Saturday, April 3, 2010

I Guess I've Got the Easter Blues...

Do you recall the Dean Martin song “The Christmas Blues”? Well this Good Friday morning I awoke with what I can only explain as the Easter Blues. I'd ended up with no long weekend plans, and upon realizing this immediately slumped into a solid sulk. Easter is not the most important holiday on my calendar, but it was unusual to have no plans at all for this weekend of beautiful spring weather. It was making me feel lonely.

So what’s a girl to do? Well, this girl first takes awhile to feel sorry for herself and complain over the phone to a loved one. Then once the whining ceases, decides to get off her heiny and take a walk through the neighbourhood. What wonders the first day of no-jacket-wearing can work! The bustle of Roncesvalles was pleasantly distracting and I got over my self-pity while poking around the shops that remained open for the holiday. Here are some things that helped to get me out of my funk:

Springtime Flowers on Roncy (Gina). 2010.
  • Bushels of spring flowers at the corner greenmarkets
  • The smells of the Polish bakeries dishing out delicious loaves and sweets for holiday dining tables
  • Flipping through books in a second-hand bookstore and scoring a copy of Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food for $10!
  • A late lunch in a restaurant I’d never been to before
  • Listening to the charming chatter of a family next to me (twenty-something son trying to explain a vegan diet to his mother, in anticipation of his new girlfriend arriving at the family celebration)
  • Fresh ground coffee beans
  • Looking for baby presents (as it seems the world has gone baby crazy – but more about that later)
  • Grabbing this week's NOW with their Top 50 Toronto Restaurants list, and indulging in my a guilty pleasure of tallying how many I’ve eaten at (13!), how many I’d still like to visit (7) and how many I disagree with (2.5)
Arriving home feeling much better, I discovered that my father was heading down the street on Sunday for a dinner with my aunt and uncle, and that I was welcome to join them out in the suburbs. All that wallowing for naught. Getting out of my own personal-space put me into a better head-space, and made me consider that good things come to those who seek them out.

What little things do you folks consciously seek out to turn a sad mood around?

5 comments:

Jen said...

Which are the 7 that you want to visit? And which are the 2.5 you disagree with?

As for getting out of a funk, getting outside usually helps me too. Going for a bike ride! For ice cream!

Gina A said...

Jen: Ice cream is an ultimate bad-mood buster! I've had a hankering all day for it but have already had my share of Easter treats... will wait until later in the week.

As for the restaurants, off the top of my head I still want to go to Negroni, The Local Kitchen, Cowbell & Edward Levesque. I wasn't too excited over Delux or Supermarket. They were fine, just not in my personal top 50!

Alison said...

Oh, it's making me feel very jealous and unpleasant to think of all of the Toronto restaurants I'm missing out on over here! I will have to eat Cadbury's Easter eggs one after another today to help me feel better. I think I can do it though.

Laura said...

who's pregnant?

ya, stop being slumpy and go to family dinner.

also, you should totally go bother juliana whenever. i would love to have the kind of relationship with neighbours where i could just drop in for a short visit and not have it be weird. and i want people to feel that way about dropping in on me. cell phones have ruined everything. that was a rant. oops.

Gina A said...

Alison: more incentive for you guys to come back! :) Also, mmmm... cadbury eggs....

Laura: That's a lovely neighbourly ideal I would like to see actualized too! As for pregnancies, none of them are mine (phew!) but it seems that this year babies are the new weddings - at least in my group of friends/family!