Life + Culture

No Candlelight for Renters?

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Are you enjoying all the cozy vibes this season with string lights and candlelight?

For those who own their residence, then it’s no problem. If you rent the place where you live, it might not be so easy. Burning candles is often prohibited in lease agreements.

I love the scents and soft light of candles. They are part of my daily routine when I do yoga, meditate or just want to relax. Especially this time of year when we’re losing daylight. Tomorrow is the winter solstice. Winter starts officially and we will have more hours of darkness than any other time of year. Creating our own light sources indoors is the best way to create hygge and embrace the season.

My first encounter with burning candles being prohibited was at my last apartment. Before signing the lease, I spoke with the owner of the property and negotiated an addendum allowing me to burn candles.

The next encounter I was not so lucky. It was around this time last year that I sold my mother’s house and rented her an apartment. Again, the lease did not allow burning candles. This time I was not able to negotiate anything. It might be the difference between renting an apartment in a smaller multi-family house from an individual versus an apartment in a large complex with hundreds of units and a corporate landlord.

Further, where my mom lives there had been a recent fire caused by a candle, which resulted in a lot of damage. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), “Candle fires peak in December and January with 11 percent of candle fires in each of these months.”

Because of the dangers caused by candle burning, I can see why property owners want to prohibit the practice. According to Statista, there were more than 40 million housing units occupied by renters in this country last year. That’s a lot of people who are potentially having lifestyle restrictions.

I wonder about that fine line between a lifestyle choice and a religious and cultural practice. How often do landlords enforce this provision in a lease? When they enforce it, do they enforce it uniformly? At what point could this restriction result in religious discrimination?

Are people allowed to have birthday candles? If someone has a birthday party and they light candles and blow them out right away, that is different from someone burning several candles for a sustained period of time.

What if someone is lighting a menorah for Hanukkah? Or lighting the kinara for Kwanzaa? Not all candle burning is the same, so I wonder how do property owners decide. Maybe there is no actual enforcement, until there’s a fire and someone has to pay.

A Few Unexpected Things

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I’m so happy that I finally have this book! For the last few months, I kept hearing about Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and wanted to read it. I put it on hold at the library and it came in much sooner than expected. I just started reading it and was immediately pulled in with the first page. A very good sign!

So often things are unexpected and bad. When they’re unexpected and good, that’s the best.

That’s been happening with some plants. Overall, I have a green thumb and do extremely well with most plants. Except for a few. Two plants in particular that everyone always says are so easy to grow were never easy for me. Years ago I gave up on African violets and snake plants. I tried so many times and they always died. But now, I’m apparently a snake plant charmer and working magic with African violets too. Very unexpected!

Two movies that I watched recently had the exact opposite effects on me than expected. Part of it may have been that my expectations were too high for one and super low for the other.

When I first heard about the movie Past Lives, I wanted to see it immediately. It sounded perfect! A friend and I had planned to see it in the theater when it first came out. We could never get our schedules to work together and we missed seeing it.

Now it’s on Amazon Prime, so I watched it last week. I was disappointed. It wasn’t bad, but I expected to love it. It was somewhat slow, with some long drawn out scenes that didn’t need to be and started to feel tedious. I was glad to have not seen it in the theater. Further, the people that I wanted to end up together did not. It’s a love story that kind of broke my heart.

Also, somewhere in my mind, because of the title maybe, I was thinking time travel or magical realism, which are two of my favorite genres. It had neither. That’s on me. But it was a further disappointment.

The other movie, Meet Cute, is also on Amazon Prime. I think I found it on a list of good time travel movies. It stars Pete Davidson and Kaley Cuoco. I didn’t know much about her, except for that she was on The Big Bang Theory, which I watched a handful of times.

As for him, I enjoyed his SNL skits and hosting, but never understood all the woman flocking to him. What’s the deal!? I heard it’s just that he’s a really nice guy. He has a kind of sweet charm and magnetism that his role in this movie displayed.

Again, my expectations for this movie were very low, but I enjoyed it. There was actual time travel! It was the time loop variety like in Groundhog Day. I always find it interesting to see how the loop will end. The movie was different than I expected and gave Before Sunrise vibes, with lovely views of New York City.

So much in life is about managing expectation. Maybe it’s best to expect very little. But I always feel like that’s a negative way to be. Is it better to be delighted when not expecting much? I don’t know. That surprise is nice, but when you’re expecting a lot and manage to get even more, that’s the dream. I guess putting up with some disappointment is part of the deal.

Maybe it’s best to find a balance between the two and be somewhat neutral. Last week I bought some dollar scratch tickets from soda can deposit money. ‘Tis the season for holiday miracles and you have to be in it to win it!

I won five dollars on one of them. I reinvested and got a five dollar scratch ticket today. I wasn’t sure which one to get, so I asked for one that won a lot. A guy behind me said, “If it wins a lot, it won’t be there!”

Sheesh. I didn’t say anything and figured I’d leave it up to chance. I won twenty dollars! Unexpected! Time to reinvest!

Polar Night in Svalbard

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Have you heard of Svalbard? I hadn’t until this past week.

A suggested YouTube video for me with the title, “Life in the DARKEST PLACE on earth (24/7 darkness)︱Svalbard, an island close to the North Pole” caught my eye and I watched.

I had never heard the term “Polar Night” until then either. I’ve heard of places where it’s dark 24/7 for periods of time during the winter, but this term seemed to encapsulate something different the way the vlogger, Cecilia, describes it. Polar Night in Svalbard lasts for two months!

The tourism website for Svalbard describes it in a rather fun way too.

‘Winter doesn’t just show up overnight’ is something you’d be safe enough to say most other places in the world without being wrong. But what if the night doesn’t just last a couple of hours, but instead spans over two months? The dark season in Svalbard lasts from around the end of October until the middle of February, but between November 14th and January 29th we enter the darkest and cosiest part of the dark season, also known as the Polar Night. As the days darken during late autumn the cold of winter also creeps in, and with the coming of the sun the light also shines on a new winter in our archipelago. While winter may not show up overnight, a lot can happen during the course of a Polar Night!

Cecilia loves this season and really leans into it. She’s all about the hot drinks with sweets, lighting fires and plaid flannel pajamas. Full on cozy! Which I love, and reminds me of when I started writing my Collection Of Moments series. Where I could find the good in all the seasons, not just the warm ones that I prefer.

I learned about hygge, which is a Danish term, where they also lean into the coziness of the dark winter months. Svalbard is one of a cluster of islands that are part of Norway, but very west of the country and closer to the North Pole.

One of the wildest things that she talks about is the polar bears. There are many around and they are a real threat. In one of the videos when she went for a walk, not only does she have a hat with a spotlight, she slung a rifle over her back. I’m not a gun person, but I can definitely see the need for one. This is no joke and one of the many tools for survival.

So I’m enjoying the videos and will watch more. But I don’t think that I would visit. Especially not during Polar Night. We’re in the darkest month right now here in Massachusetts. It will keep getting darker until the Winter Solstice on December 21st. Getting dark at 4pm is bad enough. Never mind complete darkness for two months!

I don’t want to wish time away, so I’m leaning into the cozy as well. The light will return soon enough. And at least we don’t have to worry about polar bears!

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Image: Screenshot

NaBloPoMo Complete!

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NaBloPomo 2023

NaBloPoMo is ovah!!! I did it! Posted everyday this month. The past couple of days, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. But it worked out.

As I’d hoped, NaBloPoMo has helped me get back on track with my blogging. If I can blog everyday for a month, I can certainly blog twice a week.

And that’s my new goal for a regular blogging schedule. Twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday. I may veer from that if something unexpected comes up, or if I am away on vacation. Traveling more is a big goal for next year! I should be able to schedule posts ahead of time if needed, so hopefully it won’t be an issue.

I started using the Notion app recently and it’s really helping with keeping track of my goals. It’s free and I’m enjoying it more than expected. I know I mention YouTube all the time, but lots of vloggers use Notion. Starting this past October, I tried it as well. Actually, I use the app on my phone and the desktop version too.

Many of the vloggers also do a 5:00am morning routine, but I’m not there yet. Who knows though? Maybe I’ll try it for a week and see what happens.

So far I’m just using Notion to do a monthly reset. It’s quite useful in letting me define short and long term goals by reflecting on the prior month. What worked. What didn’t. Then deciding how I can tweak things to work better for the upcoming month.

December starts tomorrow, so it’s time for another monthly reset.