Lazy Soup.

Here are two simple recipes that I invented in 2016. 

These were my favorites when I was so burned out from thinking by the end of the day, that I would just stare blankly at the stove fantasizing about sleep. Too exhausted to even chop vegetables. 

These recipes are great because they are so easy to produce that you'll still have the mental capacity to construct noteworthy answers to the barrage of kid questions like “Why do animals have tails?” and “What's 164 +164?” and “Can I have a Pony for my Birthday?” while you are preparing a warm nutritious meal.
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Andy Warhol Eat Your Heart Out Tomato Soup Stasia Style:

Unlike Campbells, you won't find High Fructose Corn Syrup in my ingredients list..

These beauties come in an 8 pack from Costco for $12.89. That works out to about $1.60/unit. Even though you will find canned tomatoes cheaper, they won't taste nearly as good, and you can trust me on this because I've tried every brand that doesn't have weird stuff added to it.)

One can is enough to feed two children and I.

Make a double recipe if you are feeding another adult.

I empty the can into my blender, then rinse maybe 3/4 cup of water in to swish out those stubborn tomatoes at the bottom. This also gives the soup it's proper viscosity. Once you have the blender lid on tight, press Go! and give them tomatoes a whirl. It shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to reach desired consistency.

Awesome. Now pour into the pot.

I add salt to taste. I only cook with pink salt because it has tons more flavor and hasn't been stripped of all of it's minerals. If you have questions about where hippies get thier iodine from, I recommend Wellness Mama for all of your "omg I'm effing up my own body with my refined processed toxic lifestyle choices" stark realizations.

I toss a half a handful of salt into my mortar & pestle and smash it up in there with some dried green chilies because they have a great flavor and I get bored of black pepper all the time. Black pepper definitely does the job though. (I buy mine at Costco; Malabar is superior.)


I am imagining that you have a really nice banksia pod peppermill or some naturally fallen branch from peppermills.ca. I am lucky enough to have enjoyed the privilege of turning some of these on the lathe back in the day. If you ever get to meet Mr. Lavers I encourage you to ask him all the questions about the trees that fell in the forest as well as his CrushGrind spice busting mechanisms. Season your soup as you prefer.

Now add 1/3 of a bouillon cube. I buy Organic bouillon cubes because hippies Love the word “Organic”, even though we are educated enough to know that substances like Arsenic, Lead, and Mercury are “Organic”.

Stir well, simmer, and that's it. Tomatoes, Water, Salt, Pepper, Bouillon. It's simple and it tastes great.

If you want to get fancy & adventurous a tablespoon of coconut oil and 1/2 tsp of turmeric adds a nice flavor.

Sometimes I sprinkle cilantro and scallions on top.

The nice thing about this recipe is it's a great base for other meals. If you have leftovers, it's easy to turn them into a more exciting soup tomorrow, or a pasta sauce, or even a curry. So many possibilities with a tomato base, really.

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The "Hey Mom, What Does *Cruciferous* Mean?" Broccoli Soup:

 

Alright. Bad Ass Soup # 2, just as simple and easy as the first.

Costco, (yayyyyyy Costco!) Sells bags of frozen “pesticide free” Broccoli. There are 4 packs to a bag, which I think retails for about 10 or 11 bucks, so you're basically looking at each batch of soup costing around $3. Again, 1 bag does me and two kids for a dinner meal.
I totally wish I wasn't buying plastic inside of more plastic, but I have come to accept two important things this year:

1. I don't live in California where they apparently have a WholeFoods on every single street corner so nobody EVER has to feel guilty about plastic packaging and instead are all bestowed the privilege of walking around with contented smiles on thier faces, knowing they are being part of the solution.

2. I forget what number 2 is because my brain is kinda melted from being a Mom...
Oh that's right. I usually remember to buy fresh broccoli and bring it home in a canvas tote but sometimes I forget to return our library books on time and pay important bills and make critical phonecalls and purchase the key ingredient to the amazing meal I wanted to make for dinner that night. So.... Yah. I guess... Instead.... I could make... Ah-ha! Last Minute Decision Fatigue Soup!
Thank Goodness There's an Emergency Stash of Costco Broccoli in the Freezer!!!

Right. So it's identical to the Tomato soup: 1. Open Pack. (blanch those florets if you've naught the time to defrost them) 2. Toss into Blender with Water and 2 cloves of Garlic. Garlic is a really spectacular addition to this soup. - I recommend Sunrise Organics Happy Hippy Garlic That Had Love Songs Sang to it, but hey, use whatever you have on hand. 

You could play Jayden's record album to the flora and fauna in your own garden.
You could sing & dance along to it while you're cooking that dinner.

3. Pour blended creation into the pot, and warm it up with the salt and pepper. Boullion is nice here too.

Possible additions: grated carrot? 1/4 of a sweet onion? handful of blanched almonds?
Mix it up and tumble last night's leftover cauliflower bake into that Osterizer of awesomely delicious cruciferous?! push the boundaries of your own imagination & gustatory palette. 


right about now we rejoice that this is a sing along blog!!!!:

 

Official 2017 Goals List:
Take a Guitar Lesson from Jayden Grahlman and serenade the wild leeks this spring. 😎

A Wise Man Maketh More Opportunity Than He Find

One day I was breastfeeding River at Sunset Point Park and a lady sat down beside me. We started chatting and she mentioned that her son was sad because he just found out he didn't make the hockey team.

"Is his birthday November or December?" I ask

"November. How did you possibly know that?" she asked

(Magician? Nope: Statistician.) I tell her to read Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers".

Wanna know about the "Mathew Effect" that cuts those late-in-the-year birthdays out of the running for future athletic stardom???

What Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, and Eric Schmidt have in common?

How about John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Henry Rogers, J.P. Morgan, etc.???

The answer is the luck of a cohort and the choice to seize a special opportunity they were given.

Luck has a lot to do with being born at just the right time, in just the right place. It extends to being raised with a sense of entitlement: the concerted cultivation that gives rise to traits like the courage to question authority.

It is my sincere desire that anyone with access to my words can find something useful in them to grab on to.

Maybe you didn't have the luck & luxury of attending a private school with access to one of the worlds earliest computing machines. Maybe you weren't enrolled in violin lessons at age 6. Maybe.... (write your own excuse here): _________________________________________________________

this is, legit, my all time favorite quote.

                                   
You do have the luck and luxury of being able to chose differently at any point in time about the things in your life that aren't working.

 

Start focusing on opportunities.

In high school I coached kids soccer. One gentleman I volunteered with owned a greenhouse business. (in addition to his full time job) "Why greenhouses?" I asked.

"We were just traveling in Europe and found this great price on glass" he said. "I saw an opportunity, so I took it."

From that moment on I was always looking for great business opportunities. I see lots of them. Everywhere. Constantly. All the time. I get job offers constantly. (Smile and say Hello to people! You will be amazed at what happens.) A man this past Friday asked if I wanted to work for him & learn how to be a Crane Operator (I'm not going to take that job, by the way, but I did interview him for the Pirates Magazine. Fascinating fellow.)

Something I hear a lot from Great Aunt Hildegard's generation is "in my day, we had to work hard just to put food on the table."

I have so much reverence for How Hard Our Great Aunt Hildegard's worked! so instead of saying "yeah, well, in our day, we have to work hard to clean up the enormous mess we all made, 'cause it's poisoning the food."

We can admit that it's time to shift our thinking and create a responsible world economy.

Adam Poswolsky says it with more eloquence:

 

"You can call us idealistic, but:

We are not the "Me! Me! Me!" generation.

We are the Purpose Generation. And we will be engaged with our work because we have to.

The challenges facing our generation are simply too serious to ignore."
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Isn't that beautiful?!

I'm noticing minimalism is one of the hottest topics these days. It's because we are all beginning to realize... All the money we could hope to "make" can't be traded for the value that authentic community brings. We can easily give our kids the cash to purchase any object of distraction. That money will even pay for antidepressants when the novelty of distractions wear off. All the money we could ever hand them, however, won't buy them the skills to form the loving bonds that will give meaning to thier lives, or buy back thier health once they've lost it.

                                      

The cohorts in Gladwell's Outliers were born in narrow slices of optimal time periods of history: old enough to be able to take advantage of a budding new era, but young enough that their mind-set hadn't been jaded by the obsolete mentality of the previous.

 

There is no lack of opportunity in this world, only a lack of determined spirit.

We shall teach our children to create value, and they will always be rich.

This entire essay summarized in a song:

This entire essay summarized in a quote:

The Roseto Effect:

 

More on the Roseto Effect:

What Have You Spent 10000 Hours On?

I decided long ago that I would never learn music. I didn't seem to have an aptitude for it & when I tried to learn it didn't feel fun, so I dismissed it as being too difficult and not my thing. Why bother? I thought. I'd rather focus my efforts on the things that come naturally to me that I truly enjoy.

But this year I've begun to crave new challenges. Radically new challenges, because I've mastered all the stuff I ever wanted to do that came naturally to me. Like cooking. I can throw together nutritious meals that taste *amazing* without even thinking about it. I'm also pretty decent with reading comprehension. And man. You should see me rock a disorganized house into a minimalist paradise.

I've learned that I can learn anything pretty quickly if I set my mind to it. I have a hunch that learning music will correlate nicely to learning computer programming languages. In a Nova Documentary I rented from the library last winter entitled How Smart Can We Get, I learned about a greatly expanded Knob that developed in Einstein's brain, resultant of having played a stringed instrument since childhood. Whenever Einstein was stumped, he would go and play his violin, and then spontaneously intuit the answer to some physics question that had him perplexed.

I admit I'm also very excited to experience the pleasure of jamming with my friends. I've always been envious of that special kind of intimacy that arises between people when they are entangled in euphonious expression.

A musical friend text me the other day asking what I was up to. I could barely contain my excitement about heading to Blue Mountain for a snowboarding vacation and that Tim Buckton was setting me up with a bass guitar and I was so stoked to start learning. (eventual hyperlink to essay about how underground skateboard/warm winter clothing/musical instrument distribution = massive community building opulence)

He replied that Paul Mcartney is the best bass player ever. Interesting choice I mused. I don't understand music well enough to have an opinion on who the best musical anything is, but in a split second my mind had Outliers loaded up on the imaginary overhead...

Right. The 10000 Hour Rule. The Beatles got super good from playing 8 hour sets 7 days a week at strip clubs in Hamburg: "
All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year in a half. By the time they had thier first burst of success in 1964, in fact, they had performed live an estimated 1200 times. Do you know how extraordinary that is? Most bands today don't perform twelve hundred times in thier entire careers." Gladwell writes.

Read Outliers!!! I recommended to my friend.
I told him to grab it on audiobook: almost every library I've ever been to has a copy. The next day I found it in hardcover at the Salvation Army. (Reticular Activation System, Beautiful Universal Synchrony, or both?!?!) so I brought the book home and was inspired to write this. And as you can see, you needn't leave the comfort of your internet connection: someone has uploaded Malcom Gladwell's entire book to youtube and I assure you, the man has a lovely reading voice:

"The emerging picture from such studies [of expertise] is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert - in anything," writes the neurobiologist Daniel Levitin. "In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some people get more out of thier practice sessions than others do. But no one yet has found a case in which true world class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that the brain takes this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

I start doing some quick math. Lets take 2 hours a day. 10000/2 = 5000. divide that by 365 days = 13.698630137. Round that number up to 14 years. (for all those days you slack off or go on a family vacation, or whatever). In 14 Years you can become a master at any skill. I find this figure significant because I've been pondering lately that that's how long its been since I've gone without television. Half my life. No cable, no satellite, no Netflix! just a movie from the library or the thrift store once in a while.

I never thought to connect these numbers until just tonight. How much television does the average person watch? 2 hours a day? I have no idea. I was making a list of the cumulative effects of giving it up such as:
-No advertisements constantly hypnotizing into believing I'm not good enough (which is how they sell you pretty much everything)
-I'm never distracted from my priorities because I have to catch the latest episode of....... (?)
-I have oodles of extra time to learn new stuff. (in just 2 hours a day of practice I could be a wicked bass player by age 45. which sounds... really interesting... as I realize how actually fast that time will pass. Wow. I will be 45 years old in... not that long. huge perspective shift just happened right there.)

I always assume that everyone else has all the same things going on inside thier head that I do.
That all the other people are happily perusing over all of the remarkable things there are to think about.

I don't actually know what other people think about. Or how anyone else's brain works.

I am certain that you can master anything you want with the 10,000 hour rule. I'm also certain that everyone out there can derive something amazing from some aspect of the experiences that they've dedicated the last 14 or 15 years of thier life to.

What did you spend your last 10,000 hours practicing? How are you going to spend your next 10,000?

You don't have to ditch your TV. (Flea's bass playing would sell me on doing it though, if I hadn't already ditched the boob tube so very long ago)

How could you incorporate daily hours of practice into your life?

Could you listen to audiobooks in your car, or maybe at work, if you have a job like cleaning that doesn't require your full attention?

Could you turn your computer workstation into a standing desk and do squats & lift weights while you are reading/watching stuff?

Could you try a new recipe every day? Or spend time drawing?

Could you take a free online course? Could you volunteer at interesting places around your neighborhood to gain new skills and make new connections? Could you and your kid learn to play chess together? Could you and your kid learn to play basketball together?

I have no idea what your goals are! The opportunities are endless!!!

Opportunity, as a matter of fact, is technically Part 2 of this post. (stay tuned!)

I will leave you with Les Claypool, who happens to be one of my favorite Bass Players.

Why Don't We Hang Upside Down Anymore?

So If you hadn't heard yet, I'm obsessed with Ido Portal. 

I love how his work is so bang-on accurate regarding how our culture has lost functional movement. (along with nutrition... sleep... & our dignity, among other things.)

When a friend first shared Ido's video with me, my initial reaction was: oh that's so super cool but I could never do that. But then I remembered that RockStar Lousie Hay would chastise me for "wasting my precious thoughts":

                             

                                  Thanks Louise! I almost forgot! OK, I'm gonna go grab life by the bazookas now.

So I decided, Awesome. I'm going to become the Female Version of Tony Robbins!!!!

and I'm going to Move Like Ido. What I really love about Ido's philosophy is that it isn't about having a hot sculpted body. (although tough to deny that's a pretty sweet side effect.) It's about retaining your body's ability to do what it was designed to do.

In grade 6 I started having massive unbelievable back pain. I asked my doctor why and she said "It's because you're tall. You have a long back & it will hurt forever. There is nothing you can do."

Nope. Wrong. I didn't figure it out until after I had my first baby. The back pain was caused by sitting in a chair all day at school. And then standing for endless hours on concrete floors at restaurant jobs hunched over workstations that were too low for my tall self.

(Remember how I wrote about design magazine fantasies yesterday? That's one. Someday I'm going to have the sexiest kitchen with ergonomic counter tops built for tall people. )

Anyhow while I was pregnant in 2010 got obsessed with being the most healthy-active version of myself because I wanted to provide my baby with ultimate nutrition, and I wanted to have a great birth. I heard that you need really strong stomach muscles and pelvic floor muscles to push a baby out. I went on 3 hour hikes with my dog every day. There are so many awesome trails in Guelph with diverse terrain and breathtaking views. Another of my favourite exercises was to grapevine while hopping and twirling along the railroad track. The purpose of that is to keep snowboarding bio-mechanics tuned during the off season. Make sure to do lots of behind the head reaches, to work your chairlift safety bar lifting muscles.

That's the condensed version of the physical aspect of my first awesome natural home-birth (the mental-spiritual dimension is textbook in length.)

After my baby was born, she was in the snugli pack all the time and we danced our pants off every day while cooking delicious food and hustling the domestic duties and and walking the dogs and having a fun & friendly time with our wonderful neighbourhood full of special people. If there was ever a more appropriate moment to promote how magical Guelph is, I don't know when it would be.

My back never hurt anymore. My body felt great because it was doing what it was supposed to be doing. I was high on oxytocin. The whole experience of asking all these bizarre questions about human nature for 9 months and researching until I discovered reality-shattering truths was powerful and transformative beyond anything I would ever have expected the Motherhood experience to evoke.

...Back to our present timeline. I joined the Gym after my dog died because I had already decided I Am a Dancer (and not just, like, a dork, rocking out in my underwear with a tennis-racket-air-guitar, but, like, actual Patrick Swayze style, Louise Hay says I can become anything I want and I'm only 30 so I've got gobs of time left and I shall become with all my little boxes, just watch me.)

I poured my dog food budget into my YMCA budget and went out to Zumba. A YMCA membership had been on my goals list for 5 years. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?????  get some chalkboard paint and cork-boards and go to town filling up your visual space with inspiration. Grab some sharpie markers and write what you desire all over the walls of your house! Set up a twitter account and start following the people who inspire you! YOU ARE GOING TO BE AMAZED IN 5 YEARS BECAUSE GUESS WHAT, ROCK STAR??? YOU ARE GOING TO START SEEING ALL YOUR DREAMS COMING TRUE!!!!

Remember 5 years ago when everyone kept urging me to me to write??? so I started this blog even though I had total writers block? Well Now I'm actually writing it, and the only thing holding me back now is back pain from sitting all day. so It's time to bust out the treadmill desk (what!? what!? ANOTHER 5 YEAR GOAL COMING TRUE IN SPARKLING MAGICAL GLORY???!?!?!?!? yes, yes! it's true)

but seriously. sitting & writing all day is screwing up my body so badly. I ache all over and it's only been a few weeks. So I'm going to set up a standing/exercycle desk tonight. (I don't own a treadmill) I had a design hack idea last night and I'm pretty excited to experiment with it.

I garnered some interesting insights about the fitness industry from my stint with a gym membership. I'm going to save those for another post.

Right now I'm on this kick of why we don't hang upside down anymore. Why did we stop hanging upside down? I guess other people have noticed the deleterious physiological effects that occurred when we gave up tree climbing, and pavement started wrecking our bodies. You know I'm gonna hook you up with a song about de-evolution:

                                     

Dave Mathews. Is there anything that guy hasn't got figured out???

I guess other people have noticed this and they are selling inversion tables.

But Oh: I'm Stasia Bryant and as if I'm going to be content to just do what everyone else is doing. I'm going to steal my ex's geodesic dome struts (because under Article 1, Subsection 4, Clause 13, if you have a kid with me and then ditch your responsibilities I now reserve the right to utilize your intellectual property for storytelling and/or profit, and I may thieve your clothing or tools or whatever else you've left laying around in your parents garage when I'm drinking beers with Jay and Johnathon)

So Yes. I shall assemble some indoor monkey-bars (galvanized electrical conduit) and work to reverse the vacuous effects of modern living.

The Geodesic Dome Solution: Yet another fine example of Dymaxion Living for the 21st century.

                                          

Hang Upside Down!! It's the next big trend. Read all about it in a Pirate's Magazine!

On Being a Wandering Hippie Mom

I have gotten so many messages over the years saying something like:

"Hey wow you're so brave/inspiration/wanderlust/free spirit/I wish I could/that's so cool/how do you?/Love it!"

Firstly: Thank you.

Secondly: I get jealous (something?) of your fancy pickup trucks, your boyfriends who help pay rent, your real actual careers and your amazing mom skills. Jealous isn't quite the right word. I'm not sure our culture has a word for it. It's kind of like I take pride in watching you guys accomplish so much awesome stuff that I know I'm supposed to want and parts of me sometimes do (like the Mom skills. God gave me only an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny pinch of patience and self discipline and I am trying so hard to cultivate it)

Thirdly: It's super hard to really know if any of our decisions are really even ours, or if we are just living out some predetermined fate. Could I even make different choices than I do? I love this avatar that I get to be, although am sometimes skeptical of the script they wrote me. (My character says that? wtf? Why did they have to give me such dorky lines? My character is a total shit disturber more often than I'm comfortable with. I'm currently trying to think of a career that requires that as a skill set. )

Minimalism: This was the 20ft storage container we rented when I decided I wasn't going to give birth in an apartment:

                             

 
The right side of this photo was mostly Cam/Cheryl's stuff.

The left side is mine and the kids: That is the entirety of belongings the kids and I own today, plus my bicycle, an MEC stroller-bike trailer & a Weehoo bike trailer, & two kids bikes.

I'm not a "100 thing-ist" or a "something in - something out" person.

I am more of a "Ecclesiastes" person: There is a Time to scavenge interesting junk off the side of the road and make art, and a Time to throw all your scrap back into the e-waste bin. There is a Time to get phat stacks of books from the re-use-it center, and a time to donate most of them to the Library. (And so it goes.)

And my house doesn't look like minimalist porn when we're living in it.

It looks like a contained disaster, because I do not care.

It looks like pencils, crayons, markers papers and CD's and books and papers and notebooks and colorful shiny things and toys and puzzle pieces and jars of science experiments and woodstove dust.

It does not bother me. There's such a small amount of it that it only takes a few hours to straighten out when I decide to.

The Kitchen is also messy because I do not care.

I used to care. and I still care in the sense that, I'd love it if someone else went and cleaned it for me right now. But there isn't. So it Won't.

It sounds like I rip on the domestic services so hard in this blog, eh? It's only because I'm a mathematician: $0 child support + 1 parent earning only minimum wage = crappy life.

I trained myself to ignore the dirty dishes in order to see myself as someone who has massive human potential. If I am focused on dishes I never find time to be creative. If I am focused on being creative, I always find time to do the dishes. Weird eh?

I could start a cleaning business if I wanted to. But I did that once and it made me hate cleaning my own house. I'd rather stay in love with cleaning my own house. And have affairs of vacuuming at my grandmothers & bouts of domestic polyamory: helping my friends go on purge fests & organizing sprees.

I could start a bicycle powered edible landscaping business. One of those shared harvest type deals. With Ducks. I could ride around planting tomatoes and marigolds and basil and oregano in everyone's yard. I'd have a rack on the side of my bike for rakes and shovels and I'd pull a little trailer with some gorgeous waterfowl in it. At the end of the year we'd have a big salsa-celebration-potluck-poetry-jam in the park. That's the kind of business that really succeeds in a place like Guelph.

Once upon a time my brother said to me "Stasia. My problem is I get super attached to one idea and I become so obsessed with implementing it that I can't let go no matter what. Your problem is that you have a million ideas and you don't implement a single one of them.

He's totally right. I have notebooks full of business plans that would probably take off if I could settle on one thing and stay committed.

Right now I'm really focused on Mom stuff. This Essay is about Mom stuff:

Isn't that a wonderful quote? I didn't read it until after I had given birth to both of my kids, but it's perfectly accurate. That's exactly what giving birth was like for me. Magic mushrooms except with slightly less of the fractacular visuals and significantly more of the being split apart.

Anyways. I wan't going to give birth in in a tiny apartment with carpet. Ew. Yuck. Carpet. Add that to the list of things that are my kryptonite, like long fingernails, and mayonnaise, and bath floofs.

So I sublet The Ab Anbar (54 Sykes St Unit 4, but you surely agree, a residence is better with name)

And then we didn't find another place to live.

So, on facebook my life is portrayed like this:

But that is because Zach didn't photograph me crying my face off when I was 8 months pregnant, and things were not exactly going.... hmmmm... Let's just say I didn't need Cam to finish building his time machine. I had total clairvoyance about what my future was about to look like:

Henceforth, Zach and everyone else have my permission to photograph my life, as it actually is at times, when I am crying my face off, or engaging in some idiotic reactionary behavior, or those stark moments of: "I just figured out what the expression wet blanket means because it rained on my duvet covers last night and I am a homeless pregnant girl with a kid and a dog and a disgruntled unemployed husband and no vehicle."

A wet blanket does not offer any comfort. Wet blankets are heavy. 

Zach and Heather rescued us & My Dad loaned me $10,000 and we went and bought the Honda CRV. Which was awesome because "What. aintcha never seen a pregnant hitchhiker before?"
(I do always meet the neatest people hitchhiking though, and I do always learn stuff.)

                        It seemed like such a score for $2500. until it cost $12,000 in repairs over the next two years.                                          

Since we still had nowhere to live I said "let's go to Science North!"
(well, what would you do?)

So we checked out a Diffusion Cloud Chamber and played in the Butterfly Room & interactive exhibits on all kinds of topics like the inner workings of the Human Body and we did some Stop-Motion Animation, and some Broadcast Journalism:

  

                      I LOVE Science North.                           

This is how our video turned out:

                                               

And then we went to Pukaskwa National Park, because it is one of my all time favorite places:

                                             The Big Lake they call "Gichigami"

Now seems like the right moment to mention that Parks Canada is giving out Free Admission Passes for 2017. So If you've ever contemplated becoming a vagabond gypsy parent, the time is ripe.

The summer I was pregnant with River was as cold as they come. It was July and we were sleeping in winter gear and I abandoned the notion that "it would probably be really fun to live in Thunder Bay! -we should do that!." (the ridiculous whims I get going on. I tell ya.)

So we came back and moved into Sarah Davie's House at Sunset Point. "The Pretty River Imaginarium" My favorite house that I've ever lived in. And I had an awesome home-birth with the Nottawasaga Midwives.

Everyone has different values. I love going into peoples houses who have fancy couches and pottery that matches the walls, and plants that they always remember to water, and so many white accent things that have not a trace of dust or dirt on them. Once in a while I even enjoy flipping through style magazines and indulging in fantasies that I would someday have a house that looks like that. Will I ever? Your guess is as good as mine.

There are many things that I do for the kids because it wouldn't be fair to entirely deprive them of mainstream culture and turn them into complete social outcasts without thier permission. There are also a lot of things I don't do for the kids because it doesn't jive with what I think is right (like buy stuff with Monster High girls on it. Those dolls have no self esteem, you can just tell. And I don't think it's fair to bombard young women with oversexualized flirtatious models at such a young age. If my daughters grow up and they decide to be porn stars, their choice. But that's a free choice one makes at an age of consent, not an ideal that needs to be thrust upon them in kindergarden. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, that's just my personal opinion.)

I believe strongly in a type of stability that I think kids need because it helps them have emotional certainty. I also believe in a type of reckless exploration that, I think, creates resilient individuals.

Elizabeth knows this: "I feel like what Steve Carell said on little miss sunshine: 

Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is?
Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."

I love Steve Carell. I could write several essays about why he is my favorite actor.

I let myself write this essay in an incoherent nonsense jumping around way because there are so many important things I want to write eventually, and I have to get all this cluttery nonsense out of my head because the good writing is stashed under it. I think the point is... Something Francesca wrote to me in a birthday card when I was a teenager. "You know in your heart what's true and that's all that matters. Don't let anyone tell you differently"

In my many years of customer service, strangers regularly walked in for a cup of coffee and told me their life story. Still on a daily basis I receive the most courageous letters from people telling me about all the difficult struggles they are going through. I wish everyone could know how many people are dealing with the exact same stuff as eachother. I wish I could set them up on friendship dates.

I can tell from the success of blogs about minimalism that people are really looking for answers about why their lives look so full but their something feels so empty. That "growth beyond anything available around you" concept I wrote about yesterday. I'll write more essays on that. "The Linguistic Relativity of Love" is one in the works 😃....

Today I read "If you are actively pursuing a life of simplicity, you are living a counter cultural lifestyle" I laughed out loud but then I realized he's right. Holy Wow. Welcome to the revolution, where the most punk thing you can do is offer someone an organic kale smoothie.

I wish I knew the right things to say to people who want so much more out of their lives. Everyone's definition of purpose is unique. It takes time. Change doesn't happen overnight. Be patient and good to yourself but also be honest with yourself. Take a step in a new direction today, and keep taking a step in that direction every day for the next 10 years. The time is going to pass anyways, so you might as well. (Oh. and that direction will seem like you're going in circles. and you are. Because life is a spiral, remember?)

Once, Cam and I were reading Louise Hay and he epiphanied: "This woman has the most positive attitude! She is 80 years old (*correction she is actually 90) and she doesn't see her life as over. She could probably master 4 more apprenticeships before she dies!!!"

"Yup." I said. It was an astute observation. One I refer back to when I'm thinking up Ways To Support My Family in the Interim (while I learn to program; so I can be a digital nomad) Do you know what I might do? I might get a job at an oil change place and eventually apprentice to be a mechanic. I would be bored of it by the time I learned how to fix cars, but I would have all this sweet knowledge I could juxtapose with all the other ideas in there. 😃 Who knows what I will do. Your guess is as good as mine.

I would coach women (& men & nonbinary folks) who desire natural home-births. Wandering aimlessly around the province for a month living in a tent is not a prerequisite, but it is therapeutic. The Smell of Trees and The Crashing of Waves always is. Crying your face off and having temper tantrums once in a while is also therapeutic, if you chose to grow from it and then look back on your silly self and laugh.

" Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we’ve been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we’re angry and scared and at each other’s throats."~ Brene Brown

How To Pick Your Friends

LifeHack: If you move around enough times, you will realize that every town hosts the same cast of characters.
Eventually it gets to be like playing with the cheat codes on.
You will literally find yourself.

I first met Celeste at the top of Blue Mountain. We were hiking. She was pregnant. She was beautiful.
I had to say hello to this girl.

“Cool Shirt.” I said.
“Thanks” she said. “I got it at my friend's store. It's called Magic Mountain.”
“In Guelph?” I asked
“Yah! How do you know Guelph?” she said with excitement
“I'm from Erin.” I said
“Oh really!? I'm from Elora”

I didn't run into her again until 2 years later. I was pregnant this time. She was having green smoothies in the Many Hands of Meaford shop. This girl is so familiar, I thought.

She made the connection. We talked about health food and babies and her job. She said she needed someone to watch her daughter while she was at work.

I said I would LOVE to!

I had a childcare business:

(I'm not exactly a graphics designer. I'm not exactly a daycare provider either.
 But I do always put my whole self into things)

The day I was to babysit, She said she had to work at 5. I figured I'd see her at 4:15, maybe 4:30.

4:45 rolled around and she had not yet arrived. This girl likes to cut it close to the line. I thought.

Then it was 5 o'clock. This girl is kinda flaky, I thought.

At 5:15 she arrived at my house. This girl is going to loose her job, I thought.

She strolled in with a box of organic fruits and vegetables. Tupperware filled with Quinoa. She started making casual conversation with me.

“Ummmmm. You're, like, really late for work...” I said “Aren't you going to get in trouble?”

“Ahhh, they can fire me if they want to, but they won't. They know they aren't going to find anyone else in this town who works as hard as I do.”

Ohhhh. I get it. I thought: This girl is Me.

And that's how you know when you've found a lifelong friend.

The things you Love about everyone else are always the same things you Love about your own self.

Think about that next time you are pointing out your favorite quality in another. Those are the same qualities you possess inside yourself. Everything you could ever want to be or do, you already have and are.

If you've forgotten how to access that inner spirit of yours, there's tons of fun & interesting ways to find keys that can unlock it again.

Maybe it's time to go on a  ♪♫ scavenger hunt ♫♪...

some groovy Flower Children right here.
...& hilarious memories of that time the Collingwood Fire Department came & took our backyard burn permit away.

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Reflections on 5 Years of Minimalism

10 years ago I did a workshop at the Eramosa Eden Retreat Center: "Clear your Clutter with Feng Shui." I gained some great philosophies from it, but clutter is really habitual.

5 Years ago I finally made the connection between hoarding and scarcity mindset. I was always trying to "use up" the worn out things, with the "good stuff" stashed in the closet for later. Later never seemed to come and I was always longing for the day when I would get to enjoy the possessions I truly cared about. And I was always wasting time searching for the things I needed, buried under pointless junk.

I read the 100 Thing Challenge. I was overcome with a clear sense of how I was trapping myself.

I had already noticed that my baby didn't care at all about any of the fancy baby gadgets I could provide her with.

She just wanted me.

So that's when I started getting rid of all my stuff. (And writing about it)

Everything I had ever worked for was because I wanted to be a parent. I thought one of the defining characteristics of what makes a 'good parent' was the ability to be a great provider of material things. but right away I realized that wasn't it at all. (Obviously I'm not referring to food and shelter here.)

Becoming a Mom was such an upheaval to everything I was good at.

Because suddenly none of it was really that relevant. Babies just want you.

Reflection of a baby whose only desire is love

So I got rid of as much stuff as I was comfortable with. Which was a lot of stuff.

And things were really cool for a while. It was very liberating.

But then I had a whole new problem, which was... What's the point of any of this? What exactly am I working towards here?

That horrible feeling was nagging at my soul. I knew that there was no more of something left in the life I was living, and If I didn't do something about it I'd start heading down the wrong path. Many people around me tried to convince me that it was still really really excellent path. I knew, (despite it's obvious excellence and sparkling glory- I had truly enjoyed that path for 6 years!) it had suddenly veered towards a huge empty pit of despair.

So then I got rid of even more stuff. Stuff I really liked, even. (I don't miss any of it.)

I sold the house and used the money to buy time to think.

Actually, that money ran out years ago, and now I'm in debt from thinking too hard for so long.

Yep. Stasia Bryant and the Extremely Expensive Existential Crisis.

I would do it all over exactly the same.

I would not have been able to define it back then, but I craved to grow beyond anything that was available to me there. I'm not sure that kind of growth could have come from any one specific location either. That kind of growth takes time and effort, and going far outside one's comfort zone.

I borrowed so many bits and pieces of ideas from so many people and places to keep puzzling away on my quest. I finally, just in this last month, am starting to feel like I sort-of know what I'm doing a tiny little bit.

That doesn't mean I wasn't having tons of fun most of the time over the last 5 years.

Of course I was having fun! Fun is my purpose of life! 
(I can experience the full spectrum of human emotion and still have a ton of fun. The full spectrum of human emotion is what makes life fun.)

I'm pretty fascinated by how our culture handles dead end roads into empty pits of despair. First we put the blinders on so we can't see much outside the television screen. (Don't have blinders? People will line up to share theirs with you! Don't have a TV? Not a problem. Everyone has like 5 extras and they want to give one to you.) We start "numbing behaviors". What else can we consume? What will fill the void? If it doesn't fill us, we can always increase consumption, right? A glass of wine? How 'bout the whole bottle? A cigarette? Have a carton! 60 cups of coffee? 10 square meals a day? A bigger television? A bigger television than that! How 'bout a Bose Home Theatre System with 8.1 surround sound?

We become consumers of dis-empowering stories when our gadgets don't fulfill us. Complaining becomes another addiction."It's Not My Fault. It's Just The Way Things Are." Maybe we can invent a pill for this. Maybe things will be better when we get a new job. Maybe they will be better when we get a new car? Maybe we can change our hair? A new brand of makeup? What about this shirt? How about these shoes? Do these shoes make me look happy?

I'm not saying don't wear makeup or buy happy shoes or drink wine or own a gorgeous television.

I'm saying you are as free or as enslaved as you ever want to be and it's always your choice.

#choices

I moved 7 times in the last 5 years. I quickly realized how heavy stuff is. And how annoying it is to re-pack a thing that hasn't mattered or made a bit of difference to us in the last 12 months.

I mastered setting up a home and getting organized really really fast. Systems optimization is essential in parenting.

My kids have toys. Some days they get really into playing with them and melt my heart with the adorable little games they invent. Other times they use thier wooden railroad track as weapons on each-other because they are bored and craving my attention.

I still own stuff. I still enjoy *things*. I have a cake pan collection stashed in a closet. I've hung on to my favorite culinary tools, because I want to start a Community Kitchen Catering Company. That's allowed to be a 10 year goal, but if it happens sooner, cool. If it never happens, whatever.
Life is not a race, and not every goal needs to come to fruition.

I've always believed strongly in taking good care of your things. Right now my bicycle is outside in the snow and I feel guilty that I haven't stored it properly. I am not a perfect human being and I accept that.

I've learned to accept the insane frustration of products designed to fail. Intentional obsolescence used to stress me out so much. I used to fret over making a bad choice & hold resentment about corporate greed.

I've finally begun to accept that I can't take responsibility for everything. I go at life so hard:
Is this the best I can do? Is this? Can I take it up another level still? What is actually the *best* I can do?

Sara has coached me on this. She calls it all or nothing thinking. Whenever I catch myself engaging in it, I know I'm listening to some external voice whose opinions I've allowed to control my ego.

So now I pay different mind to our stuff.

If we decide it matters to us, we create space for it.
If it breaks and I can't fix it, we move on.
If nobody uses it, it gets donated.
If it is something we really want, It finds its way into our life.

The space in my life that slowly opened up as I got more comfortable letting things go made room for other kinds of things. The strength to quit smoking, for example. My enchantment with how amazing I felt as a non smoker piqued me to explore veganism. I am not a vegan, and I may never be, but I do like to eat that way as much as I can.

I thought I would have tons of "extra money" every time I gave something up. I did, but I upgraded my spending to make different lifestyle choices. It stopped bothering me to pay a little extra for really tasty healthy food.

Instead of being a workaholic I chilled out and often chose to be first cut from my shifts at the restaurant. I came home and took my dog for long walks at the Clen Denam Dam before I picked up Zoraya from daycare. I threw all my resources at being the Kind of Mom I Want to Be (and no, I'm not yet the kind of mom I want to be, but I'm not allowed to engage in "all or nothing thinking" 😎)

When River was born I didn't send Zoraya to Kindergaden because I knew how much we would all benefit from getting really excellent sleep that year. That was a great year. One of my favorites. It is impossible now to sell me on the benefit of running around like stressed out idiot because of the choices I've learned to make.

Before minimalism I felt remorseful while making most purchases. I worried about money constantly. I felt guilty about everything. I can't say I feel that way anymore.

I don't buy many "things" now, because there just isn't that much that I want. When I do decide to buy something, I see it as an investment in myself & my family, so I buy a quality version of that thing, and I enjoy making the purchase. Then every time I use that item I get a special twinge of pleasure and satisfaction.

I now buy the things that I want instead of only what's available in bargain shops. I love the feeling of wearing clothes that fit me properly. Of course we do still try to find what we need in thrift stores, and when we find something cool that we want, we get it. I love the feeling of always having cash in my wallet. I love to sit and eat a nice meal with my daughters at the health food store when we decide to. (It's also been beyond amazing to have the time to sit and eat some nice meals by myself these past few months 😌).

Thinking back on 2016 I realized that I was engaging in Time Scarcity. Believing I could make a mad dash towards balanced living. I scoff at how ironic (moronic?) it seems from this vantage point. I am moving forward with the attitude that things will all get accomplished when they need to, and that I will find fun careers that fit into kid schedules while simultaneously paying our bills. I am completely confident that it will all come together.

I once heard that "Poverty is a disease of the mind" I love that. I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly.

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”

― Mother Teresa, A Simple Path

In recent contemplation over where would be an ideal place to live, (because I'm not interested in accommodating another vehicle in my financial budget or my time budget anywhere in the visible future) I considered moving back to Guelph (because of Public Transit and the University and many things for kids to do, and great friends, and so many hippies) but my standard of living now includes the pleasure of walking to the beach. (Spoiled! I know.) My preferences extend to the good drinking water that flows from the kitchen tap. (Who'd have thought clean water would settle so high on a person's priority list?!! ...I also have a fetish for fresh air.)

I truly wonder who I would have become if I had listened to the people 5 years ago who tried to convince me to stay. Surely a fraction of the person I am now. It makes my stomach do a weird twisty thing to imagine never having met the spectacular individuals who fill up my heart today.

The space I am de-cluttering now is the space inside my head. That sounds goofy but it's sincere. I no longer stumble over objects piled in the hallway, but I regularly trip over my reactionary nature. I can resist the temptation of junk food, but I still indulge in anger; impatient and yelling furiously at my children who I love so much. All I want to be a parent who is mindful, calm and present.

They say meditation can achieve this. I will report back to you in 5 years.