Looking For Suggestions...

For ways to green up my lifestyle.

I am trying to incrementally improve my lifestyle and decrease my impact on the environment.  I'm actually doing pretty well and generally feel relatively good about this area of my life, but I know I can do better, and not in an obsessive-compulsive kind of way.  I want to be green, but not insane, sorry to disappoint anyone about to propose moving to an eco-hut outside the city and living like a hermit with no footprint at all on a perfectly self-sufficient mini-farm.

I try to give myself mini-goals, and incorporate some new tip or trick I have run across once a week or every couple of days depending on what it is and well, what it costs.

This week for instance I started turning off the power bars attached to my computers and television when not in use, and stopped brushing my teeth in the shower (it takes too long and uses up more water.)  So any resources, hints or tips would be much appreciated, and I will mention any interesting ones I run across.

Far from the Maddening Crowd

So it's Olympic time here in Vancouver, and for the most part, I'm avoiding a lot of it.  The truth is, I am working at one of the pavilions (Russia House to be precise) most nights, catering to their guests and athletes, and that is almost enough for me.  I actually wish I had not accepted this job, but well, I could use the dough.  The problem is that working every night makes me not want to go to the other events, or means I'm too busy to go to the free concerts or too tired to get up and go to say, Granville Island. 

The whole world is in my city, and I'm living behind my computer, and curled into my bed with a kitty cat. 

I could be spending time with my sister-in-law and her boyfriend while they are in town to catch some events.  I could have been volunteering at my church where they are opening the doors of that beautiful building and inviting in tourists and locals alike.  I could be volunteering with one of the environmentalist groups who are helping with cleanup and spreading the world about simple every-day changes that can be made in people's lives (that make a huge impact too!)  I could well, just be going out and enjoying the free events, and learning about other countries and trying all the various foods!  Instead, I work 6PM until 2AM most nights, and am not even awake the next day until noon.

Ah well.  Maybe, just maybe I'll drag myself out of bed and try to catch something on my next day off.

Unexpected

As quickly as my pregnancy changed my life, and my entire orientation, no longer being pregnant hasn't.  I miscarried earlier this work.  I suppose in a sense it has as well, changed my life and my viewpoint as everything shifts around me, and my hormones play pinball with my emotions, but at the same time, the shift from no-children to children hasn't been shaken.  The same is true of my husband.  As he put it, he had adjusted to the idea of life with little one, and saw no reason to adjust back.

We will try again, sometime after my body has had a chance to recover of course.  We had both accepted this, and both wanted it, this I suppose just gives us more time to prepare.

The hard part is this: how do you grieve for someone who wasn't even really alive yet?  Outside of the abortion debate, the truth was this was a piece of parasitical tissue abut the size of my thumb, if that.  There was no heartbeat, no movement, nothing I could feel or sense, or associate with a living, breathing, conscious creature.  I had never held them in my arms, or even felt them alive in my belly, yet I loved them, and deeply.

I could give you the practical things that have changed, a laundry list of things done.  I have withdrawn from school.  Now is not the time to be an intensive program of study that holds little to no interest to me really anymore, because, let's face it, my mind isn't there.  I have cut my hair, and let it go darker, though still blonde since that's what I was born with, just because I wanted a change and a break from my apartment.  I have begun to lose myself in cookbooks and the market because it's a place I find solace in the smells of simmering stews, and the steady beat of my electric mixer, or the chopping of vegetables for salads.  I went to a yoga class, rather than just practicing at home since I wanted to be around people, but not people who knew.  These are just things, things to do to occupy time and offer some tangible bit of comfort or tactile distraction.

I would tell you all that I am praying, but largely I am not.  I have no idea what to say even though I know that God knows what I intend wordless or otherwise, and understands infinitely more than I do.  Yet this is proving even mor challenging than normal.  I can continue to read my Bible, to pray or editate over text, but this, this I'm having a hard time giving over to God.  I'm just not ready to let go and say goodbye quite yet.

Maybe tomorrow will be different.

Prayer & Tea & My Epic Lack of Discipline

Ok, so I am not the most disciplined person on the planet.  Heck, I am not even close.  I struggle with the idea of waking up at the same time every day, having a morning or night-time ritual, trying to follow a schedule, remembering to take my vitamins every morning....  I think you get the idea right?  Now don't get me wrong.  I see the value in structure and time management.  I always look up to those people who get up in the morning, exercise (or not) and take time for breakfast and dressing nicely, and personal grooming (that isn't chapstick and a ponytail.)  Every New Year's I resolve to become one of them.  Every year I fail.

Yet I am having a child, and that means needing to learn to structure things a bit more.  It's a simple fact.  Kids do better with some structure in their life, and establishing routine is particularly important in early life and infancy (in as much as you can.)  Over-scheduling and over-structuring is just as detrimental as complete freedom, I know (and thank you Lenore Skenazy for reminding over-involved parents of this), but my current style needs some tweaking before LOU comes into this world.  (Lou - Little One in my Uterus.  'Cause you knew I was going to nickname the foetus living parasitically off my body for the next seven or so months.)

So this year, once again, I have resolved to improve my time-management skills and my self-discipline since I really do believe the two go hand-in-hand.  This of course, brings me to the title of this post.  Prayer.  Prayer is a discipline, and as I have said, discipline is not my forte.  So my prayer practice is lacking.  Do I pray?  Absolutely.  Do I prayer regularly?  Heck no.  I talk (and rant, and complain, and plead, and occasionally try making bad jokes toward) to God as I feel like it.  Some days this means I do a lot, some days this means not at all, and the overall lack of structure and almost mindless nature of it means that my prayer practice is really lacking in something, mostly in giving God a chance to answer. 

So my minister introduced me to Lectio Divino in the fall.  When I tried it then, it worked for me.  The mindful reading, contemplation and meditation was an expansion on skills I had already developed as an English student in University.  I have long been comfortable with text and looking into text and reading the black and white spaces on the page, and so adding a deeper layer, and more mindful practice to that was, while not easy, at least easier than just trying to force myself to sit down and "pray." 

So maybe I can't follow the traditional monastic practice of getting up early to devote a full hour to the practice every single day, but I am going to try and add a (shorter) practice to my regular life, and with any luck, stick to it.  So far, I am only a couple of days into this experiment and so far it is working.  Every other day, when I get home from school, I pour myself a cup of tea and sit down with me Bible.  Oh the tea is an essential component for me.  A good cup of tea, herbal or otherwise, is part of the 'ritual' and helps get me into the right headspace by giving me something to focus my senses on, and thereby freeing up my mind for the spiritual work ahead.  Then again, there are days when I truly believe that God gave us tea so that on off days, there would be an infinitesimally small, but infinitesimally comforting, physical manifesting of God's embrace.  Ok, maybe I give tea too much credit...

So here’s to attempting to learn self-discipline, and who knows, maybe if I can make this work, maybe I can start exercising regularly or getting up and getting ready more than ten minutes before I have to be out the door? 

Yeah right.

An explanation for the Absence

I know, I'm a terrible person.  I have learned, over the last 27 years to accept this fact.  I have made peace with my own horribleness, and make no apologies for my long absence.  I will however offer you (as in you three people who occasionally read this) an explanation.  Just before I was going to post something the second week of December, I found out something.  I found out something huge. And by "huge" I mean ginormous, gargantuan, of such immense scale that I cannot in fact quantify it in a single sentence, or even twenty thousand. 

I am pregnant.

Despite all efforts to the contrary, I am now expecting a child late August, early September.  It's still very early, and things could happen.  The chance of miscarriage at this point is still up around 20-25 percent.  Nonetheless, I have not posted anything because I have had a one track mind.  Everything has changed.  My goals, and my hopes, well they are still there, my plans though?  Torn to shreds.  And I didn't want to say anything here until after we had told our families, which we did, while visiting them all in Edmonton over New Year's.

I'll be honest, I am petrified.  I am also though very excited, very being the operative word there.  This is a good thing, it's an absolute blessing, and already I feel so much for Lou (Little One in my Uterus.)  It's frightening to think though that Eric and I are having a child.  He's still in Law School.  I am going to need to go back to school to take a couple of courses a semester a year after they are born to complete my own program.  I still want to study theology, but now that's more an eventually.  Did I mention my husband is still in Law School???   Did I mention I am still in school???

On a positive note: Think of all the delightful things I now get to knit!