Another meme. ('Cos I'm all about the personality-sharing, yo')

"List 5 things you enjoy, even when no one is around and you want to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level?"

My response: well, duh.

1. would have to be Knitting. Or maybe, better, a whole subcategory titled Making Stuff with Fiber. Because, honestly? I could probably come up with five fiber-related hobbies and leave it at that. The different activities I do - knitting, piecing quilt tops, handquilting, sewing clothes, making critters, crocheting - are all relaxing but in different ways. With knitting and crochet, if it's a simple pattern, it can be done almost on autopilot - it's the motion of the hands that's calming, the stitch-after-stitch that smoothes out the roughness of life. With knitting lace or handquilting, it's the attention required. The simple being in the moment of having to concentrate on doing what I'm doing correctly. With the stuff on the sewing machine, there's the added danger/joy of possible mechanized mayhem. And even apart from the process, there is the good and right feeling of making something that is either useful, beautiful, or both.

2. Yoga. Oh, don't laugh. My aunt laughed at me when I mentioned doing yoga and one of my snarky, I'm-cooler-than-you cousins had to ask if I had found "enlightenment" as a result. Honestly? No. But it does make me sleep a whole lot sounder at night, and I've learned that certain poses (like Cobra, like Wide-Angle Forward Bend) will open up my chest when my asthma is bothering me a little. Again, I think it's the concentration required that is relaxing to me - you can't think about what you have to do tomorrow or what you forgot to pick up at the store when you're doing yoga. You have to concentrate on the pose or on the breathing or on your balance or on trying to figure out what Rodney Yee means when he says "let the centers of your eyes peacefully descend, as if they were hollow." (which creeps me out a little if I really think about it.)

Except I think I pulled one of my butt-muscles while doing yoga last night. That's not very relaxing.

3. Music. I have a huge collection of CDs, most of them classical but also a number of jazz, chanson, world, early rock and roll, Celtic, and some oddball things (like that guy, Iz - how do you classify him? Hawaiian? World? Folk?). Some of it I put on, loud, when I'm sewing on the machine, to just keep me going. Sometimes I'll put in a disc with music that has a good beat to it and just dance around the room. Or I put on Charles Trenet and try to sing along with him.

4. Gardening or doing yardwork. At least when the temperature is low enough not to kill you. It's because it's a very low-decision sort of activity (and a lot in my daily life is a high-decision sort of activity). Is this plant a weed or a desirable plant? If a, pull it, if b, leave it. Are the tree branches obscuring the growth of your flowers? If yes, cut them, if no, leave them - very simple descisions to make. And if you mess something up, nine times out of ten it will grow back (or you can buy another one). Housework is kind of the same way, except I don't find scrubbing floors quite as fun as pulling weeds.

5. Shopping. Yeah, yeah, I know. I've admitted before that I shouldn't be as fond of it as I am. But I am. And it's a part of me. I love being able to go to stores and drift around among the merchandise and if I see something I can use or that I really love, buying it. Part of this may be an outgrowth of having grown up on a minimal allowance (seriously: like $2 a week when I was in HIGH SCHOOL) and also having spent many years in grad school (and before that, trying to make the money my grandparents left me for my education spin out long enough so I wouldn't have to take out loans to go to school). It's an aftereffect I think of a frugal childhood and young-adulthood. Besides, if a $4 bar of soap really does make my life better, that's a cheap price to pay. Even if I can get 5 bars of not-so-wonderful soap for the same price at the Wal-Mart. Life is not always about paying the lowest price possible. I also like shopping because of the possibilities - so many books I could buy, and take home, and read, and let change my life! So many fabrics I could use to make beautiful quilts, or skirts, or pajamas! So much yarn that I could buy and have the joy of running through my hands as I knit it up! So many things to sample, so many things to try. So many antique items to rescue from people who don't appreciate them for what they are!


I could also add cooking, I suppose, if I had to go with a sixth. And reading, for a seventh. And bathing.

oh, what the heck...

6. Cooking. Again, it's the pleasure of making something. And there's the little nurturing joy of being able to take care of yourself and knowing how to eat so you don't get scurvy or rickets or some horrible deficiency-caused disease. And there's a certain smugness about knowing how to make tortillas, I think.

7. Reading. I could write a lot more on this. Maybe I will sometime. I mostly read as an escape, as a way of de-tracking my mind from its quotidian thoughts ("Is there still enough time to write and submit an abstract?" "Do I need to e-mail my committee and call a meeting?" "Was that kid in class laughing with me or at me?"). It's also a way of celebrating language - I love words. I love language - syntax and grammar and sentence structure and all that, when it's properly done. I like writers who respect language and who still know how to have fun with it - how to let the words sparkle and flitter like a crowd of butterflies. One of the first writers I remember noticing this about was C. S. Lewis, in his Chronicles of Narnia.

Incidentally, one thing I can't abide are writers who are sloppy. Not so much in a casual forum, like on a blog (I'm not going to delink anyone for being sloppy - although I might if someone decided to eschew punctuation or appropriate capitalization, simply because those two affectations [and yes, I think they are] make it harder for me to read). But I hate it when a paid published writer is sloppy - even in the name of "Art." Communication is more important to me than style.

8. Bathing. This is also very important to me. I love to be clean. There are few pleasures greater for me than coming in out of the garden, getting in the shower, and washing off all the soil and perspiration. Or coming in after a long day in the field and being able to get rid of the sweat and haze and bug-spray under a cascade of water.

One of the most purely happy moments of my life that I remember was when I was an undergraduate, taking a course in Trees and Shrubs (except I think it was called Woody Plants by then), and one day we went out on a field trip - this was late November in Michigan. It was sleeting out. And it was muddy. And we were looking at forest-edge trees, so we were mostly tramping around in old soybean fields in the mud. It was very cold. And then, I got home, went up to my little apartment, and drew myself a warm bath. And I realized that sometimes the thing that makes you happiest in the world at any given moment can be a very simple thing, when it is just exactly the thing you need.

One of the first purchases I made when I knew I was going to get the house was one of those rain-shower type shower heads. And Bath and Body Works has me in its thrall. And one of the things I look forward to on trips to places like McKinney is finding bars of the little artisanally-made soap, or bath fizzies, or nice hand lotions, for sale. You'd be more than a little alarmed to look in the cabinet under my sink, to see all the soaps and bath salts and all that that I have under there.

One of the things that depresses me about summer? It's too warm to really enjoy long warm baths. (And baths, understand, are NOT about getting clean - they are about relaxation.)