comfort & ritual

autumn beach scenes with my best girl Miss Winnie Dixon

Never underestimate how much assistance, 

how much satisfaction, how much comfort, 

how much soul and transcendence there might be 
in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.

Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

As my days and evenings and weekends continue to be jammed packed with work, with art, with design, with creativity ... with passion & with love.  I'm finding so much comfort in the small rituals I celebrate throughout each day. Self care has finally become understood and appreciated by me for the first time perhaps ever. My coffee in bed each morning while tucked into flannel sheets recently brought in from being hung on the line outside, a cat or 2, a dog or 2 and of course a charming Prince also. Writing my Morning Pages with that coffee in bed, planning my day neatly & in exquisite detail. The hot sudsy facecloth scented with handcrafted patchouli soap that I wash my face with, my walks with Winnie twice daily our first in early morning, crunching through leaves and occasionally lately seeing our breath in the morning's crisp fall air. Our second stroll nearer dinnertime, at sunset we walk the village streets admiring the early Christmas light displays and enjoy peering into the windows of well lit homes. Making tea each afternoon at 3pm sharp - sitting somewhere away from desk, breathing deeply, feeling grateful ... relaxing. And my final and perhaps favourite ritual of the day is leaving my desk by 8pm and tucking back into those flannel sheets soon after with a book. Reading feels like taking a tranquilizing tablet or attending an hour long therapy session. It's the carrot (my bedtime reading) hanging there, pulling me, tempting me, pushing me forward through my day. Lately I've been rushing through book after book and loving them all. I'm currently half way through Louise Erdrich's* The Round House - oh my it's so good ! the plot completely gripping, the characters so well developed I forget that they're not really part of my life.

What are some of your favourite  rituals ? I'd love to hear them

* listen to a fantastic interview with Louise Erdrich on another fav CBC show Writers & Co.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. 

The man who never reads lives only one.

George R. R. Martin - A Dance with Dragons

heard yesterday on fav CBC show Q & hey Blogger you are really pissin' me off !