Tag Archives: be flexible

Busy? Might I Suggest Sandwich Night?

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Barb| 5 Comments

Sandwich Night!

 Randy Son Of Robert 

Things have been a little hectic around here this week.  Nothing we can’t manage, just a little busier than usual.

I’m sure you know what that’s like.  Actually, for many of you, our ‘busy’ would be your ‘I’m all caught up and have a completely free agenda!’  I don’t know how most of you do it really.  Especially those of you with kids.  There’s school and homework and all those extracurricular activities.  Soccer and hockey and the especially dreaded soccer-hockey overlap.

Even without children, there are meetings, business launches, home improvement projects…

Who has time to make dinner?

While I highly recommend unstuffing your schedule on a regular basis, even the most stalwart among us will occasionally find themselves with too much to do and no time to cook dinner.  My solution is sandwich night.

We have this notion that dinner must be cooked in some way, if it’s to count as dinner, even if the cooking is done by a high-school student in a paper hat.  But if shouting into a speaker and rushing a greasy paper bag home to the hungry masses leaves you cold, try sandwiches.  Good bread, a selection of sliced tomato, avocado, greens and sprouts, onions, mustard, mayo, cheese.   Add a plate of chopped up raw veggies to accompany.  If everyone’s old enough to wield their own knives, you can lay out the ingredients and let them go to town.

This is how my mother used to serve up Sunday lunch when the family came to visit.  There’s something really sociable about passing plates round and round the table.  Conversation flows, hunger is sated.  And when the meal’s done there are no pots and pans to wash.  Just some plates and glasses that, frankly, can wait till tomorrow to be washed.

Do you have any cooking questions you’d like me to cover?  Particular foods or techniques that have you stymied?  Please let me know!

Today’s Photo: Welcome to Stratford

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Posted in Simple Food

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Pick ‘n’ Mix Lifestyle Design

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Barb| 2 Comments

David Locke1

We are a society that loves our labels, aren’t we?  We can say, ‘Oh he’s a Republican’ or a ‘Vegetarian’ or a ‘Minimalist’ and for the most part, we know what that means.  And within those categories we can add sub-categories to further refine our labels.  And on and on until we almost get a clear picture of who someone is.

Which can make it a bit scary to enter into the contemplation of any particular group.  Along with the labels come assumptions and expected behaviours.  If I eat less meat, will I have to go on protests?  If I clean out my sock drawer, will I have to then give up my car?

Let’s face it, labels are only shorthand and just as shorthand can never be literature with all its subtlety and nuance, labels can never substitute for the rich entirety of an actual living person.  So the only label that I tend to give myself is my name.  This leaves me a little more free to look around at what’s on offer from the various lifestyles out there.  I call it the Pick ‘n’ Mix approach.  You used to (and possibly still can) be able to buy candy by choosing three of these and twelve of those and leaving those yukky-tasting things you hate for someone else.  I suggest the same approach to the rest of life.

I read a lot of minimalist blogs.  They’ve got a lot of great ideas that I can use.  But some of them are pretty hard core and more suited to single people.  I’ve got a husband, a house and a back that needs understanding.  So I leave the ideas that would conflict with those realities alone.

Location Independence?  Love the concept.  And a lot of the ideas make my life easier, even though I have no desire to travel endlessly.

I read a lot of business blogs, too.  They’ve got great ideas that can apply to an online business,  be transferred to a brick-and-mortar endeavour or just applied to your household budget, whether or not you ever intend to go the entrepreneurial route.

So don’t limit yourself in your explorations.  You really don’t know when an article for, say, packing for an around the world trip will be the spark you need to make your kitchen more organized and easier to use.

What’s the most unexpected place you’ve found an idea you could use?

Today’s Photo: The Huron Street Bridge

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Posted in Inspiration

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Celebrating the Attempt

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Barb McMahon| 9 Comments

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OakleyOriginals

My post on embarrassment struck a chord with a few of you.  I hope it helps to know you’re not alone in your struggles.

And I hope that you fully understand that most of the time, your embarrassment comes about because you’re out there, trying something.  And that’s what we’re going to celebrate this weekend.  The attempt, no matter how it turns out, to learn something new, to express ourselves, to make the world around us a better place.

Yes, these attempts can go wildly awry.  You can work and work and work and end up with, well, huh.  Not quite what you were expecting.  Sometimes you try to make dessert for four and end up with The Pavlovasaurus (eight eggs – how did it get so big???)

Akan and the pavlovasaurus.

Or sometimes, it takes a really long time to see if you’re making any progress at all.  Like adding pages to this blog.  It’s going to take awhile to import all the Celebration Friday posts from my previous blogs.  The interfaces aren’t compatible, so I’ve been spending my afternoons hacking code. 

Has anyone noticed that I’ve added a page here?  That’s what I thought.

But you get out there and you try.  Yay, you! Reward yourself.  Celebrate getting out there.  Don’t worry so much about the outcome.  Yes, of course, you want it to be great.  We all do.  And sometimes it will be.  And sometimes it will make for a really funny story.

The motto of the Special Olympics is “Let me win.  But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”  They’re the words I live by, as I keep on trying.

So let me know, what have you been attempting this week?  What should you be patting yourself on the back for?  Please let me know so I can cheer you on!

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Posted in Uncategorized

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You’ll Just Embarrass Yourself

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Barb McMahon| 3 Comments

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Paolo Camera

Quick quiz: How many of you read that title and saw it as a warning or a threat?

Had I not known that I actually meant it as a reassurance, I probably would have, too.  Let me explain.

So many times, I find myself wanting to get out there and do things – expand my blogs, meet new people, learn new skills.  But it’s really hard, no, it’s impossible to do these new things without having moments of embarrassment.  It’s embarrassing not to know what you’re doing.  It’s embarrassing to make mistakes.  And embarrassment?  Well, it just really, really sucks, doesn’t it?

So, for far too much of the time, we let that hold us back.  We don’t reach out to those new people, or sign up for that class at which we would be absolute beginners.  We don’t do those things that might just get us closer to our dreams.  Because we don’t want to suffer the wretched discomfort of embarrassment.

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Paloetic

But here’s the thing, and here’s what my title really means.  Embarrassment is just uncomfortable.  It’s not fatal.  And if you can learn to just weather it and leave it behind, it doesn’t even have to cause any long-term damage.  It’s just embarrassment.  It’s just a feeling.

How do I know this?  Experience my friends, and plenty of it! I have pulled more boneheaded stunts than I will ever admit to in public.  Made every mistake possible.  Felt my cheeks flame and my stomach churn as a realized how dumb I’d made myself look.  Just last week I took a huge misstep in the blog-building arena that made me look like a total over-eager amateur.

But I lived.  And I learned.  And I have quite a few experiences that I can look back on that I never would have had if I hadn’t taken a chance, hadn’t learned to keep going, to not let the embarrassment keep me from where I wanted to go.

I mean, you should have seen me last week, racing through the downtown with my camera, trying to get the perfect shot of the visiting marching band.  Did I feel like an idiot?  Of course I did!  People were looking at me!  And I’m not a professional photographer, I just have this little photo blog that not a lot of people know about.  Did I let it stop me?  Not this time and because of that, not next time, either.

I’m not advising that you just get out there and make an ass of yourself without doing any homework whatsoever.  My homework for the various things I want to do is prodigious and on-going.  I am saying don’t let “doing your homework” become code for “not doing”.

Because I also remember those times I did let my fear of embarrassment stop me.  I regret those times.  I remind myself of them when I hesitate and off I go.  Because regret feels even worse than embarrassment.

Embarrassment is survivable.  And the rewards for surviving it are huge.

  • A little note about that first picture – the horses and jockeys are all fine.

 

 

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Posted in Fearless Living

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Straight Line Thinking

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Barb McMahon| 2 Comments

Vinni123

Many years ago, I injured my back, requiring multiple visits to a chiropractor to put it right.  He did a great job and gave me exercises to do at home to continue his good work.

During treatment, he reminded me many times that healing doesn’t occur in a straight line.  If you could graph the process, there would be peaks and valleys, not the direct forty-five degree straight line that most of us seem to expect.

“Some days,” he told me, “you’ll feel fantastic.  Other days, you’ll wonder if you’re making any progress at all.  That’s how normal healing works.”

I thought of this over the last week or two as what had been my exemplary financial progress since last summer hit a series of potholes, some of them foreseen and welcomed and others not so much.  I mean, seriously, does anyone ever want to buy a new muffler?  I’m much more sanguine about these things than I ever used to be, but I still have my moments of flinging myself about and huffing that it’s two steps forward and one step back.  Poor me.

But then I remember what my chiropractor told me.   And the fact that I have actually made really good progress, even despite job loss.

I’ll get back on track.  And I know this isn’t the only time I’ll use this lesson to calm the heck down.

And you know what else occurs to me?

Two steps forward and one step back sounds an awful lot like dancing.  And isn’t that a great way to move through life?

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Posted in Happy Living

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