Grocery shopping day

December 5, 2024

I just got back in from the sauna. Like yesterday’s post, I’m writing this little missive in the evening. Except for the earliest days of blogging, when I had to fit writing into non-childcare hours, I haven’t written in the evenings for many, many years.

Writing has become part of my vocational identity, plus it has become a huge burden and so it gets assigned to daytime work hours.

I’m fooling around with disrupting that energy.

So it’s the evening and I’ve just saunaed. Had a sauna? Took a sauna? Sat in the sauna? Went in the sauna?

I like playing with this word that can be both a noun and verb.

Dad built the sauna this summer and fall.

I talked about it in this video. It’s built from a Backcountry Recreation kit. Various people worked on it over the summer. Ok, various guys. My dad, my brother, and my nephew. Oh, I also helped carry a board or two and helped Dad with some leveling. That’s on the video.

The sauna sits along the woods path between our two houses. You can’t see it from anywhere on the property, except when you step onto the path. And there is it is. A little shingled barrel in the woods.

It was grocery shopping day, something I’ve reinstituted since moving to Nova Scotia. I don’t know about that word. To “institute” sounds so formal. It’s a routine I’ve re-established. For most of my adult life I’ve grocery shopped during the work week, ie: not on weekends. There was a season there during our child raising years where I went in the evening by myself. But mostly it’s been a daytime, work week thing.

Except for the last couple years in Montreal, as life routines shifted to accommodate my schooling and the reality of adult children living at home, who helped with the shopping.

Thursday is grocery shopping day because Thursday morning is the Lunenburg Farmer’s Market and I want to combine all my shopping on one day.

So I start there. And then come home and re-group, finish my list for Bridgewater - the larger town we live by with all the big stores - and head out again in the afternoon.

Today, when I got home from the farmers market, where Mom and I had lingered over breakfast and coffee (these are the moments) Damien had the fire lit. I’m usually the fire starter in the mornings. But I didn’t have time to get it going before leaving for the market.

It was a wickedly stormy morning. Windy and rainy like all get out.

To come in from that weather to the wood stove burning was such a comfort.

I picked up a new seasonal candle at the market from my friend Jen at Simple Local Life.

It’s my first touch of Christmas decoration/vibe making in the house. It makes the house smell so good.

After finishing my grocery list, I went for a walk in the woods. Not because it was lovely, but because it wasn’t. And I wanted to experience the fierceness of the storm. I warned Damien if I wasn’t back in a couple hours to come looking for me, as trees fall back there during big winds. (More like hurricane winds.)

I’ve really needed my walks with this anxiety and this one offered the unique experience of coming home soaking wet and making me nervous about something real, like a tree falling on me.

Grocery shopping itself was unremarkable, and tiring. I’m often tired grocery shopping but wow today really knocked me out. It’s that time of the year where anytime after 10 am you start asking “is it 6 o’clock yet?”

I am making a concerted effort this late fall and into winter to not do anything I feel I “have” to do in the evenings. I really want to live as seasonally as possible and winter nights are just not times of productivity for me and I don’t want to push myself into that. I am done all the stages of my life where that kind of productivity is required. And now that my schooling is winding down there is just no need for winter evening productivity. To be clear, I have days and days of school work to do still but that’s the point, I’ll be doing it during the day.

Looking through my photos as I am just finishing this up, and also wondering how to end (that’s always the question, how to end?), I was reminded that I made a fresh batch of Elecampane & Spruce Tip Cough Syrup. I love how this looks like a holiday potpurri.

Technically I think the syrup should be made with the fresh tips that are harvested in spring. I haven’t lived here that long, so I had to make due with fall-harvested tips. Probably less potent but hopefully still somewhat effective. This is batch two for this bout of sickness.

I have been looking forward for years to harvesting things from these woods. And I love how homemade herbal medicines taste like sweet roots and leaves and bark. Sweet from the honey of course.