The elusive Lodge

Afternoon tea: Meditative Mind by The Tea Spot (ingredients: white tea, green tea pearls with essence from jasmine flowers, rose buds)

Decision making can be tough, as can steeping jasmine tea to perfection. You have to let it bathe long enough to develop - full bodied and round - but just a tad too long and it develops an unforgiving bite. You have to be willing to enjoy the lightness, and indulge in the now. It's a delicate balance between securing the opportunities at hand and allowing yourself to let go of what might have been.

I tend towards over-steeping my decisions until they're bitter and unenjoyable. Not always, but most of the time. Take, for example, my choice to transfer my funds from a brick & mortar to an online bank. I got the inkling to do this in mid February when it hit me like a ton of (aformentioned) bricks that a .2% APY stinks, even by today's sad standards. I made it my March goal to meet with a financial planner, which I did - twice. I avidly researched several banking options and alternatives to those options and alternatives to my alternative options. By the time I chose a bank (FNBO Direct, in case you were wondering, because of rave customer service reviews) I was so jaded about interest rates, minimum account balances and monthly transfer terms that I wasn't even excited about more than quadrupling my APY.

Or another example, for those of you who turned off your brain at the first mention of money (you know who you are). Ellie's Eco Home Store recently had a gigantic "pre re-grand opening sale". The discounts started at 10% and went up by 10% each day until the final sale day when the entire store was a whopping 90% off.

Being the avid comparison shopper I am, I hit the store on 60% day (a Thursday) to do some scouting and information-gathering. There were acai berry necklaces here and paraben-free bath products there, but what really caught my eye was a Lodge cast iron 9x13 casserole dish, rust-colored, heavy so you know it's the real thing. There was a healthy supply, so after circling and re-circling the store several times and spending a solid 5 minutes groaning in front of the display, I decided it made the most logical sense to wait until "80% off Saturday" for the additional $16 I'd save. I left the store and basked in rust-colored dreams that night.

Along came Saturday. I sauntered in to Ellie's and not only had the Lodge beauties been completely looted, but there was a line at the register that could make even the most die hard shopper give up their quest. I walked in, swiveled on my heel, and immediately exited from whence I'd come.

I'm pretty resilient, like a good cast iron casserole dish. I got over my disappointment with the help of a chai latte and some serious, on beat fist pumping during the car ride home. But, I'm here to admit, that $16 would have been worth an unprecedented spur of the moment decision.

Springtime lunch on the balcony

Lunch: leftover Bengan Bartha from Tandoori Grill

Like with many things in life, being close to the edge is thrilling in its danger - leftover Indian food included. That near-heartburn rush forces you to slow down and enjoy the feeling in it's full monumental capacity, while also respecting that it owns you. You're not finished until it's finished with you, and only then will you be free to breathe and carry on with your life.

I have always had a tendency to want to disagree with age old wisdom, ignore metaphors and question popular knowledge (I didn't experience heartburn until recently, sitting at a restaurant eating onion salad with my parents. Up until that fateful point, I blatantly denied that heartburn actually existed, or at least that I was susceptible to it). It's a humbling experience to learn that sayings ring true, and that despite your infinite intelligence, you did not create them. For example, "the grass is always greener on the other side": I was going to be the one to prove that wrong, to always be content in my current state, never wanting or regretting. Not so.

I'm not sure how I duped my Gemini self into believing such a thing was possible. I'm constantly looking forward, planning for the next thing or looking back fondly, nostalgically on the past. I have an undesirable beef with the whole 'be present' philosophy. Even as I write this my frontal lobe is thinking of potential Mother's Day gifts and my left pinky toe is adding to my never ending grocery list.

I once heard of an article whose subject was essentially: "multi-tasking is bad for you". It was a whole article (was it Shambala Sun, or Tricycle maybe?) about how multi-tasking leaves us ever restless, constantly asking more of ourselves. We can never truly be present because the present is merely a means of preparing for the future while learning from the past. Once the present becomes the past, only then does it become valuable.

Writing seems to help me be present (besides my overactive left pinky toe). It allows me to listen to the birds and rave at the view from my balcony - spring is the perfect time to see the mountains from here: warm enough to sit outside half naked, but no view-sabotaging leaves to fence me in. It allows me to see the fallen mosaic tiles that were once a part of my "patty o'furniture" as life, and not ruin. It allows me to truly hear the live music sitting right in front of me instead of playing my life to its soundtrack. It allows me to sit back and create art projects in my head and, more importantly, acknowledge that they are not a waste of time. However cliche it is (and don't I know how scathingly accurate a cliche can be?), I start this journal off on the premise that writing is my outlet, my one true connection to the present. For whom isn't it?

Welcome to my headspace: the lime green underbelly of a chartreuse umbrella.