20/80 rule

 To me there is something about 20/80. And when i googled it, i read there is  the Pareto Principle. Cool!

The other day walking through the forest on snow,  the 80 percent thing came to me as in; if i stay on top for 8 steps and fall through the snow  two steps, i can still have an enjoyable walk.  But really i think the Pareto Principal doesn't apply here.

This morning i wondered if it applied to life in general.  In my morning meditation felt kind of down, because I had a whole list of beings and people that  I felt needed a little extra. So i devoted my whole meditation to that.

I did come out at a difficult spot, a time in  my childhood when i just was not happy. That one never gets easy. I try to apply the 20/80 rule. Now in my life i can happily say i am probably 80 % of the time happy. Or i have a good life, but of course there still might be 20% problematic things. But in that time  in childhood i feel i was 80% unhappy, but  still had many moments of happiness, probably also 80%.

Haha i realize i am dividing again, judging maybe.  Why? Yesterday was such a beautiful day, looking at the mountains they look 100 % gorgeous. Yet  I always feel pain looking at the mountains, because i want to be on top of them. I will recognize that feeling, but then realize i am on top of the mountain! I am right here, and quite literally so. I grew up below sea level, now i live at 725 meters above sea level. That is a mountain!

My meditation went well,  I came away with that feeling of just happy to be alive, thanks to sending love to a friend who .... is really crawling out of a what is considered very bad situation. She is just happy to wake up alive, nothing else is needed.

Ha! and here my pitiful account of being thrown back into 'my' pitiful bad spot ( sure related to that childhood . For today i had a date to go walking, a bioblitz event. Yes maybe you are part of it, it is the -city challenge- today! To see what is alive in your city, all over the world. I had planned to go to what i call a good friend, who lives  in the area included for Whitehorse. They cancelled, with some kind of lame story. With my dear husband we do discuss this and always will come out ok. But let me say it, i am pissed of, because their excuse for cancelling just doesn't add up, even if it is 80% true

haha my dear husband calls me for my walk, if he only is the instigator for 20% of the time i am happy! And he is.

Do check out the city challenge https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-canada-2023-defi-nature-urbaine

even if one of you reading this participates, i am very happy:) even if you don't,  still happy.

How is your happiness quotient? 

What a glorious day

 It started when i was busy deleting again. I came upon an old blogpost, and saw that in 2016 someone had asked to have copies of the photos i posted. I had never seen that request before, because yes for me blogger does not notify me when there is a comment (i can probably change the settings?)

Now the timing was perfect, I contacted the woman that requested the photos and now have cut out the pages concerning from a scrapbook, photos from her dad 1986. I will give them all to her. I love it!

In the afternoon we went to get water from Stony Creek, just 3 jugs, but it might be the last for a bit, in springtime there is a lot of run-off in the creek and the water gets murky, not too good for drinking. On the way back we stopped at Mendenhall Landing, and as a joke Don said shall we bet if the river is open, I tell you that man has a well developed sixth sense. I did not even take it serious. But sure enough the Takhini is open at the Landing. The glory was all the migratory birds. Often we watch the migratory water birds from a-far, open water often in the distance. But here the road  being right beside the river. We stayed for an hour or two, just looking at the spectacles taking place.

                                                                 July 1986 Taku River

How am i doing.

 The deleting thing, for the good of  forests staying forests and meadows staying meadows, not having to expand or build more server farms to store all that stuff i have on the Internet. 

I am stuck at 400 emails in my inbox, trying hard almost daily to keep it under 400. This week i will make a start looking at those 400, opening them, i am sure i can delete most of them, it is just  i kept them on the first round of deleting.

 Daily having to delete, i will also figure out how nothing can enter my promotion and spam box in the first place. Does anyone know how to do that?

For mindful eating that  i started a week  or two ago after reading a book by Geneen Roth. I am actually doing surprisingly well ( my own standards are not very high, i am a permissioner (Geneen's word) after all. My coffee is sitting here beside me, but i do hardly ever anymore take a mindless sip, and if i do i seem to notice.  I eat much slower now, always, my heartrate stays at 84 (which is low for me, doctors never suggested why it was high, the specialist, after many tests, only said that all was fine.)

I also do stare my craving into the face, i still have it, mainly for crunchy salty things ( you might know the kind:) when i stare it in the face, it mostly blows over. 

Yesterday we bought an ice cream and one  can of coke to share. We never finished the coke, i just have no interest.  And with all left overs; always, my whole life, i would be the one to lick the pot clean. I will still not throw anything out, but something leftover can wait now for a day or so.

I sometimes do the meditations she suggested, the exploring the feeling. I did encounter an awful one that i do remember having as a child. scissors in my throat, isn't that horrible? All i can think is that it is a past life thing, not that i per say (how do you spell that again?) believe in that, but i am sure there is more going on that way then i know. but for sure i do not come out by a childhood memory. fortunately  so.

 What is still very hard is not doing other things when i eat. It is hard both ways; i do live with another person, and we talk during meals (a good thing yes?) but also he likes the radio on. But even on my own i am used to multi task when it comes to eating.

Spring Log 2023

 I will continue to work on this post. Spring is slow and now late.

Febr 12  pussy willows

March 18  chipmunk came out for a peek

March 16 to 24  we had days above zero Celsius

March 26  an Eagle high in the sky above the yard

March 21  Snow buntings on the highway

April 14  6 chipmunks racing around the yard

April 15  Northern Harrier on the highway

April 16  we heard swans flying over

April 16 - We saw 3 Caribou on the Kusawa road.

               - 5 swans at the mouth of the river

April 17  driving we broke through the ice on the driveway at one spot.

April 18  13 cm of  fresh snow

April  19  high plus 7 C. it did not melt too much really, but the ditch in the yard is running as it was a week earlier. Don cleaned the driveway with his atv and the government plow truck  driver was kind enough to do our entrance. I cleared the path in front of the house.

April 21  a few crocus buds sticking out through the snow (close to rocks and small open patches) on the Aishihik road 5km in.

 April 22  3 Mourning Cloaks  on the first  south facing ridge turning into the Kusawa road 

Bruce found blooming crocuses at Ear Lake Whitehorse             

 April 24  Again this morning we woke up to 10 cm of fresh snow

April 25  -for a few days already, flocks of Snow Buntings swooping through the yard.

              -Mendenhall landing, open water on the Takhini river, the Mendenhall still frozen;

             -10 Swans, 1 Northern Harrier, 1 Lapland Longspur and 34 ducks: American Wigeons, Northern  Pintails, Common Mergansers, Mallards

              - seemingly more Northern Harriers then ever coming through,

              -1 Goshawk

               - 1 Robin, on the first overlook, Kusawa road at Takhini river.

April 26 -snowing

               - Junco in the yard

April 29  -driveway and yard wet but snow free.

                - snow depth 33 cm on the garden

May 2 -lots to report, but just now our resident gopher came out ( arctic ground squirrel) He had a little bit of a stand off with the resident squirrel, they were both rather shy, but surely  both wanting to make a statement about property rights. The gopher we chased it off, because it was eating my sweet williams.

             -snow disappearing fast!

May 3 -a few crocuses on the Aishihik bluff. Katanne says they are blooming on her hill in this neighbourhood, i will have to go look, here the snow just left 2 days ago....

           - a Comma on the Aishihik bluff

            -for many nights now  ( over a week) i hear the boreal owl, but have not seen it

The Joys of Snow

 When temperatures here are around zero Celsius, Don and i every morning sit in our outdoor porch after our walk. This morning we had fun watching and listening to  the snow sliding of the roof. plop, plop, plop. 10 cm of snow had fallen last night and of and on it is still snowing, not adding  too much because it is very wet snow. The snow sliding of the roof, now a big pile all along the front of the house where i walk to the outhouse,  it is  now full of snow.  Lately I had spend two weeks clearing the ice that forms there. I fear this pile might turn ice too. The weather forecast is not very promising.

We only walked the  length of the driveway, making a trench as we went. After lunch I went our normal distance. Nobody had travelled the road yet for the first half km. We have only one neighbour past us, them being at the end of the road. The neighbour down from us, I saw he had left with a vehicle. On 511 there is a road advisory from here on to Haines jct. and a ways  beyond there.

With my friend Cindy i planned to look for crocuses  today, coming up on a hill along the Kusawa road, Don and i had driven down that road on Sunday, and with the jeep the road was driveable, this is a minimally maintained road. It had lots of puddles and mud a week earlier. I can not imagine how it will look after this snowfall. People do live there and they do most of the maintenance 25 km of it.

I will leave a picture here  of a good spot on the road from Sunday.  I will leave that picture because! we saw 3 caribou, this is the first time we actually saw caribou on that road, we have know  that for several years now  they do cross that road, so it was exciting finally seeing them.

And after  writing this post I am happy to not do an afternoon outing just for today, but spend it on all my projects for the expected baby. I am painting old baby stuff, that i salvaged 30+ years ago for my son, it is getting a new life again. I do wonder about the paint.  Many questions, but one logistic;  what do people do with the water you wash your brushes in? I am horrified to throw in the forest and will not! flush it through the drain.

tree following

 The tree I started following last month, still appears to be in winter sleep. 

I think that is normal, May is really the month it will start showing any green. Normal is a big word these days. The  snow people here in the Yukon measure snow every month, they take measurement on the end of each month. Now they were saying for the end of the month of march this year 2023. snow depth was average. What ever that means. I think yesterday on the day i photographed my poplar ( trembling aspen). snow at that location is more then i have ever seen it for the middle of April!

I think it is  somewhat important to take measurements of things, but to take any conclusions is very sketchy. More important to me is that we always take care of Nature. Always make sure that what we do is kind in every possible  way.

craving

 There is a snow bunting in the yard, one, it  must have lost its flock, but it is a sure sign of spring.

And spring is a good time for dieting. Because no matter what this Geneen says, her approach feels like any other diet. 

note; being the permitter i have only dieted/fasted twice or three times in my life, and  I did not like it.

So yes yesterday the start of this spring diet, was awesome. Now i just want to take a handful of nuts or two slices of whole wheat raison bread with butter. I do not want to feel if i am full or hungry. I want to give in to my cravings. coffee and breakfast went well, i think the guideline; to sit quiet and only eat, helps me a lot too.

Now, this very moment. i just procrastinate, doing other things instead of  the work she suggests.

I think i can get away with it for today, because after i shut the computer off , it will be time for a walk, and when we come back it will be time for lunch, hurray for lunch.

But i already know it will be hard to make a true break through.

Interestingly enough my heartbeat already slowed down,  which is a good thing for me, i have this fast heart beat but the specialist have tested me thoroughly many years ago. Now imagine if this fast heartbeat related to my eating habits. that will be great.

I happened  also be on 21 day dream journal thing with the intentions of happiness for the both of us. ( my husband has a hard time with aging, and me with looking after him.)

I am not dreaming of food yet, which i did on my previous diets.

My relationship with food

I am the only skinny one from a family of six. I do wonder what went on. How did i get so, i call it, lucky?

I am reading a book by Geneen Roth. I found it in our neighbourhood's free store. Our free store is, a floor, three walls and a roof. At the moment it is better then any bookstore or library can be, such is the quality of reading material.

Geneen writes about food in a way that helps me a lot. I am familiar with her meditation/inquiry suggestions. But again it was surprising how her suggestions let me to see something i had never realized.

First i am  mostly a permitter!  Geneen suggest we are either a permitter or a restrictor .  My inquire brought me to the fact that i was raised to NOT listen to my body when it came to food. Hungry was not a thing because we had not lived through a famine, we had no right to be hungry. And my mom quite gently really always made me wait to eat, i was always ravenous, she let me cheat, but really the big rule was to wait for the others.

And hence with my permitter tendency i  eat whatever i like whenever. And yes for some reason i like to eat wild stuff and healthy food. lucky again? who knows. And i realize now that really i can go without food quite easily and NOW that makes sense i have never listened to my body when it comes to food.

For years i have been saying, that i don't like it that i snack so much, stuff my self during a meal and still snack right after. I have always said it is a miracle i am skinny.

So yes Geneen! Now i am scared that i will get skinnier, because reading your guide lines, to wait with eating till i feel hungry is very scary. I might not eat. Because i have learned at an early age that whatever i feel it is not hunger, so how do i know what that feels like.

I have always noticed that my eating habits are fuelled by trying to fill a gap. That is what Geneen is suggesting to find also through inquiry; what is the gap i am trying to fill? I suspect it has something to do with boredom...

 I don't know yet.

But what i do know that by  just feeling my body, before i eat,  has stopped me, form eating too fast and too much and it stopped me from snacking. Like now, at this moment, my gut still seems to be full up to my heart level. 

For coffee, i only drank one cup this morning, i just did not want another one after following Geneen's guidelines.

I am also scared, that when i listen to my body will i eat more junk food? Will i start wanting sugar again? This morning i did put butter on my porridge....

I am willing to try it out, i already feel i am going into the right direction, without  any sweat, no will power needed.

My husband we figured, is a restrictor. Yes he can stop cold turkey, he has proven that. He is skinny too.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out for him. depending how far he wants to go trying this out.