Meg Evans

Back during the summer, I got rid of a dog bed that Diva Dog totally refused to sleep in (as I mentioned here). My daughter bought another bed in a style more to the dog’s liking and put it next to a wall where the dog often napped. It has the words “Gone Fetching” in the middle, though you can’t see them in this photo with the dog snoozing there.
 

Bed, dog, and daughter left for Cleveland this morning, although they’ll be back for a Thanksgiving visit before my daughter starts her new job at the end of the month. It seemed very quiet around the house today. I took the garden fountain off the porch and put it away for the winter because this weekend is forecast to be much colder. In life as in nature, everything changes…

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 occasionally buys rubber band balls to put in the desk drawer. When they’re new, the drawer looks neatly organized, with enough rubber bands to last for many years. But they don’t really last that long because as time goes on, the bands start coming off the ball and getting all over the drawer, and the rubber gets hard and brittle.
 

Last night I didn’t know what I was going to post for Nurturing Thursday. I started to feel anxious—what if I couldn’t think of anything good? It seemed so much easier last week when I had the post written and scheduled in advance, leaving no uncertainty.

Then I realized that such worries made no sense because a personal blog post is supposed to be a snapshot of where the author is in the present, which means there never can be much certainty. If I wrote everything far in advance like some commercial sites, I would just get bored, and the posts would feel as useless and irrelevant to my actual circumstances as old worn-out rubber band balls!

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.

After saving her money for a while, my daughter is making plans to move out. She decided to take a new job and go back to Cleveland for graduate school after looking into her options for nurse practitioner programs and employer-provided tuition assistance. On Monday, she went shopping and bought furniture for her apartment. Rumor has it that her boyfriend, who also took a new job in Cleveland, has been looking at engagement rings. My husband says that seeing his little girl all grown up is making him feel old!
 

I am proud of how well she is doing; and although I’ll miss having her nearby, at least her new home is close enough to visit in a day trip. As for feeling old, not so much. At whatever age, there are always more adventures to fly toward and discover!

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.

The frigid winter two years ago was hard on my roses. Three bushes, weakened by the extreme cold, caught the rosette (also called witch’s broom) virus last summer and died this year. I ordered bare-root replacements and planted them with fresh topsoil and mulch last weekend. Here’s a photo of one:
 

Next spring I’ll have three tiny new bushes in the same flowerbed with larger existing ones, which will look peculiar at first; but I expect it won’t be long before they grow big enough that I can’t tell the difference! That’s often how things go. Even if something happens that is bad luck and a nuisance, there’s no reason to get stressed about it because in a year or so, it will all be forgotten.

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.

The credit for this week’s self-nurturing topic goes to Elizabeth Gilbert. In her bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love, there is a scene in which she describes going to a soccer match in Italy and taking notes on a spectator’s colorful cursing because she loves the sound of the Italian language so much. She mentions that there is no good English translation for “che casino,” which literally translates as “what a casino,” but has a meaning closer to “what a mess.”
 

After reading that book, sometimes when I realize that I’ve let myself get into a “what a mess” mood, I say out loud “Che casino!” in my best fake Italian accent, dripping with exaggerated pity. That’s almost sure to leave me giggling and take the seriousness out of the situation! Although we all get into bad moods on occasion, humor can be a very effective way of dealing with them.

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 recently asked me to leave cookies off the grocery list because he had been eating too many of them, which was best dealt with by an “out of sight, out of mind” diet. Over the summer his employer got acquired, and he ate more cookies because of stress without realizing it. Many people do that, of course, as shown by this word-art picture I got in an email from a coworker last month.
 

Many years ago, Sesame Street changed the Cookie Monster to the Veggie Monster out of concern that kids shouldn’t be encouraged to eat sugary snacks for comfort. Although I can’t picture the Veggie Monster inspiring kids to clamor for lima beans, the health concern is indeed valid, given that today’s diet has way too much sugar in it. But even though it’s best not to overindulge, I have to admit there are times when nothing beats a soft gooey fresh-baked (or microwave-warmed) chocolate chip cookie after a tough 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.

Saturday was a chilly day here, with some rain showers. I was outside for part of the day and was glad to get back home, where I could warm up! When I looked out the window by the front door, I noticed a rabbit on the steps, looking perfectly comfortable. My first thought was that the rabbit wanted to get out of the wet, too!
 

I didn’t invite the rabbit in for tea, like in old-fashioned storybooks, but I did take a photo as a self-nurturing reminder. While it’s good to get outdoors and be active, having a warm and cozy house to come back to later is always something to appreciate!

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.

In my home-office area there are two matching desks, which my husband and I bought in 1999. They’re still in pretty good shape; the only issue over the years has been that the file drawers came with thin curved handles, which broke many times. At one point my husband bought a bag of 10 drawer pulls because they needed replacing so often. The last time one broke, though, it finally dawned on us that maybe we should get something better, instead of always matching the old ones! So we bought nice big sturdy ones instead.
 

Much better! Though it now seems as if it ought to have been obvious all along, we honestly never thought about it before. Over the years we’d gotten so used to the drawer pulls always being in the same style, we just couldn’t shift our mental maps enough to imagine the desks being any different. There’s a good lesson about self-nurturing here; instead of mindlessly putting up with little annoyances out of habit, it’s best to consider the alternatives!

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.

Last week I realized that I’d had a bit of calendar confusion and had made plans to attend a fun activity at the same time as a responsible grown-up activity. Leaving out the details to protect a not-so-innocent party (me, that is), I’ll just say that I came to the conclusion other responsible adults could handle the latter activity without any need for my presence, so I shouldn’t feel obliged to pass up an opportunity to have fun. In short, I decided to play hooky.
 

As it turned out, the would-have-been ditched event got rescheduled anyway, so it didn’t matter except that it gave me some food for thought. Often we feel guilty if we don’t follow through on every obligation—but maybe we shouldn’t. After so many years of being responsible parents, employees, volunteers, etc., and constantly burdening ourselves with one task after another, an occasional day of playing hooky could be just what’s needed to lighten the load!

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.

The orange trumpet vine along my backyard fence (also shown here and here) has one last bloom remaining at the very top. All the others have turned into big, heavy seed pods hanging down above the grass. Hummingbirds love these flowers, and I took a quick picture with my phone camera on a gorgeously blue morning, to mark the end of the season.
 

Wishing everyone who reads this post something beautiful this week too!

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.