The Not-to-Do List
I love this meditation from Rick Warren, who sends these out daily from his Purpose Driven Life connection. I was at dinner last night with three well-connected (2 i-Phones, one something else) family members, and I remember thinking (with a grin) that we spent the entire dinner in conversation, and no one was occupied with their phone.
Choosing a simpler life
by Rick Warren
. . . a time to embrace and a time to refrain. Ecclesiastes 3:5 (NIV)
You’d think that living in Southern California means I’m surrounded by people who live a laid-back lifestyle. The truth is just the opposite: Most of the people I know are trying to cram more and more into each day.
For instance, a couple of years ago, I was with a group of friends driving down the interstate. At one point, I looked around and realized most of us were engaged in some activity other than talking to each other. Two people were on their cell phones; another was working on his BlackBerry; and a fourth was focused on his laptop computer.
As a joke, I declared I felt left out. I called the driver, who was sitting right next to me, and we chatted together on our cell phones for a few minutes! The point of our traveling together in the van was so we could grab time to talk face-to-face! Yet we felt pressed to get it all done.
That’s when I realized the truth – we couldn’t get it all done, and God never intended for us to make completing a to-do list the purpose of our lives.
The fact is, there are many things we think we must do that really are not worth doing. My point is this: You won’t simplify your life by getting an electronic organizer. You won’t even find it by convincing your neighbor, who makes Martha Stewart look like a sloth, to give you tips about coordinating your activities while still wearing a perfect dress and pearls like Beaver Cleaver’s mom.
Simplifying is really about choices – prioritizing what is important – and then sticking to those choices no matter how tempting it is to add more to your to-do list. In fact, take those tempting activities and put them on a list of things not to do.
You are the only one who can assume responsibility for your time and clarify what’s really important to you.
Now maybe you’re thinking, “But I have to take care of the kids,” or “I have to get this report done by Friday.” I’m not naïve about the pressures many people feel today, but it may be that those things – your children, your work – are the priorities you keep on your to-do list, and you move other things to the not-to-do list.
Home Improvement: Spackle and Paint
When you paint those walls (or have them painted) save a small container of your paint in an airtight container. When you are putting things on the walls – yeh, you can measure all you want, but sometimes that wire on the back of the mirror or heavy painting is just a little longer than it should be. It happens to everyone, even the pros.
When I was an Army wife, our houses had to pass inspection before we moved on. I was GOOD. I learned how to mix a little spackle and paint, and use a toothpick to seal the holes.
Once the hold is sealed, use a paper towel or kleenex or toothbrush (in a pinch your clean finger) to make the surface a little rougher, otherwise the spackled area stands out because it is smoother than the surrounding area. Using a toothpick works best for filling in small holes, if you have a larger area, use a popsicle stick or small spatula. Having a little paint of the original wall color mixed in to the spackle makes the fill invisible. 🙂
(Whenever I use spackle, I think of my sister Sparkle, who calls oatmeal ‘spackle’, LOL!)
Pray – then Listen
(Warning – this is religious based musing; if that is offensive to you, skip this post 🙂 )
Jesus often used the phrase “if you have the eyes to see” and “if you have the ears to hear” after telling his listeners a metaphorical story.
Yesterday, AdventureMan and I had another huge surprise. We filed for a tax exemption, and we were told that for this year, the previous exemption would hold, and then next year, our exemption would start. You would think that might be bad news, but in our case, the previous owner had all kinds of wonderful exemptions, and in a year with a lot of expenses, not having a huge property tax bill sounds really good to us.
“Humd’allal!” I said to AdventureMan as we left the building. (Thanks be to God!)
When we knew we wanted to retire this year, we began praying about it together every morning before AdventureMan headed off to work. We specifically asked that God be in every detail of the move – and as you can imagine, a move back to the USA from Qatar has a lot of details. It was more complicated than “just” a move. We had a huge storage shipment which needed to meet up with us in Pensacola, a cat that needed to come with us. We needed to buy a house, and to do that, we had to sell a house, and we needed to buy cars, and basic household appliances; we needed to start up all over again with groceries, and with cleaning supplies, and gardening supplies, and the most basic items you take for granted every day in your well-established lives. There were a LOT of details, an overwhelming amount of detail, and, by the grace of God, every detail was covered.
Some details, like the total rewiring of our house, may not seem like such a blessing, but, by the grace of God, we had the money to cover the need, and we are glad we could get the rewire done before moving in, and we are really really glad not to have to worry about fires happening in our electrical system. If and when we need to sell this house, having had it rewired helps its salability, too.
Some people might call it good luck. We don’t think so. We think it is God, answering prayers, in control of all the details, and blessing us in ways we can’t even begin to imagine. Every now and then, we have “the eyes to see.”
Prince Attab of Baghdad
I love A-Word-A-Day. This morning, I read it aloud to AdventureMan – who knew? Who knew that tabby cats got their name from a cloth which was named for a district in Baghdad named after Prince Attab? You can subscribe to this daily e-mail by clicking on the blue type above. It’s free. Amazing, huh?
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg
tabby
PRONUNCIATION:
(TAB-ee)
MEANING:
noun:
1. A domestic cat with a striped or brindled coat.
2. A domestic cat, especially a female one.
3. A spinster.
4. A spiteful or gossipy woman.
5. A fabric of plain weave.
6. A watered silk fabric.
7. A building material made of lime, oyster shells, and gravel.
ETYMOLOGY:
For 1-6: From French tabis, from Medieval Latin attabi, from Arabic attabi, from al-Attabiya, a suburb of Baghdad, Iraq, where silk was made, from the name of Prince Attab. Cats got the name tabby after similarity of their coats to the cloth; the derivations of words for females are probably from shortening of the name Tabitha.
For 7: From Gullah tabi, ultimately from Spanish tapia (wall).
USAGE:
“I was playing whist with the tabbies when it occurred, and saw nothing of the whole matter.”
Charles James Lever; Jack Hinton, the Guardsman; 1857.
“Kay Sekimachi uses tabby and twill weaving to contrast black and beige linens.”
Stunning 30-year Retrospective at San Jose Museum of Quilts Textiles; Independent Coast Observer (California); Jan 4, 2008.
“Mayor Carl Smith suggested that tabby fence posts be used around the cemetery’s perimeter because the oyster-based concrete would better fit the island’s character.”
Jessica Johnson; Group Restoring Cemetery; The Post and Courier (South Carolina); Jan 21, 2010.
“Is it Spicy?”
AdventureMan and I have wide ranging taste in dining out, as you know if you are a regular reader of this blog. We like Barbecue, we like Mexican, we like Vietnamese, we like Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Seafood. There is one food we do not like – tasteless food. We like TASTE.
Living here in the South, we will often see a group come into a restaurant, and one person – always a lady – will ask the waitress “Is it spicy?”
Spicy doesn’t mean fiery hot, spicy means pretty much anything other than the food’s natural taste plus salt – they do use a lot of salt in food here. At one restaurant, the waitress said “no, it’s not spicy, but there is a little bit of horseradish in the cocktail sauce” and the little lady said “oh, then I had better order something else.”
It’s all a matter of taste, what your palette is used to, and what it craves.
I wonder, too, if it isn’t what we are trained to expect – for example, some Nigerian friends once told us that from the time their children are babies, they give them little bites of hot hot pepper with their food. I think many of our restaurants add sugar, as well as salt, so that we have become more and more addicted to sweetness.
How To Be a Southern Lady
You’d think moving back to your own country would be a piece of cake, wouldn’t you? We nomads know better. Young people who travel to other countries to go to school know better. Military people know better. Missionaries know better. Diplomats know better. Anyone who has spent time living abroad know that it works both ways – you have an impact where you are living, and where you are living has an equal impact on you. You may go back, but you are never the same.
With this move, AdventureMan and I have been too busy trying to get settled and to take care of the incredible amount of bureaucratic detail it takes to relocate. Even with AdventureMan ‘retired’, the days are flying by, and we don’t know why we are so busy.
For one thing, I am doing my own housework, and I am finding I am not very good at it. Like I am good at getting laundry done, and even folded, but I haven’t ironed in a long time, and the things that need ironing are stacking up. I have bought a beautiful new ironing board, and a beautiful iron . . . and some starch, the liquid kind I like, not the spray kind. . . but I haven’t set it up, and I haven’t ironed, not a thing. I have discovered that all my packed things looked a lot better after hanging in the closets for a week, most of the wrinkles fell out, lucky me. But . . . the day of reckoning is coming.
The worst part, for me, is cleaning my floors. My floors are supposed to be beautiful; wood and tile floors. They actually ARE beautiful, maybe two days a week, the day I clean them and the next day, but five days a week, they need work. I wish I had asked my cleaning lady in Doha how she got my floors so beautifully clean. I wish I had paid more attention. I keep looking in the store for some miracle, a machine that will clean them in a heartbeat and make them all shiny. . .
The wonderful thing about moving into this culture – and it truly is a different culture from the one in which I was raised – is that we have our wonderful son and his wonderful wife to give us hints on what to do and not to do, and we have his wife’s wonderful family.
Mostly, I try to keep my eyes open. Southern women admire things extravagantly, and after living for so many years in the Middle East and Gulf, learning to admire extravagantly goes against all my instincts.
In the MIddle East, when you admire extravagantly, you can make people nervous. Some people worry about attracting “the evil eye” of jealousy, evil intentions, people who envy you and wish you harm. Some people, if you admire something, will give it to you! It’s true, those stories, it has happened to me. So now I have to un-learn my lessons in retraint and learn to appreciate, if not extravagantly, at least enough to be polite.
One of my wife’s relatives gave us a house-warming gift, an iced-tea maker, with a darling card that states Rule #1 is that every Southern Hostess knows that a pitcher of iced tea is a MUST for all occasions. I like iced tea, but I have never kept it on hand to serve, and I guess I need to start!
Her second rule was one that made me burst out laughing – “A Southern Lady, the most interesting ones anyway, know that rules are made to be broken.”
“Just be prepared for people to leave your home saying “Bless her heart, she must be getting forgetful. There was no iced tea!”
And then rule #3 – “The only correct and acceptable way to criticize anyone is to add ‘bless his/her heart!’ and then, anything goes!”
At a party at her house this weekend, I learned a couple more – the first rule being that when you are invited to a great big family dinner, bring dessert! Thank God, I did take a little guest gift, but now I know – bring dessert! And it had better be sweet!
The next rule is would make any Kuwaiti or Qattari feel right at home – spare nothing in making our guests comfortable. This Southern Hostess had seating areas inside the beautiful air conditioned home, and also seating outside for those who don’t mind a little heat. She had a big basket loaded with all kinds of insect repellents to keep her guests from being bitten. She took time with each guest, and although she was running her little bottom off getting everything organized, she made it all look easy, and as if she was having a good time. I have a sneaking suspicion the truly was enjoying having all the people around and that her great big heart loves taking care of the crowd. She was the essence of gracious hospitality. Did I mention she has also lived in Kuwait?
Dinner was “Perlow” an old Southern tradition, made in a huge old kettle from her husband’s mother, and hung from a tripod over a roaring fire to cook. The actual cooking was the men’s work as they sat outside drinking iced tea:
Home grown peas and beans mix – delicious!
Serving up the perlow:
My Middle East / Gulf friends would be comfortable eating this meal – Perlow is a variation of Pilaf, and very similar to Biryani. No alcohol served. No pork. Lots and lots of fabulous sweet desserts.
It’s funny, I used to tell people in Kuwait and Qatar that it was a lot like Alaska; when the weather got too bad, you just stay inside most of the time. When the weather gets good, you go outside as much as you can. When it’s too hot/cold, you run from your air conditioned/heated car to your air conditioned / heated store or movie theater, or restaurant, and then back to your air conditioned / heated car and back to your air conditioned/ heated house.
In the same way, I am beginning to wonder if the South and the Middle East know how much they have in common? In Pensacola, on Saturdays, we have the religious people on the corners shouting at passing cars, not a whole lot different from the volunteer morality police in Saudi Arabia. In the South, as in the Middle East, ‘family’ isn’t just blood, it’s also who you’re married into, and there is a lot of emphasis on family getting together and spending time together. In the South, as in the Middle East, men tend to gather in one area, women in another.
In the South, they drink iced tea; in the Middle East, it’s hot tea. Both have passionate patriots, fundamental believers and a tradition of gracious hospitality. Both have a passion for hunting and fishing. Nobody much likes obeying the rules in either culture. Maybe I’m still in the MIddle East?
Olive Oil: Reading the Labels
Ever since I read the New Yorker article on The Olive Oil Scandle I have been goosey about olive oils, reading the labels. My friends (Palestinian) tell me I should always buy Palestinian olive oil, and from the oils they have shared with me, holy smokes! I think they are right.
Try finding Palestinian olive oil in Pensacola. Honestly, sometimes I am afraid they are going to arrest me in the stores as I stand for a half hour, turning all the bottles and trying to read the labels, some of which are in very very tiny print. One thing the Gulf States (Arabian Gulf, my friends) have going for them is some excellent labeling on the foods they import.
When I came across this label, I could hardly believe it. I am sure they probably don’t like me photographing in the stores, but as long as no one says anything to me, I do it. Often I am saying something nice, anyway.
So here is the front of the bottle; it looks promising:
Here is the reverse side, showing the origin of the oil, or at least where parts of it might come from . . .
Horrors! What a mess! Every bottle could be different, it’s like cat food and dog food, it’s what the oil bottler could find that was the cheapest at the moment, and maybe it is from Spain, or maybe from Tunisia or who knows where? I will NEVER buy an oil that looks like that!
Meanwhile, the search for Palestinian olive oil goes on . . .
For Our Convenience
For our convenience, KLM has introduced a new ‘simplified’ baggage policy:
Joining their Flying Blue Elite program is free. It only makes sense, join up and get that extra bag at no charge, at least not in the Europe / Middle East countries.
As little respect as I have for KLM customer service – most of their people manning the transit desks in Amsterdam specialize in saying ‘no’ with a sneer – they are EXCELLENT for traveling with pets. If you are traveling business class or if you have a gold card that gets you into the lounges, you can shower between flights and have a decent cup of coffee. It’s worth the trouble to get the card.
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