The Inevitable Resolutions

I think this whole season of binging and darkness and consumerist frenzied overindulgence is the perfect set up to start fresh in the New Year. It's brilliant actually.

My friend Mary had a recipe for the flu or feeling blue: if you're feeling crappy, just make yourself watch daytime TV, and when you're really sick of the couch, make yourself watch it for four more hours. By then you won't be able to stand another minute and you'll get over whatever it was.

This seasonal extravaganza falls in the same category. Eat one more piece of fudge, stuff in some shortbread, slop down some Bailey's, put on your fat pants and by New Year's Eve you'll be so ready to stop, that you will. Hence all those January over-enthusiastic gym-goers and instant marathoners.

The key is baby-steps. My tendency is to go from 0 to 60 mph. But it really is better to start small. And that is my plan...instead of thinking I have to paint the entire inside of the house at once, I will do one or two hours a day.

And. I won't be doing any of it until we're back from our train trip to Montreal. Hmmm...which means I'll be overindulging for another two weeks. Forgot about that. Oh well.

My New Year's resolutions will begin when we return on Jan 16th. Wow. I'm really going to be ready by then.

The Next Thing (ish)

We're going to China. Kevin & I as backpackers, albeit rather old backpackers. But still.
This will be a trip just for the sake of travel. Not because I want to write about it or have an assignment or anything like that. We leave February 18th and return March 27th. Six weeks of planes, trains and bicycles.

I'm finding it harder to do the whole writing pitch and query thing lately. Not sure what that's about. Maybe this rainy grey day is just leaching all ambition from my bones. I just want to read and lie around and eat bon-bons. Is that so wrong? I figure as long as I don't start watching daytime TV, I'm still okay. That has to be the line in the sand for me. Just say no to Dr. Phil.

I'm pondering the idea of what I want to do with this whole writing thing. Perhaps this is just a Christmas phase of inertia. Let's call it that. Now I don't have to make any decisions about it. Just ride it and see where the wave lands.

Make shortbread. Surely, that's the answer. Though quite honestly? I'd rather just have it show up in my house somehow. Oh dear. I'm in a completely lazy-dog mode. Let's call it an incubation phase instead. It sounds more promising that way.

That's it. I'm mulling big thoughts and grand plans even though it might just look like I'm drinking rum and eggnog while working on a puzzle of a world map.

Been thinking about the past year

I've been thinking about this past year. It's been another rather large one. Lots of trips and lots of memories. I'm working hard at being able to have lots to reminsce about when I'm old and stuck in my rocker.

It was great traveling with Dee Dee & Karen this past spring. Who knew that our regular hiking appointment would turn into a month long trip into India? Holi is a great tradition. I love the
idea of tossing bright colours on each other. It was so intense.

That's India.
Intensely Bright and Beautiful.

Africa Slideshow - Click on image for enlarged view

Just a few images of the many still filed in my computer. Some captured by the camera and so many that are only memories. How do you really present a trip? A series of photos, some words and somehow you hope to convey the enormity of what transpired. But it doesn't matter. It happened. That's enough.

Ephemera - Altered Books

It's 9:52 pm. Just finished rearranging my little office again. Seems it's the only way I ever actually clean it is to throw everything into the bedroom and then slowly reintroduce it back in, piece by piece. I had this compulsion for several reasons, first, because that's just what I do. I need to shake things up and can't stand anything to stay the same too long. Second, I'm avoiding the article about Malawi that I need to write. A more gracious explanation could be that I'm incubating ideas...yeh, that's it. Third, I'm onto this altered book thing. I love collages. Love them. And have seen altered books at various points over the last couple years, but somehow it just really hit me the other day, that I really, really had to get going on this. So, of course, the office space must be reconfigured to add this new area for exactly that. Tomorrow, I start. Gluing, cutting, pasting, collecting little bits of maps, tissue, cards, words, ephemera as they say in the collage and altered book world...ephemera...things of no lasting significance. Ephemeral - that which is fleeting, that which lasts a very short time.

Back At Home

Wow.
Back from Africa. It's hard to reconcile these trips. Not really sure where to file this new information.
Where do experiences like watching a leopard haul a reedbuck carcass up a sausage tree fit in? Is it in the same category as the roasted duck dinner - served with a very fine rose wine - that Kevin & I had the other night?
Or what do you do with the memory of two young boys named Frank and Cameroon eating our group's leftover chicken carcasses out of the big oil drum garbage can? Does it belong with my latest health focus of making sure I get my 800 IU's of Vitamin D?
Being charged by elephants while in our safari jeep in the Serengeti doesn't really relate to yesterday's experience of walking to the IGA with my cloth grocery bag.
When people tell you the world is small. Tell them this. They're wrong. We are, all of us, living on completely different planets. The world is huge and diverse. It is a freakin' miracle. Every square inch of it.

I created a Trip Map.

October 11, 2007
Well there ya go! I figured out how to add a map to this blog. If I can do this, well, hello! There's hope for anyone. I've sketched out a very basic route plan cuz most African cities don't seem to have made it onto Google's radar yet. Lots of big brown space where there should be city names. But then...that's why we can't call the world small yet, can we? And all the more reason to get out there and see it for yourself.

Gearing up.

October 11th, 2007
We're home earlier than planned. Changed a few flights around and got in on the night of the 7th. Almost rid of the jetlag now. I've put away all those city clothes from our days in Quebec and stored the fleecey stuff from our time in Cape Breton.
Kevin headed off on his weekend trip today, which means we won't see each other again for 37 days. I think this is the longest time apart yet. Argh.
Karen & I are emailing and calling back & forth as we get the last of the details organized. This really is going to be an amazing trip.
The backpack stuff is scattered around the bedroom floor. Should be able to fit it all in with room to spare. Filling an extra bag with pens, pencils, paper, world maps and whatever else we can come up with to take to the schools in Malawi.
It's a silver-grey day. The water has mercury sparkles below the diffused sun in the high puffed clouds. The waves are steady today. How does that work? No visible wind difference and yet some days, it's glassy-smooth and then today, it's a steady wash on the rocks.
I would like to add a map to my website so I could share my trip route. It's times like these I wish I could get a more Internet savvy brain plopped into my head. I have such crappy patience for trying to figure these things out. I know it's probably something a 7-year old could do, but I grew up with piano lessons and pencil crayons. This stuff is too strange.

The End of Summer

You'd think I'd have this all down pat by now. But I don't.
I am packing my little wheelie carry-on for our upcoming trip to Montreal and then Nova Scotia. Kevin & I will come back from Nova Scotia and two days later, I'll be leaving for Africa with my girlfriend Karen. I'll be using the battered old backpack that I am also packing right now.
I feel like I'm on a multiple personality reality show.
Look! See the first persona try to pack groovy French city clothes for Montreal for her whirly 11-day stay in the city with her husband. The second woman needs comfy fleece & gore-tex for hanging out with Mary & Robert in their new Nova Scotian world that will include tromping about beaches and windy hikes and the Celtic Colours music fest.
And then there is the backpacker woman. She's dumping all her old cotton pants, beat up T-shirts and Tevas into the pack while trying to squeeze in the sleeping bag and Therma-rest. Is it quite mad for a 47 year old woman to go on an overland camping trip for 3 weeks? Especially when the average age for these things is around 19? Probably. Oh well...