The Week Before Christmas

‘Twas the week before Christmas with much to be done

There’s cooking and baking and oh so much fun.

There’s work as well so early I go

Out into the day but not into snow.

And then work comes to an end and I’m headed home

Where for an hour or so I’ll be alone.

Time to bake cookies just one little batch

So I rush to the door and turn open the latch.

But what do I hear as I open the door –

The sound of a loud “Plunk” followed by more.

I rush to the kitchen and look in the sink

But it’s not the faucet left on as I think

It comes from the ceiling and what’s more

There’s an inch of water all over the floor.

I rush to the stairs and up them I dash

Race through the bedroom to bath – splish, splash.

I turn off the faucet and pick up the rugs

Full of water they’re thrown in the tub. 

Throw down more towels so sop up the mess

Get on the phone and call Dann in duress.

Down to the kitchen to open deck door,

Frantically sweeping the tide from the floor.

Dann arrives and asks what to do.

I tell him call Eliot to get us out of this stew.

Call him he does and then Eliot comes

Shortly thereafter the whole house hums.

Fire in the fireplace, heaters galore

Blowers and suckers all over the floor.

Four hours later the best has been done

When we dry out we’ll get back to the fun.

               J C Fouchaux

What You Can Do For Humanity On Thanksgiving

 In a recent Huffington Post blog, Dr. Cara Barker posed some provocative questions for this season of introspection, contemplation and gratitude as follows:

·         What are we doing to bring about a world of collaborative action for our children and our children’s children, seeded today in our thinking and harvested tomorrow?

·         Are we willing to find the naysayer inside our own head and “out” him when he gets in the way of living more gratefully, more spontaneously?

These are especially good questions for us as women for as women we hold special attributes which can, if encouraged, strengthened and used can bring about this world of collaboration.   As women, it is in our nature to look for how individual actions affect the whole.  We are more likely to see the interconnectedness within the world, more likely to look for common bonds and relate to others from an understanding of common goals.

Small changes in ourselves can make big changes in the world.  As we meet with family and friends over this Thanksgiving week, I hope you will join me in being an observer as well as a participant.  Notice, as I will be doing:

·         Do I listen to my inner knowing or my inner terrorist, conforming to the prevailing attitude?

·         Do I support conversations of “us vs. them” either actively or passively?

·         Am I willing to look past the things that irritate me about people or that I disagree with in people to find the good in them?

·         Do I teach by my example the kind of world I would like to pass on to my children?

I wonder what I will learn and how it will help me and my family to have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  May you enjoy this season of gratefulness as well.

To read more about the qualities we have as women that can support us in changing the world, I would recommend “Awakening The Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power” by Maureen Simon available on Amazon.com and Maureen’s website – www.TheEssentialFeminine.com. 

Judie Fouchaux

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

Gratitude and Thanksgiving – A currently timely topic which shouldn’t be just for this time of year.  As a part of the growing field of positive psychology, scientists have been studying the effects of gratitude for a number of years with some interesting results.  Dr. Robert Emmons of University of California Davis and Michael McCullough, a University of Miami professor conducted a gratitude study that has been widely cited.  They found that, “Grateful people are happier, more optimistic, more satisfied with their lives.  They are more empathetic toward others.  We even have a bit of evidence that grateful people are viewed as kinder, more helpful and more supportive than less-grateful people.”  Subjects in the study practiced a daily exercise of writing down five (or more) things they were grateful for each day.  The results were that they became happier, had fewer health complaints, exercised more and increase their ability to reach out to support others. 

This research set me thinking.  What changes would be made if this practice became an opening exercise for Congress.  Would they be motivated to work together for the benefit of all of us?

The trick is to be able to become aware of the things we are truly grateful for while we still are aware of the problems or negativity (whether personal or global).  This is a choice we can make to improve our lives.  I’ve often heard that what we think is what we create.  Science seems to be supporting this notion.  I’m starting my Gratitude Journal today.  I hope you’ll start one too.  Our lives, our marriages, our families, our social interactions can all be improved by a big serving of gratitude for Thanksgiving dinner.

Judie Fouchaux

The Year of Canning

Golden Plums Growing Wild

This year was the Year of Canning.  I remember in summers gone by, my mother canning.  It was war time and there were victory gardens and people canned foods.  We were in the country during the summer and my grandmothers cottage had a quince tree down near the boathouse.  We gathered quince and mother made jelly.  There was a grape arbor at the front of the house and so we picked grapes and made grape jelly as well. We had a folding towel rack behind the big woodstove in the kitchen and she would hang the jelly bag over a pot on the stove.  It was a fond memory and so over my lifetime I have often canned.  I remember getting a bushel of peaches at a farm in Illinois when we were in graduate school.  My hands broke out in a rash from the peach juice from peeling all the peaches but the three kinds of peach jam I made were worth it.

This year I was inspired by a plum tree.  It lives in a friend’s yard and there were more peaches than he could use.  So Dann went and picked some for us and I made jam.  When made I sent some back to the friend and his daughter.  Another friend told me of some plum trees out in the woods that were delicious.  So we went walking with baskets and collected several more quarts of plums, some golden (see above).  More plum jam. 


Golden Plum Picked

The canning then took over.  I had a hankering for bread and butter pickles and discovered that there were pick-it-yourself farms nearby.  So one Sunday, Dann and I ventured forth on a gathering adventure.  We found pickling cucumbers, sweet onions and tomatoes at a roadside stand and then went to a peach orchard where we picked several buckets of peaches.  From all this bounty I have jams, relishes, tomato sauce, chutney and bread and butter pickles.  There was also a sense of accomplishment and as I open a jar of pickles or jam a sense of satisfaction. 


Plum Jam 2011 Batch Two

Though I’ve canned before – I usually make a batch of chutney at Christmas to give as gifts – it was a new learning experience this time.  I realized the joy I taking something through a complete process.  Thinking about what I would make, picking the fruit, preparing the relish or jam, putting it in the jars in the canner, listening to the pop that tells you it’s sealed properly, storing the brightly colored jars and then enjoying the product, especially when I can share it.  I hope that my mother felt that same satisfaction when she made jams and jellies over the kerosene stove in those summers long ago.

The Sound Of Falling Leaves

Yesterday I was sitting on the deck enjoying some Indian summer. It’s almost November. Sometime around two-thirty the angle of the sun finally reached me, warming my
back. The air was sweet with the blossoms of the small lemon tree behind me, so sweet a hummingbird dropped by briefly. Sitting in the still, warm air I can almost imagine it’s a cool summer day in the mountains. It’s fall in Northern California. The deck is strewn with fallen leaves like a wood nymph went by tossing leaves for our pleasure, much as a flower girl would
drop rose petals at a wedding. Tomorrow I will make another attempt to clear the deck but as there are so many more green leaves still clinging to the tree, it will not be the final clean
sweep. I paused in my writing to pick two ripe Sungold cherry tomatoes for an afternoon snack. I have to catch them as they get ripe or even before, otherwise the raccoons will have them at night.

I love that the warmth of the sun takes be back to earlier days when lying on warm rocks, soaking up the sun was all that was expected of me. I’m grateful that for a brief moment I can capture the feelings of those free hours and use them to renew my spirit before the responsibilities roll in. I
can already feel the snippets of thought reminding me of things to do. I chose to take a little longer. Sitting in the quiet, I hear the sounds of the dry leaves as they “hit the deck”; watch a spider rebuilding her web. It is easy to open to the nuances of life when you are sitting still. My challenge is to stay open to these little things as I resume my busy day. It’s my challenge to you as well. As life gets busy and pushes in don’t miss the sound of falling leaves.