Foundations

Already mid-January. It's been eventful, but not so much of the interesting kind. More of the workaday kind in my life (and horrific in the world), and talking about those types of events isn't especially helpful. 

twisty snowy branches

But one thing that I've understood in a different way, after experiencing of those events, is the need for a foundation. In a literal sense, like a foundation for your home, and a figurative one, like something you really need to make your life possible (or okay, that lets you live your life with the ease to which you have become accustomed). 

Side note: here's a brief invisible-to-you pause while I searched a couple of things and got sidetracked learning about foundation garments. Sometimes it's interesting to be alive long enough to see times changing. (In the global sense, not so much, but we aren't talking about those events.)

My point is that in rural northwestern Ontario, we need a car that does well in snow and icy conditions. Even though we don't go to a job daily, we have enough errands in town and enough interests or concerns out in the wide world that we must be able to walk out of the house, get in a car, and drive away in almost any weather. (I'm neither embarrassed nor proud of this fact.)

We did not have our most reliable car available (brake calipers are a real thing, however much they sound like medieval instruments of measure or whistle as they fail) for something more than ten days. Because it snowed early and often this winter (SO FAR!), and the temperatures were also below normal for the season (single digits Fahrenheit), I wasn't 100 percent sure we could shovel out or drive our other (less reliable) car.

I'm not a "car person," any more than I'm a "computer person." I use them as tools and don't appreciate them for their own sakes. I don't need the latest or coolest; I need one that works. Therefore, I often forget how necessary they are to my life. So through that time of switching things around, I tried to explicitly appreciate the elements of my life that I tend to take for granted. 

Hydro (it's flickered a time or two recently and went out for a full minute one frigid windy night, whew) and flashlights (which turn up in unexpected places in this house with fading batteries). Reliable water and septic systems and showers. A body that is mostly healthy and mostly a pleasure to live in, jeans that fit, the wherewithal to sign up for drawing classes and a weekly weightlifting workout. Firewood for emergencies. And cars and computers. 

This ongoing practice of looking at the things I take for granted isn't new. As part of our morning "let's chat till Marion wakes up" time, my husband and I do talk about things we're grateful for. But we stop at three, and the car (or computer) doesn't appear on them until it's malfunctioning and missed.

We did shovel out our second car (also something I'm grateful for; that we have another option), and the reliable car is apparently back to being reliable and we had the money to pay to make that happen. All things I'm grateful for and newly aware of.

Not a bad way to start a new year. And I'm also grateful to be able to ask, "what foundation am I taking for granted?"