Making Time For Delightful

Special dishes aren’t for special occasions. They’re for special people.

~Caroline Ingalls ;)

The first time I had cancer I used a wonderful website called Caringbridge to update people on my health. We used dates and times and the name of our hospital and such. It’s my preferred way of life – all that sharing. This time I have facebook and this blog and twitter, which are all a bit more open than that site and thanks to a few more years of cyber experience, the media has scared me a bit when it comes to how many details to share online. Where and when you’re going is officially not recommended – only where and when you’ve been. So I won’t use these platforms to share those kinds of details probably. Though I hope friends and family will feel free to pry through email and phone calls, etc. All that to say that this might be the last post I write before my surgery though I won’t type exactly where and when since in the words of my recent twitter post, “the paparazzi, I mean you can’t just feed them the information.”

So until I blog again, I have some happy thoughts for you.

My friend Widney Woman started a movement on Facebook last week based on her blog post, Use The Good Dishes. I used it to ask everyone who wanted to do something in my honor to please use their good dishes for their Thanksgiving meal together. And so many people played! (I love it when people play). I was so moved by the thought of all those good dishes being used and people doing it with a feeling of gratitude and awareness at how precious life is and how precious the time we have with those we love.

This weekend I’ve been planning how I might spend my time as I recover from surgery and then as I go through several weeks of intense chemotherapy. And I gotta tell ya, the thought of all that time when I may only feel good enough to watch a chick flick or read a book? It makes me so happy that I forget I even have cancer. And I’m thinking everyone should take an hour or so here and there to get this particular benefit of cancer without actually having the cancer. There is no reason for you to never read that book that’s been on your to-be-read list forEVER. There’s no reason not to take just 138 minutes to watch The Holiday again because it’s delightful to live vicariously in either the mansion in Los Angeles OR the cottage in the English countryside, and a movie that has both within it should be praised and lauded to the end of time. (“I only used the good notes.”)

Along these lines, pull out some stationary or a note card and write to someone. It’s a moment that spoils you, because it’s kind of fun to slow down that much and extremely edifying to give that much time to another person. And it totally spoils the other person whom you know will squeal with delight (on the inside at least) when they open their mail and see a real live handwritten envelope.

And some more: Write a novel, if you’re so inclined. Color a picture, paint by number, or buy a sketch pad and pretend you’re in Art Class again. Go watch Tangled; it’s delightful. And seriously, seriously, stop as many times as possible in your day and hug your kids like you just want to, rather than because you’re leaving for somewhere or just getting back and moving on to something else. They smell good. They rarely feel too busy to hug you back. And it will probably change their day as much as it changes yours.

Most of these things are what I like to do, but you should definitely feel free to make your own list. And then you should definitely, definitely do it. One delightful thing at a time.