This summer I haven’t been blogging as much as usual because I’ve spent more time rowing with my husband. He signed us up this spring for online coaching from Christine Cavallo, who works for Tagalong. Christine is well suited to us because of her experience with the lightweight double, which is our preferred race. The training plan she created for us includes both rowing workouts on the water and indoor exercises on our rowing machine.

I have to admit that it felt exhausting when we were getting started, but now we’re definitely rowing faster and more smoothly together. My strength and endurance have improved noticeably, and my husband is looking better as well. The Masters regattas where we compete are just for fun—no prize money or anything other than cute little medals. But it’s a fun activity that we can do together and a good way to stay fit, and I am thankful to have something that we can work on improving every year.

Word-art that says "Do something today that your future self will thank you for."

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

August 10, 2021 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

I’ve had some dreams recently about moving on with life. On Monday morning, I dreamed that I had moved out of a house and that the new owners changed everything around, so that it became almost unrecognizable. They planted ivy that grew to cover the walls.

Photo of house with ivy on the front walls.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)

Then I had the “first day in a new school” dream this morning. You know, the one where you’re walking through a big crowded hall just before the first class starts, and feeling like you’ll never find your way to the classroom and will be doomed to wander around forever like a ghost.

Dreams like that always have to do with getting used to change. We’ve all had to contend with far too many disorienting events over the past year, and there is no magic wand to put things back to normal. Instead, like a student at a new school or a homeowner who has moved to a different house, we just have to learn what we can, in the place where we are—however strange it feels.

I’ve been amusing myself this week playing with an app that turns photos of faces into cartoon images. My current Gravatar/Wordpress photo is from 2018, which now seems like a very long time ago; so I’ll probably change it to a cartoon of me soon, just for fun. We all could use more fun these days, right? And more reminders that the world is full of beautiful things just waiting for us—or, perhaps, waiting to be us.

Word-art that says "Be YOU tiful."

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

I woke up later than usual on a cloudy morning. In part, that was good because I needed more sleep, but it also left me feeling like I was behind schedule and would have no free time to rest and relax during the day. There wasn’t actually much going on at work today—no meetings or anything, and no particular schedule to keep, so it was mainly in my mind.

As the day went on, though, it got to me. Usually I get groceries on Thursday around noon, which doesn’t take that long, but today I felt like it just wasn’t possible to have a few quiet minutes for myself. By the time I finished my workday, I was feeling tired and blah, even though I hadn’t really done anything much. It was all because I started the day with the expectation of having no downtime.

I did a workout on the rowing machine, took a shower, and put on my pajamas, still feeling like the day had gotten away from me. Then my husband came into the bedroom just after I finished drying my hair, and we started to chat about nothing in particular. Only a minute or so had passed, but I felt much more cheerful and relaxed. Then it occurred to me that—of course!—I would have felt much better earlier if I had started the day expecting to find plenty of small relaxing moments.

Word-art that says "Today is full of possible."

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

When I sat down to write my usual Thursday post, I wasn’t sure what to say because this seemed like a very ordinary day. I got up, worked half the day in my home office with my husband also working from home on the other side of the room, took a break and went to buy groceries, got some exercise on the rowing machine in the basement, took a shower, and finished my workday as usual.

Then it occurred to me that this ordinary day looked magical if I just took the time to notice. Working from home with my husband to keep me company is nice and mellow, buying groceries in a well-stocked supermarket means that I am blessed with abundance, and the rowing machine makes it easier to stay healthy and fit. Worth writing about, after all!

Word-art with a cloud of words like "magical" and "inspire."

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

When I woke up this morning, I felt calmer than I’d been in a long time. Nothing had changed much since yesterday, but I felt more peaceful anyway, as if my own perspective had somehow shifted overnight. Whatever concerns I’d had were farther away, distant enough that they no longer felt threatening but were just little specks in my internal landscape, without much emotional content. I began the day feeling as if I had made more space to invite happiness into my life.

Word-art that says "Let peace begin with me."

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

While I was driving to the supermarket this morning, I heard Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock” and it brought back memories of jumping rope on the playground at recess while listening to that song on someone’s cassette player. So, because I was in a retro kind of mood today, this image seemed just right for Nurturing Thursday. I hope it gives you a smile too!

Word-art that says "Love, peace, joy."

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

July 8, 2021 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Although I’m feeling much more relaxed because of taking vacation this week, all of that unscheduled time has been provoking what-comes-next thoughts. Everybody seems to be having them now, according to a news article I came across, which reported on a survey that found 95 percent of workers were thinking about quitting and 92 percent might change careers. Burnout was cited as the main reason.

The survey came from a jobs website, so it’s obviously a skewed sample and the real numbers are lower. Also, just thinking about doing something different does not necessarily mean that a person will take the leap and actually do it. The U.S. Department of Labor has calculated the number of quits for May 2021 at 3.6 million, which is down from April’s record high of 4 million, though still much higher than in past years.

I took a short break from writing this post to bring in a package from the porch, addressed to my husband. He opened it to find an unexpected gift from his employer—a little toy helicopter to commemorate the successful launch of the project he has been working on. Once upon a time, I used to get small gifts like that too. After a while, it started to feel like ancient history, and seeing them on my desk felt demotivating because management plainly didn’t care enough about the workers to ever do it again. So I boxed them up and put them in the basement.

Since then I still haven’t found an intuitive sense of direction. As my fictional 76-year-old future self Kass pointed out in an imaginary chat on this blog last summer, that turned out to be fortunate because most people who changed careers two years ago ended up in very different circumstances than what they expected. Now that the world feels like it’s settling down into a more recognizable pattern, I feel that my subconscious mind ought to be able to sift through the details and come up with something meaningful.

So I decided to take a virtual stroll down to the stream where I’d found Kass casting a net for symbolic images last year. The low water was murky and full of lily pads, and at first I didn’t see her.

Photo of a lake with lily pads.

(Image credit: James St. John)

After I went a little farther upstream, around a wide bend, I spotted Kass standing knee-deep in the water. She had on wading boots and some kind of drab uniform, and the curly hair under her cap had been dyed a darker shade of brown since I last saw her. A gloved hand carefully tucked away a test tube into a backpack.

“I’m taking microbial samples,” Kass explained, in response to my curious look. “The river of time needs regular monitoring, you know, just like any other body of water does. Can’t have it getting polluted with all kinds of random garbage, can we? And didn’t you have a few thoughts about going back to college to study biochemistry?”

“Not that seriously. And the last time I was here, you said this was the stream of consciousness.”

Kass shrugged. “It’s whatever it needs to be.”

A fly bit my right arm and zoomed mockingly away before I could smack it. The failed attempt left me off balance, and I took a step backward into squishy, smelly muck in which the geese had left their calling cards.

“I’m really not seeing myself in this job you’ve got.” Scowling at my future self, I scratched my arm while wiping off an icky shoe in the grass as best I could.

“That’s what imaginary scenarios like this are for, you know—narrowing down the possibilities. If this one won’t suit, how about I’m happily retired and living in a beachfront cottage in Aruba with the money you saved, snapping my fingers at the cabana boy to bring me another margarita.” Kass raised a hand before frowning slightly and dropping her arm again. “Except that you never learned how to snap your fingers properly, which is a bit annoying; and that margarita is much more likely to be delivered by a cabana robot. Workers are hard to come by in the future economy, what with the low birthrates.”

“Retirement never had much appeal to me anyway. Sitting around for decades with nothing productive to do sounds like it would be awfully boring and unhealthy.”

“Doing the same work forever, without trying out other possibilities because it seems too hard to pick one, wouldn’t be ideal either.” Kass took a few steps and came up on the shore, her boots dripping. “It’s best not to judge. Everyone in the modern world is struggling with the same issue—so much change, so many decision points—how can we have any idea where we’re going? My advice, at this point, isn’t so much about picking careers, but simply about discovering what the world has to offer. You’ll know what makes you happy when you come across it. And, be sure to set aside enough time for minding the river’s health.”

Every time my daughter comes home for a visit and brings her dogs, as she did two weeks ago, I’m reminded of how much we can learn from our furry friends. As humans, we tend to get stuck in our own heads and overcomplicate everything. But, often things are a lot simpler than we make them out to be.

Word-art with "dog lessons for people."

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

June 26, 2021 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

The killdeer nest by the boathouse, which I wrote about earlier this month, has unfortunately gotten its eggs eaten again. The birds only try twice per year, so they have moved on to wherever they go when it’s not nesting season. I’m hoping that their destination is somewhere peaceful, like the landscape shown in this image that I put on my art display this morning:

Michigan river landscape with flowers and trees

(Image credit: Andy Thomas)

When I went rowing with my husband on Wednesday, we planned to do two 1K sprints in our double and then just paddle around and enjoy the river afterward. Boat traffic is supposed to keep to the right, so when we turned around after our first sprint, we crossed the river to stay on our proper side. We’d almost reached the end of our second sprint, getting up pretty good speed, when a quad (4-person sculling boat) wandered very far left of center and collided with us.

The quad wasn’t going very fast, thankfully; but we were, and one of the aluminum riggers on the quad struck my husband with enough force to snap the rigger clean off. He wasn’t seriously injured, just bruised—which was very fortunate, considering how hard the impact was. We also were lucky that our double was not damaged. Of course, the quad will be out of commission until a new rigger can be delivered.

Although my husband was still sore on Friday, we went rowing after work anyway, planning to just go slowly. When we took our boat down to the river, we heard a loud commotion going on with some mallards near the shore. A male duck was on his back in the water, moving his legs feebly. (With mallards, gender is obvious because the males have green heads.)

Another duck, very agitated, was quacking loudly and flapping all around. At first glance, I thought perhaps two male ducks had been fighting and the one on his back had gotten the worst of it. After we had rowed a lap, however, I looked more closely and saw that the quacking duck had a brown head and was therefore female. The duck lying on his back was no longer moving, but just floated there like—well, a dead duck.

By the time we rowed another lap, the carcass had floated into the weeds by the shore, and the female duck was no longer quacking or flapping. Instead, the poor thing was perched motionless on a nearby rock, silently grieving for her mate.

I found myself thinking that any day when our family members are still in the world with us, it’s a good day.