Spring is around the corner!

Hello,

I am looking forward to Spring. The 21st of March to be precise. Not only because tradition has it that I will participate in the family egg painting/lunch at my daughter's home but because I missed making any resolutions on the 1st of this year. I should say that I had some goals on my mind but then if I did not write them down then they have no bite in them and also there is no goal setting or revisiting them later at a specific time to monitor my successes and my mis-hits.

Mostly I am anxiously awaiting spring as I have a very good feeling that I am going to rock my world when it comes to where and how I want to live in the time that I have ahead of me. I have recently been getting these surges of thoughts and energy that tell me that I have a spectacular decade ahead. I can feel movement in many directions. High energy stuff. Like home (oh! but I love my current home!) and work and travel and there's more. Let me start to set the platform for my resolutions.

Lets look at the home situation. It would be nice if I could live in a very spacious newer penthouse with tons of windows affording expansive city and ocean views. All the extravagant finishes in all the rooms and lots of stainless steel. Too cold you say? Ok, maybe just the stainless steel appliances. Surely they would have to be stainless steel now that they have the smudge free surface on the market. Parking for two cars, of course. The question then arises - where? That's the sixty million dollar question. Not only do I love my current home with its quiet location and nice garden but I am blessed to be situated close to my grandkids and their mama and papa of course. Then again, change is good they say and I have lived here for over 4 years. There was a time that, on average, Canadians moved homes once in about 5 years. Maybe we are not so mobile any more now that spikes in property values combined with shrinking earnings for the ever-increasing numbers of baby boomers like me has meant that we remodel our existing homes and live in them for some more years. Home equity, two beautiful words. Translates to money in the bank. No money, no honey! I mean the real stuff for my toast. Ok, so it looks like this is going nowhere - yet. The energy flow is kind of low today but like I said it is early in the decade and I can sense a build-up coming. Maybe not in Spring but certainly down the road. I will resolve to keep an open mind in this matter. The Universe will set me up where and when when the time is right. Here's another way to look at it. I live in a home that has a beautiful garden. Sadly neglected, to be truthful, in the last part of last year. Neglected by me but not by the forces that are present to create an everchanging landscape of a healthy mix of evergreens and perennials. Oh! those colours. That kind of tells me that maybe the Energy will translate into re-visiting the garden and re-arranging the granite stones around the ponds, creating a 10' x 20' zen garden and transplanting some of the existing shrubs in different locations around the garden where they will make a stronger presence and all that would kind of create a new experience/garden landscape that could in a way be more like living than just existing. Case in point. I sometimes drive in the area of multi-million dollar homes and see some really nicely trimmed hedges and shrubs that make me go gaga. Then I ask myself if I see the same cookie-cut shrubs that seem like so round or square or whatever, have I really felt that closeness to the natural setting that a free-growing, oh just sensibly pruned, garden would? Everchanging landscape seems to be the answer. That would make me feel renewed. That landscape can include the garden within me that is my spirit. Give it sun and warmth and love and sit back an enjoy a new joy each time you visit it. Works for me.

This Spring will almost certainly have to be the beginning of my need to keep my body active. Gardening can do that but you know one works in the garden mostly for the therapeutic reasons and mostly hurting knees. I want to put it out there that I will welcome the move to the future with the move to the recreation centre. Three times a week minimum. For a couple hours each time. There's pickle ball and zumba that have really caught on these days. Both these sports, if I may call them, involve movement. Lots of it. Pickle ball is the mind and eye coordination kind movement around a court and zumba is the movement with salsa kind music. Both very intoxicating and both opening up avenues to new friendships, laughter and food of course. I know that food is another whole issue that can sharpen or dull one's spirit. I know as much about this subject to state quite clearly that I will not overindulge and I will stay away from starch and grain and go for protein and vegetables. I want to add that I am so fortunate that I live in an area of the world that offers so much outdoor recreational opportunities that I will hike trails, go boating, try snoweshoeing and swim in the lakes of course. This is the year that I will not waste. I will take it in as I have never dived into another one before. Hopefully I will have the company of the guardian angels and my earthly companions, both friends and family, to make the experiences so much more special.

That's two down, home and play, and one to go. Just three is all I need. Anything that matters would probably fall into one of these. Then again, at various times, I might feel the need to travel. Short or long trips. The short ones would probably fit into the first resolution. The long hauls need no resolutions as these would be spontaineous and once in a blue moon events.

Then the last thing I want to resolve for the year March 2011 - March 2012 has a spiritual bent. I shall spend a little more time on this before I put anything down here. I have some time to dwell on this - or do I. I once told a friend that I would buy a boat in a couple of years so I can take it to the lakes and go for a ride  when I felt like it. His response: "Why not now?" Exactly. For who knows how time will affect our journey on this Earth. More than most I know from recent events in my home scene that Time need to be grasped and enjoyed to the maximum. It is the most slippery thing if you think about it and once it slips by it cannot be recovered. Human beings are procrastinators by nature. I will use that excuse to procrastinate. I will howver write my monthly blog entirely on this resolution as I want to give it the stage it should have in our lives.

This piece has been challenging as I have not written in a bit. I hope that it all comes together as you read it. Also this is the last day of the month and I had resolved at the beginning of this year that I would blog at least once every month. Todays tha day it had to get done. Please excuse any errors because of it.

Love to all and with prayers for a very happy 2011.

AJ

It's time to rejuvenate!

                                                                                     Hello,

For about six or eight weeks my soul has been going through a search. Its been feeling a sense of "need to do something" which also means that it is getting a little bored with the way its just been idling these days. This has led me to think if I should head out into the country with pen and paper and see and write about what a little bit of personal soul search can reveal to me in terms of expressing itself in a number of different ways.

I can think of several ways of releasing this expressive urge. I know one way of making my soul dance again would be quite simply to dance in the rain (like no one is watching). Reminds me of a wall plaque I saw at a dollar store which read something like 'life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but it is about dancing in the rain'. Something like that. Then I could actually get into music, something I have been very passionate about from a very young age. Singing seems to be a perfect combination with playing the keyboard. Then again how about just plain singing karaoke.  

There are many reason I think that I should take some alone time out. Like it is exactly one year since my trip to Ontario at Cosy Cove on the south shores of Nipissing Lake. Primo Place and I still remember those glorious sunsets

old endings, new beginnings

hi there,
they say that when something ends then something else begins. cycle of nature is the best example. birth, life, death then re-birth and on and on it goes. rather then lose time and energy with thoughts of 'what had been' one should be enjoying the 'what is'
more than once i have heard comments about the wicked past (why we find it necessary to seek sympathy i will never understand) when the present is by all accounts filled with so many blessings.
i know that my tomorrow will be better than my today and day after tomorrow will be better than tomorrow and so on till eternity.
God bless. goodnight :)

India's a calling!

Of late I have been having issues. Well, don't we all! My issue is pressure.....blood pressure to be exact. Never did I have a reading that did not bring a smile on my GP's face till about this time last year. I figured that there could be half a dozen reasons, all genuine. Or maybe a dozen reasons if I can throw in six non-genuine ones. Let me get serious here. We are talking about the silent killer (as it is commonly called).
I have tried fixing my diet. Tried excercise (watering the garden or sitting on my garden swing and swaying my head back and forth like a pendulum to keep the swing from losing its swing!). Having even tried remaining calm and happy by ignoring all my domestic chores be it laundry or dishwashing or making up my bed every single day. I remember one bright kid of mine suggested that making one's bed was a real waste of time as it would get unmade again that same night when we have to go back to bed!
I think I may found the true culprit that has found its way from my heart to my head and back to my heart and all the arteries and capillaries and veins in my body. This culprit resides in my mind and never for a moment shows any desire to go away.
It is a thought - the thought that I should go to India and as soon as I deplane at Mumbai Airport I should discard my dress pants and cotton/polyester shirt and socks and my shiny black leather shoes. I should put on some nice wooden sandals and a pure cotton 'dhotti' and march of into the India of my ancestors to witness first hand where my great grandpa plowed the land and my even greater grandma made chappatis on a charcoal burner for him.
Alas, but times have moved and maybe where my great ancestors toiled the land and made their modest homes has been reduced to a city of concrete - 'western' style.
Maybe I should keep my dress pants and all and check into an ashram. Ooooom Shaaaaanti.

How beautiful is the rain!

Hello,
It was so nice to have some rain for a day after a particularly warm spell. The grasses and gardens are much prettier now and the air certainly seems to have been cleaned up a bit too. Lets see what tomorrow brings. I will sleep in tomorrow if I hear raindrops outside. I will sleep in too if I don't hear rain drops! I will enjoy my day off. Goodnight!

Me and cooking

Hi,
Suddenly feel like cooking again! Just loved the drumsticks I threw in the pot and into the oven with some fresh crushed ginger/garlic, some yogurt and cou[ple teaspoons of tandoori masala powder. I am eyeing the frozen halibut in my freezer and seeing in my mind's eye that it will convert into a delicious serving of 'machi bhat' hopefully this weekend. I must be getting back to 'normal' after a few weeks of living on finger food!
Frog's legs on the barbecue was the topic of the evening on CKNW with some Ron guy (Shewchuk?)

Just plain wonderful

Hello,
I went to Richmond yesterday to a prayer hall that I frequented for over two decades. Nostalgic! Met my son and his significant other at a restaurant afterwards. Spoke with people I love and all in all that was a wonderful evening. It happened just because I decided at the spur of the moment to get away from my daily routine. Try it you guys out there and you will see what I mean.