All dressed up!

 All dressed up with someplace to go! It's been a loooooong time! A lovely afternoon spent with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. #lettingjoyin

Sweet summer air!

 'I'm just breathing in the sweet summer air, mammīte.'

#lettingjoyin

Juice for the neighborhood kids!

 Juice for the neighborhood kids! No place to be but outside on a refreshing evening at the end of a hot week.

#lettingjoyin #somanyboys

The ant and the grasshopper

Today, I've decided to channel my inner grasshopper and let the ant take a little rest.  We all know the story of the ant and the grasshopper - the hardworking and impressively responsible ant who diligently spends the summer stocking up on food and securing shelter for the harsh winter ahead, while the capricious and far too carefree grasshopper spends the summer lounging in the fields and enjoying the heck out of the glorious sunshine.  As a hardworking and impressively responsible individual by nature, I always secretly enjoyed that ‘told you so’ moment at the end of the story, when the ant who has clearly made the better choices gets to swoop in and save the grasshopper by generously opening the door to its warm home and sharing the abundant stock of food when winter rolls around.

Last summer, I was searching up this story in Latvian to use in my teaching, and was intrigued to find three different possible endings, which I’d never come across before.  Moreover, it was a remarkable revelation to realize that given various options, the traditional ending did not resonate joyously with me as it once had.  Here are the variations: 1. The ant swoops in and saves the day - she is a hero both because of her diligence and because of her generosity (definitely aspirational for the old me).  If grasshoppers had tails, she’d certainly slink into the house with the tail between her legs, and the ant probably gives her a scorching teacher look, just to seal the deal and ensure that the ugly lesson has been learnt (yikes! - also, embarrassingly, definitely the old me). 2. The ant gets great pleasure in turning the grasshopper away into the harsh winter, because why should she even consider sharing her hard work and good fortune (yuck! - this has never resonated with me and I hope it never does…). 3. The ant welcomes the grasshopper in and the grasshopper reciprocates the ant’s generosity by sharing her gift of playing music, so the long bleak winter passes even more colorfully and warmly for both the ant and the grasshopper as the two share their riches with one another (wow! - now this feels like something to aspire towards!).

In Waldorf education, storytelling plays a hugely important role in the primary years.  Through the different characters and actions, we are introduced to different aspects of our own self.  Our soul then experiences a natural expansion or constriction, a like or a dislike for things with which it aligns with or does not, and this is how we discover ourselves as we move through this world.  I especially appreciate that in Waldorf education, teachers are not meant to color the story and its characters or events one way or another.  Teachers are not meant to insert their own commentary or personal opinions, and also there is no push to discuss or formulate immediate reflections with the children.  If something sits strongly with them, they’ll comment on their own and then a natural discussion can unfold, but more often than not our experiences (including the ones we bump up against through storytelling) need to sit with us for a while, and we don’t serve anyone by rushing the processing.  Maybe later that day or week, the children will produce their own commentary through play or in snack time discussions, or maybe not.  We all process in our own good time.  I’m definitely still learning to give others and especially children (as well as myself!) the respectful space we all deserve to take in and make sense of the world and ourselves at our own pace.  Because isn’t it so that the grasshopper and the ant aren’t actually two different creatures, but both aspects of our very selves?  And isn’t it so that they are both good and they both serve their golden purpose, we just have to unravel and become more skilled at knowing when to employ which and how to keep them balanced?  (And isn’t it so, these lessons are best learnt when they come from within ourselves, not because someone told us or scorched us with ‘told you so’ looks?)

Today’s train of thought was spurred by exponentially rising meat prices.  Looking through weekly grocery flyers, I cued in on some excellent sales.  I panicked. My freezer is already full! What if I miss this moment for stocking up?! I literally felt my ant-like tendencies kicking into overdrive.

And then I remembered my story about chocolate chips and relaxing into the moment and trusting that the future will take care of itself.  Because so far, the track record is that 100% every new moment does indeed sort itself out. 

Chocolate chips will forever be my reminder to cultivate gratitude for what the present moment has to offer….and for heaven’s sake, enjoy the heck out of it here and now!  For our fifteen years in Latvia, my parents were wonderful about sending regular care packages filled with odds and ends that were unavailable to us - some were genuine needs like the only brand of eye drops that successfully soothes my seasonally red and wildly itchy allergy eyes, but they also appeased plenty of wants like powdered coffee creamers in a variety of fun flavors.  During my first years in Latvia, some of the top things I really, really missed (hovering dangerously close to the borderline of wants/needs) were Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and chocolate chips.  There wasn’t much my parents could do from the US to help with the ice cream situation, but they would send copious amounts of chocolate chips.  And you know what I mostly did with those chocolate chips?  I hoarded them.  Deep in a top shelf that was far out of reach, so they couldn’t tempt me too much.  It took a remarkably special occasion for me to crawl up on a chair and release a precious bag into the world to be enjoyed.  Until it came time to move and I dug out the chocolate chip stash to pack them up.  The bags were mostly solid bricks of crusty chocolate.  They’d melted and hardened so many times over the seasons they spent in those shelves, there wasn’t anything appetizing about them anymore (sorry, Mom and Dad!).  In all my stinginess with saving for a rainy day instead of allowing myself to enjoy what was perfectly available in the moment, I’d missed the moment altogether.  With the thunk of each bag hitting the bottom of the trash can, I decided at least with food, the best way to go was to enjoy the heck out of what was available when it was available, acknowledging that when another food was available, I’d enjoy the heck out of that.  When in Latvia, I’d enjoy honey cake and fresh rye bread and pīrāgi (Latvia’s legendary ham/bacon rolls), and when in the US, I’d enjoy my Ben and Jerry’s and Taco Bell.  I’d consume fresh strawberries with the greatest abandon during those precious few weeks in summer - no guilt for overeating when they’re available and no grumpiness when they’re not in season because that means I’m probably missing out on something else available to me now.  No worries about that which wasn’t, but uninhibited joy and gratitude for that which is.  Strange, how I learned this first with food and only later with things that matter more in life like my use of time which is categorically irreplaceable, but at least I got there.

Would I like a larger freezer?  Well, yes. I think we will always have the desire to create more and more security for ourselves, but as it turns out, hoarded chocolate chips melt into regrettable clumps of garbage. 

It's one thing to plan ahead for winter, but it's quite another to let that become such a laserbeam in your life that you miss out on the warm summer right before your very eyes. My inner ant is a particularly active character, but I’m becoming better at noticing when enough is enough and gently shifting my focus less on the practical and more on the beautiful.  Here and now.  We are ok, and in fact more than ok.  Today, I’m giving my inner ant the day off, so I can lean into the grasshopper and enjoy the moment.

This is my soundtrack for Living in the Moment.

Flight school for baby birds!

Our backyard has transformed into flight school for baby birds! #lettingjoyin They live in our neighbor's tree but there are dogs in all the yards around us, so when the parents shoo them out of the nest, they are dropping down into our yard. We noticed them at dinner time last night and have been keeping close tabs on them since - as Austris said: it's a nature show in our own backyard! (And then he proceeds to deepen his voice and narrate events for us as they are unfolding.

) The little one pictured in the branches was just hanging on by a toenail after losing its balance stretching its legs while the parents ranted at it - just go already! A's commentary: when it comes to survival in nature, scolding your child like an army general is the most natural thing on earth.

Bath time for superheroes!

 Bath time for superheroes! It's sunny! It's hot! We've got those lovely lazy summer days on the mind. 

 #lettingjoyin

A handful of sunshine!

 A handful of sunshine! #lettingjoyin

The first barefoot day!

 The first barefoot day! #lettingjoyin

Homemade pizzas

 Insert classical music in the background and the monologue of cooking show commentary in a heavy Italian accent as Austris makes homemade pizzas (which he learned to do in French class last week) for Mothers' Day! #lettingjoyin The day began with all of us snuggled in bed still in pajamas, reading aloud from the third book of the Narnia series, when this conversation happened.... Austris: 'Mom, you look beautiful even when you don't. To me, you will always be the most beautiful mom. That is what we celebrate on this day, how beautiful all moms are, even when they aren't. Fun fact! Did you know that moms do about 95% of everything for our survival? The other 5% is just fun. So moms are like real-life superheroes!' Dainis: 'Yes, mammīte, you are like Wonder Woman. Because her name is Diana and you are sometimes Diana.' I'm not sure I've ever felt as simultanesouly loved, appreciated and amused as I have felt today.

Happy Mothers' Day to all the real-life superheroes!

It sure does go just like this!

It sure does go just like this! ♡ Thank you, friends. Thank you, family. Thank you, nameless angels who momentarily alight. #lettingjoyin 'The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.' (Albert Einstein)

Video of turtles helping each other:  https://www.facebook.com/100046813621767/videos/5011467108937219/ 

Peas in a pod!

 Peas in a pod! ♡♡♡ #lettingjoyin

Laughter as the best medicine!

 Laughter as the best medicine! If you know the game Apples to Apples and if you know Austris' sharp wit, you'll understand how these two are a killer combination. He's at home today, a touch under the weather, and I was completely delighted to find that he'd set up this game, awaiting my return from shuffling Dainis to school. Oh, the belly laughs! Today's joy felt bubbly and shimmering, fast-paced and absolutely hilarious. #lettingjoyin

White tablecloth

 Happy 32nd anniversary, dear Latvia, of the restoration of your independence! We too had our 'white tablecloth' celebration! Though ours isn't pure white, it holds extraordinary meaning for us. This tablecloth was my grandmother's final sewing project for mājturības skola - an extraordinarily precious possession as it travelled with her while fleeing Latvia as a young mother in WW2. I love cross-stitch and I love sunflowers, and I was incredibly honored when this was given to me and traveled back to Latvia with me many years later. Even as the tablecloth has now travelled back to North America with us again, our hearts are in Latvia today. On the backdrop of everything taking place in the world right now, sitting around this white tablecloth adorned with my grandmother's sunflowers brought up such an intricate tangle of emotions. As I've been zooming in on daily joy in my life, I'm becoming more aware of how nuanced joy can be - the feeling is rarely the same from one day to the next. Some days it is straight-up and pure, but today it was markedly laced with variegated shades of emotion. Nevertheless, I recognize the flutter of joy and this is what it looks like today. #lettingjoyin

What a difference a day makes!

 What a difference a day makes! There must've been a smashing all night party on our maple-lined street. Yesterday the buds were still tightly closed, but this morning every single tree showed off its new baby leaves. What a celebratory feeling in the air! #lettingjoyin

Chuckles

 Chuckles and a flash of motivation on a rainy Monday morning! #lettingjoyin

Rainy day boardgames!

 Rainy day boardgames! ♡ #lettingjoyin The battle cries still reign supreme! 

Intuition running high!

 

Intuition running high for all things Canadian!

Canuckle 80 1/6

#lettingjoyin

Expectation or gratitude?

The past week has been brilliant for putting my sense of entitlement back into check.  I still get caught off guard at how deeply growing up in a white middle class family in America has imprinted me with an expectation for smooth living.  (Moreover, this expectation and sense of entitlement is a thief of joy - an inside-job robbery of my own doing.)  As much as I think of myself as an open-minded and easygoing character filled with more gratitude than expectation, the truth is this is a perspective I still have to check in with extreme regularity and adjust mechanically as needed.  

Beyond showing me that I will in fact survive if things aren’t always easy or smooth (and that this really, really is ok!), life in Latvia was a mirror on some hard truths about myself.  I suspect if it hadn’t been for fifteen years living outside the culture I was born into and grew up in, I might not have gotten such a good look at some deeply ingrained thought patterns, which it turns out I am still working on unraveling.  

Dainis has been on-again-off-again coughing since the start of April.  Our rapid tests keep confirming it is not covid and there have been zero symptoms to worry about beyond a cough.  He hasn’t had a fever, he is eating and drinking enough and his superhuman levels of energy continue to keep us all on our toes and wishing for someone to just hurry up already and invent that technology for transferring young children’s bottomless stamina into their caretakers.  But it has been nearly a month and the coughs have gotten juicier, so I decided last Friday we should have a medical professional listen to his lungs.  

I know that our family doctor is well-booked in advance, but there is a walk-in clinic at his practice, so we woke up early to get ourselves in line in a timely manner.  Turns out from that very day the walk-in service is no longer available on Fridays due to staffing shortages.  The receptionist kindly gives us two options of covid/cold/flu assessment centers which have recently opened in the area for just this type of situation.  Originally created as walk-in centers, both have since shifted to appointments only and I quickly learn that all appointments are filled for the foreseeable future.  With some more digging, I discover another local walk-in clinic which assures me that they will be able to see Dainis today if we do a rapid test in front of them upon arrival to prove that he is covid negative.  We drove home to pick up our rapid tests (Dainis was understandably not a happy camper as we’d just done a rapid test an hour earlier and why must he have a stick up his nose again) and arrived at the walk-in clinic only to discover a line out the door with 15+ people ahead of us.  Dainis has already cried and found his courage again three times….there is no way I’m going to be able to keep jollying him along for however many hours it would take to creep forward through this line (never mind that withstanding the chilly wait outdoors no matter how well-bundled he is did not seem like a wise choice for his cough).  

I was supremely annoyed at this point (even as Dainis is thrilled that indeed he won’t have to have the stick up the nose again) and needed a few minutes to breathe through this irritation before moving on with the rest of our day.  This was a glass half-filled/half-empty moment and it was in my power to decide.  The day was not unfolding in the way I had expected, but it was in my hands to decide how much that mattered.  My original expectation was that both boys would be back at school and I’d have the whole day to run my own errands and clean the house following a week of visitors and preceding a busy weekend that will conclude with a birthday party in which we were preparing to host ten children and twelve exotic animals in our living room.  The expectation which replaced this original intention was to carry out my responsibility as a conscientious parent and finally nip this cough in the bud before it morphed into something serious.  I started on the path of ‘Damn Covid!’ for butting into my life and my well-sculpted plans *yet again!*, but I realized if I check in with myself at this exact moment, everything is actually ok and indeed better than ok.  What was that I wrote once?  ‘Gratitude or expectation? The choice is ours.’  

Instead of allowing my thoughts to steam forward fueled by heavy irritation and scathing judgment, when I took my self-generated expectations out of the equation, here is the far more level-headed conversation I had with myself: Dainis is ok right now. I can still get to a pharmacy and speak with a pharmacist today about whether there’s anything more I can be doing for him. I am living in a country where the quality of health-care is high and it is absolutely free for my children. Even if things are currently sluggish, if this becomes more serious we will absolutely get the help we need. (Is there room for improvement on this - yes!; are we in immediate trouble right now because of it - absolutely not, that is my imagination getting away from itself creating ‘what if’ scenarios.)  We have a car to easily get ourselves where we need to be, I have a phone and internet to connect with potential resources, I am fluent in the language of this country so this is not a barrier.  And on and on, I understand that we are actually ok in the moment and most likely will be ok, because even if everything isn’t just the way I’d like it to be right now, our situation is good and we are blessed.

I give Latvia kudos for giving me plenty of practice with stepping outside of judgmental mind spirals and reframing my instinctive perspective of entitlement.  When I comment on life in Latvia, I often feel like it comes across as a judgment toward Latvia and that’s certainly not the way it’s intended - in reality it is a judgment on me.  I have to tell the story from the perspective that I lived it and the things I experienced and comment on because they stand out most brightly in my mind were not within my norm. The truth is that even as they felt weird and different *to me* at the time, for someone else, that is just reality.  I appreciate having years of practice to redirect the aim of my knee-jerk judgmental reactions, by using them as a mirror to delve inward as opposed to lashing out externally.

The following two stories are my favorite snapshots of how I learned to harness that unattractive moment of entitled expectation and swing it around into a reality-check and gratitude:

Keeping other people’s perspectives in mind sure helped as I learned to navigate public transport, a ripe breeding ground for some of the more savage lessons that have come my way.  ‘Sometimes elbows are necessary’ or ‘sharpen your elbows - we’re going in!’ are our family metaphors for moments when you just have to ruthlessly stand up for yourself.

Upon arriving in Latvia one of the more startling differences was people’s sense of personal space in public places, particularly where moving forward in a line was involved (case in point again, my first post office experience).  It is absolutely something I can comprehend with my head, if not with my heart, understanding how pushing your way forward in a line during the Soviet times may have meant you got the last pair of shoes or bundle of sugar while others went home empty handed.  I now experience reverse culture shock when I’m in the US and someone says ‘excuse me’ for coming within a foot of my space without even having touched me.  

While I’d experienced the elbows here and there, that legendary train ride home from the beach on a hot summer day is how I first learned to use my own elbows.  I came to understand that like it or not, sometimes elbowing your way through can be a necessary part of survival.  

Trains run about every fifteen minutes through the beach stops in the summertime and we arrive to a platform pretty full of people.  The train pulls up and is already bursting at the seams with people from the previous beach stops heading back into the city.  It doesn’t even occur to us that more people could possibly get in, but astonishingly, everyone around us starts wriggling their way into the already full train cars.  Those comical tiny cars with endless streams of clowns pouring out of them have got nothing on Latvian trains in the summertime.  KB and I are the only ones who step back, politely making the decision to wait until the next train.  Somehow everyone else manages to find their nook or cranny on that train and everyone holds their collective breath as the doors close.

Fifteen minutes pass, and the platform is full of people again.  I am beginning to glimpse that although I consider myself quite open-minded and unbiased, I carry some pretty deep sense of entitlement involving my personal comfort and it’s not something I was particularly proud of.  I’m broadcasting my politeness and respect for others but peel back a layer to find the bubbling lava of my hot judgemental desire for my own comfort. I am looking down my nose at the situation and realize this is a perspective that will need adjusting.

This is not a threshold I am eager to cross.  I wish there were a more graceful way to step off my pedestal without involving my elbows, but when the next fully packed train shows up, we understand - when in Rome….  If we want to get home that night, we’re going to have to join the party.  

We look at each other hesitantly.  

Elbows up?  Elbows up….

***

I’d already done a notable share of heavy learning on the precociousness of the big stuff in life - relationships and marriages - before arriving in Latvia. However there was still quite a bit more expectation and entitlement that needed unravelling.  One moment it’s here and the next it’s not is not something a middle class citizen in the US often has to consider when it comes to the minutiae of life, and Latvia had some crisp lessons in store for me on the impermanence of it all.  I attribute my false presumptions of anything otherwise to my privileged upbringing.  Not that I came from a family in which my every whim and desire was instantly pacified.  There was plenty that we wanted but never got or had to work for diligently to get if we wanted it badly enough.  But every need was met without question and moreover I grew up in a time and place where if I prioritized something highly enough, I could make it happen.  The American Dream.  Proof of this was quite simply evident in weekly trips to the grocery store.  Want fresh tropical fruits in the dead of a Wisconsin winter?  No problem, if you’re willing to pay for it.  In the mood for breakfast cereal?  There’s an entire aisle of options for you, go nuts and get exactly what your heart desires.  Orange juice?  Your options are also endless.  With pulp or without?  Organic or frozen?  Mixed with other flavors or pure?  Which kind of oranges, exactly, will you drink - navel, valencia, blood oranges, or tangerine?  And always, always, in the unusual event that your exact preference is not immediately available, the store will express their remorse at this unexpected hardship, finding a way to make it up to you.  (In our family, this was dubbed the ‘Free Butterick Pattern’ phenomenon, born of the time when my mother expressed a complaint at her favorite fabric store and she was appeased with the offer of a free pattern, despite the fact that this didn’t actually resolve the issue.)  

Like it or not, growing up like this cultivates an awesome sense of entitlement and embarrassingly unrealistic expectations.  Latvia’s grocery stores certainly helped me revise my expectation that everything I desired would be readily available.  Here I am not talking about the typical American standards of chocolate chips, spicy salsa that actually has a kick or Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, which I knew I was trading in when opting to live in Latvia, but I am talking about super basic things which are truly grocery store standards.  It’s not that they aren’t ever available, they just might not be available on the day when you’ve planned to buy them, and no one will offer you free coupons or apologies for not having it in stock that day. 

In my first weeks living in Latvia, trips to the grocery store were always a true adventure. (Mistaking spam for a nice Italian sausage was a true story, made more horrific by the fact that I discovered this as I was making my infamous gourmet lasagna for a friend...which ended up turning into a spam lasagna!  Hilarious lessons of lightness for learning to just let go and live in the moment were aplenty as a fresh arrival to life abroad.) I easily spent triple the time grocery shopping, taking my sweet time in finding what I actually needed and always scoping out what else was available in planning for future shopping trips.  So within a month of arriving in Latvia I was quite certain and optimistic that I’d be able to make tacos when I had it planned, because taco spices and tortillas had recently become available on regular rotation in large Latvian grocery stores. Everything on the menu was now standard ingredients that showed up at the store week upon week. 

Except when I finally planned to make tacos, there was no lettuce at the store.  Not the kind that comes in a pot with roots still attached, and not any other kind…  Seriously?  How can there be no LETTUCE?  I was beginning to glimpse that although I considered myself quite open-minded and unbiased, I carried some pretty deep sense of entitlement around things like the availability of lettuce in grocery stores and it wasn’t something I was particularly proud of.  Brush it off.  No lettuce is a bit disappointing, but tacos without lettuce it would have to be!  

Until I got to the meat counter and there was no ground meat.  Of any kind.  So that was that - no tacos for dinner.  For a super crazy planner like me, I felt like a ship lost at sea trying to navigate the store with my useless grocery list.  For others, it may be totally standard practice to wander through the aisles and put together a meal based on what looks good (and years later I pride myself on not only having developed this skill but also not breaking into an instant full-body sweat if I have to use it!) but that day I truly felt like a fish out of water.  Nowadays my grocery lists are much looser and I always have plans B, C and D in the back of my mind.  This skill probably also reaches beyond the aisles of the grocery store. 

Beyond this forced flexibility in the life of a super planner, the important lesson I’ve learned through grocery shopping in Latvia is to walk into most situations with gratitude instead of expectation.  Whether you realize you’re harboring the sense of entitlement or not, if you’re expecting your every desire at your fingertips, it can only lead to disappointment and grumpiness when things are not just so.  If you walk in with gratitude for what is available - the ability not only to work with but also appreciate what is instead of what you’d like - the world starts looking a hell of a lot different.  

Things have changed a lot in fifteen years, with all kinds of things readily available in shops that weren’t here when I first arrived.  There is still an unmistakable burst of excitement when something old and familiar suddenly shows up on the shelves - Doritos and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are two recent newcomers.  I always do my fair share to help boost sales - sometimes they stay, sometimes they disappear again after a matter of weeks.

 

It’s my constant reminder to keep expectations in check and pour out loads of appreciation for everything that is.  In this moment.  Here and now.  

There is a great comedy sketch available on youtube by Louis CK called ‘Everything is Amazing and No One is Happy’.  He describes perfectly how as humans we are far too quick in getting used to absolute marvels and miracles.  The idea that we are painfully annoyed at a ten minute delay on a flight even as we are sitting in what is essentially a bus with wings that is going to fly us around the world.  Or how crazily impatient we become if our internet connections are a bit slow, when these signals actually need to travel all the way up to space to bounce off satellites and make their way back to us.  Or how wildly beautiful the full moon is, but no one bothers to notice it anymore because it will be back again next month.  Gratitude or expectation?  The choice is ours.

So here is how the story of getting Dainis to the doctor concluded.  During the weekend we focused intently on comfort, rest, nutritious food and plenty of fluid intake, as we do when we are unwell, while I diligently popped into the cold/flu clinic sites regularly until an appointment became available for Monday afternoon.  We made it to Monday just fine and arrived punctually ten minutes ahead of our scheduled time to an unexpected lineup of five people at the receptionist’s desk with another ten people already seated in the waiting room.  I understood we would not be seeing a doctor in ten minutes, but I also understood we definitely would be seeing a doctor that afternoon.  I spent the next hour in the waiting room seated comfortably enough with Dainis on my lap as we paged through the thick storybooks we’d brought to help us wait more patiently.  I marveled at the loads of mumbling, grumbling and outright complaining filling our collective space (including from people who hadn’t scheduled appointments but made the decision to wait and see if they could get squeezed in and then subsequently rolled their eyes dramatically and grumbled some more at every scheduled appointment holder who arrived).  I didn’t judge the situation and I sure didn’t judge the people (after all, just Friday I’d mumbled and grumbled myself, despite the insights life has offered me and lessons I’ve already ‘learned’), but I did observe and marvel. 

I marveled at how living in the North American bubble leads us to expect our bumpy paths to be smoothed over so quickly.  Does it suck that you don’t feel good and can’t get to the doctor straight away?  Of course.  Does it suck that what is advertised as a walk-in clinic doesn’t function in that way right now? Yes. Are you actually going to die if you wait until tomorrow when the receptionist is offering you an appointment?  Probably not. And if it gets to the point that it feels like you will, you have the amazing opportunity to call an ambulance that will pick you up quickly and transport you to the ER for free and your health care at the ER will be for free (yes, USA, I’m looking at you here - and that *is* me passing judgment).  Is the situation ideal?  Of course not. Is it hard when you aren’t feeling well and are worried for yourself or your child?  Absolutely!  However….let’s keep it in perspective: here and now, we are better off than a very large part of the world’s population.

I double checked with KB to make sure my memory wasn’t blocking something out, but we both agreed - no matter how long the lines were for health care in Latvia, we don’t ever recall seeing someone complain or even express annoyance about the wait.  If you couldn’t wait that long, you made the choice to leave and would sort it out in some other way; if you needed to wait, you waited.  The expectation was never there that this needs to happen straight away and on my terms.  For better or worse, our thought patterns really are incredibly ingrained by our surrounding culture and it can be pretty hard (and uncomfortable) to see outside of that.    

So… expectation or gratitude? The choice is always ours.  

TBR!

 TBR! Gearing up for another Readathon tomorrow! Flipping pancakes and simmering soup, so I don't have to worry about food! Books and cozy clothes ready to go! #lettingjoyin #deweys24hourreadathon

Dancing rainbows!

 Dancing rainbows! My mom gifted Austris and Dainis each a Swarovski crystal to hang in our windows. She loves walking into a room full of dancing rainbows on sunny days and wanted us to enjoy the same magic. It really is spectacular! #lettingjoyin