Stay Loose, Go With The Flow!

by Pamelagrace Beatty

It’s fall and I’m happy!  I am one of those people who, like the rare ones who don’t like baseball and apple pie, doesn’t like summer.  I don’t like heat.  Summer equals heat. I stay loose and try to go with the flow. The best thing about warm weather is I get to wear my summer clothes.  I think I just lost the guys on that one, and am about to lose the women…  But, stay with me; this gets better.

As I sit here and gaze up through the skylights, I see the beautiful blue of the sky and the trees that are taller than the house, and I am reminded of how important it is to stay loose; to be open to new experiences and new ways of doing things.  This, of course, has to include trying to enjoy hot summer days. 

It is so much easier and more enjoyable to go with the flow.  Not too long ago, I was reading a book where the author said most of our problems come from disappointed expectations.  We thought we were going to get vanilla ice cream and we got chocolate instead.  We had our mouths set for some sweet, creamy vanilla bean ice cream, and chocolate just wasn’t what we were expecting.  If we chose to go with the flow we could say, “Hey, chocolate’s good too.”  But frequently we don’t.  I ordered takeout a while back from my favorite barbecue restaurant.  My mouth was watering for ribs, potato salad and green beans, with cornbread on the side.  Yes, I was channeling my southern roots.  

What I got was barbecued chicken, baked beans and coleslaw.  Soooo not on my list!  I had never ordered chicken from them, and never planned to. I hadn’t checked the order until I got home and it was too far, and too late, to go back down there and raise…well… you know, have a little fit.  I pouted for a moment and then decided to go with the flow. The coleslaw was so-so but the chicken and the baked beans were screaming (that means good, for those who were wondering). I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the mistake. And here’s the best part:  When I called them and told them about the    mix-up, they apologized and offered me a free dinner next time I came!  Now that’s customer service for you!

But I Can’t Swim!

Sometimes, it is really hard to go with the flow — especially if we are afraid of drowning! The vacation I took with my boyfriend to Spain this spring was an example of the benefits to just relaxing and letting things be what they are.  I could choose any point in the trip, and I describe how it was calling me to just relax and go with flow.  We could start with me spraining my ankle the day before the trip, and end with me painfully hobbling all over Barcelona, or the Catalonian countryside on my injured ankle.  But I didn’t want to ruin the trip by staying in bed.  We were in a very tiny village and neither of us spoke Spanish, much less Catalonian. There was no local transportation, except for our friend who invited us there. So, I ignored my ankle and took in the beauty that our friend showed us of the small towns, hills, rivers, old castles and ancient homes that were still standing after a few hundred years.

Accept Help

I come from people who are familiar with the phrase, “stiff upper lip.”  I was raised not to whine or cry.  Just power through it. No flow there! That’s not always a good thing. I powered through the ankle pain on our vacation to Spain. I walked, through the airport to the gates, and through the city to take our bus to the small town, and oh I also stepped in a hole in the street and re-injured my ankle while waiting for that bus.  Yet good things were on the way to me. 

Once we got to the little village our friend lived in, I mentioned my injured ankle and our hostess immediately called a friend of hers who was a homeopathic healer and former nurse.  Her friend was also an acupuncture practitioner.  I had never had acupuncture but had long been curious about it so I went with the flow. Our hostess insisted I buy an herbal-based pain relief cream as she set me up for an acupuncture session.  I believe her quick reaction, the cream, and especially the acupuncture saved our vacation! Although I still felt pain and still limped, the pain was much less than when I got to her home, and it stayed at a manageable level the entire two weeks we were in Spain.

Embrace the Unexpected

This vacation was filled with challenges.  I was careful however, not to paint a dreamy picture of how things would go in Spain. There were some issues because we didn’t speak Spanish, didn’t know Catalonian would be required.  We knew transportation would be a challenge, but again, we didn’t know we would be in a little town with NONE!  Well, let me correct that. There was a bus that came through the village, on its way to other villages and towns, but none that drove around the village we were in. Our hostess went out of her way to take us places, introduce us to her friends, and to see that we enjoyed ourselves.  She had her own time schedule but she fit us in.  Although our jet lag and morning addiction to coffee didn’t quite fit into her schedule, by the end of our stay in her village, we discovered we could walk to a nearby café where coffee was the same word in Spanish as it was in Catalonian.  My studies with Duolingo paid off–sort of.

There were three more unexpected challenges, besides my sprained ankle, the lack of transportation, and having late – versus early — morning coffee.

• Using Google Translator:  We thought we were so smart trying to use our google translator app as we traveled about. It was pretty lame.  Restaurant servers rolled their eyes right in front of us. Other folks like the bus ticket and store salespeople were less obvious with the eye rolling and quickly jumped in while we stumbled through “How much?” And “Where is…such and such place.”  By that time, my Duolingo Spanish was history and useless. Imagine our joy when we discovered if we just hover our cell phones over the restaurant menu, it would automatically translate what we were looking at, as thought the menu were in English. I use the word “translate” loosely.  I was unpleasantly surprised when my pork roast – per the translator — turned out to be pork belly. It was in a delicious sauce, but it was still pork belly!  Way too much fat for me.  Nevertheless, I followed my own advice and went with the flow.  I also learned to recognize the dishes I really liked and to only order them.

• Finding our way around without our hostess:  I mentioned that our hostess did have other commitments, and couldn’t tourist-sit us all day every day.  One morning she dropped us off at a street market that was a lot like the ones here is in the states.  It had all kinds of things to buy like clothing, kitchen utensils, vegetables and fruits.  I was in heaven just wandering around.  The market was in the middle of a more cosmopolitan town that had cabs and buses.   She gave us instructions on how to get to the bus station that would take us back to her village.  

Sounded easy. Not so much.  We toured the marketplace.  Took photos of the surrounding cathedrals and shops.  Found a restaurant where I had the pork belly and then, on our way to the bus station there was a downpour!  The lovely sunny day turned into a monsoon!  Seriously! We were drenched in minutes and we both had umbrellas.  To make things worse, we forgot how to get to the bus station and were using our phone GPS which for some reason kept taking us in circles, in the rain, on my aching ankle.  We did find the bus station and the sun came back at the same time.  We, however, were still wet.

• Last-minute solution to a music conundrum:  I had agreed to sing a jazz song for our hostess’s art opening.  I was flattered that she asked me to sing. I was just thrilled to be going all the way to Spain to see her new art being shown! She had done some paintings of my boyfriend’s photographs that he had taken of Buddhist monks in S.E. Asia. So, she invited him to come to the opening and I got to tag along. I asked her to find a musician to accompany me and she said she would.  However, I knew there was a possibility she might not; and she didn’t.  So I went with the flow, having been prepared for the unexpected, and used the music app on my cell phone to back me up.  

The wonderful thing about that was the restaurant owner had a sound system that jacked right into my phone, which made the music loud enough to be heard by the people standing near me.  Everyone was having so much fun talking and greeting each other, that the back of the room couldn’t hear a note!  I was fine with that. Instead of singing one song, I sang for the entire evening because the jazz went so well for background music. Again, the amazing thing about this was I have wanted, for a long time, to sing jazz in a café, bistro or club in Europe.  There it was.

So, “goodbye summer,” even though summer is stretching into fall time here. And “hello beautiful reds, oranges, yellows and brown leaves,” as fall dresses herself for the coming cold.