Addicted

I don't really drink. This means that, yes, while alcohol occasionally passes my lips, it is most often at the urging of someone well-meaning, who likes the taste, trying to make sure I don't miss out. On an amazing beer (gross), or wine (almost worse), or mixed drink (I can still taste the booze, that's the problem). About once a year I'll have something like madeira or some other really sweet wine. But even then, I'd much rather have dessert itself. The whole huge piece of cake.

And I've never been addicted to things one can consume - sweets, caffeine, drugs, cigarettes, booze. The first two, I can live without (although I regularly don't), and the last three don't float my boat.

I may be a bit addicted to shopping as a means to making myself feel better.

I am more addicted, however, to feeling busy. To doing the right things. And it is this that I'm trying to do a bit less of these days. Trying to stop trying to cram in all that I could do, for about 20% less doing.

I'm currently missing a large piece of a tooth. It kind of just fell out last week. Instead of a rogue popcorn shell, I pulled out a quarter of a large tooth. And, hours before being due to leave on a trip, I was sitting at the dentist's, hearing that I'd have to come back 5 days later. So, suddenly my rushed day was quiet. I had an extra hour and a half left. More, maybe.

My first instinct was to do as usual - rush out to try to get even better rain boots than those I'd bought at the hardware store for this trip. I could make it into town. I could probably find a shop that carried better ones. It could make the trip better.

And then I stopped. Partially because my stomach told me to hold the hell on and go get some lunch first. But also partially because it is okay to be stationary. To not be rushing from one thing to another, in search of an even better thing to add to one's already nice day. Last Saturday, it was deciding to just sit at the train station with A's Kinder Egg and my newspaper, while she had time to eat, and we had time to just sit. To watch trains go by on platform 1. To watch people. To see the Jordanian Royal Army Band members in full uniform walk past us. To chat. This was lovely, and instead of rushing to get to the market, just 100 m. away and go buy Greek food for lunch, and make our Saturday even cooler.

So much better to have time.

I won't always be able to make that call. I'm new at this. But when I do, it has been worth it. No sky has fallen, no one on Facebook has unfriended me, and I get to slow down and notice smaller things. Like the fact that my kid thought a phone booth was an elevator, since she's never seen a corded phone. We took 20 min. while she ate her treat and then stopped in at the phone booth before heading home. She may not have wanted to touch the receiver or buttons this time, but she had the opportunity.