A new connection

I am always deeply touched when a person feels comfortable enough to open up and share their pain with me.

Yesterday I had a volunteer in the office with me. We don't know each other well, but we chatted as we worked. She was in a talkative mood, and as the afternoon progressed I learned about her family back in Ontario, her career, her faith, and her tragedies. This woman has lost several family members in very sad circumstances, and has not quite healed from all of it.

What a privilage to hear her stories. Now we are more connected than we were before, and I have a better understanding of her needs and strengths.

I look forward to the growth of this new friendship.

branding myself - sounds painful, doesn't it?

Lately I've been thinking about making changes to my blog. Many blog "experts" say your blog should have a theme. It should be topical in order to attract and retain more visitors.

This seems to make sense, so I started trying to think of a theme that I could write about on a regular basis. One that is unique and that I would like to bookmark if I found it. As a person who's busy trying to cram every hobby and interest in the world into one lifetime, this was a difficult exercise for me. The one consistent thread that I find running through my life, that ignites my passions, is human relationship, on both the large and small scales. Well, that could work.

Now I think I need a new name for my blog, but creating a new address would be a pain, so I'm trying to think of a name that connects with human connection, but still has something to link it with "wannapeanut". This is a good puzzle.

I looked up famous quotes with the word 'peanut' or 'nuts' in them and did not find many - definately no great ones.

Every idea I have is already being used, so now I'm taking suggestions.

Sometimes I am a bad person

There, I said it. Now I feel better.

There are times when I let expectations (my own and those of society around me) weigh so heavily on me. It gets hard to admit that I can rarely live up to those ideals. My everyday failures to be good become little secrets that I keep to myself and they suck up my attention and my energy. Keeping others from finding out holds me captive, unable to engage fully in life.

It is so freeing everytime I finally let go and admit that often times I suck in a really big way. Then I can devote my full attention and my time to what's going on around me.

I need to do this much more often.

Law of Inertia

Medicine Hat MP Monte Solberg ticked me off by sending me a slick, shiny flyer in the mail, full of drivel about how the 1% GST reduction is going to save average Canadians a lot of money and blah, blah, blah. But then he did something that made me happy. He added a postage paid postcard at the end for me to send him my thoughts.

The inertia of apathy is difficult to overcome. The simplicity of this little slip of paper was actually enough motivation for me to detach it and set it carefully at my place on the table so I won't miss it and will fill it out...tomorrow.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Sometimes my job is really hard.

Someone comes in and asks for help, and I'm caught up in a whirlwind action/reaction. What kind of help do they really want? What is in between their words? Say the right things. Make them feel comfortable. Ask this. Don't ask that. How is their response? Checking off the mental list of things to do, things to say, papers to sign. Breathing can wait.

And then they're gone. Time slows again. Did I miss a step? Did I miss an opportunity? I'm left focusing on what was left out, unsaid. It feels like failure.

I know I will drive myself crazy if I continue to look at each file on my desk with a perfectionist's eyes. I'm not God. I can't expect perfect results. I don't even know what perfect results should look like. I can only hope for better-than-before-they-walked-in.

I'm always telling volunteers that their job is not to fix a person's life over a cup of coffee, but to connect with them and make them feel like a real human being; valued and equal. I need to follow my own instructions.

Too much of a good thing

I am sick of raspberries.

I'm sure most gardeners can identify with the experience of harvesting much more of a particular crop than they personally need. This summer I have spent hour upon hour picking, cleaning and sorting raspberries. I have eaten them almost everyday, as well as frozen the 'B' grade berries, and cooked the smooshed ones.

In case you, too, are getting tired of eating the raspberries in your garden, I am posting my recipe for raspberry sauce so you can invite your friends over for dessert and get them to eat your raspberries for you. I doubt they will complain.

Reduced-Sugar Raspberry Sauce

4 cups fresh raspberries
2 or 3 cups fresh rhubarb (you probably have some of this to get rid of, too!)
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cinnamon stick

Combine rhubarb, lemon juice and sugar in a med. saucepan and simmer over MED-LOW for 15-20 minutes. Add raspberries and cinnamon stick. Continue to simmer for 20 minutes more.

Spoon over whatever you like. Mocha-flavoured yogurt is particularly good.

knowing myself

It's funny how discrimination can sneak up on you. I consider myself an sensitive, loving person. I think I value people with all levels of mental and physical functionality. But then every once in a while I startle myself with knee jerk reactions. I'll realize that I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a "normal" person being marrried to someone who is mentally handicapped, or a brain-injured woman raising her kids alone. Being ashamed of these thoughts and feelings don't make them go away. It will take more work and more grace for our society to be able to really accept and include everyone. To stop thinking of others as being less than ourselves.

swords into plowshares

The news was terrible this morning. I woke up to nothing but killing and exploding things. After 15 minutes of bad news they switched to a garden call-in show. I promptly felt serene and content.

Gardening: opiate for the masses?

It starts my only stories while feeling a romantic wind

This weekend we took a deep breath and bought two plane tickets to Japan. We had a huge wad of airmiles burning a hole in our pocket and thought that now is as good a time as any. I feel irresponsible and guilty, but we will probably never have 'enough' disposable income to make a vacation like this financially sensible.

In October we will be travelling to visit our friend Dave, who has been living in Fukuyama for a couple of years. The trip will be two and a half weeks, so we plan on using rail passes to zip around and see as much as we can. It looks so small on the world map, but there is still far too much to see in such a short time. It'll be hard to pare things down.

Today I went to the library and took out some travel guides. Now I will start 3 months of intense absorption of everything japanese!

I hope I don't bore you all to tears with incessant blathering about nothing else. Please tell me if I do.

Beaming with Pride

Last night I had a milestone moment during my stick-shift driving lesson. I finally got the hang of nudging the car up the driveway without fear of ramming it through the garage door. I was getting so frustrated, and then finally the lights came on and it all became so easy and so clear. Now I feel I can tackle anything. Bring on the freeway!

Greenery

This was a weekend of parks. On Saturday night we served coffee and watched the fireworks at the top of the hill looking down into Kin Coulee Park. Sunday aftertoon we had lunch at Echo Dale Park, just outside of town. Today we drove out to Cypress Hills Interprovincial park with some friends and spent several hours strolling, eating and resting in the shade. We saw so many different birds, insects and animals. I kept thinking about how lucky we are to live in a place where we have all this wilderness at our fingertips. How fitting that I got so close to being patriotic on Canada Day weekend.

This weekend was also a weekend of mosquitos. So far I don't think I have West Nile Virus. Someone speculated on Saturday that the native tribes of Canada must have developed an immunity to the little pests. He knows many first nations people who don't seem to be bothered by them at all. Any thoughts or facts about this?