This morning, I got stressed because I felt that I had been unfairly criticized. After having some time to reflect on what happened, I decided it would be useful to give myself a friendly reminder not to get overly upset by other people’s reactions, which often aren’t really about me at all.
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
My husband’s new toy is a mini trailer for our rowing boats, and we used it traveling to a regatta in Oklahoma City last weekend, which was a lot of fun. We parked it at the venue when we arrived on Friday, taking our boats down for a practice row. On Saturday, we rowed the standard Masters sprints 1K distance in the morning, and then we did a 500-meter dash in the evening. It was nearly sunset, and we decorated the boat with glow sticks matching our colorful unisuits, in addition to the usual safety lights. Then we put the glow sticks around our necks when we stepped up on the awards podium.
Our dash was the last event, and fireworks were going off as we derigged our double and put it back on the trailer. My husband had planned the trip well, finding an Airbnb with a long driveway where the trailer could be kept overnight. I took a photo Sunday morning as we were getting ready to leave.
I don’t have a “Travel” tag on this blog because the vast majority of our travels are to rowing regattas, so I thought it would be duplicative of the “Rowing” tag. For this post, though, I decided a “Places” tag would be appropriate because I’ve been thinking about the imprints left on us by the places we visit. After returning home from a trip, sometimes I wake up and still have the spatial map of the hotel or Airbnb in my head, and it takes me a minute to reorient myself to being in my own house.
Earlier this year I read the classic novel “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier. The narrator carefully observes the small details of her surroundings, while feeling haunted by thoughts that each moment is soon lost forever. I vaguely remember starting to read it when I was in high school, but I never got through it because I didn’t have enough life experience to make sense of what the author was saying. The past didn’t feel lost to me; it was just a little farther away than the present. Now, I have more understanding of how fleeting the moment is. But, even so, I still don’t look upon the past as having been lost. There’s always space for something new and fun to replace each moment.
I’m traveling on a road trip with my husband, leaving Wednesday evening, so I’ve scheduled this post in advance. I like the quote, and although (being honest) there isn’t much chance I’ll wake at dawn, it should be good enough to schedule the post for dawn, anyway.
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
My next-door neighbor has been putting down mulch this week, and she offered to give me whatever was left over from the pile in her driveway. That might have been a roundabout comment on the less-than-perfect condition of my front yard. Although I took good care of the roses behind the house this year, and they look great, I can’t say the same of the neglected shrubs in front.
I spent some time cutting them back this evening, however, and they’re starting to look better—not perfect, but that is okay. It’s just what happens in real life.
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
My daughter sent me a text message on Monday with a photo of an incomplete Sudoku puzzle. She told me she’d gotten stumped, and she asked if I could see anything more to put in.
I looked at it for a few minutes and replied that the fourth number in the first column had to be a 7 because the other open spaces in the fourth row couldn’t be.
Although this was a very simple conversation, it left me feeling much more cheerful. At first, I wasn’t sure why. She lives close enough to visit often, and she had sent several other texts over the past week, so it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary.
Then I started thinking about conversations I’d had with my parents. I generally didn’t ask for help with simple things because I felt they might judge me for not being self-reliant enough. Perhaps they weren’t overly critical by the standards of their time; but I got the distinct message that I was expected to do for myself, muddling through as best I could. Asking for a hint with a puzzle, however stumped I might have been, wouldn’t even have occurred to me.
By contrast, my daughter was perfectly comfortable about sharing her Sudoku and saying she hadn’t been able to solve it, without feeling at all self-conscious—and that was what made me smile.
Instead of writing this post early in the day, I went out to get my hair done and left it for later. When I came home, I just sat down at my desk and got back to my work. Then I started chatting with my husband, and we went down to the river to do our rowing workout. By the time we got back to the house, it was past sunset, and I still had to take a shower and cook dinner, so this post didn’t get written until the end of the day.
When I thought about what to write, leaving things for later seemed like just the right topic!
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
