Little things

(Photo by Robin. 2006)

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~ Robert Brault

Ain’t that the truth?

It’s the little things that tend to excite me, bring me joy, or make me feel content with life. It’s the little things that can throw off a day, too.

Little things I enjoy:

• My granddaughter (of course she’s on the top of my list!)
• Holding hands with my husband
• Hugs
• A good laugh
• Spotting an unusual (to me) wildflower or mushroom while hiking/walking
• A long, hot shower
• Sitting on the beach, watching the waves roll in
• Time to read a good book
• Cooking a delicious meal
• Taking a few moments each day to do a gratitude list, mentally or by writing it down
• The Best Socks in the Universe (might as well link to them since, like it or not, it’s usually my top entry)
• My favorite comfy cotton hoodie
• A cool breeze on a hot day
• A cup of tea, any kind of tea
• A good conversation with my sons
• Deep, deep breaths, the kind that go right down to my toes (I can do that now that I don’t smoke)
• Smoke-free environments
• The scent of fresh air that wafts through the apartment when I open the windows
• Listening to the spring peepers at night
• Watching fireflies in the summer
• Picnics
• Snow
• Rain
• Sunshine
• Moonlight
• Watching someone I love enjoy themselves in some activity
• Sitting quietly, being in the moment
• Walking barefoot in dewy grass
• Letting the colors of a sunrise or sunset wash over me
• Floating in the pond
• The sound of thousands of bees buzzing in the wildflower meadow

Well, this could go for a very long time (and it’s sounding a little like one of those dating things: “I enjoy long walks on the beach, picnics in the park…”). Some of these things aren’t really little things, either (my granddaughter, for instance, may be young and small in stature but she’s a big deal in my life).

Let’s make this an interactive post.  I know there are people out there reading.  Time to speak up.  What are some of the little things in life you enjoy?

Joy (3)

(Yosemite. Photo by Robin. 2006)

And we who have always thought of joy as rising, would feel the emotion that almost amazes us when a happy thing falls. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Red-beet eggs and other things

I’ve had a couple of questions about the eggs in a previous post.

Yes, those are really eggs. Red-beet eggs are a Pennsylvania Dutch treat. They’re basically eggs pickled with beets (the beets are what give them such a lovely color). My husband grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country and his mother taught me how to make them the way her mother made them.

I don’t have the recipe with me on our sabbatical adventures, but this one is fairly close to how I make them:

• 1 (15 ounce) can sliced beets
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 12 hard cooked eggs, peeled

Heat up the vinegar and sugar just until the sugar melts. The more sugar you use, the sweeter the eggs will be (stating the obvious here!). Add the can of beets, juice and all. Place the eggs in a jar, pour the vinegar-sugar-beets mixture over the eggs, put a lid on it. Refrigerate.

It takes a couple of days for the eggs to pickle and take on that lovely color. The longer they sit, the better they taste (up to a point; you don’t want to keep them for months or years or anything like that). You can reuse the pickled beet mixture for another round of eggs. After that it starts to lose its flavor.

My mother-in-law liked them on the sweet side. I like them vinegary, so the amount of sugar I use is somewhere between 1/4 – 1/2 cup. Some folks add onions. I’ve never tried them that way. I have used fresh beets rather than canned. You have to cook the beets in a little water first, then add the sugar and vinegar.

(Note:  I posted an update with the recipe my mother-in-law gave me.  You can find that recipe here.  Enjoy!)

Other things

It seems my most popular entry is “My Feet.” It was kind of funny at first, but it’s beginning to feel a bit creepy. There are a lot of people with foot fetishes out there (if the search engine terms on my blog stats are a reasonable sampling) and the post I did about my feet has been drawing in visitors. I’m thinking about changing the photos, at least the second one although a part of me feels it’s ridiculous to care one way or another.

Still and all, it’s a little weird.

Watching the rain

(Rain on the window.  Photo by Robin)

A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is rain. ~Arabian Proverb

11 March 2012 update:  I’ve been wanting to once again write small stones to go with my images, but haven’t been able to find the time because of traveling, gardening, and life in general.  This week I am going to work on getting things in order so I can set aside the time as if I have a very important appointment.

In the meantime, I’ll release a few more posts from the private files.  (A couple of years ago I made almost all the posts on this blog private.  I’ve been wanting to switch them back to public, but don’t like to do it all at once since it means an email goes out to subscribers every time I switch one over.  There are about 700 private posts.  Nobody wants 700 emails from one blog.)

Wonders

(Moon over the Bogs. Photo by Robin. 2006)

Sometimes I look at something and I think it’s so wonderful.
And then I realize I was pointing out a fact
That was as obvious as the moon.

~ Hsu Yun

Pathways

(Peat bog trail at Quail Hollow. Photo by Robin. 2007)

I’ve been spending a lot of time sorting through my photos on the computer. I’m a very lazy photographer in that I haven’t had many of them printed. This sorting business is going to take a long time.

I’ve noticed a trend in my photography, something I might not have noticed if I hadn’t been so lazy and forced to spend an entire day staring at the fruits of my photographic labors. Every group of photos contains at least one shot of a road, a pathway, a river, a window, a gate, or a doorway.

I wonder if that reflects my nature as a Sagittarius. We’re known for having itchy (as in wanting to travel) feet. I do enjoy traveling, that’s for sure. I don’t enjoy the packing and the angst and anxiety (aka fear of flying) I go through getting ready to travel, but the traveling itself is always a fun adventure.

This pathways and portals trend might also be a reflection of my favorite activity: walking and hiking. I like nothing more than to set out on a long walk or hike. I have dreams of going on walking tours where we spend the entire day walking through some countryside or along the coast of any country. Like Forrest Gump and his running, sometimes when I start walking I just want to keep going and going, see where it leads me. Walking is, in my opinion, the best way to travel. It slows you down so you can truly see and enjoy the scenery and the moment. I like having my feet on the ground and in touch with the earth (which might partially explain my fear of flying).

In spending a day looking at a lot of these photos, they also remind me of meditative journeys. I look at the photo and in my mind I begin to wander the path in front of me, letting my spirit lead me where it will. This type of journey opens up whole new worlds for me, when I allow myself the freedom to travel in this way. It’s not always easy to let go, or to feel safe enough to let go. But when I do, oh…what a wonder it is!

I frequently keep this type of photo as my desktop background because these images are so calming to me. But they’re also exciting, because who knows where any pathway or portal may lead?

Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it. Then the tie of association is born; then spring those invisible fibres and rootlets through which character comes to smack of the soil, and which make a man kindred to the spot of earth he inhabits. –JOHN BURROUGHS, The Exhilaration of the Road, Winter Sunshine, 1875

My feet

Today I’m focusing on my feet.

Yep, those are my feet, all nice and comfy and warm in the Best Socks in the Universe. Everyone should own a pair of these pampering socks. It is pure bliss, wrapping my feet in these wonderful socks. (They’re made by Gold Toe Socks. I’ve been unable to find them on the internet or I’d link you up to ’em. I bought mine at the Gold Toe Socks outlet store.)

I’ve never been particularly fond of my feet. I’ve certainly never thought of them as pretty feet. I often refer to them as duck feet. No, I don’t have webbed feet. But I do have wide feet. Buying shoes for my wide feet has always been something of a challenge. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have grossly distorted wide feet. You won’t find my feet in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. They are, however, wide enough that buying pretty shoes that actually fit was never much of an option in my younger days. I would squeeze my duck feet into dress shoes and suffer the consequences (pain) for as long as I had to wear them. That made for some long days when I worked in a job that required me to wear a suit or equally professional looking outfits.

And now I’m old enough and wise enough to buy shoes for comfort and fit rather than looks. New Balance shoes are the best. They make them in wide sizes for those of us with duck feet.

These are my feet without the Best Socks in the Universe. My naked feet, in all their glory. Granted, this is a post-pedicure shot, but I wasn’t going to show them in all their frumpy, winter, calloused glory. I’m not quite ready for that yet.

I’m learning to like my feet, to truly appreciate them. They are, after all, carrying the weight of the world. Well, the weight of their world at any rate, which is me and whatever I might be carrying.

My feet are the beginning and ending of me (depending on which way you’re going). I bet my feet were a source of great delight before I could walk on them, providing hours of entertainment as I held them up in the air or tried to put them in my mouth. “This little piggy” must have been played on those toes hundreds of times. My feet have been tickled more times than I care to count. They’re not very ticklish feet, by the way. You have to know the secret to tickling my feet in order to get a good tickled reaction. No, I’m not revealing the secret. Dream on.

My feet bring me into direct contact with the earth, one step at a time. I love being barefoot. My feet were born to be naked, all exposure, all the time. My feet love me when they’re naked. I love my feet when they’re naked. I like the feel of cold tile, plush carpet, green grass, warm or cool sand, mud, dirt, and even concrete. When I was much, much younger I had feet tough enough to walk over any surface because I spent most of my summer days running around without shoes.

There was study from Rush Medical College, Chicago, published in the September 2006 issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism that suggests adults with osteoarthritis benefit by going barefoot. Findings “suggest that modern shoes may exacerbate the abnormal biomechanics of lower extremity OA,” and that “modern shoes, and perhaps our daily walking practices, may need to be reevaluated with regard to their effects on the prevalence and progression of OA.”

See? Even science agrees. Barefoot is best.

My feet take me places. I often wonder how many miles my feet have walked and hiked. In almost 50 years, they’ve gotten around the block, as they say, much more than once, that’s for sure. I walked over 700 miles last year and that’s just the mileage I kept track of during my walking workouts. Who knows how many more miles I walked doing things like shopping, cleaning house, visiting museums, walking around at work (where I was on my feet all day), meandering around the pond?
My feet balance me. They keep me grounded.

Now that I’ve taken the time to think about them, my feet are amazing.

I am grateful for my amazing feet, for all the miles they’ve walked, for all the places they’ve taken me, for all the standing around they’ve put up with, and for allowing me to stay in touch with Mother Earth.

Thank you, feet. Maybe you’re not terribly pretty feet, but you sure are beautiful.

Quiet waters of the Chesapeake

(Chesapeake Bay. January 2007. Photo by Robin)

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world. ~ Hans Margolius

A walk in the warm winter rain

(Photo by Robin. West Chester, Pennsylvania. 2007)

Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main…
~ Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Pathways

(Photo by Robin. Quail Hollow. 2006)

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it … if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

–SOREN KIERKEGAARD, Danish philosopher, 1813-55