Lately I’ve been feeling like I am doing too much and just running around in circles. It helps to be able to laugh at myself, though. At least I’ll always be amused!
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.
On Friday after work I started feeling gloomy, as if there had been many times when nothing would go as I wanted it, despite my efforts. To cheer myself up, I got a cup of vanilla caramel tea, and then I sat down to relax for a little while. The gloom didn’t seem inclined to go away, though.
Hmm… maybe the present-day me wasn’t the one who needed cheering up.
I visualized an old-fashioned tea service that had two settings in a floral pattern, a basket with a loaf of hot bread wrapped in a white cloth napkin, and a jar of apple butter. Then I pictured all of that sitting invitingly on a wooden outdoor table in the imaginary long-ago village of Channelwood, and I looked around for my often-troubled younger self Queenie.
At first I didn’t see her, but then I heard a grunt not far away. Turning around, I saw Queenie in thick cotton gloves, busily cutting up a small tree that had fallen across a nearby path. She had sawdust all over her gingham dress, her bonnet was askew, and a ferocious scowl made plain what sort of day she was having.
Then she saw me and tried to get her face arranged in better order. “You know I didn’t mean it,” she said, before I had even greeted her.
“No accusations here,” I told her mildly, with a nod toward the table. “I’ve just brought some tea.”
A severed branch fell to the ground with a thunk. Queenie put down her saw and took off the sap-stained gloves, not looking much happier as she did so.
“It’s not fair, at all,” she complained, throwing the gloves into a pile of branches, “that when I have a bad day, which of course I didn’t want, you show up to remind me that I’m also making my future selves miserable. Why should I have to be responsible for what goes on in your life? It’s hard enough to deal with my own feelings, without having to worry about yours too.”
A cool breeze blew in from the cliffs above the beach, smelling of salt and washed-up seaweed. It set the leaves to rustling and carried the cry of a lone gull, high and plaintive.
I started to say something, thought better of it, and instead picked up the teapot and poured for both of us.
“Actually, you’re right,” I acknowledged, after a minute or so. “And, you are doing much better when it comes to recognizing and expressing your feelings. You knew exactly what was bothering you just now, and you were able to put it into words and explain it to me clearly.”
Queenie sat down across from me, looking somewhat mollified, and took a slice of bread from the basket.
“Well, I couldn’t say much before I came here, you know,” she told me, still sounding a bit defensive. “I would’ve been laughed at or yelled at—or both—if I talked about my feelings. Besides, it didn’t seem like anyone cared.”
“I’m not here to blame you for how you handled things before,” I reassured her, as I put some bread on my plate and took a sip of tea. “All I wanted to do was cheer you up a little, if I could. What made today such a bad day?”
“That tree.” Queenie gestured toward the fallen wreckage in frustration. “I cut firewood all the time, of course, now that I live here in a small village. And usually I don’t mind, but that tree was one of my favorites. It had lovely blossoms in the spring. I pruned it carefully, expecting that it would look even better next year; but we had a storm last night, and now the tree is gone and all the work I did was wasted.”
“But when you pruned it,” I pointed out, “those branches were used for firewood too, right? Or maybe some of them went to the compost heap, if they were small. So you did get something useful out of your work.”
“Well, yes, sort of,” Queenie said grudgingly, “but we always have plenty of compost, and firewood can be found all over. So it was mostly a waste.”
“The tree isn’t completely gone either.” I glanced toward the jagged remains of the trunk. “It still has a few small branches around the base, and next spring there will be more growth from the roots. Give it a few years, and it will be full of blossoms again.”
Spreading another slice of bread, Queenie looked skeptical, but she didn’t say anything else. The gold necklace that I had given her two years ago glinted in the sunlight.
“And of course it’s not fair,” I continued, “to blame the tree for making you have a bad day, when it didn’t want to have one.”
That finally drew a smile—if only a small one—from Queenie, as she poured more tea.
A few years ago, I bought a small water fountain to put on my front porch. It brightened up a shady area and made the house look more cheerful. Birds and chipmunks occasionally drank from it, although I didn’t often see them. Here’s a photo that I posted when it was still fairly new:
It didn’t have the best luck, however, in that it kept getting kicked over by pizza-delivery and package-delivery people. Last year, inevitably, a wing broke off one of the ceramic butterflies. I didn’t notice right away, and it was nowhere to be found. Buried forever in the bushes, probably.
I looked online for a replacement but didn’t see anything similar. Then winter came, and I didn’t think much about it. My husband surprised me at Christmas with a new fountain—a big sturdy one, much too heavy to kick over, with a pot to hold a seasonal plant. It sat in the box till spring came, and then we put it in the same area where the old one went.
We soon discovered that the new fountain had become a favorite gathering spot for small birds. They’ve been chirping and chattering to each other all the time, sounding much like office workers at the water cooler. The porch is certainly much livelier now!
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.
A few days ago, my husband and I looked up the origin of the word “skinflint,” just out of curiosity. We knew a flint was a rock that people kept in a fire-starting kit before matches were invented. But what might it mean to skin a flint, and how did that relate to saving money?
The explanation turned out to be quite simple: after a flint had been used for some time, it lost its sharp edges and became too dull to make a spark. Usually, people would throw away a dull flint and pick up another; it was nothing but a common rock, after all. But in large cities, a flint couldn’t be found in nature, so it had to be bought.
Some city-dwellers didn’t want to pay the tiny amount it would cost them to buy a new flint. Instead, they would keep on sharpening the same old flint again and again, until there was nothing left of it. That was how an overly frugal person came to be called a skinflint.
I was thinking about that in relation to the vast amount of consumer items we have nowadays. Before the modern era, people often had to repair and make do with worn-out stuff because most of their household items weren’t as easy to replace as a flint. Clothing had to be made by hand, as did many other things. It made sense to fix whatever reasonably could be fixed.
In today’s world, though, we have a lot of cheap little things that can quickly be replaced. When something goes wrong with one of them, maybe it just needs a simple repair, but often it’s not worth the trouble of keeping it going. Whatever the best choice may be, there’s generally no good reason to waste a lot of time and energy—either on fixing it or on worrying about the replacement cost.
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 was putting things away in the basement of an apartment building. What they were I can’t remember, but getting them tidied up felt like something I needed to do.
Then it occurred to me that I had left my purse upstairs in a common area. I started to hurry back and get it before a thief noticed it was there.
“Wait a minute,” I thought, “this is just a dream. That means I can finish what I’m doing, and the purse won’t have gone anywhere.”
So I got everything put away neatly, in its proper place, before I went upstairs. Sure enough, the purse was exactly where I had left it.
But as I got closer, I saw that the purse was open and my wallet was empty. A thief had gotten to it after all.
“It’s a dream,” I declared in exasperation, giving a nasty glare to what appeared to be nothing but a blank white wall. “When I look down again, that money had better show up back in my wallet where it belongs.”
I gave it a moment and then looked down. The small amount of money I’d had in my wallet was still gone—but instead, my purse now held a big wad of 50-dollar bills.
“Well, that’s more like it,” I said, as the dream faded.
Then I spent some time afterward sorting out the symbolism. An apartment building is a place where many people live. A basement is where old things are stored. So, perhaps the dream’s setting had to do with tidying up memories of past relationships and social interactions.
The forgotten purse likely represented anxiety about leaving behind something of value. Realizing that it was just a dream could have been my subconscious mind’s way of reassuring me that I am in control of my circumstances. Even when I feel vulnerable, I don’t need to worry about losing small stuff; instead, I can feel confident that there are better things coming my way in the not-so-distant future.
My daughter and her husband are going on vacation this weekend, leaving their dogs here. It’s always good to see how dogs enjoy simple little things, like going for a walk or taking a nap in the sun. They remind us to live in the moment and to keep it real, rather than letting our minds wander off into pointless worries about everything that isn’t perfect—which, of course, is everything.
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.
My husband and I went on a day trip to London, Ontario, last week. We both enjoy sculling, and my husband’s boat needed a small repair, so we decided to take the boat back to the Fluidesign factory where it was made. The owner and his son kindly offered to give us a tour of the facility.
The boats start out as thin sheets of carbon fiber, of various types, which look very much like cloth. They are unrolled and cut to the appropriate size for each particular boat.
Then they are put into a mold with resin and baked in a very large oven to harden them. The oven had three boats in it when we looked.
After the shells are hard, they are finished in another area. The company moved to this building not long ago; it’s larger than the previous facility and has plenty of space to move boats around and work on them. It was fascinating to see how the shells are made. They’re almost entirely hollow, which is why they are light and easy to carry, but they’re also strong. My husband expects to get his boat back on Friday, which will be the next scheduled delivery to Ohio.
We enjoyed the road trip too. Canada is a beautiful country, and its drivers are careful and courteous. We saw wind turbines everywhere along the highway, which was in very good repair. London’s neighborhoods looked welcoming and friendly, with many blocks of well-kept houses with lovely flower gardens on tiny lots. Now we’re thinking that it would be fun to go back to London sometime to row in a regatta!
This week I’ve been busier than usual and haven’t had much time or mental energy for blogging. Still, I sat down at the computer just now to write a Nurturing Thursday post. I’ve found that regularly taking the time to put together uplifting blog entries not only encourages others who may read them, but also replenishes my own energy. Even when the words don’t flow as easily as usual and the post is short, it’s a kindness to myself, setting aside space to create a little bright spot in my day.
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 recently learned that more work was needed on something I did years ago. Although it wasn’t wrong at the time, the circumstances turned out to be different from what I had expected.
It wasn’t really much of a problem; there was a simple standard-form fix. Still, I felt like I had made an ignorant blunder when I was told about it, even though the person who told me was not at all critical and, in fact, helpfully offered to send me the form.
When it arrived in my email, I wasn’t sure that it was the right form; it looked as if it might be referring to something different. The sender had been rushing to catch up on a large backlog of work after having computer problems. I thought, oh well, it’s no big deal—if it should have been something else, it was a mistake that anyone in a hurry could easily have made.
Then I started to wonder—why had I been judging myself as anything less than capable?
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’ve been feeling somewhat frustrated the past few years,” I said to my imaginary future self Fannie, as I helped her unpack a picnic basket on a cloudy and windy afternoon in July 2083. The corners of our disposable red and white tablecloth fluttered briskly in the breeze. Although the sky had gotten dark enough that a storm surely had to be close by, we didn’t have to worry about losing the tablecloth to a sudden gust because a thin strip of some futuristic temporary adhesive kept it firmly secured to the park table.
(Creative Commons image via flickr)
Sipping her iced tea, Fannie gave a nod of encouragement, waiting for me to go on. I was distracted, however, by a pair of unusually large bluish-green flies that hovered above our tuna sandwiches for a moment before they both flew away.
“They’re harmless,” Fannie informed me in a cheerful tone. “Genetically engineered to eat mosquitoes and other pests, while leaving picnic food alone. Also, they glow in the dark—that gene was inserted to help the biologists track them. They’re really quite pretty on summer evenings. Look, there are more of them glowing under the trees where it’s dark.”
In all honesty, I thought the genetically engineered flies looked a bit creepy; but in the interest of being polite to my future self, I didn’t say so. Instead, I went back to my earlier topic, which had to do with the frustration of trying to imagine my future work in a rapidly changing world.
“My job is comfortable enough,” I said, “and maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe I’ve been doing the same work for too long. I feel like I ought to have a better sense of what comes next, but I can’t seem to get it clear in my head.”
“Let’s talk about what happened when you first took the job,” Fannie replied, putting down her salad fork. “Did you have any clear future plans then?”
This obviously was a rhetorical question because Fannie, as a future version of me, already knew what had happened. Still, I gave it serious consideration and got my thoughts in order before I answered.
“No, I didn’t really—and that seems strange now, given the fact that I started in a temporary position and had no assurances that it would become permanent. I was mainly focused on the skills that I was learning, and I felt confident that I would be able to use them in a future job, whatever it might be. At the time, I didn’t worry about not having long-term career plans.”
Fannie took a bite of her tuna sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, as the sky grew darker and I heard a faint rumble in the distance. It sounded like thunder; but considering the sci-fi surroundings, I guessed that it might be traffic noise from flying vehicles instead.
“Well, then,” she finally asked, “what changed?”
Several potential answers came to mind before I was able to settle on one. “Mainly my perspective. By now, I’ve seen what can happen to people who wander through life without plans or who get overconfident in their assumptions. A lot of comfortable jobs disappeared during the recession, and the economy still feels shaky—but it’s not just that. With the world changing so fast, I now feel like I could easily miss out on something good because I didn’t know where to look.”
Although a faint pattering of rain had by now started in the nearby trees, our picnic table was still dry. Fannie poured herself a little more iced tea before starting to put away the remnants of our picnic in the basket, which looked like old-fashioned wicker (but a closer inspection showed it was a synthetic material instead).
“To sum up,” Fannie stated in a matter-of-fact tone, “you’ve gained more awareness of possible different outcomes, and you understand that present-day choices have great power to shape your life going forward. But rather than feeling empowered by these insights, you worry about making bad decisions—or failing to make decisions when they’re needed, which amounts to the same thing.”
I nodded, feeling somewhat embarrassed. “Yeah, that’s about right. I guess I’m being kind of silly, when you put it like that.”
“Not at all,” Fannie declared firmly, as she took from her handbag a small item that looked like a key fob and pressed a button on it. “More choices always mean more uncertainty; that’s just the natural way of things. But what usually happens is that although we may feel unsure of our decisions, they end up all right anyway. Even when we think we’ve gotten ourselves into a bad situation, we find that a solution appears.”
The rain was coming down in earnest now, splattering on the now-cleared table. A moment later, I heard a mechanical whirring, and then Fannie’s flying car came into view. Evidently it had been parked somewhere close by. It landed on a concrete pad not far from the picnic table, and Fannie walked briskly toward it while carrying the basket. She winked at me as she got into the car.
“See, things work out—rain or shine. It’s not that hard.”
I started to walk around to the passenger side, thinking that it would be great fun to go for a ride, even in the stormy weather. But alas, that would have to wait for another blog post. Fannie and her surroundings vanished into the mist, and I found myself back in my own time.
