I usually take advantage of April Fools’ Day to pull a prank on at least one person, preferably a group. One year I baked cookies for my colleagues, and strategically placed plastic cockroaches under each of the cookies in the box ‘-) Another year I did up a batch of gorgeous cupcakes, topped with homemade buttercream icing and fancy frosting flowers, and placed a chili pepper jelly bean at the bottom of each of them.
You get the idea, right? Nothing truly nasty, like gluing things to a co-worker’s desk or filling their car with toilet paper or Styrofoam packing chips. And yes, I’ve worked with people who did those things – but luckily not to me!
This year, with most of the world dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it just didn’t seem right to pull a prank on anyone. Besides, my husband and I are pretty much in self-isolation these days, because my rare disease puts me at greater risk of complications from this illness than healthy folks.
He has been truly fantastic for me in the four years since I was struck by Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), formerly called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD).
The start of each month is always his busiest time at work, with tight deadlines and not enough time to manage them, so I’ve avoided pranking him. There are only two of us in the house, and I wasn’t going to pull a gag on myself!
Instead, I asked my sweetheart to carve out a few minutes this afternoon. To take a fifteen-minute break from his hectic month-end schedule and sit with me for a cup of tea, while we watched the birds in our spring gardens. Half of our yard is still covered with snow, but the rain later this week will hopefully melt the rest of it.
Even though I’m not pulling any ‘fast ones’ for April Fools’ Day this year, I wanted to surprise my husband somehow – in a good way. And I found the perfect, delicious, surprise at a local farm shop.
I visited Quinn Farm last Friday with my sister, and picked up an assortment of locally-produced goodies; bacon, cookies, quail eggs, sunflower sprouts, yellow tomatoes, and other specialty products including these lovely herbal teas.
This box of assorted herbal teas is made by Inuit peoples in Canada’s far north, under the brand name Délice boreal (Northern Delights). It’s a social entrepreneurship enterprise, people helping people. The type of thing that I adore!
“Avataq Cultural Institute draws upon the wisdom of the Elders to provide a product – Northern Delights herbal tea – that people find so delicious they look for more reasons to indulge, and one that respects, even as it advances in the marketplace, the culture and traditions of the Inuit.
We, the Inuit, believe that our ways and this earth must be protected.
As such, we are prepared to share our knowledge even as we hold on to our
values. In this way, we are all part of the solution.
And Avataq is our conduit.”
At three o’clock, the time of our planned ‘tea break’, I served us each a mug herbal tea made with plants indigenous to northern Canada. The one I chose for today was made with Rubus chamaemorus; cloudberry in English, or arpiqutik in the Inuit language of our Nunavik Territory:
Cloudberry is the fruit of choice for the Inuit.
Dr. Alain Cuerrier, Botanist, Montréal Botanical Garden, http://deliceboreal.com/en/
However, the old leaves are one of the best known teas for the Nunavimmiut (Inuit of Nunavik).
It is a small plant of the rose family (Rosaceae).
Cloudberry strew around wet and swampy areas and often consisting of two leafs decorated with its large white flower.
This is a good source of vitamin C and therefore a friend of our wellbeing.”(1)
This herbal tea was refreshing and delicious, but a truly surprising taste for someone more used to European-style teas. It was just a small surprise, but it let me feel that I’d still done something special for April Fools’ Day this year.
As a bonus, it created an opportunity for my husband to unwind for a few minutes during a stressful workday ‘-) That’s an advantage of his new work-from-home routine, due to the COVID-19 pandemic; we’re there for each other on much more constant basis.
I can help him get through the darker days of his depression, and he can help me deal with the constraints of CRPS and its resultant mild cognitive impairment.
Hopefully by this time next year things will be back a new kind of ‘normal’ for us, despite my rare disease, and I’ll be back to planning pranks again. I hope you got some laughs today as well, some moments of wholehearted joy.
You may have noticed that I’ve been writing a lot recently about the locally-made products that I picked up at a farm shop last Friday. This blog remains 100% non-commercial, and no one has asked me to showcase their goods. I’m featuring some of them here simply as a way of sharing some simple pleasures with you, a break from the hourly news reports.
As always, thanks so much for stopping by. You have my best wishes for good health, for you and your loved ones, and for moments of hope and gratitude in each and every day. All the best…