Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Snow day dreaming

The other day I had an e-mail from my cousin in England, with a picture attached of her charmingly snow-covered back garden.  My reaction:

a/ MAN I have to get back on an England-bound plane, because tea just tastes better in my cousin's back garden, though possibly not if it's cold enough for snow and I forget to bring mittens.

b/ How come south London has snow and Toronto has none?

Then Lucy at Attic 24 posted about her more northerly English snow day, spent out frolicking and then in, crocheting by the fire with hot beverages.  In the words of various people I know who are not so much prone to swearing: "Come on!"

Yesterday, we got snow.


Proper snow days in Toronto are harder to come by though, because the white stuff has to be super heavy and deep to shut anything down.  I would shake a fist at the snowplows and salt trucks we keep on tap here, if I didn't have to be a grownup and drive a car most days.

So, on the upside, I finally got driving experience in snow (because I couldn't get anybody else to do it for me) and I didn't hit anybody or lose control of my steering (often, or for very long at a time, or too near a cyclist, thank goodness.)


Living better, with or without snow

During an ordinary break from all the ordinary weekday tasks of this ordinary snow non-fest, I got to multitask listening to a little more of my new audiobook, Andrew Mellen's Unstuff Your Life, with folding laundry and crocheting a few more rows of my currently-preferred square in progress.

I think I would like this book a lot better on paper because I retain more meaning from what I see than from what I hear, though for some reason I do retain more actual content what I hear.  If I had it on paper though, I would have to work harder to find time to review said content.  H'mmmm.  Either way: it's a very good book on organizing your house and, by extension, your life.  Or perhaps the reverse?

Listening to it is pulling together a lot of threads for me, like

Life is so much shorter than you expect.

Yet... life lasts a long time.

You can do a lot in, and with, very little.

The time you spend not doing a lot is so much better spent enjoying life, than hunting for some important thing you've misplaced.

Enjoying life makes it much easier to see what you personally are meant to do a lot of.

(if you look, and if there isn't too much clutter blocking your view.)


My life needs an art director

Judging by the popularity of Star Trek conventions, I'm not the only person who sees a movie and thinks That! I want my life to look like That!  I'm especially drawn to movies with proportionally huge art direction budgets, with quirky main characters who are misunderstood, yet have the sort of clothes, haircut, bedroom decor, and personal soundtrack the average teenager would walk a very long way to have too.

Or former teenager.  Have you seen the YouTube video of how to do your own Coraline doll makeup?


I don't even want to think about how that woman crosses the room at a party in her costume; turns out the button effect is achieved by gluing buttons to your eyelids and keeping your eyes closed.  That's just an owie waiting to happen if you ask me.

Anyway, I got thinking yesterday that I would prefer my snow days to be more full of fireside and my every days to be less full of clutter, and really,

why can't they be?

(okay, the fireside might not be literally possible - there's a big sheet of collaged plywood over my fireplace right now, because when there's a fire in there the thermostat shuts the furnace down and the rest of the house turns into a meat locker.)

All I need is a really talented art director to come in and re-envision my house to be full of cool things, thereby giving me something to live up to.

Or maybe I could just knit some cushion covers for the sofa.  I don't know.


What I do know

It's gonna be snowy again today, and even colder than yesterday which is saying something, and I will be super busy for the duration: too busy for decluttering or being creative.  But we're midway to the weekend, right?  And maybe I can have a real snow day on Saturday.  Or at least, hot chocolate?  Because really good hot chocolate makes everything special.

Meanwhile: you have yourself a good day whether or not is has snow, crafting, or clutter in it, and I'll see you tomorrow!

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