My Indulgent Weekend

What do you do when you feel tired all the time? How do you keep your spirits up day after day?

I get tired of feeling tired and I don't want to give in to feelings of uselessness or self-pity. That was actually one of the reasons I started this blog last Spring; to help me remember the simple pleasures of life. The big pleasures are more elusive these days and so it helps to focus on small things of joy and to remember that there really is joy in such moments.

This weekend with all the rain and my seeming inability to get out to do an important errand, I ended up staying close to home. An internet friend in a far off land told me I should get out to the movies but the rain hindered that. Instead, I rented two movies from a video place a block away and stayed cuddled up with a soft blanket and pillows to eat popcorn, drink soda and watch:

He's Just Not Into You with Jennifer Aniston & Ben Affleck; and Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio.

I watched the Jennifer Aniston, chick flick first and found it quite engaging. I have not read the book by the same name but I did watch an interview on Oprah Winfrey with the author and found him to be very enlightening. The movie was fictional however and it captured my attention more so than I expected.

Perhaps I was tired by the time the second movie played (the first movie was rather long). But I did not enjoy this "blah-ish" movie nearly as much as I expected since I love both Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio. Anyway, the two movies more than took up my Saturday evening.

Today, I finished a book I've taken a long while to start (it's been sitting in my collection for a long while) Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by Kate Taylor. This was a satisfying book overall but it was weakened in the telling of the story through the eyes of three protagonists. I think it was one too many, but that is my humble opinion. I won't give the story line away but I did very much enjoy the diary entries of Mme. Proust who spent much of her life (at least in this novel) attending to the needs of her asthmatic writer son, Marcel Proust. If anyone reads the book's description on Amazon.com and would like to read it, I would be interested in a book exchange.

Still feeling indulgent, we had chicken with ginger ale sauce for Sunday dinner from Lynda in Tanzania; one of the bloggers I love to read. She has a lot of wonderful recipes. Some of you might be wondering what I am doing eating chicken when I said I was going vegan. Sadly, I have not been able to continue with my vegan diet. It simply takes much more energy and planning than I can muster at this time. Whenever I am a little more "up", I hope to incorporate vegan eating as often as I can.
The chicken dish was delicious accompanied by brown rice and a mixture of steamed gai lan (chinese broccoli), crimini mushrooms and green beans.

In my first making of this dish, I learned that next time I need to somehow get the more fast out of the chicken first. Perhaps this means boiling it or partially cooking it and straining off the fast. I also need to measure the ginger ale more carefully or use more chicken to have a thicker sauce than what I ended up with. Nonetheless, it was a delicious dish which I will try again some time. My roommate pronounced the sauce "really, really good" and asked what was in it.

Downsizing

Before the fire in the condo building on Mother's Day, I had been contemplating downsizing. Excessive paper, books and stuff coming out of the closets were all making me feel unhappy about my current level of materialism. With my poor health issues, I do not make quick progress on any project so I hadn't begun to get organized when the fire happened.

We were in a hotel for several months after the fire while reconstruction went on in the affected units in the building. When I moved back in I was even poorer in health than before the fire so progress in unpacking and downsizing has been very slow. I did manage to get rid of clothes, books and "odds and sods" to the local goodwill; but there is still much to do to get rid of things and satisfactorily downsize.

I've decided also that some smaller things can be gifted to friends who will appreciate them. Here are two little packages I'm packing for friends south of the border.

Silver earrings for a friend in Maryland. These are for pierced ears but my friend will convert them to clipped earrings.

A bracelet and a broach for a friend in Florida.

I have many reasons for downsizing. The main one is waste. Wasted funds as I don't use a lot of things I buy and wasted space since I've run out of space for everything I buy. If I can overcome accumulating things, I think I will have more funds to give to missions overseas, to the Missions of Hope. The people helped by this missions live in simple huts with not even a scrap of paper lying about. Helping the missions really makes me appreciate more those things I do have. It also makes me question, what I really need to live and live well.

Once I've downsized (and in fact even before then), I need to be able to ensure I don't get to overflowing in the condo again. I've heard from experts that the way to keep this from happening, is to get rid of at least one article for every item you purchase. From a lesser known Canadian actress who keeps only a small wardrobe of clothes, I learned that she donates two items of clothing for every one item she purchases. Now that, is will power and determination. I think I will be doing well if I can rid myself of one item for every item purchased. Give it a try yourself and you will see this is actually harder than it sounds. If you are successful, you will be doing a small part for "greening" your space.