Category Archives: Personal

The big day

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in House, Personal, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

Yesterday was a perfect day. Not just a nice day, not just a good day, but an authentically perfect day.

I’d been dreading it for weeks. My last full day in my house, my last moment to say good-bye. I expected loneliness and sorrow, regret and probably some worry about the future. Instead, I puttered around, moving stuff from one place to another. I went for a walk with a friend, cleaned and swam, saw another friend, ran some errands. Spent half an hour on the phone with R, made a snack sort of lunch, swam some more. Cleaned some more, went out and saw some other friends, made dinner in Serenity — a salad of mixed greens, turkey chunks, pecans, and dried apricots, with a balsamic and peach honey mustard vinaigrette.

And at about 9, when I was tired and ready to sleep, instead I went back into the house and out to the swimming pool and lit the torches and swam by firelight under a starry sky. It was lovely, so beautiful as I floated in the still water, watching the colors of the flames against the backdrop of the green leafy bamboo. The sweet olive tree was even blooming a little again, making the whole backyard smell tropical. It was as magical as I could have imagined, maybe even more so.

The only not quite perfect thing about the day was that poor Zelda was so tired from staying two inches away from me while I wandered around that when I swam she didn’t play with her ball. Instead she slept, as if she was grateful for the chance to get some rest while I was contained. She, of course, doesn’t know that it’s going to be her last chance to play in a pool for a while.

But even that’s okay. I’ve been fighting to keep her ears healthy — drops every morning, cleaning them every day — but I’m pretty sure that I’ve failed and that she’s working on infections, maybe in both. It would be impossible to keep her out of the pool if we were home, but her ears will have a chance to stay dry when we’re on the road. And if I decide in a few days that this is an infection that needs more than Zymox, I can find a Banfield on the road and use her wellness plan to see a vet pretty much anywhere.

And today — well, today’s the big day. I shouldn’t be writing a blog post, I should be finishing cleaning out the house, making last decisions about all the things left inside, dragging the trash out to the curb. Maybe scrubbing the kitchen floor — I did a fairly half-hearted job yesterday. Definitely finishing emptying the fridge and cleaning it out. Checking the laundry situation, maybe making a last run to Goodwill. Oh, and cleaning my bathroom.

I suspect that today is both going to fly by and have long moments where it feels like it’s dragging, but at 2PM, I will sign the papers. One set of dreams will come to an end, but another will begin. I have no idea where I’m going to be spending the night, whether I’ll still be in Florida or have made it to Georgia or South Carolina. For that matter, I have no idea where I’ll be tomorrow night either. How fun!

Peaceful mornings

23 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Personal, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I slept in the house last night, but this morning I decided to have my first meal in Serenity. I brought my coconut milk, my gluten-free cereal and a nectarine out to the driveway and made myself a cup of coffee while I sliced up the nectarine. I sat on the edge of the van, the sliding door open, coffee on the floor next to me, bowl of cereal in my hand, adoring dogs at my feet.

A bird was flitting in and out of my crepe myrtle tree, which is in full, gorgeous pink bloom, and the sky was the pure blue of early morning with some wispy white clouds floating by. I took a deep breath and thought about how a peaceful morning just sets the tone for the whole day.

And then a dog walked by and Zelda went berserk and I grabbed for her (brand-new) tie-out cord, throwing my cereal into the air. Before we were through, I had nectarine and coconut milk and soggy rice chex in my coffee and on the floor and even on the comforter on the bed next to the door. Yeah, that happened.

I didn’t let either dog lick up the coconut milk and cereal, and I growled at Zelda as I cleaned up the mess. Literally, a low rumble of annoyance.

But now I’m sitting on the bed in Serenity, trying out my new mobile internet solution. I’ve been finalizing one room at a time in the house. My bathroom and bedroom are almost done–cabinets and medicine closet bare, dresser drawers empty. My living room is done, the family room, guest bedroom, Rory’s bedroom and guest bathroom are all complete. Most of my fridge is in Serenity — and the online wisdom that the small fridge is surprisingly big seems to have been accurate, I’ve gotten a lot in there already with plenty of room for more.

If I was really motivated, I could get everything I need out of the house within the next hour, take a load of stuff to the storage unit, and be living in Serenity by noon. But there’s the slight problem of no water supply, plus I do still intend to take as much advantage of the pool as I can in the next two days.

And I don’t feel done. I’ve still got a lot to do in the next couple of days, including the always really boring deep-cleaning done for the benefit of the next inhabitant. Something about scrubbing floors when I know I’m not going to be the one messing them up again makes me clean more sullenly. Still, I’ve got a definite glow of joy going as I sit here. This is going to be so much fun!

Playing house

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Randomness, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

I spent a couple hours this morning moving into Serenity. Like, really moving into Serenity. Tomorrow morning when I want coffee, it’ll be in the van. When I get dressed, I’ll be running out to the driveway first. My cooking capability in my house is down to… well, nothing, actually. My frying pan and two pots are both in the van, along with all my utensils.

Does this make any sense at all? No! I’ve got four more days in my house and Serenity’s not hooked up to water, and the refrigerator’s not cold, so it’s impractical to think I can really just stay in her. But I’ve been having to make tough choices about what I can bring & what I can’t bring and tomorrow is my last trash day, so I needed to make decisions. The easiest way to decide was to try things out.

It was fun, actually. I put all my dishes and pantry goods onto the shelves, then realized that when the bed is made up as a double bed instead of two singles, one of the cabinets will be difficult to access. So I rearranged everything. And then I decided that my shelves didn’t work the way I needed them to, so I did it again. It felt remarkably like playing house, like being a little kid in a pretend kitchen, doing pretend shopping.

Analyzing the way I use my dishes has also been entertaining me. I have two pretty mugs, blue with red flowers, white interiors. I’m very fond of them. But I use them only when I’m having an extra cup of coffee. They’re “special” mugs. On a daily basis, they’re too small and they cool off too quickly. Meanwhile, I have four tall latte mugs, and I use them exclusively for tea. They’re the perfect tea mugs, because they heat so evenly and hold the heat so well. I also have two red mugs that I didn’t actually like very much aesthetically, but they were what I drank regular coffee from, because they were a good size and weight.

Eight mugs. Serenity does not have enough room for eight mugs. Also, I am one person. I do not need eight mugs. For a time, I had six in there — two of each. But even six didn’t fit. So then I had one of the pretty ones, one of the red ones, and two of the latte mugs. The reality, though, is that my perfect tea mugs are by far my favorite and the most useful to me. What to do? Finally I asked myself the daring question: could I actually drink coffee in my tea mugs? It turns out the answer is yes.

But it amused me to realize how rigid I am in my uses of specific things. I put almost all my knives in Serenity for exactly the same sort of reason: I need the small one for apples and other fruit, and the next size up for carrots and vegetables and the third for slicing meat, and the fourth and fifth and sixth… but I suspect that after I’ve lived in Serenity for a while I will discover that I can live with two or three knives. Fortunately they don’t take a lot of room, so I’m going with abundance when it comes to knives for now.

Ugh, and bowls… so many tough decisions when it comes to bowls, because apparently I need a certain bowl for scrambling eggs and another bowl for marinades and a third bowl for mixing salad dressing and a fourth bowl for making rubs. And let’s not forget cereal, fruit, and frozen treats! I could actually explain why each of these bowls is better for its purpose than another but I did manage to decide that I could adjust to having only a couple types of bowls. Well, four. Or five. Anyway, I still have plenty of bowls, but I picked ones that stack and reluctantly let go of the ones that don’t.

Spices and herbs have been fun, too. I think I wound up keeping almost everything except red pepper and pink Himalayan sea salt. Their containers were just too tall or I would have squeezed them in, too. Three kinds of vinegar — balsamic, red wine, and white wine, but I jettisoned all the oils except coconut and olive. I hardly ever used the avocado oil, the red palm oil, the canola oil and the other oils I had, so I can live without them. Soy sauce, yes, fish sauce, no. Four kinds of hot sauce and chili-garlic sauce, yes, but all pre-packaged salad dressing, no.

Tomorrow I take Serenity to the dealer and get her vent fixed. Saturday and Sunday — I finish cleaning the house, I guess. Do a last load of laundry. Swim and swim and swim some more. Spend some time with friends, I hope. And then I’ll be moving on. And getting back to Grace! I find it really very funny today that Serenity has stolen so much of my attention from Grace. Even funnier when I realize that my mental name for APB (which has also stolen attention from Grace) is Balance.

Serenity, Grace, and Balance — three very nice things to have in one’s life.

To-do lists

18 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Personal, Writing

≈ 5 Comments

I had an incredibly productive Monday morning:

    I scheduled an appointment at the RV dealer to get Serenity’s vent fixed.
    I called the fence people about the permit problem.
    I took a load of stuff to Goodwill, probably the last.
    I stopped at the pharmacy and picked up a prescription and discussed arrangements for refills on the road.
    I called my doctor and got a couple extra refills added to my prescription.
    I took some old cans of paint and bug spray to the landfill.
    I loaded up Serenity with four bookcases and a chair and drove them to the house of the friend who’s taking them.
    I posted a question about traveling with pets to Facebook.
    I emailed my realtor.
    I called the guy who’s taking my porch furniture and made arrangements with him for Thursday.
    I talked to my sister and set up a time for my nephew to come collect a few things.
    I spent some time researching temperature monitoring solutions for when I have to leave the dogs in Serenity.*

And then I sat down at the computer to write and… didn’t.

I have this fantasy where I’m so engrossed in the story I’m telling that all the trivial details of my life are simply flotsam and jetsam drifting past unnoticed while a current of pure story drives my days. Reality is never so smooth. If Grace was a kayak outing, it would be an insanely frustrating one where the current of reality keeps driving me into eddies and backwaters. Actually, that’s a really good description of Grace anyway. I keep thinking I’ve got it and then… I keep not getting it.

But the day is not yet over. Admittedly, it’s after 7 and I haven’t had dinner and still need to take the trash out and my realtor just answered my email… but words can still be written! So off I go to at least try, having fulfilled one more item on my checklist of things to be done. (I’ve managed to blog every Monday of 2016 — I didn’t want to break my chain!) A week from today, I’ll be on the road, headed to PA, and all of the vast multitude of house-related to-do list items will be… well, done. I don’t know whether I’m more relieved, scared, or excited.

*The temperature inside Serenity hit 122 degrees the other day. I was impressed. That was with all windows closed and no AC on, of course, on a Florida day in July — a situation in which I would never leave the dogs. But I would like some kind of warning system for when I do leave them, although preferably one that doesn’t cost a small fortune.

Change

11 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Personal, R

≈ 4 Comments

R came home for the weekend, which was lovely.

We went out for sushi at our favorite sushi place on Friday night. Saturday morning he slept in. For breakfast, I took small slices of some melon halfway between cantaloupe and honeydew and topped them with prosciutto and a sprinkle of ginger. I saved him some so he ate a little of that when he woke up and then we had a big brunch of bacon and eggs*, scrambled with sautéed onion, cilantro and avocado. Plus coffee with coconut milk and cinnamon.

We watched a movie while we ate. Inception, I think, with a break in the middle to swim and read in the sun. Then we ran some errands: another load of stuff to Goodwill and also a run to the storage unit. He went out for a while and when he came home, we watched Ocean’s Eleven, and ate salad with roast beef, sweet corn, radishes, cucumber, avocado, and a dressing of balsamic, olive oil, italian herbs, fresh cilantro, and finely diced red onion. I’m sort of into the diced red onion salad dressing. It’s got a really nice but subtle kick.

On Sunday, he woke up late, then went out to lunch with a friend. When he came home, we watched Interstellar. Afterwards, he helped me drag some stuff out to the curb — his box spring and mattress, an old washing machine that’s been in the garage for the past seven years.

We put Serenity’s name on her. He’d been joking about my spaceship since he first saw her, but when he looked at the name lettering I’d gotten, he told me I’d picked a very Christian font. I was a little taken aback, but he viewed this as a good thing. He said that when I was broken down by the side of the road, people would be inspired to want to help me.

We talked about Ireland and his job, his thoughts for the future, ideas about plays he’s writing and his thesis, places he wants to go, and the movies we were watching. Whether Christopher Nolan can get away with anything. A show he’s watching on Netflix that I would really hate but that makes him laugh. Game of Thrones, which neither of us watch, but both of us know much too much about.

And then he got into his car and drove away. And I will not see him again until 2017. And we will probably never live in the same house again. And I am so sad.

Also completely congested, eyes puffy, face tear-stained, and so, moving on. Change happens. It’s not always easy. This change is enormously better for me than sitting in this house, waiting for him to visit, so I know it’s right. But a little grieving, that’s right, too.

*Cooking note for future reference: I cooked the eggs in red palm oil, which is supposed to be a butter substitute. It worked pretty well. They’re not kidding about the “red” part, though — it turned my onions orange and gave the eggs a deep, rich color. It doesn’t have much taste, which is a positive, I guess. Eggs cooked in olive oil or coconut oil are definitely flavored with the oil. Well, as are eggs cooked in butter. Funnily enough, though, I think I’ve adapted to eggs cooked in coconut oil. They give the eggs a flavor of sweetness that I missed. I’d still prefer butter, though, if only dairy didn’t make my immune system crazy.

Letting go of expectations

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Boring, Meditation

≈ 5 Comments

The search for happiness begins with letting go of expectations.

I can’t remember where I read that (and I probably mangled it, since I can’t find the link) but I was thinking about it this morning while I was practicing meditating. At first I really thought it was one of those bullshit philosophical sentiments that make absolutely no sense with a closer look. Like, really, one of those “you will only find the thing that you are looking for when you stop looking” ideals that may be occasionally true, but is mostly not helpful. Sure, I’ve had moments when I’ve given up on finding my keys and suddenly remembered where they might be, but most of the time I find my misplaced keys by looking for them. And not looking, while it might eventually work, does not get me out of the house on time.

But while I was meditating and my thoughts were roaming, as they do, I realized time and again that what I was thinking about was an expectation. Example one, things to do. I had a moment of realizing that I still didn’t manage to do a two-minute job for a friend, felt guilty, resolved to do it immediately, or at least as soon as I stopped meditating — and then realized that my plan was an expectation, an expectation for what I would be doing next. So I reminded myself to let it go. (I will still do it, of course, but I let the pressure of needing to do it immediately and the guilt of not having done it yet go.)

Next I started worrying about Serenity. The dealer called yesterday and they couldn’t find anything wrong with the air-conditioner. Not an okay answer. But worrying is just another expectation, an expectation for a future that will be the way I want it to be. There’s nothing I can do to influence either what’s wrong with Serenity or what will happen next, so what value does worry have? It is entirely contrary to my nature to try to let go of that kind of worry, but I did it anyway. I thought of it as an expectation and tried to let it go.

I went back to trying to focus on my breath and still my noisy brain, but my nose was dripping. It’s tough to be peaceful when you have a runny nose. So then I started questioning whether I was sick or allergic and running back over all the things I’ve eaten recently, trying to figure out what I could be reacting to. But that’s another expectation, in its own way. I’m expecting that something I ate might be making me sick. And really, what difference does it make? My runny nose is going to stay the same, regardless of whether it’s caused by a cold virus or injudicious dairy intake. What benefit does deciding that I’m to blame possibly give me?

At that point, I was totally into the idea. Every thought that came up, I looked at and tried to see how it could be labeled an expectation. As soon as I defined the thought as an expectation, I tried to let it go. Unexpectedly, I got happier and happier as I did so, until the bell rang and I finished my meditation on a pleasant glow.

I was talking to a parent friend a few weeks ago who’s struggling with her adolescent daughter. She’d snapped at her daughter, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” Her daughter’s answer, “Right, of course!” I think wanting to be right is expectation-thinking. I’m not sure I can express it better than that, but for today, I’m going to try living without expectation (to the extent that is even possible for an obsessive, controlling, perfectionist type) and see where it gets me. Because I think at this point in my life, I’m grown up enough to decide that I would rather be happy than right.

More about moving

04 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Boring, House, RV

≈ 12 Comments

This morning, while I was sitting out on my lanai, enjoying the early morning breeze (early-ish, it was maybe 7:30), I had a million ideas for blog posts. (<–hyperbole). Two hours later, sitting in my room, having done an assortment of organizational and internet-related tasks, all of those ideas are totally gone. What did I want to write about again? Oh, right, Serenity first.

I picked her up last Wednesday, YAY!, and when I wrote my blog post last Thursday, she was sitting in my driveway, feeling something like an overwhelming Christmas present, needing to be unwrapped but almost too scary to touch. So much to learn, so much to do, so much stuff to move in and organize and…

…that all became irrelevant Thursday evening, when in the midst of a torrential rainstorm, I discovered that it was also raining inside Serenity. I am trying to count this as fortunate in so many ways — it happened while I was here, still with a dry bed to sleep in. It happened in a big way. If the weather hadn’t been so extreme, it might have taken me weeks to realize that a few drips were a symptom of a serious problem. It happened before I’d moved much stuff into her, so she could go back to the dealer without inconveniencing me unduly. All good things. Of course, they’re sort of counter-balanced by the rather bad thing of it raining inside my future home, but hey, glass half-full. It could have been so much worse. I would have been very unhappy to learn that she leaked at 3AM when I was sleeping under the leak.

So, yeah, Serenity is back at the dealer and I’m really, really hoping to get her back sometime this week. Obviously, one of the dumb issues that I’m going to have to figure out how to deal with when my home needs repair is that she’s also my vehicle. I need to find a ride to get back to her, a ride to get home when I drop her off. It’s not so convenient.

In other things — my weekend felt bizarrely chaotic and overwhelming. The house is a mess and I’m still needing to get rid of more stuff. I’m definitely at the point where the decisions get harder and harder. I have approximately 50 shirts. This is too many shirts. In so many ways, this is too many shirts! But I’ve already said good-bye to all the ones that I didn’t really like, that didn’t really fit as well as I wanted them to or weren’t as flattering as I thought they’d be. I’ve also gotten rid of all the ones that I loved, but that were showing signs of their age. (Almost all of those, a couple are going to get worn until they’re literal shreds. I have a Lehigh University t-shirt that is probably fifty years old, maybe older, faded, with holes, and I still love it.) So, yeah, hard choices about stuff going on.

Also much trying to plan. The house closes three weeks from today. Where am I going to sleep that night? For that matter, where I am going to sleep the night before that? I will have needed to get the furniture out of the house before closing, because it’s not like I’m sticking it on a truck and moving it to the next place. But Serenity needs power to run the air-conditioner, and the guy who showed me around warned me that house power (i.e., not 30 amp) was not sufficient to run the AC. And in Florida, in July? I need the air-conditioner. I can run it on the generator, but probably shouldn’t all night. So the house closes in three weeks, but I need to be staying elsewhere before then, and elsewhere needs to be close enough that I can conveniently come to the closing. Decisions, decisions.

And yeah, somewhere along the way, I’d really like to get back to writing regularly. I’ve missed too many days in a row, because of the distractions of camper ownership, camper repair, and house chaos. But one day at a time, right?

Today’s goal: well, some words would be nice, but I need to get simpler than that. Email! I don’t know how many emails are stacked up in my inbox right now but far too many of them are real emails that deserved real replies. So today’s goal–clean out my inbox, do some more work on cleaning out my house, and remember to enjoy the moment that I’m in. Also, yoga. It’s been at least three or four days, which is too long to go for something that always makes me feel more settled and joyful.

Happy Fourth of July!

Productive Mondays

20 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in House

≈ 2 Comments

When I woke up this morning and walked into the kitchen, I remembered that Past Me was kind of an asshole last night. I hadn’t cleaned the kitchen. My niece was visiting me for the weekend and my dad, step-mom and nephew came over for a Father’s Day dinner. It was a pretty low-key meal. We had flank steak, fruit salad, potato chips and dip, i.e. not a lot in the way of dishes to deal with. We even used paper plates, leftover from my house-painting party of a year ago. Anyway, I felt okay abandoning it after everyone left to spend some time on the internet.

Alas, my time on the internet stretched in that way that it does, and then I did a meditation class from yogadownload.com, and after the meditation — well, three quarters of the way through the meditation — I shut my laptop and went immediately to sleep. Thus, messy kitchen.

But when I saw it, after I rolled my eyes at myself and called Past Me some mean names, I promptly set about rectifying the situation. I threw away what needed to be thrown away, recycled what needed recycling, loaded up the dishwasher, washed some dishes, wiped down the counters, started my hot water for tea, and about ten minutes later, if not less, the kitchen was clean. Funnily enough, although I greatly prefer starting off my Monday mornings by walking into a clean kitchen, it was also strangely satisfying to start with an accomplishment. It made me feel like today is going to be a productive day.

It might also be a big day, emotionally speaking. The house is under contract. It had its inspection last Friday and the report is due to the buyer today. After he gets it, if he still wants the house and doesn’t ask me to do anything unreasonable… well, then I guess I’ve sold my house. Assuming all works out today, the closing is July 25th, five weeks from today. I wonder whether that day I will break my blog streak of actually posting every Monday morning? Maybe. Five weeks both feels like forever and no time. Fingers crossed that today goes well.

And may we all have productive Mondays!

Yoga

06 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in Grace, Reviews, WIP, Yoga

≈ 4 Comments

I haven’t been making it to yoga at the Y nearly as often as I would have liked. Partly that was motivation: with C gone, it was harder to get out of the house at the right times. Partly it was bad planning — I kept intending to go to evening yoga instead of morning yoga so that I wouldn’t be so tired in the afternoon that I didn’t write. But then I’d forget or be busy and miss the evening class. Last month, though, my favorite yoga teacher left the Y. And I knew that given my future plans, I’d be needing to come up with another solution if I wanted to keep yoga in my life.

So question one: did I want to keep yoga in my life? Easy answer: yes. As with any exercise, I struggle to get motivated. I don’t love pushing my body and it’s always easier to just sit and do nothing. But yoga enriches my life, brings me a sense of peace, helps me feel stronger and more competent, doesn’t push me harder than I want to go (hanging out in child’s pose is always an option in classes at the Y), and has generally been an all-around positive for me. Even though I’ve been going weeks at a time without making it to a class and haven’t been choosing to practice at home, I knew I’d regret it if I just stopped.

Voila, yogadownload.com. Holy cow, this place is a bargain! I didn’t want to only stream classes because I know my future life is not going to be friendly to streaming (mobile data plans are expensive and limited) so I bought the $90 elite membership, which gives me a year of free downloads of their own classes and streaming episodes from their content partners.

So many classes! So many options! So many choices to work any part of your body or to have whatever kind of yoga experience you’re looking for! I keep winding up downloading more than I can feasibly do because I’ll be looking for a class that fits one idea and I’ll see so many that interest me that I wind up with three or four. Dorm-Room-Yoga (to see if it could be future RV yoga), Moon Salutations (because it was short), Sunset Flow and Night, Night, Don’t Sleep Tight (because it was the evening), Yoga Break for Writer’s Block… I’m downloading ALL the yoga.

And so far the classes have been great. Clear videos, good teachers, reasonable expectations. There have definitely been moments where I have to pause and try to figure out what the instructor is doing and a couple times that I’ve been like, haha, isn’t that cute, NO!, to poses that abused my knees more than they could bear, but I am without question going to get my money’s worth from that $90. I’ve done yoga three days in a row, two classes on Saturday, and the reason I’m writing about it right now is mostly because when I woke up this morning, thinking about what I needed to do today and what I wanted to do today, yoga was at the top of my list. Yay! My Future Me is going to be very grateful to Present Me for being willing to include more exercise and stretching in our life.

Anyway, if you’ve ever been interested in learning more about yoga, but group classes seemed too ambitious or you didn’t want to over-commit, yogadownload offers some free classes or you can pay by the class or package if you don’t want to commit to a subscription. That said, the Elite membership is really a bargain.

In other news, possibly more exciting, I — for the first time ever — found an ending for Grace and Noah. I’ve had an ending for the book, a place where I thought it would close, and I’ve sort of had a scene in mind for Grace and Noah, but one of the reasons I’ve just been wallowing around in this closing third act for so long is that I didn’t see and couldn’t get to a HEA or even HFN (happy-ever-after/happy-for-now) ending to the romance. I think I found it on Saturday. Still not there, but it’s like sighting land at the end of an ocean voyage that’s been taking forever. So my other goal for the day — write lots of Grace! Get myself to that ending!

Future Self

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Grace, Personal, Therapy

≈ 5 Comments

I read a truly brilliant comment on reddit on Saturday.

I consider reddit a vice, unhealthy on a regular basis, best avoided, but with a lure that makes it ever so appealing on a slow Saturday evening. It’s not the worst vice in the world, pretty far from it, really, but I do try to stay away. 99% of the time on reddit, I leave feeling the same kind of vague nausea that eating too much junk food creates. Like I should rethink my life choices if I’m wasting my time that way. But 1% of the time, I read something truly inspiring. On Saturday, it was this comment on Non-Zero Days.

You should go read it, really. I cannot do justice to its splendor. Partially because I couldn’t bring myself to use capital letters like he did or swear like he did, but also because the flavor of the comment is perfect for the advice within the comment.

My favorite part of the advice, though, is Rule 2: Be grateful to the 3 yous. Ever since I read it, I’ve been thinking about Future Me and how to be nice to her and it’s such a lovely way of providing perspective in my days. Some of it is obvious: that cookie that looks so appealing? Future Me would be so grateful to Past Me for not eating any gluten today. Some of it is a little less obvious: Future Me will definitely appreciate it if Present Me unloads the dishwasher before I start piling dishes in the sink, instead of only after I have a pile of them. And then there’s the big picture stuff: how grateful to Present Me will Future Me be if I actually get better about flossing my teeth? Huh, probably pretty grateful, especially given what a minimal effort flossing really is.

But I’m also trying to take care of Present Me. I got reminded of the second half of the serenity prayer recently, which begins, “Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time;”. It’s so easy for me to get lost in worry about the future, so natural for me to spend my time wandering in mental circles of anxiety. But stopping, taking a breath, sitting on the lanai and admiring the bamboo… it feels so much better. And worrying about the future doesn’t actually help Future Me. Yes, I need to take care of her, but I don’t need to try to live her life. I’ll get there when I get there.

My backyard neighbor has lined the entire back of the fence with bamboo. It’s really tall, at least fifteen feet, maybe even taller and so beautiful. One stalk has managed to spring up on my side of the fence and it’s leaning precariously. But it sways in the wind and light filters through the leaves, and the colors are so perfect, yellows and deep greens. I think Future Me will probably have to chop down the stalk at some point, but Present Me thinks it’s lovely. bamboo picture This picture doesn’t do it justice, because I don’t know how to take a picture of light with my phone, but I’m posting it anyway to remind myself.

So this is what I’m trying to do this week: Be grateful to Past Me for her good choices, forgive her for her less good choices; take care of Present Me and live in her time; and do nice things for Future Me. Fortunately, Future Me would really, really, really like it if I could finish this book and move on to writing A Precarious Balance, so I’m hoping for lots of good writing. Happy Monday!