Category Archives: Books

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Speaking My Language

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In yesterday’s post, I talked about Love Languages and how we communicate and said I would be back to share the results of my assessment with you. It’s no surprise to me that of the five areas that Gary Chapman identifies in his book The 5 Love Languages, the one that ranks highest for me is what he refers to as, ” Acts of Service ” with “Words of Affirmation ” close behind.

I have included a couple of photos of John doing the service part. While we were home in Atlanta for Christmas week, he raked and bagged all of leaves around the house I still own in Atlanta. I did not even have to ask. I had arranged for the man who cuts the grass to do it, but he was waiting until after Christmas and being concerned about how shabby it looked and how it might be affecting the grass, I decided to do it myself. There were some immediate things I needed to attend to inside the house first and by the time I was ready to move outside to the yard work, John picked up a rake and attacked the problem by himself.

I know this front yard looks tiny and you’re thinking, ” How much work can that really be? ”  The back yard is only a little larger, but the leaves seem to multiply or get blown in from my neighbor’s yards so it’s always a huge task every year and one I usually do alone.

John did all the work without a single grumble during or after and when it was all done had 40 bags of leaves lined up against the fence. That’s exactly what I mean by ” Acts of Service. ”  I think the quiz is especially useful when you think you may be saying or doing all the right things to show your love, but your spouse or partner is acting as if they are not feeling it.

For example, giving me an expensive gift is never a good way to show me love especially if money is tight because I will just worry about the cost. Worry = stress which is never a ” gift of love ” for me. Men might be surprised how many women feel this way. I have jokingly said many times that when it comes to seduction, a foot rub can be way more effective than a diamond bracelet for most women.

How about you … did any of you take the assessment?


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Love Languages And Connection

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We were leaving Auckland last November to begin our tour of North Island when I noticed the man on the motorcycle in front of us. I could see the city reflected in his helmet, but what made me lift my camera was the love message written on the round rearview mirror on the right side of his bike. Do you see it … the heart with two small xx’s underneath?

I have been thinking a great deal lately about the ways in which we communicate and particularly with the people we love. It is a huge topic with endless amounts of information available in bookstores or a quick click or two on our computers. It’s a great source of frustration for many and one most of us will spend hours of our lives discussing at some point.

One of my favorite books on this topic has been around for some time and when I went to the website of Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, I found the short assessment that I took a few years ago. Back then it reaffirmed what I already knew about myself but more importantly, it gave me an easy and concise way to share how I interpret love when trying to explain it to others.

There are some additional assessments added that deal with children and a few other topics that you might find a worthwhile use of your time especially if you’ve been feeling disconnected lately from the important people in your life.

Have a look and let me know what you think and I will be back tomorrow to share my assessment and tell you which love language I speak.

 

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Seeing Sydney By Dawn’s Early Light

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Sydney Harbor By Dawn's Early Light

Arriving in Sydney Australia early yesterday morning just as many of you were waking or going to sleep yourself, we flew into a gorgeous sunrise and the beginnings of a journey I never imagined I would take.

While I have long had a list of 50 Things To Do Before I Die, trips Australia and New Zealand were not included. Travel is there of course, but closer to home and more familiar than the other side of the world to where I was living in Athens Georgia when I began building my list.

Looking back I have to wonder if some of the things on it were limited more by the idea of practical obtainability than the scope of my imagination.

Don’t get me wrong … there are some pretty far-fetched ideas written on that wrinkled piece of yellow legal stationary such as my desire to write a speech for a US president or play the cello like some of the musicians I had seen on stage.

Many dreams I imagined important in my 20s no longer matter and there are new ones taking shape in ways I could not have foreseen when I created my list in the late 80s while finishing my undergrad years and preparing for the birth of my daughter.

Turning 50 a few months ago, I realized that I needed to close the door on certain dreams. It seems very silly now to mourn for a lost life as a dancer when I never even had ballet lessons as a child. Truth told, I have such trouble picking up steps that I was always a disaster in any musical audition that required dance and early lessons probably would not have changed that.

Speech writing for the president is another dream that’s not likely to happen as people develop whole careers as speech writers, a path I do not wish to follow. And while cello lessons and practice would improve my skill with the instrument, I wish for smaller things with it now such as solo pieces I can play with ease for myself.

It did occur to me while I was sitting and thinking during our 22 hour flight to Sydney that a writer has the best career because they get to be anyone and do anything in the stories they create.

After seeing treetops filled yesterday with loads of large bats in a park near our hotel, I wondered if the Wright brothers had studied the bat and its wings when considering how to cover the wings of airplanes while dreaming of the possibility of flight.

Which led me back to who I really am as I began crafting a story outline involving Orville and Wilbur Wright. I may not have a pilot’s seat on the flight deck listed on my list of 50, but I can fly all of the planes in the stories I write and the possibilities are really much larger than that old list ever was as long I stay open when the opportunity presents.

This two month trip with John is one of those opportunities and I am wide open to possibility.

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New Zealand Travel Research – Traditional & More

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New Zealand Travel Guides

For all of you who included New Zealand as a destination in our upcoming extended holiday … you were right!

Even though we have Round the World tickets, most of our time will be spent touring New Zealand. While I usually book flights myself, this was one instance where I saw the benefit in working with an agency to book the many flights we will be on while we are away for eight weeks.

John has handled all the arrangements, bless him for that … for most of my travel life, I have been the one to take charge of the big and small details and it is so different to relax and let someone else do it. Having been to New Zealand in 1996 for six weeks, John knows exactly what he is doing and how to get the best experience for the money.

I would never have known that buying Round the World tickets were the way to go since I associated the RTW expression with the mega wealthy who might go for six months at a time and stop in more countries than the four that our toes will touch down in while we are away. Remember when I said we would be in four countries, well … one was to throw you off a bit as we will only be refueling there during the 22 hour first leg of our journey.

We can hardly count Thailand as it will only be a quick stop, but we will spend a few days in Sydney, Australia before moving on to New Zealand. If you live in Sydney and want to meet for a cup of coffee or a bite of lunch let me know. We are staying near the Botanic Gardens while we are there, but plan to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing after we recover from our long flight. If you have any suggestions for places around Sydney that we should put on our ” Must See list ” please leave them in a comment below.

Some of you guessed correctly that America would be on our list as well. After about seven weeks in New Zealand, we will fly to Atlanta to spend Christmas week with my family. I am really looking forward to showing John what Christmas with my family is all about and it feels like the perfect way to end our trip.

Getting back to travel research, we have gone through guide books both old (from John’s 1996 trip) and new, The Rough Guide To New Zealand, but none of these have photographs that do proper justice to the beauty of the country we are going to see.

The slightly unorthodox ” travel guide ” below has done more to get me excited about what we will experience than all the words in the books above.

Billy Connolly’s World Tour Of New Zealand

Billy Connolly is a comedian who I find screamingly funny at times, but has such a potty mouth that some of you may find him offensive. I know a lot of comedians can get pretty tacky on stage and he tends to put me off a bit with his bad language and constant references to sex, but when he talks about New Zealand (off stage) and shows us places he visits during his ” Too Old To Die Young ” comedy tour he shows us his softer side which is my favorite. (Off topic: I also think he is a fine actor and I loved him in the role of John Brown in the movie, Mrs. Brown with Dame Judi Dench)

John ordered the New Zealand World Tour DVD set above and we have been watching it for the last few days. It is broken into series of eight shows that mix New Zealand travel with segments of his shows performed in towns on both North and South Island. The country looks as magnificent as I have heard and I cannot wait to get there.

I will as you might expect be blogging from the road so don’t be a stranger as I won’t be completely away.

If you are a reader who lives in New Zealand and would like to meet for coffee, just give me a shout through email (found on my “About Me” page at the top) and I will get in touch. Suggestions from readers about what not to miss are always welcome so feel free to share your thoughts in a comment below.

We still have a few days before we go, but the house is such a wreck in places that I feel a little overwhelmed. I don’t know if I feel more obliged to leave it spotless as our housesitters will be family or if strangers would make me feel the same need.

What about you … would you worry more about order and neatness with family or with folks you did not know well?

 

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Reading A Kindle Book Without A Kindle

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Today I made my first Kindle book purchase from Amazon. I always thought one needed a Kindle to buy books in this way, but after doing a bit of research this morning, I was able to download a book straight to my MacBook.

Intrigued by a post written by Suzanne Anderson who comments at GOTJ from time to time, I went in search of her book, Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure which she talked about over at her place today.  She recently decided that self-publishing by way of Kindle was the quickest way to get her book in front of readers. It is an interesting possibility for many writers and one I had not considered until today.

 

Photo Courtesy Of Suzanne Anderson

I plan on doing some more of my own research, but I may be a bit slow in getting back to it as I will be busy reading Suzanne’s new book.

Big congrats to Suzanne and good luck on this new adventure. She will be talking more about self-publishing in the days to come and you can follow her discovery and progress here.

 

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One Step At A Time

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The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs…

one step at a time.

~ Joe Girard

My sister Margaret gets the credit for the photo of me climbing the 280 steps to the top inside the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. I thought this photograph was a good one to use in a thank you to all of the readers and friends who took time to leave a supportive message with regard to my writing and ever so slight disappointment over receiving a polite  ” not interested ” response from the newspaper I queried recently.

I have found such fine support for the writing I do here and I am never sure I let you know how much it is appreciated. Mary from A Breath of Fresh Air left me a very kind comment yesterday about writing a book, in which she said she that she would not hesitate to gift a collection of stories taken from my blog to her friends. It was just the lift I needed yesterday to pick up my pace mentally and refocus on the steps before me.

Thanks again to all who visit here at Gifts Of The Journey and thanks for your support.

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Shakespeare And Company – Surviving And Thriving

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Elizabeth Harper - Shakespeare And Company - 2010

Some of you may be thinking,” What does the famous Shakespeare And Company bookstore in Paris have to do with Surviving And Thriving? ” Aside from the obvious fact that American George Whitman’s bookstore has survived and thrived since he established it in 1951 across from Notre Dame, today’s post has to do with the ways in which we may unknowingly affect others in the blogging community.

I can’t remember if I visited this bookstore the first time I came to Paris in 1980, but I do have a photograph of myself standing in front of it in 2000 and again in 2009. While it may seem pretty touristy to have your picture taken in front of such a well-known shop, it has become a bit of a tradition for me now to stop by George Whitman’s eclectic bookstore to see what’s happening.

It’s funny how people pop into your mind when going through your day and when I mentioned to Donna Freedman in an email recently that I thought of her during my trip to Paris last month and she could not imagine how or why Paris might have triggered a thought about her. It makes perfect sense to me as I am sure it will you once I share a few things about the day.

You may remember that I have mentioned Donna in the past. She writes a great deal about living frugally and makes it sound almost like a game to enjoy versus anything close to deprivation. While strolling in and out of various places in Paris, there were endless opportunities to open my wallet and spend on things I did not need. I found myself having conversations in my head that generally went something like, ” Oh, isn’t that just the cutest thing, maybe I should get it to help remember my trip to Paris.”

Never mind that I had already accumulated about 3,000 photographs of Paris to help trigger my memory, while walking through Shakespeare And Company I decided ever so briefly that I needed another canvas tote. How many of these bags I currently have did not even matter when I discovered the cool bag in the photo below. I went back and forth, buy it – don’t by it … until finally I thought about what would Donna do and I put it back.

Bag Design By Badaude And Image From Her Site

It was a lovely bag by Badaude and I would have snatched it up in a hurry if I did not already own more bags than I have use for, but that did not stop me from considering several books just as I always do. I was on the verge of another purchase when I picked up the book below. (The full image is in the first photograph)

It’s Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and finding it reminded me of how many in the US are struggling just to get by and how the scarcity of jobs has many people working for far less than they would have considered in the past. That thought led me to frugality, which once again made me think of Donna Freedman and even though she didn’t write this book, I still said to my sister, ” Take my picture for Donna.”

Earlier this morning I finished reading a piece she wrote for Get Rich Slowly that has tons of information and tips for both the underemployed and the unemployed. Donna writes regularly at MSN Money as well and has her own site that I mentioned in the title above. She also has a contest every week over at her blog home, Surviving And Thriving and even though I have not won anything yet, I feel like I take something away with me every time I stop by to see what she has to say.

So there it is, a message about how Donna Freedman inspired a thought and photograph in front of a famous bookstore, in the shadow of Notre Dame. It could be you next time.

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Missing The Good Stuff

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Sometimes when I am in bookstores I stop by the discount table to see what I might find there that’s a good read. I say sometimes because I don’t always do it. It’s not because I don’t want to take the time to rummage through or because I think I won’t find anything of value there, but more a case of how I feel when I find really good writing laid out there for just a few dollars.

I know what it takes to sit alone and write and write and write … sharing bits of reality or imagination hoping that the effort will have some impact on a reader somewhere one day. So when I see good authors on the clearance table that never made a ripple in the book world who have quietly slipped by unnoticed, I get a bit depressed even if temporarily because I can’t help but think, what if that happens to me.

Of course, not having published a book yet one might think my momentary angst a bit premature, but I do feel for really good writers whose story appears to go unnoticed. That said I want to be sure you don’t miss out on a piece that really touched my heart a few days ago. Mariellen Romer has written about a life event that had a lasting impact and I hope you’ll take a minute to stop by her place and have a read .

You won’t be disappointed. I promise.

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Is This How Pioneer Woman Does It?

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Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Sheet Cake As Mini-Cupcakes

Unless you have made these yummy treats you have no idea how delish they can really are. What you see here is the result of turning Pioneer Woman’s Chocolate Sheet Cake recipe into mini cupcakes which were perfect for the party we went to last night and the July 4th celebration we’re going to on Sunday with some of our expat community. It was the first time I’ve made them in mini-cupcake form and the success was clear by the clean serving trays we came home with after watching my cupcakes disappear into the mouths of a mostly (except for me) group of Brits.

Several people asked as they complimented my bite-size cakes if they were an American speciality to which I gave credit where it’s due and said, ” Yes, but not a family recipe of mine. ” I told them it belonged to this wild woman out West who went by the name of Pioneer Woman.

Okay … so maybe I embellished a little with the wild woman comment, but as most Brits seem to think they’ve mastered an American accent if they sound like John Wayne when imitating us, (likely having learned their technique as my John did from old western black & white films) I thought wild woman out west would fit the image many seem to have of us as a tough talking, gun-toting, straight shooting, slightly unruly lot.

Passing by the dessert table or puddings, as all desserts are sometimes referred to here was a teenage girl who overheard me give credit to PW and turned to me and said, ” Oh, I read her, did you see what she said about iPad on her blog? ” I have to admit that PW seems to be moving farther abroad than she may realize. Thanks to the internet, not only has she young American followers like my daughter reading her, she’s picking up teen readers in rural England as well.

While PW appears to have a tidy kitchen when making her varied goodies, I must admit that my prep area looks a bit different.

Not Pioneer Woman's Kitchen

Thank goodness for lots of counter space or work-tops as John would refer to kitchen counters.

Messy Cooking With Elizabeth Harper

Gone, these are all gone now.

I call the cupcake closest to you, ” The Half and Half  ” for half nuts/ half not … neat huh? Okay, so I ran out of the frosting with nuts and had to use some without. I bet no one even noticed at the party last night. Creativity is key in marketing. I think I like that … Half and Half … I wonder what I could call my other kitchen mishaps.

My daughter once referred to my turkey meatloaf as looking like cat food, I must say years after that high recommendation by my then seven-year old, it’s one of the things I do best now. (Pssst, I’ll be making my cat food/turkey meatloaf for some American visitors this weekend) I promise I really do use ground turkey … no cat food involved. Cross my heart.

Remember what I said earlier about messy … I wonder who’s going to help me with these dishes!

Maybe I could do a reality show for messy cooks … how about you, are you messy or neat when whipping up family favorites?

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Boris The Bear Tells Himself A Story

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In the window at home there’s a sweet little bear,

slightly tattered, not torn, but missing some hair.

He sits kind of floppy, and propped with a view,

watching and waiting and thinking of you.


A bear you can see by his worn looking face

that’s been treasured and favored

with his own special place.

Loved from the beginning,

he’s been very well fed

on the dreams of girl

and all the things in her head.

He’s enjoyed the all pleasures of years

two, three, four, five, and soon six,

he’s her favorite he knows,

the one she always picks.


But today is somehow different,

someone’s taken his place,

it’s that silly old Pooh Bear who’s crowding his space.

Beside his dear girl as she goes for the day

he wonders what they’re up to

missing her greatly

in his bear sort of way.


Growing up can be scary for a bear on his own

he’s been a faithful companion and rarely alone.

He sits and he watches and wishes she’d phone.

‘ I am here and I miss you,’ is just what he’d say,

‘ Will you be home soon, are you on your way? ‘


He knows it’s silly to be sad and so blue

as her little girl heart can love much more

than a old bear or two.

One day when she’s older

with hair that’s gone grey

she’ll have trouble remembering

things like his name,

when she got him,

or the games that they played.


He’s heard all the stories

from bears on the street

when the children aren’t looking

and they’ve a moment to speak.

They whisper in passing

of changes to come,

but for now he’s still Boris,

and her number one.

Yesterday after a long day out, I noticed Jersey Girl’s favorite bear Boris sitting in the window. He’d been left there in the morning by JG posed on the window ledge so that he could see outside while she was out exploring with us. I was lucky to see him when I did managing to get two quick shots before she grabbed him up to join us at the table for dinner. She didn’t know I was outside taking pictures and in the second photograph, you can just make out her ear and the side of her face as she is reaching for him.

I began the little bear story this morning and what came out has as much to do with my relationship with an old stuffed bunny from my childhood as it does with Jersey Girl and Boris, her bear. This is one of the things I love most about writing, you begin a story thinking it is about one thing and suddenly another story begins to reveal itself along the way.

I would be interested to know if you remember a favorite toy or stuffed animal and can you remember its name ?