April has arrived, and with it, the showers promised in the adage of “April showers bring May flowers.” My little town is on day two of a deluge and while the skies are grey, it’s also an invitation for me to slow down, just a bit. To linger with my cup of tea in the morning, to open the windows and let the fresh, cool air into the house.
Like Hilary Duff, I’m coming clean.
Here are some things in the spirit of embracing both old and new.
Eat: I’ve been avoiding cooking of late. It feels like a drag: I am unmotivated and uninspired to plan, get myself to the grocery store, and let’s be honest – isn’t that spinach just gonna go bad in my crisper drawer anyway?
When I’m in a slump like this one, the best thing for me to do is to gamefiy it, while considering my energy/my spoons an actual ingredient. My Chopped challenge is to take these three wilting bell peppers, a container of feta cheese with half the crumbles remaining, and six eggs (which I have tested with a glass of water to make sure they’re still good) and to make something from it.
Then I consider how much energy I’ve got: just enough for a single pan? Omlette it is. Or do I want to dare to turn on the oven and incorporate a break into this process as it cooks? Sounds like time for a frittata. It’s still cooking: but I am looking at how I can be kind to myself while doing it.
See: If you’ve followed me for a while, or you know me at all, musical theatre and performance is a massive part of my life. (See below. I went to school for it. For a long time.) This suggestion is in keeping with that, but even if you are not a musical theatre person, I encourage you to check it out anyway. Watch Mary Poppins. It’s on Disney+ and it is just a sheer joy.
I came to Mary Poppins late in life, embarrassingly. My friend sat me down and said, in essence, “I cannot remain friends with you unless you watch this right now.” And it was a pure delight.
I rewatched it this past weekend and took closer note of the things I missed upon my first viewing. Julie Andrews looks like a baby compared to the Queen of Genovia whom many know and love, and Dick Van Dyke has legs six miles long that are always somehow in the air or horizontal to the ground. The children are charming in their performances, and the child playing Michael Banks has the adorable face of a content, 63-year-old old man. And there’s a full dance sequence for “Step In Time” that does the perfect comedic thing of going too long and then a bit longer – FOURTEEN MINUTES of British Cockney pub-style singing.
In short, do your childhood self a favor and watch. And cheer to yourself “what’s all this? Step in time,” as you go about your day.
Do: It’s April, and there’s a sense of spring cleaning in the air. As someone who went to (checks calendar) too much school, then taught in a school for years, I am still stuck in that brain space that tells me “you have one week of spring break to get your life together.” Talk about internal peer pressure! Thinking about spring cleaning can be overwhelming, especially for those of us with accessibility and treatment needs. (Collecting things to clean, donate, or throw out? In this meat suit?)
Here is my proposal: take spring cleaning to a micro level and start with your phone. I don’t know about you, but I have approximately one million screenshots of memes, shots of my parking spots in the garage of the cancer center, and photos of my dog. The dog photos will stay. (I’m not a monster!) But I can probably offload some of those parking spots from 2019 to the permanently deleted folder, and at least put those memes in some kind of organized spot to access to send to my friends.
So spring clean from your bed, the waiting room, your couch, or your kitchen. You might not be able to see boxes moving in and out of your home, but you don’t have to lift anything, either. I’m calling it a win.
Have a Chopped, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, digitally tidy week!
– Christina
