Where sustainable foods, women-artists' work and the new design assignment cross paths!

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Choosing Not to Anticipate; Enjoying the Surprise

The Fedex delivery-person just knocked on the door with a package for me in exchange for a signature; it was from The Crown Publishing Group, as it was so stamped on a Random House mailing label.
I had been looking for this package when first notified that my name had been selected randomly, in response to an article posted about the author and her book, on one of my currently favorite foodie blogs. This kind of news really is unexpected, then the promised prize becomes secretly hoped for, and overall the experience is an exciting little lift!

After the initial news, days of waiting passed that seemed to turn into "weeks of anticipation." I contacted the prize-giver to be sure there hadn't been some mistake, some delay of which I was unaware. I was reassured that proper notification had been followed-up, and the item was on its way to the address I had provided.

More days passed; I wasn't really obsessing about the material proof of this luck in my life. Intermittently, I was just 'noticing' that the promised item wasn't coming! Finally yesterday however, I woke up realizing that I had let go of any further anticipation of it arriving all together. If and when it came was fine, if it didn't, that was also fine.

This morning I woke up with a fleeting thought that the 'package' was arriving today. So fleeting that I decided not to pay attention to the thought, because I am committed to living a life free of thinking habits centered in anxiety. A practice of conscious attention that lately I am learning the least little bit to practice more adroitly.

After breakfast, my attention thoroughly engrossed in the morning computer roamings for jobs, and completing all daily correspondence, there was an assertive knock at the front door.

As I said, and to my unexpected surprise, there was the randomly selected prize made manifest in the delivery hands of the Fedex driver!! After thanking the efficient delivery-person for wishing me a good rest of the day, I closed the door looking over the cover of the sturdy envelop, in which this weighted prize lay waiting. Waiting to be unwrapped and discovered.

Parting the adhered flap on the back side of the envelop, I reached in and pulled out a bright and shiny hardbound book. A brand new book whose glossy jacket was only slightly worn, from a nine-day by ground, journey from New York City, to Oregon!
Opening the front cover of the new book, I discovered the formal note card with the CPG logo and printed directly under it, a note: "With compliments"!

I have a new friend; a new cookbook is always treated this way once it arrives in my kitchen!! This one written by founding chef of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, Deborah Madison. It is titled: "Seasonal Fruit DESSERTS, From Orchard, Farm and Market"!! Woo! Hoo!

With a daughter about to graduate from college, this surprising gift is going to see a lot of action and joy this spring and summer! A big THANK-YOU to the folks hosting the foodblog Culinate, for randomly selecting mine as one of the names to recieve what is soon to become, a well-used source of memory-making with family and friends, in the kitchen and on the back deck of this seasoned and passionate home cook!