Saturday 30 December 2017

Ice cream spiders

It's warm and sunny in Wellington today. Sure, there's wind - but that's to remind us of which city we live in. After a few wintry days inside, I decided to spend an hour wrangling the hebe bushes and deadheading the proteas that have been thriving since the early arrival of summer this year.

It was hot work and reminded me of summer days when the whole family got stuck into outdoor work at home. I don't remember having much success in Mum's garden but I do remember our reward if we helped: Dad would make us an ice cream spider - and there was nothing better in the middle of a hot afternoon when we'd been working hard.

Here's how it worked. We'd sit at the kitchen bench and watch Dad place one or two scoops of ice cream into a tall glass that was kept especially for this occasion (along with the extra tall teaspoons that could reach all the way to the bottom). He'd bring it over to us and pour Coke all the way to the top. Sometimes he plonked a straw in so we could sip up the last of the liquid at the bottom. There were no cherries, berries, cream, wafers, syrup or sprinkles in our spiders; simplicity was the key. You had to be alert, though; fizzy drink and ice cream could quickly overflow if you didn't catch it in time, which is why Dad assembled them right in front of us.

These days, I'm not much of an ice cream fan and haven't drunk fizzy drinks in more than 20 years, but nostalgia hit hard while I was gardening and I suddenly felt like a spider. I settled for a handful of ripe cherries and some leftover gingerbread instead.

Wednesday 27 December 2017

Catching up

'Tis the season for catching up:
With neglected friends and family
With unwatched TV series
With untried recipes
With unread books and blog posts
With saved podcasts
With unfinished blog posts
With socialising
With learning new skills
With exploring hobbies
With housework and household chores
With house renovations and repairs
With life in general.
Now that the holidays are here, I am blessed with some time and space to catch up on so many things. Hopefully I can take a break from chasing my tail for a while. But how did I get so behind in the first place? Who sets this unattainable tempo that is punctuated with escalating goals? I often wonder whether I'm trying to keep up with other people's expectations or my own. I suspect it's a combination of the two and one feeds the other, leaving an ever growing To Do list that doesn't really get anywhere.

No matter how many times I've said it, next year will be different. I want to achieve a better balance and am open to ideas and strategies for how to do this - or just to get started. Walking away from a stressful job should help me catch up on all the things I've put on hold for so long and also make some forward progress, but I need to sustain it once I add work back into the mix.

All I know is that things can't continue as they have been and the best time to make a change is now. Who's with me?