It is Sunday afternoon, so this is certainly the most belated Nurturing Thursday entry I’ve ever written. I worked later than usual on Thursday, and we had dinner late because my husband was at the boathouse, teaching a Learn-to-Row student who couldn’t make the usual class time. He is always very flexible and helpful. So, I thought I would write a blog post after dinner, but then I got a database error message. I told my husband, who maintains my blog on a virtual private server; but I also said that because he’d had a long day, I was not asking him to fix it right away. The post could be written just as easily on Friday, after all.

After he restarted the database program, my blog seemed to be back to normal; it got some comments on Friday. We went rowing after work. It was windy, but we thought that was good practice because we planned on racing Saturday morning in the Indianapolis regatta, which is held on windswept Eagle Creek and known to rowers (not so affectionately) as the Windy Indy regatta. We needed to get enough sleep to be well rested, so I thought I’d write my blog post after dinner and then go to bed. The database error showed up again, however—and once again, there was no post.

We woke up early on Saturday and gave my women’s double partner, Deb, a ride to the regatta. My husband also towed the boat trailer with his SUV; he is the club’s usual trailer driver. Our race results weren’t the best because the water was choppy, as usual for Indy, and we were struggling. After we finished rowing, my husband took some time to help rowers on another team, who did not have much experience traveling, to secure their boats properly on their trailer. Then we took our club’s boats back to the boathouse and, with our other teammates, put everything away where it belonged.

When we got home, I cooked dinner while my husband updated the database program; upon investigating, he had discovered that the version he’d been using was buggy, and that was what had crashed my blog. He also updated WordPress after dinner, although of course he was tired from the long day. By then, I was pretty tired myself, and just fell into bed after cleaning up the kitchen.

I am better rested today. Now that I’m finally sitting down to write this post, I feel gratitude for having a kind and helpful husband and, as well, for being privileged to know so many friendly and generous people. Even in times like these, when it often seems like the world’s ties have frayed, our communities are stronger in many more ways than we know.

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.”