August Good Things

Hi, everyone! It's the last day of August, which always feels like the end of summer. I haven't blogged much lately, for a variety of reasons. But all is well, and I'll share a few things I've enjoyed this month:

Seeing live baseball for the first time in two years!

This beautiful rainbow, which was even more beautiful in person.

My sister was here for two weeks, and we had a few adventures.

More sister fun...using homegrown and farmer's market veggies for this delicious (but rather labor intensive) ratatouille.

Participating in a local tradition with my younger son. Colorado State University used to be Colorado A & M, and the A on the hill has been painted annually for nearly 100 years. Here are the photos before and after the first shift. Go Rams!

A private party/concert with The Motones, a Motown tribute band. Fantastic music and a great time.

I'm so grateful to have had these outdoor experiences this summer. Our Covid numbers are climbing steadily, and I'm afraid we will soon be facing increased restrictions even for fully vaccinated folks like me. 

I hope you are happy and well and ready for September!

July Good Things

Welcome to the second half of 2021! Here are some things I'm enjoying these days:

A visit to the local butterfly house

My new crane birdbath and copper cattails
(the birds don't use it, though--probably because it's metal,
and the water gets really hot!)

Golden zucchini blossoms

Kayaking through quiet coves at Horsetooth Reservoir

Ferret Cam: 

Native black-footed ferrets were thought to be extinct by the 1950s, but were rediscovered in Wyoming in 1981. Since then, conservation efforts have increased the population and continue to support this species. Our local Discovery Museum has a live ferret cam. A lot of the time, nothing happens, but it's exciting when the little guy pops out of that hole! Here's more info about black-footed ferret history:

What good things are happening for you mid-year?

Joy Project: Renewal

I've made it through the last chapter of Ingrid Fetell Lee's book, Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, and I cannot think of a better topic for the end of 2020 than renewal. This "unprecedented" year affected everyone to a lesser or greater degree, and we are tired, limping toward the holiday season dragging stubborn hope along with us.

A new year is of course a time of renewal, but other than a fresh calendar and some resolutions (or not), where do we find help in hitting the reset button? As with so many things, looking to nature for inspiration is a great place to start. Nature cycles constantly through decay and renewal, death and rebirth. Even now, in the midst of wintry weather, I notice the cycles of freezing and melting, sun rising and setting, birdsong and silence.

But plants have got to be one of the best and most accessible symbols of renewal, whether it is a simple leaf stretching toward the sun or a giant flowerhead bursting into bloom. As anyone who has battled a weedy garden knows, plants have energy that is sometimes difficult to quash. From a design standpoint, reproducing the elements of viney curves and colorful blossoms in our space reminds us that change is not only possible but inevitable. Or, as Ingrid puts it, "...flowers suggest a momentum toward a more abundant world."

This is also the reason indoor blooming bulbs such as amaryllis are so popular during the scarcity of the colder seasons. The gradual process of growing and unfurling gives us the anticipation of beauty, with a serving of hope on the side. So, friends, as we make our way to the end of 2020, I encourage you to buy a plant from your local greenhouse, sow a few seeds in a pot, force some bulbs, or suspend an avocado pit in a jar of water...anything to serve as a daily reminder that renewal isn't only reserved for the turning of a new year. It's with us every day, even in small ways.

I'll leave you for now with these lines from the last paragraph of Joyful:

To fix the world is a tall order, but to renew it is not nearly so daunting. The lesson of renewal is that from small seeds big things grow.

Stay safe and well, and enjoy whatever makes the holiday season special for you!

 

Joy Project: Transcendence

Hello! Before we jump into the next chapter of Joyful, I'll continue the theme of the last post by confessing a weird joyful surprise my husband and I share. I don't remember how it started, but we hide this novelty severed finger for each other to find. 

It might show up in a coat pocket or a drawer, usually some place we don't frequently check. I know, it's completely strange, but it cracks me up every time. 

So...

Moving on to the topic of transcendence. Definitions of the verb transcend include to surpass and to go beyond, but for many of us, it also means to rise above. Accordingly, Ingrid Fetell Lee poses the question, "Why is it that our emotions seem to lie along a vertical axis?" Joyous things feel light and uplifting, somber things feel heavy and low. 

The effect can be pronounced when we are physically raised off the ground, as in a treehouse or a skyscraper, but even just looking up can feel transcendent. Hot air balloons, bubbles, and clouds all have a visual lightness that results in a positive emotional payoff. 

Human beings enjoy looking up. So why don't we do it more often? Sadly, as Ingrid points out, we're often looking down at our phones--to the point that walking into obstacles while doing so has become commonplace. And most homes aren't exactly cathedral-like in their dimensions.

Though my house is a modest size, I am lucky to have a few big windows and a high ceiling on the main floor, which impart a feeling of lightness. But my writing space is in the basement, with no window nearby, and I certainly wouldn't mind bringing some transcendence to that area. 

Ingrid suggests low furniture, tall plants, vertical stripes, and long curtains to accentuate the height of a room. Maybe someday I will get creative like that. But for a quick fix, I did two things. I brought in a tall plant, which I conveniently had at my disposal, and swiveled one light fixture on my floor lamp so it points upward. These tweaks took about two minutes, and I'll let you know if they make a difference. 

I hope October is treating you well! See you next time!

 

Fingers crossed that my magic plant helps me
transcend mediocre writing!

Shape of Play Update

In my last post, I mentioned the idea that the most playful shapes for humans-and some other animals, too--are circles and spheres. I haven't done much in the way of decorating tweaks since then, though I really meant to get some round throw pillows. But here are the small, plant-based ways I've added spheres and circles to my life:

Marimo moss balls:

Goldfish plant in a bowl:

Air plant habitat:

String-of-pearls succulent:

And this moss terrarium:

My history of plant care is a little spotty, so it's a good thing these are all fairly low-maintenance. Because the least joyful shape for a plant is, well, dead.

I hope you're having a good week, and I'll see you soon!

Joy Project: Play

Hello! Before I jump into the next chapter of Joyful, I'll update you on my quest for harmony in the cleaning out of my mother's house. I could not be happier to report that I've crossed the finish line. Thanks to a lot of help from a lot of people--and a very cooperative local real estate market--the sale of the house closed on Monday.

The last week was a little strange, full of competing moments of nostalgia and frustration. But as I swept out the garage last Saturday, I finally got the sense that the harmony of the home had been restored, and it was ready to receive its new occupant. It was a feeling of satisfaction more than sadness, and I was delighted when a large dragonfly flew into the garage and buzzed around for a bit. If you believe in such things, dragonflies symbolize adaptability, transformation, and new beginnings. They also remind us when we need to bring a little light and joy into our lives.  

Now I just need to restore harmony in my own home, which has been kind of neglected the past few months.

And, boy, was I ready to read a chapter about play!

Many animals engage in play. It's one way they learn appropriate social behaviors. If a pup plays too rough, its litter mates will let it know. Although human play is often much more complicated, it can also be quite simple. I hadn't really thought about it this way, but the book suggests that play is the only activity that humans do solely for fun. There's generally no monetary gain or survival of the species on the line.

I imagine we all have a pretty good idea of what constitutes a playful activity. But what makes for a more playful environment? What is "the shape of play?" Sorry, triangle, it's not you. Nor you, rhombus. Research supports the idea that the most joyful shape for humans is a circle. Sharp angles subconsciously evoke danger--teeth, thorns, and various potential injuries that clumsy people like me know all too well. A curved surface feels safer and more accessible, which in turn reduces stress and promotes creativity.

Unless you have an extensive collection of decorative plates, Hula Hoops, and dartboards festooning your walls, your environment is probably more angular than not. I know mine is. So now I'm going to consider the ways in which I can add more curves, circles, and spheres in places in my home that feel particularly stuffy. And I honestly don't think I could go wrong with a bubble machine.

Stay safe and healthy, everyone! See you next time!

Joy Project: Harmony

Happy Friday, and happy last day of July! It's been more than two months since my last post, and honestly it feels as if it could have been two weeks or two years. These are such strange times, and it's easy to lose track. But the real reason I've been absent is that I've been helping my mother downsize from a four-bedroom house to a tiny apartment.

Downsizing does not come naturally to my mother. She's a keeper, a collector, a saver. She's not the only one; women of her generation learned to "waste not, want not" and were expected to be the caretakers of a family's history through its artifacts--the dishes and quilts and photographs and mementos, sometimes going back generations.

I knew the house was full--that was more than apparent to the eye--but once my sister and I started digging in, the density surprised me. Every closet, every shelf, every drawer, every cupboard. I couldn't help but think of a black hole drawing in matter and compressing it until not an inch of space remained. I won't go into all the details at this point, but suffice it to say that the clean-out is requiring a significant amount of physical and emotional energy. And time.

So this is the context in which I read the next chapter of Ingrid's book, Joyful. The chapter entitled--wait for it--"Harmony".  (For anyone who does not believe the Universe has a sense of humor, I submit this bit of synchronicity as Exhibit A.) 

A significant component of harmonious surroundings is order. Though humans love things wild and messy sometimes, we are also drawn to order. Order implies safety and predictability, which were vital to early humans. "The greater the complexity in an environment," Ingrid writes, "the greater the need for an underlying harmony to bring a sense of order and ease to a space." Order is a manifestation of harmony, and "harmony offers visible evidence that someone cares enough about a place to invest energy in it."

I'll add to that a lesson I learned from my mother's house: if you do not invest energy in maintaining order, the resulting disorder will take that energy from you, and then some. 

For ideas on how to promote harmony within a space, many people turn to the Chinese art of feng shui. And although it is prone to mystical overtones, it really is just about the smooth flow of energy. For me, a big part of that is simply paying attention. We get so good at overlooking things that we hardly notice the stack of mail on the table or the chair that everyone bumps into. Ingrid describes this as "finding friction at a moment when you really want momentum."

So far, 2020 has been full of friction of all kinds, and it doesn't appear that it is going to get much smoother in the near future. But as I move forward with the idea of harmony fully planted in my brain, I'm going to concentrate on reducing the friction within my control. 

Wishing you a harmonious start to the month of August!

   

Joy Project: Freedom

Photo credit: Nathan Sundstedt

Whew, April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge set me a little behind schedule, but I don't want to let this month go by without posting about the third chapter in the book Joyful. This chapter's aesthetic is Freedom, which is a complex ideal right now as many of us are feeling physically, socially, and psychologically confined by the coronavirus pandemic. But in some cases, those restrictions are actually opening up our lives in unanticipated ways.

Ingrid writes that "Joy thrives on the alleviation of constraints," which seems completely at odds with the increase in constraints we are all experiencing. I'm finding personally, however, that some of those constraints are balancing out. Yes, I have to work from home, but I can do it without business casual. No, my husband and I can't take the beach vacation we planned, but we can use that time and money to make long-needed improvements to our landscaping. And if no one has been to the supermarket in a while and we don't have much to cook for a meal, we all just fend for ourselves.

Much of the Freedom aesthetic doesn't have to do with coming and going. It's really about the feeling of freedom that comes from removing or mitigating obstacles that block us. That could be as simple as rehoming a piece of furniture that doesn't quite work or stepping away from your technology for a while.

But the best freedom is found by going outside in nature, or bringing nature in. Research shows that people living with more access to green spaces have less stress and more contentment. Workers who sit near windows report better health and job satisfaction. Even the humble houseplant can make us feel happier. Walking about in the forest, aka forest bathing, improves immune function and has been a public-health initiative in Japan since 1992.

We humans are deeply connected to nature down to the molecular level. So I encourage you during this unsettled time to experience and appreciate nature as often as you can--at a safe social distance, of course, and taking all appropriate precautions. Get a houseplant and give it a name. Plant some seeds and flowers. Victory gardens are a thing again--although in all honesty, mine will likely be more of an uneasy truce.

Be well, everyone! Find some joy today!

 

Meet Jeffrey

A to Z Joy: Xanadu...Homes, That Is

Last spring, my husband and I had a quick road trip getaway weekend in Taos, New Mexico. One of the local sights we visited is the Earthship development.

In the 1970s, Architect Michael Reynolds developed his "biotecture" designs for passive solar homes built of natural and upcycled materials. Empty glass bottles, dirt-filled tires, and many quirky design elements make the homes look like something from a sci-fi desert planet. The concept is still going strong, with Earthship homes all over the world.

One alternative housing project from the same era which didn't fare so well was the Xanadu Home of the Future. The homes were built with polyurethane insulation foam, which allowed for cost-effective construction. Repeated spraying of the quick-drying material onto a large, dome-shaped balloon produced a five-to-six-inch-thick shell within a few hours.

The architecture emphasized ergonomics, usability, and energy efficiency. But what made them most different from the Earthships is that they were also the first automated, computer-controlled "smart homes."

In many ways, the Xanadu homes, of which only three were built, were ahead of their time. Office spaces envisioned integrating work with home life (sound familiar, anyone?). The "electronic dietitian" in the kitchen planned balanced meals, which could be prepared at a preset time. The walls of the family room were covered with television monitors. All of the fifteen rooms (including the health spa) relied heavily on computers and electronics.

Kissimmee, Florida, 1990 (Wikipedia)

So, why are we all not living in these awesome Xanadu future-homes? The technology, controlled by Commodore microcomputers, very quickly became obsolete. Interest in the homes peaked in the 1980s, and by 1996, only one of the three homes remained as a tourist attraction in Kissimmee, Florida. It was torn down in 2005.

I'm sorry I never had a chance to live the Jetson lifestyle in a Xanadu home, but maybe this is one of those ideas that will come around again. If so, sign me up for Xanadu 2.0.

A to Z Joy: Roadtrips

My husband and I have been taking road trips together since we were newly married and too broke to afford airplane tickets. He loves to drive, and I love to ride and look out the window, so we're a perfect match. After our two sons came along, we continued road tripping, at first with giant stacks of library picture books and later with Harry Potter audio books.

We have driven through amazing parts of this country: the sparing beauty of the Southwest, the lush farmland of the Midwest, the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, through Texas and Montana and so many wide open spaces. We've crossed the Mississippi River and the Continental Divide more times than I can count. We've also been in our fair share of traffic jams, detours, and construction delays. And occasionally we get lost.

I have no problem flying, and I do appreciate that it is a much quicker way to travel a great distance. All things considered, I think my favorite trip now is a combination: fly to a destination and then drive elsewhere. A couple of summers ago, we flew as a family to San Francisco and then drove north to see the coastal redwoods. When we left the city, it was foggy and about 55 degrees F. A couple of hours later, it was 103 degrees in the middle of wine country. It's hard to experience that in an airplane.


Bonus Rs:
If you're feeling the weight of the world these days, as I am, I hope you'll get a laugh out of Randy Rainbow's tribute to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The Reveal

This post was supposed to happen last week, but sometimes even small projects take me longer than they should. Anyway, here I am with the reveal: I painted one wall of my office space and swapped the large desk with hutch for the smaller desk that was in my bedroom. Oh, and I got a new lamp.

Before:

After:

Color choice is really hard for me, probably because I know I'm bad at it. After lots of thought, I decided on yellow, because my writing space is in the basement and doesn't get a lot of sunlight. I wanted something that would pop--you know, that whole energy/joy thing. In the end, I chose a color called Geographic Yellow. I assume it's a reference to National Geographic, which brought thoughts of travel and adventure to mind. When I got it on the wall, however, it reminded me more of macaroni and cheese. (The perfect color for a Kraft room, ha ha.) 

I didn't love it at first, but it's been almost two weeks now, and I think the color is growing on me. It certainly does liven up the wall! And the big desk looks much better in its new home, so I guess this project is an overall improvement. Whether the change jump-starts my creativity is yet to be determined. Fingers crossed!

If you missed my first installment of Local Joys, pop on over to my other blog and check it out!

Joy Project: Energy

In the first chapter of Joyful, author Ingrid Fetell Lee focuses on energy, and it couldn't come at a better time for me. For at least two months, I've been feeling as flat as an open bottle of New Year's champagne that gets pushed to the back of the fridge and poured out a week later. But what exactly does it mean to feel energetic? A good night's sleep, a caffeine fix, or a brisk walk all boost my energy, but what affects whether an environment changes my energy in a positive or negative way?

Lee breaks it down into two components: color and light.

If you look at your surroundings right now, I hope you see a burst of color. But if you're American, chances are you might not. We are, Lee writes, chromophobic, or afraid of color. Many of us run-of-the-mill Americans do not grow up in a culture of color. We learn to see bright colors as "childish and frivolous," whereas neutrals come across as "mature" and impart a message of "self-restraint."

This may be true, but I think a lot of us aren't afraid of color as much as we're afraid of using it wrong. I blame HGTV and the like for giving us so many messages of the importance of being on trend. Why would I want to commit to this year's blue when next year, it's going to be saffron yellow or whatever? We need to give ourselves permission to choose what we love, and kindly tell the color gurus at Pantone to kiss off.

The other component to energy is light. A great deal of research backs up the health benefits of sunlight or broad-spectrum artificial light, so I won't go into details here. Suffice it to say that light helps us feel happier, healthier, and smarter. Moreover, light is "color's power supply." When photons of light hit an object, the ones that are reflected back to our retinas are perceived as color. We see short wavelengths as the color blue, long ones as the color red, and so on. According to Lee, this "alchemy" between light and color lies at the heart of the energy aesthetic. 

Makes sense, right? Now that I have a better understanding about the importance of color and light, my homework is to implement them in a way that puts the bubbles back in my champagne, so to speak. Because I'm not a big project person, I have just a few small tweaks in mind for my writing space. I hope you'll come back next week to see what that looks like!

    

  

Good Morning, Sunshine

After last week's trial of sleep semi-deprivation, I thought it might be nice to do something to help me get back in my normal routine, a.k.a The Routine of the Failed Night Owl. I read somewhere that regular exposure to morning sunlight plays an important part in establishing a good circadian rhythm, which seemed like a good place to start. Plus, it sounded like a lovely way to begin the day.

Two of the most important byproducts of sunlight exposure are melatonin and Vitamin D, which support and regulate all kinds of physiological functions, but apparently our bodies also release some bonus endorphins. Yeah, sign me up for that good stuff first thing in the morning. 

Although some recommendations call for 30-45 minutes of morning sunlight, a general suggestion for a pale person such is myself is fifteen minutes of exposure between the hours of eight and ten. Unfortunately, I, like many people, am at work then, so my sun time during the week was 7:15-7:30.

The first morning, I was pretty excited to bask for a while before starting my day. But the sun didn't cooperate. (Actually the sun rose as it normally did; it was the cloud cover that messed things up.) Ditto the second day. The third was a little bit better, but honestly, I'd never noticed how many clouds hang around in the morning. So inconvenient.

In fact, of the seven mornings in the week, I only had solid sun exposure on three of them, which overall was a disappointment. It was nice to eat breakfast outside, though. (So nice that I almost made myself late a few times.) I didn't notice a difference in how alert I felt in the morning or how tired I felt at night, and I assume it's because I didn't get enough regular sun to have an effect.

As much as I wanted this morning sun exposure to be a Take It, it didn't work out as well as I hoped. And as the days get shorter, it will be nearly impossible. So this one is a regretful Leave It.

I hope the sun brightens your day today, whatever time you're out. See you next week!

The Oil Change

Move over hydrogenated oils. There's another bad guy on the block, and his name is palm oil. But unlike hydrogenated oil, which really has no redeeming qualities, palm oil is a mixed bag. Semi-solid at room temperature, it resists oxidation and extends shelf life. It is a very efficient crop, producing more oil per acre than any other equivalent. In fact, palm oil accounts for 35% of the world's vegetable oil while using only 10% of the land.

The trouble is, that land is already home to lovely tropical forests. The worldwide demand for palm oil drives deforestation and threatens many species which are already hanging on by their toenails. What with all the slashing and burning, the palm oil industry also contributes to an increase in greenhouse gases. And apparently the jury is still out as far as the health benefits or implications of consuming palm oil.

All things considered, I figured it wouldn't hurt to go without palm oil for a week. In fact, I thought it would be really easy, because I tend to not eat a lot of packaged cookies and frozen pizzas and the like. I did not realize that palm oil is in everything from lipstick to ice cream to biofuel. Sneaky palm oil is also known by many aliases, including vegetable oil, Palmitate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Octyl Palmitate, Palmityl Alcohol, Stearic Acid, etc. etc. A person could go cross-eyed from reading all those ingredient labels. (That person is me, and yes, I did.)

Despite my concerted efforts, I failed at completely removing palm oil and its cousins from my life. But I did manage to swear off my favorite palm oil product: vegan butter. I love butter, but I don't really eat much dairy anymore. I thought Smart Balance was the perfect solution. The orangutans think otherwise. Darn you, palm oil.

Since I'm not a fan of dry toast, I turned to the internet and was rewarded with many recipes for vegan butter. The one I tried called for coconut oil, avocado oil, nondairy milk, salt, vinegar, and sunflower lecithin (which cost nearly $10 a bottle, and I only needed a teaspoon). Honestly, the result was not wonderful. It looked weirdly curdled and tasted like a combination of butter and feta cheese.

Now I'm in a tricky spot: settle for my unappetizing homemade "butter" or kill an endangered gecko every time I have breakfast? I don't want to do either. So I will try for a middle-ground approach and choose sustainable palm oil products whenever possible. And avocado toast...which probably has its own set of issues. 

Because I am going to continue to reduce my reliance on conventional palm oil, I guess this week's Take It or Leave It is a Take It. But it's going to be a challenge.

'Sup, Single Use Plastics?

Last Monday was Earth Day, and in respect for that important observance, my goal for the week was to reduce my single use plastics.

Plastics have done so much to make the world safer, more accessible, and more technologically advanced. But as you probably know, we're suffering from too much of a good thing. It is estimated that there are more than 150 million tons of plastics in the ocean. If we continue along this path, the ocean is projected to contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish by the year 2025. That's an astounding number, and not that far in the future.

Those plastics choke, strangle, and foul up the digestion of thousands of creatures. Additionally, plastic can degrade in the sun and salt water, resulting in trillions of microplastic particles that work their way up the food chain to us. Super fun, right?

Like most modern humans, plastics make an appearance in all aspects of my life, but nowhere more so than food packaging and consumption. From clamshells to take-out containers to straws and stir-sticks, food and plastics are nearly inseparable. I may feel virtuous buying organic baby carrots, but they still come in a plastic bag.

An alien creature consumes my avocado

The good news is that there are options available for consumers wanting to use less plastic. But it takes some advance planning. Before the week began, I assembled my kit: metal utensils in a pouch that I could toss in my purse; mesh produce bags; cloth shopping bags; reusable water bottle and coffee mug; and a weird but fun product called Cover Blubber Super-Stretchy Foodsavers (that's the green one on the left). I meant to also pick up some of those cloth-and-beeswax food wraps, but I didn't get to it. (So I wrapped food in aluminum foil instead.)

Since going without plastic is virtually impossible, I focused on reducing items such as the water cup and "disposable" fork that get used for ten minutes at a fast-casual meal and then discarded. I wasn't perfect, but I did manage to score some eco-points over the course of the week:

• At a dinner meeting, I had to use a plastic plate, as piling salad directly on the table didn't seem to be a great option. But when I took out my metal fork from its handy pouch, my fellow diners were impressed.
• I brought a travel mug when I went out for coffee. Not only are coffee lids plastic, but the paper cups are plastic-lined, too.
• I made the ultimate sacrifice a conscious choice to not purchase my favorite single-serving guacamole cups.
• A woman at the grocery store asked where I got my mesh produce bags, and I again felt that I was setting a positive example.
• On a quick errand, when I ended up buying more items than I anticipated, I refused to let the clerk bag them and, with as much dignity as I could muster, stuffed them in my purse instead.

These are not huge accomplishments, but I'm the kind of person who believes that small changes add up. That's pretty much the point of this whole Take It or Leave It experiment. Speaking of which, this week's reduced use of plastics is a Take It, no doubt about it.