A mini, mini, mini adventure

I have broken any record that I might ever had concerning nights spent at home and although I have managed to be fairly patient I am now starting to want to be “anywhere”, to travel, to see new things or even old ones. Not that I don’t love my own bed or the beauty that I see out of the windows every morning, simply that it’s not like me to not have gone anywhere since December 27^th when I returned from my Christmas Market Cruise and Christmas in Austria.

Today the sun finally deigned to grace us with its presence so I decided to have a mini adventure. Bus into town, train to Morges where I had intended for years to enjoy the Tulip Festival.  The tulips are still only about 30% out, but there were 80 pottery stands from all over Switzerland exhibiting their wares, the weather was accommodating and it was a glorious little adventure.

The park itself is also gorgeous

Looking across the lake towards France

Kind of hazy, but a beautiful day everywhere

 Including having a plate of antipasti in the dining car of the return train (hadn’t come across any restaurant in Morges that looked interesting – and most were chock-a-block full in any case and I didn’t want to settle for just a sausage in the park).

Very appetizing and the accompanying bread delicious.

Only a few hours, but a true change. And I'll still have the comfort of my own bed tonight.

Spring reflections

Or should that be reflections on Spring?

There is truth to the saying that the older one gets, the faster time goes: here we are already well into the fourth month of the year and I am already playing catch up.

Although Spring officially started a couple of weeks ago, my mind set wasn’t there until yesterday.  For one thing, as winter was so mild, Spring was more of a concept than an actual fact, for another, in spite of the mild Spring, flowers are just barely starting to bloom.

But we have changed to daylight savings, the calendar does mark the pas

sage from Winter into Spring, but more importantly: whilst browsing in the grocery store – I can’t drive yet so do the grocery shopping with M after our morning coffee – I came across some new place settings as well as hand and dish towels in a color, that for me, embodies Spring - lime green.

Couldn’t resist (and it must be said didn’t even try in spite of the fact that I already had some lime green cloth place settings…) and arrived home with them. That of course led to the purchase of more tulips to fill the beautiful vase that is just perfect for tulips.

It also led to my finally turning off the lights in the tree next to the garage.

Spring has finally sprung at #15.

Getting things done or…Don’t turn on the computer!

Every age, every new development brings ways to spend ones time – and not necessarily in a productive or intelligent way.

As a child my nose was always in a book except for the rare occasions where my mother caught me and made me 1) do some chore or 2) go outside and play. I wasn’t much better at school always hurrying to finish the assigned task so that I could take my book out of my desk and hiding it on my lap (or at least I thought that I was hiding: it was a rude awakening when I did my student teaching to realize that all those years, all those teachers, everyone could easily see the entire class – even the back row – and what the students were doing).

Although I kept my nose in books – and still do – other ages brought other ways of “wasting” time: the mini solitary deck of cards with which I whiled away the odd 10 minutes; the bundle of knitting that was my constant companion for many years; the 500 – 1000 piece puzzles that took days of not weeks to complete; the piles of magazines without which I feel insecure – all of these served to spend time, sometimes way too much time, although I am not sure that cleaning the house etc. would have been a more productive use of that time. Then there were the first handheld games: Game Boy and Tetris (swiped from my older son when he was at school: good thing that neither of my sons really read my blog!). And although I never got into video games, I will be the first to acknowledge that my use of computer games is not any better.  I can’t even claim that by playing Letter Garden I am improving my mind (most of the words I “make” are of the three or four letter variety – occasionally I’ll find a “write”, “exit” or “hazard”, but it’s rare.)  Are the bursting bubbles type improving my hand/eye coordination? Probably not even. Sigh.

So this morning in a fit of “I have to be productive today” I didn’t turn on the computer until 10:30. It’s amazing the amount of things I got accomplished: swept the laundry room, including picking up after the cats; cleaned the tops of all the cupboards therein and put away or otherwise disposed of many items; vacuumed my office and dusted the tops of everything and – drumroll – the best of all sorted through my guarantees file and threw away (as in actually tossed) 52 items!

I am patting myself on the back, but it will all be downhill from here on in as I have turned the computer back on and even if I do get some tasks done that involve having to have the computer on, I can guarantee that at least an hour (or two) of the day will be spent playing computer games, I mean, really how industrious can one be on a Monday?

Guarantees to be thrown out

reward for work done

It’s not what you think or…

How different reality can be from what one perceives.

Shocking picture, I know, but it proves my point.

This morning although I do have plenty of administrative tasks that I could be doing (i.e. billing, sorting, filing), having nothing urgent requiring my attention and its being the weekend, I took a look into the downstairs refrigerator (o.k. that came from putting in the wash, seeing a Tupperware that needed putting away, which lead to the room in which the fridge resides) and decided to sort out the bottles of condiments.

Now if my housemate and myself are pretty good about sharing our condiments (and there are still a ton of those in the upstairs refrigerator as we tend to use them about once a month – if that), the visits and stays of my younger son, her daughter and her husband over the past couple of years has led to a real plethora of condiments bottles and jars.

I was in a ruthless mood so down the toilet went the pickles, the barbecue sauce and the Satay peanut sauce (to use by date was late 2012!) which is what you see above.

Not what you were expecting was it?

Which also reminds me that often what we perceive a person’s moods or opinions to be can be just as misleading – tolerance is the word for the day.

And pretty tulips to take the bad taste out of your mouth – or rather to take the misconception out of your eyesight (and yes they are real tulips).

tulips in front of the Brunswick Monument, Geneva, Switzerland