There are topics weighing heavy on my heart, but I’m feeling good today and don’t want to go heavy. Instead, let’s talk about fun things. Awesome things. Peaceful things. Here are a few I’m loving right now:
Harney & Sons Cinnamon Tea
It’s delicious. It’s comforting. And it’s now my sole source of caffeine. Drinking coffee was really only the favorite creamer anyway. (Sweet Italian Cream, I still love you and miss you, but you’re too stubbornly sugary.) Cinnamon tea helps curb my appetite and is even said to give you a metabolic boost. I look forward to warming weather to try it as a sun tea.
Winter Walking
I love where we live here at The Angle right now. It feels as though we’re in the center of things. We have less than a mile roundtrip to walk to the post office to see Ms. Judy, so it makes the perfect outing for the five-year old and me. We pass the tiny general store, J&M, and always stop in to say Hello to Ms. Janette and her excited labradoodle, Lucy. Iris brings her quarters for a treat but more often than not, Janette or Mac has already palmed her a sucker.
Blogging & Fasting
As I write this, I’m on Day 4 of a (primarily) water fast. I drink tea, bone broth if needed, and water with sodium and potassium chloride added for electrolytes. I’ve been playing at this fasting-focused lifestyle since January but had only made it to 62 hours until now. For this longer (albeit still short) fast, what has helped me stay accountable this time is blogging about it. Everyday. By sharing WAY too much personal info, I am staying on track, curing my addiction to food, focusing on my spirituality and losing weight.
Putting Down my Phone
This week’s Minimize Minute column was about cleaning up my smart phone apps. I took the task seriously and right away deleted Facebook. Not my account, just the app. I can still access it on my PC or tablet, but I found that FB on my phone was pretty much killing my soul. Life has been night-and-day better without it whispering in my ear all day long. “Look! Scroll! Click! Comment! Comment again!” Deleting it has helped me spend far less time on my phone and focus on more important things.
Fluffy Body Butter
I made up a recipe for my own body lotion, whipped it up in my stand mixer, dolloped it into jars and handed it out to the ladies in my family. They liked it. I like it too. We’re on the third batch. It’s creamy and smooth, and we know exactly what’s in it. I use it everywhere, even my face. If you want to try making it, use equal parts coconut oil and shea butter, half as much sweet almond oil and cocoa butter, even less jojoba oil and aloe vera gel, and then just a little bit of castor oil. Let it all melt down and combine, then let it partially solidfy and whip it good. I never measure. It’s too confining.
If Women Rose Rooted
I jump from book to book as my spirit dictates. But one that I keep coming back to is Sharon Blackie’s “If Women Rose Rooted – The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging”. She’s an Irish writer but has spent time in corporate America (the wasteland, as she calls it). The book focuses on the power of place and the language of the land. She details the lessons we can learn from our mother earth through her own and other’s experiences living close to the land, belonging to it, finding her soul, her peace through it. It’s an exquisitely written book and definitely not for the quick day reader. When I’m completely present with it, her words move me towards ideas that feel like coming home. They assure me that I have more to do and be and that my power is waiting to be unbridled and charge forth. Goosebumps arise in the most holy of ways when I read this book.
The Snow Crust Moon
It is the season of teasing thaws and bitter sunshine, winds that whip cruelly but then rest and beckon us out of heavy jackets. The off and on warm and cold turn the snow blanket into a hardened carpet, clean and dry, capable of holding vehicles some years. The squirrels and the five-year old can run on it, though she prefers to jump and crash through, delighting in the dry snow crystals that lie beneath like a million small diamonds waiting their time to melt, merge and be useful. We will soon be wet and mud-covered, floors dirty for weeks on end, pant legs marred with the gray Angle clay that coats our vehicles. But for now, for this Snow Crust Moon, we walk through the woods on frozen clouds, above the snagging ground brush, grabbing at branches we couldn’t normally reach. It is a magic all its own this time of year, this fleeting, higher vantage the snow crust allows. And it will disappear over one of these dark nights, gone like the moon as she rests after her work, unremembered by a fading winter, lodged only in the deep memories of childhood.
Kellie Knight’s “Angle Full of Grace” 