change

First Impressions

Standard

I had the strangest experience last week. From where I work, I can see the lake, and one day, there was, as if from nowhere, a huge crane and a platform with steel girders standing vertically from it, as tall as the trees. I couldn’t see what the crane was hauling, but it made me sad. There’s this lovely, unbroken stretch of lakefront, and now there was going to be something built there, too.

It had me thinking about how little there is still completely left to its own devices, when it comes to nature, about the recent controversy of a privately-owned skywalk–you know, one of those glass decks that juts out of the side of a mountain–built in a Canadian national park. About how, even in our refuges from commerce, we seem to add commerce.

I’d resigned myself to a new structure forcing its way into the shoreline, wondered how it would look, whether it would stand as tall as the girders, as the red crane swung back and forth.

And then, later in the week, I caught sight of a barge. Then another one. I focused on my work, and looked up again. Suddenly, the thing I thought was so intrusive, the thing I thought was so permanent, was being towed away into the water.

So you never know.

Download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Try Her Cousin Much Removed, or sign up for my spamless newsletter.

Advertisement

Discovery is a Dandy Word for Change

Standard

So we’re all blogging D in the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, and that got me thinking of discovery. It’s the perfect month to discover new blogs, new ideas, new corners of the internet. New indie authors, as I said in my morning post.

The intriguing thing about discovery, though, is that it’s one of the overlooked upsides to change. Those of us participating in the challenge committed to change how we typically blog for a month, and by now, we’ve likely discovered some great people and fun posts because of it.

Doing things differently, at least for some of us, can be scary. Comfort zones are called comfort zones for a reason, but they also may leave us in places without much room to grow.

Discovery, though, somehow, is a less frightening word than change. Discovery is exciting rather than daunting. Discovery promises to take you new places, instead of reminding you of what you’ll leave behind.

Discovery is all about the possibilities.

Discover my Newsletter or read Better Living Through Gravy and Other Oddities for free.

I Love Lucy was a Long Time Ago

Standard

The other day, I woke up far too early to get up, but much too alert to go back to sleep. So I turned on the TV to find an episode of “I Love Lucy.”

Perfect.

The Ricardos and the Mertzes sat together in that iconic living room, listening to a beautiful radio, Bakelite by the look of it. One of the questions was about the last state to be admitted into the Union.

It was Arizona. Think about that. Back then, in the early days of the Lucy looniness, before the chocolate conveyor belt and weeks after Vitameatavegamin, Arizona was a baby state, only admitted in 1912, not yet dreaming of what was to come.

Then Lucy said she thought there were 46 states, and covered her embarrassment by saying she must have forgotten about Alaska and Hawaii, which was funny to them and not to us, because, of course, those states wouldn’t be admitted for seven more years. Such a strange thought.

Lucy, in that black-and-white living room, with the love seat sofa and the curtains in the background, only had 48 states. That we have 50 seems so immutable, so permanent.

But even these things change.

I’m Giddy over My Fridge, and I Don’t Care Who Knows It

Standard

For the first time in my life, I was excited to put my groceries away. If you saw Friday’s bit, you know that my former fridge is no more: the fridge is dead, long live the new fridge.

And it’s a beaut. I came home with a heavy cart loaded with fresh foods, and the fridge swallowed the groceries all in one dainty bite. I haven’t yet stocked the freezer with my beloved frozen veggies, and probably won’t today, given that the sky seems to have forgotten how do do anything but snow, but there’s all this blank space, ready to host bag upon bag in a way I can find them.

No struggling with drawers happier closed than open. No vying for shelf space. Knowing that if I put something in the door, it was likely to stay there without secretly planning its thrill-seeking jump to the floor. Or my foot.

The produce bins took all the fruit and vegetables I bought and then seemed to ask if maybe I didn’t have more. And when I took my Greek vanilla yogurt out of the fridge to make my breakfast of yogurt, berries and nuts, no part of my brain wondered if it would exact revenge.

Thank you, presidents, for having a day that naturally lends itself to sales. My new refrigerator and I will be very happy together.

 

My Fridge Heads to the Kitchen in the Sky

Standard

My fridge died yesterday. I’m no fridgician, but I attribute the cause of death to internal bleeding. I’d noticed water on the floor a day or two ago, and in the way these things go, I wasn’t too concerned.

My fridge was tottering on realm of the elderly. It even had some minor surgeries, completed with help from the miraculous duct tape,  But, alas, I did not realize how dire things were.

I opened the door, and there was a little water on the plastic below the fruit and vegetable drawers.

“Huh,” I said to myself. “I wonder where that came from?” I pulled out the drawer and discovered a new, vast body of water, pooled beneath the drawers.

So farewell old friend. Though I won’t miss the compartment on the door coming loose and bottles falling on my toes. Or the array of odd noises you make. Or the uncertainty that you are, in fact, properly refrigerating my food to a degree to prevent food poisoning.

But otherwise, farewell, old friend. I’m thinking maybe a side-by-side.