Another kind of new year

Saturday was officially the day to mark the Lunar New Year. Because I knew the restaurants would be crowded with people wanting to celebrate, I stayed home.

But staying home doesn't mean going without yummy treats. My local produce store has a freezer filled with ready-to-steam dumplings and lotus-wrapped packets of sticky rice. So, a little feast at home serves as a nice appetizer -- just a taste to encourage me to gather a crew for a trip into Richmond for a proper feed of dim sum.

I'll admit to having mixed feelings about this being called the Year of the Rat. According to tradition, it's the first of the twelve animals depicted in the Chinese zodiac. First or not, my associations with rats are less than savoury. Especially now that coronavirus is making the news.

Even though I understand it's passed by contact with fluids (mucus, etc.) and isn't an airborne virus (which sounds promising for not having it spread more than it already has), it's causing me some concern, as it's hard not to think about SARS, which initially didn't seem like such a big deal. I remember having to pass through Toronto's Pearson International while that epidemic was raging. Many people were wearing masks. My paranoid reaction was keeping my ears covered, as I'd somehow got it into my head that ears were a forgotten point of entry (not the usual mouth, eyes, nose).

So, we're being told that this one isn't airborne, and not like the Great Plague with the fleas from rats serving as carriers. Still, this morning when I brought my empty garbage bins back in, it was disconcerting to spot a rat slinking along the neighbour's lawn. I can only hope he was there on invitation to celebrate this new lunar year.

Ongoing inspiration

Because I'm a coward when it comes to cold weather, last week found me mostly staying in. Unless I was outside clearing snow off the walk, I was inside, doing my best to stave off cabin fever.

In keeping with the decluttering plan I started earlier this month, I've been cleaning up inside too, though using more subtle tools than the shovel I used outside. The focus has been mainly my office, where I've been sifting papers, getting rid of items I shouldn't have kept as long as I have.

But every once in a while, something special turns up. A forgotten photograph of a now-gone friend, or sometimes, as with the scrap of newspaper above, a timely piece of advice. The quote on the image above feels important and true: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

I'm old enough to remember that terrible spring when King was assassinated (and when only two months later, Bobby Kennedy would be too). Old enough to be shocked now to learn that a man who accomplished so much for civil rights, and left such an impact on so many, was shot when he was only 39 years old.

So this is my small observance for today, Martin Luther King Day, a promise to myself. With it, I am reminding myself to keep to my beliefs and to speak out when I see one of those many 'things that matter.'

Odd how a scrap of paper, nearly forgotten, can offer such encouragement. Ah yes, the power of words.

Goin' nowhere

Those of us who live in BC's Lower Mainland are generally blessed with not having to shovel ourselves out during the winter. Many express pity on us, as most of our precipitation falls in the form of rain, which yes, means skies that are often grey.

While today's skies aren't blue -- or even grey for that matter -- more whitish than anything, what's on the ground is definitely white.

So, what am I doing? Staying inside as much as I can (though yes, I bundled up and shoveled the walk on the odd chance the letter carrier comes through ("...neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night...??") with something for the mailbox. The radio is full of warnings, saying that roads are icy (even transit is having big problems), and cautioning everyone to stay home if we can.

It feels like a day for carbs, so pasta it shall likely be, especially if I can come up with a recipe that will want some time in the oven. And of course, a few more chapters in the novel I'm currently reading. Who knows, maybe even curling up under the covers and taking a hibernatory nap.

Wintry flowers

Some long time ago, or at least a time that feels long ago, George W Bush told the world that Iran had a stash of WMDs -- weapons of mass destruction. He used that line to justify yet another war.

The year was 2003, so it was just about the time Greta Thunberg was born. How's that for a way of understanding time.

But back to 2020, this morning.

I'd walked to a nearby restaurant and met some friends for breakfast. Afterwards, because I wanted to mail a thank you card, I'd taken the long way around and stopped by the post office to send it.

Then, taking one of my short cuts home, through a yard where a house used to be (and where nothing new has been built yet), I discovered a somewhat straggly-looking bunch of wild daisies. So yes, I yanked at a few branches and brought them home.

They reminded me of an article I'd had in a newspaper nearly 17 years ago -- about the daisy as symbol for peace. It's too long to paste into this post, but here's a link to the archives of the Globe and Mail, the place where it first appeared.

As the day wore on, we learned at least that a war had seemingly been averted. But, as if in some horrid balance, we heard the terrible news that a plane had crashed, killing all 138 people on board, with 63 among them from across Canada, many from here in BC.

A sad little bouquet for a very sad day.

Getting a start on good intentions

Probably everyone has a catch-all site they call the junk drawer. It's that place where things with no particular spot of their own gather together, often in shame.

It's no different at our house, and as you can see, our collection of odds and sods was starting to overgrow its home.

For a year when I plan (okay, hope may be the more truthful word) to do a bunch of decluttering, though not on the scale of any Marie Kondo white dreams, I figure I've made a pretty good start.