Not doing it…

Yes, I get the irony of this post right after yesterday’s

It’s the weekend.  So I break out my escapist reading and pointedly ignore the chores that are screaming for my attention.  It takes some concentration, but it gets done.  (On the flip side, that same concentration could be reused to complete a niggling important task!)

It’s the world’s least kept secret that I am an avid reader.  Always have been.  Despite my friends’ comments and urgings, TV and movies fall a very distant third behind books and cooking as my way of relaxing.  (And then there’s my collection of cookbooks, which we are not discussing today)

In honour of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 148th birthday today, I’ve dug out my Little House series of books, and have been happily reliving American prairie living from over a century ago.  There were some details that stood out in this reread that I missed before (granted, that was more than 10 years ago).  Now that I live in a country where there is a WINTER, I understand and appreciate better the stories in The Long Winter, and how real the risk of starvation was.  Even written for children and carefully disguised, there were hints of people who came close to death from the lack of food when the trains didn’t run.  (Then there’s this from earlier this week.  Pretty impressive.)  The books talk about how close farmers lived to failure, especially with one main cash crop.  It’s something often overlooked in our confortable, urban, Internet-active world, even though there are people who talk about farming and the need to support farmers.

There’s an added guilty pleasure when reading this, as I can appreciate the luxury that I have in my totally-electric condo.  Dishes can be done without my direct attention; laundry is completed without me needing to break a sweat; food is pulled from a frozen state in the house without the need for straw-wrapped bundles of ice (although in this weather, my balcony keeps foods colder than my freezer!)  This is a level of comfort that for centuries was the sole province of royalty.

In as much as we have heavily scheduled, busy lives, it is necessary to sometimes stop and simply exist.  Ironically, several self-help people recommend scheduling “break time” on your agenda.  I know that I sometimes have to call my girlfriends to say “Hey, let’s go for coffee.” because otherwise we schedule, plan and DO until we collapse, totally stressed at the end of the day, working out what we need to plan for the next day.

But today, I am reading childhood books (expect a review of some of them soon); making a large pot of tea (I have this new yellow tea to try) and playing with my little dog.  It doesn’t get too much better than this, does it?  Happy weekend!