I will look at alternatives to the 1.5L water bottles, maybe an attachment for the tap.

Someday Lessons:

• You can't make deliberate choices with examining your habits.
• Use irritation with something as a trigger to examine how it fits into your life.

Active Laziness

When I first arrived in France for my sabbatical, I often felt guilty if I wasn't productive. I didn't let the guilt consume me or even push me to work; I simply did my best to ignore it. In doing so, I learned that I really like doing nothing and arranged my life so that doing nothing is an option pretty much whenever I want.

Like today for example. Other than teaching two English classes and puttering around the house, I napped, uploaded photos to Facebook, and napped some more.

Tomorrow I'll be productive again, if I feel like it.

Someday Lessons:

• Figure out what you really want and arrange your life accordingly.
• Don't let societal norms and the word "should" make you feel guilty.

Cheese is Good Food

Starting this past Saturday, for one glorious meal each weekend, I am opening up my diet. This weekend I reveled in cheese. Raul and I had gone to Pamplona to visit a friend. On Saturday we went out for dinner and I started the meal with a cheese salad – lettuce still crispy but slightly warm cubes of a colby-like cheese, a 3-inch by 1-inch wheel of goat's cheese flash fried on both sides to create a crisp shell, the whole thing drizzled with a white fondue.

My perennial sinus problems prevented me from smelling the dish, but the combination of textures – crispy, crunchy, smoothly grainy, soft and liquidly warm – and the flavours – fresh, pungent, innocuous, and tangy – made worth it every moment of my three months without such foods.

To mop up the last bits of cheese, I used a warm whole wheat dinner roll with a thick brittle outer shell and dense soft innards.

The main course was something I could eat any day: secreto de cerdo, green beans and carrots, so although very tasty, it didn't send me into raptures.

I ended the meal with a square of blueberry cheesecake consisting of a thin layer of cake, a frothy layer of filling made from Queso de Burgos not cream cheese, and topped with a blueberry jelly. The outside world disappeared while I partitioned off small pieces of dessert with my spoon and melted each morsel in my mouth before swallowing it.

Next Saturday, we're going to a Eurovision party. The treats the host will serve excite me as much as (or more than) the party itself does.

Someday Lessons:

• Savouring occasional treats is much more fulfilling than unthinking consumption.
• Having without anticipating first robs you of half the experience.