Just Enjoy Your Life

I've been taking a writing class this summer with Harry Thurston, a well known Canadian author and a neighbor and friend.

One of our assignments was to write about something magical that happened in your life.  I narrowed it down to three incidents. One, involving a monk in an elevator in Albuquerque just seemed to beg to be enhanced and so I turned it into a short story.

The actual incident was real.  About 8 years ago, I checked in to the Albuquerque Hilton a day before my friends Kathy and Carol were arriving there from Pennsylvania.  I was coming from Colorado, and I can't remember why I arrived early. Our plan was to go to Santa Fe and furnish Kathy's newly purchased condo.  When I checked in to the Hilton, there was a large spirituality conference going on, and after wandering around among the booths and book stalls, I got on the elevator to go up to my room.  The elevator was filled with people from the conference, talking enthusiastically about the sessions they had attended.

The last person to get on was a tall, broad monk in a long orange robe.  As the elevator whined its way up to our floors, only the monk and I were quiet.  When it got to the fifth floor, the door opened, the monk stepped out, turned and lifted his arm to hold the elevator door open.  He looked at each one of us, waited till everyone stopped talking, got eye contact with each one of us and said,

" Just enjoy your life, that's all there is."

 Then he let the door close,  turned, and walked away.

Just enjoy your life, that's all there is!

My story goes from there, and stays in the magical vein that I felt on that elevator on that day.

In the  writing class with Harry, he gave some great comments, but asked, " Does the monk have to keep coming back?" ( In my short story, the monk keeps coming back, mostly through messages.)
I said yes, the monk had to keep coming back or there was no story.

Since the class, in my real life, the monk and his message keeps coming back in all sorts of mysterious  ways, and I'm choosing to keep living in the magic of "Just enjoying my life."

 I did this  illustration on my ipad - drawing it with my finger and printing it to give away. My latest "monkish" adventure was to make it into a wine label for our newest batch of wine.

Happy 104th Birthday, Virginia

The mother of my friend, Heather Ricker Gilbert, turns 104 today!  Virginia is an unforgettable character and I have a stash of  memories of  her. 

She was a professor of English at Penn State, and you knew you'd "arrived"  when you made it onto her Christmas Tea list. 

When Heather got her Doctorate in Education, Virginia gave a party for her.

Bud and I were invited, but we had a conflict. We had already made plans to go to Nova Scotia and we really wanted to get our vacation started.  I talked with Heather and said we'd have our own private celebration with her when we got back. She was fine with our going.  

That was the easy part.  Next, I'd have to call Virginia with my regrets.

I told Virginia that because we were leaving for Nova Scotia a few days before the party, we'd be unable to come.

"Nancy," she said, "it isn't that you're unable to come to Heather's party, it's that you choose not to come to Heather’s party"

Whoa, Virginia, I still liked you in spite of that uncomfortable moment and right now I'm choosing to come and see you next month in State College.  

Happy 104th Birthday!

Blue Water

Daughter Kate, who advises me on well-being issues and sells some wonderful products through Life Force International, has been telling me that I don't drink enough water.  She's right,  when I'm in Nova Scotia.

In Colorado and Arizona, everyone carries water bottles around with them. We are all very water conscious there.  It's hot and dry and dusty. You can almost see your skin cracking before your eyes.

You're thirsty there.  You drink.

Here in Nova Scotia, there's water everywhere.  It rains, it's damp, skin is moisturized, happy.  I'm not thirsty. I forget to drink water.

Take that beautiful blue bottle you bought at Frenchy's ( my favorite thrift shop ) and fill it with water every day",  Kate said. "Leave it on the counter in plain view and drink it all. "


     So I fill it daily, and I'm drinking the water.

The bottle is Italian, and used in France for  fruit juice.  I looked it up on the web and found out it was worth $10  and is made of cobalt glass.  My resident chemist ( Bud ) assured me that the cobalt doesn't leach into the water, but I looked it up anyway and he was right ( no real surprise there ).  In the searching, I found another website that said water ionized by the sun through a blue bottle was calming, good for blood pressure, thyroid and other issues.

My bottle has been sitting on the counter.  In the sun.  I've been very calm lately.   hmm.


p.s. If you don't have a blue bottle, the article mentions Harvey's Bristol Cream bottles which are a beautiful blue.  You could drink the Harvey's, which is very calming, then ionize your water in the sun and keep the calmness going.

Parties to Decide Whether or Not to Have Parties

Two years ago we had a bang- up party with 100 people to celebrate Bud and his friend Charlie's 70th birthday.  We forgot nothing. We had entertainment, fake telegrams from prime ministers and presidents, real messages from friends and family, dinner, live music, dancing -- everything. 

 It was so much fun that we did it again ( without the birthday reason ), with  a working committee of 12 couples the following year.  It looked like we'd be continuing on into the sunset with these parties.  So, after PARTY # 2, the "working committee" had a party to evaluate the party and set the date for the next party, as well as the pre- planning party ( are you still with me? ).  This year's pre- planning party was for June.  June rolled around and we had our pre-party committee party ( what a blast ) and decided NOT TO HAVE A PA RTY.  

Wow, NO PARTY.  Now that was a big decision.  So, we thought we'd better have a " committee"party in September to decide whether or not deciding to NOT HAVE A PARTY was a good decision.

We gathered last night to have a post NO PARTY party to see if we made the right decision. ( The photo catches us at a staid moment when Bud is calling for the critical vote on whether or not we did the right thing.)

It was unanimous.  The June vote to NOT HAVE A PARTY  was the right decision.  We'd all had an amazingly busy summer.  We couldn't have done a party.  Ah - but what about next year?  Another vote.  NO PARTY. 

Wow, NO PARTY.

 But we chose a date to get together again next June.  We even chose the place.  We'd have a "committee" party to decide whether or not we really should have a party... a kind of second chance to see if we really wanted to have a party. 

I can only conclude that party animals will always find a reason to have a party --- even if there is no PARTY!

From the Arctic Circle to South America. One Stop

Each summer, there's a miraculous sight to see about an hour from our place.  Thousands of small semi-palmated sandpipers fly from above the Arctic Circle in Canada to South America,  stopping to rest and feed at the Dorchester Cape in New Brunswick.


Naturalists say that it takes them about 48 hours of non-stop flying to do it.




This photo only shows a small portion of the estimated 150,000 birds that were on the shore of the Bay of Fundy the day we went to view them.  It's magical to see them all, waiting for the tide to go out in order to feed on the minuscule shrimp that are in abundance there. Fundy has the highest tides in the world, and at this spot, the tide goes out for a mile, so at low tide, there's ample ground to search for shrimp.


The best time to see the birds is at high tide when they're close to shore, resting and waiting to eat.

They feed until they double their weight, which takes about two weeks, and then they fly non-stop for 72 hours on their annual winter migration to South America.  

There's a platform with a naturalist just above the shore.  It's a hushed atmosphere, all of us staying still and quiet not to disturb the birds since every  bit of flight burns precious calories.  Only the occasional predator bird startles them and their flight, 150,000 of them, is like a grey wave hovering over the sea.

We leave, as quietly as we came, transfixed by the wonder of it all.