Life

It’s only 7 am, and I have an entire glorious, totally alone day stretched out before me. I’ve already thrown a load of laundry in the washer, I made myself a veggie and cheese omelet, I’m working on my third cup of coffee, the house is clean.

 

And did I mention I have this entire day to myself?

 

I don’t plan on turning on the tv, or the radio, or anything that makes noise. Well, the washer and dryer make noise, but those are down in the basement, so I won’t hear them. Today, I plan on knitting, reading, painting my toenails, making myself a yummy salad for lunch, doing some more reading. Oh, and writing of course! I am working on a blog post for the Share blog about the importance of celebrating joyful simplicities when you are grieving, and I have several ideas of things I want to write about for this blog swimming around in my head, so I may get started on some of those as well. I may even take a nap and make a batch of homemade ice cream. I am also planning on getting out some of my fall decorations. I don’t usually do that until the end of September, but I am more than ready to leave this summer in the dust. Bring on pumpkins and mums and apple spice scented candles (which by the way, is already burning on my kitchen counter). I’m tired of droopy petunias and shriveled up hostas and crispy brown grass.

 

When I woke up early this morning, before the sun was even beginning to lighten the sky, I had a few moments of feeling depressed, or maybe sad is a better word, that I was looking so forward to a quiet day by myself. I felt sad that my life has come to this point, where I look forward to a quiet holiday spent alone. There was a time when Labor Day meant barbeques and swimming with neighbors and friends and kids everywhere. Then, we began to spend Labor Day weekend in Virginia Beach. We did briefly toy with the idea of going to Virginia Beach this weekend, but Tony and the kids have some other running trips planned for this fall, so that was one reason we decided not to go. It would have been nice to have one last family vacation before the boys leave for the Navy, but Justin couldn’t have gotten off work anyway.

 

I decided that rather than feeling sad at the way life has changed and is changing, I’d dust of my seldom-worn Miss Susie Sunshine hat and think instead of the good things about having a day all to myself. I came up with the list above of things that I wouldn’t be able to do if everyone was here.

 

So, here I am, crossing one thing off of my bucket list for the day.

 

This has the potential to be yet another Gloomy Gertrude post, but I will try my very best to spin it into something good before I am finished.

 

As I was planning my day early this morning, I decided that I am not going to spend it on the computer other than for writing. I’m going to pretend that I have no internet service after I get this posted and not waste my day away checking email and playing games on facebook. However, I did want to catch up on some blog reading, so I went to my favorite blog where I read something that gave me the idea for this post. I didn’t actually need an idea because I thought I already knew what I was going to write about. However, this is perfect for the way I have been feeling lately. I just didn’t put my thoughts into words like this.

 The author of the blog has written the past week about her daughter’s struggles with starting kindergarten. She has written about her own struggles with this, too.  On Saturday, she wrote about how she has learned these four principles about life:

 

1.    Life is hard.

2.    You have to go through it.

3.    You learn.

4.    And then, you grow.

 

Amen to all of that.

 

1.    Yes, life is hard. I accept that. I don’t like it, but I accept it.

 

2.    Yes, you have to go through it. You have no choice. I accept that too. I don’t like THAT either. I wish I could be like a caterpillar and go curl up in a cocoon somewhere with a quilt and emerge as a beautiful butterfly ready to bravely face my new world. But, I guess maybe that isn’t so easy, either. I have no idea what a caterpillar goes through in its cocoon…how much pain and turmoil it experiences before it becomes a beautiful butterfly. I guess a caterpillar probably does a huge amount of work inside that insulating cocoon. Maybe that’s what I want…to be able to do my work inside an insulating cocoon, where I don’t have to deal with outside stresses and problems.

3.    You learn. Well, hopefully, you do. The blog author has this to say about learning:

 

And the fear of learning itself? Well, aren't we all afraid of that? As exciting as the world of knowledge and experience is, the magnitude of information--what we don't know and have yet to learn--can make us feel so small and fragile.

 

Those words sum it up perfectly for me. Yes, I am learning. I have learned so much in the past few months about life, about myself, about people I care about. And, yes, I am afraid of some of these new things I have learned. Very much afraid. Some days, I think it’s too much, and yes, much of it has made me feel small and fragile. And alone. Very fragile, and very alone. Those are not very good feelings to have when I am almost 50 years old and wishing and thinking that things in my life could be more settled and secure than they are. Wishing that everything I have worked  for and valued and treasured didn’t feel as if it was slowly slipping through my fingers no matter  how tightly I  clench my fingers together to prevent it. I am even more afraid of what I still have to learn in the future. Will those things bring me to my knees, or will they empower me? I wish I knew.

I will take the blog author’s thoughts about the fear of learning one step further and say that learning can be the hardest part of the whole process. I can accept that life is hard. I can deal with going through it. I am armed with a few “tools” that help me get through each day—I can bake, I can read, I can knit, I can go for a run, I can clean out a closet or a drawer. I can scrub my kitchen floor until it shines. I can do any number of things to get through each moment. It’s much harder and scarier though to think about what I have learned/what I am learning.

 

Which brings me to:

4.    And then, you grow. I don’t think I’m to that part of the process yet. I don’t feel like I am growing. I feel like I am withering like my pots of sun-scorched summer flowers.

 

Wow.

That came out so depressing. Definitely not a “dancing in the rain” post.

 

 I wrote a few weeks ago about how I am feeling guilty for not writing posts full of happy dancing in the rain moments since that was the reason I began writing here. I have come to a sort of peace with that though. I write to help me sort out things in my mind, and the things I’ve written lately have helped me do just that. So I guess in a way, this silly blog is serving its intended purpose. And even though I have often written in a more melancholy way lately, I haven’t forgotten to focus on simple little joyful things, even though it may seem as if I have.

 

In fact, I will end this with a list. J

 

*I have been knitting up a storm.

 In the past month, I have knitted 5 dishcloths and started working on my first ever shawl. There are times when I am ready to toss the thing in the trash because I have ripped out more rows than I actually have on the needle right now, but I am determined to finish it one of these days before it gets chilly. My aunt Saundra gave me the pattern and said she would knit it along with me. Her shawl is finished, and she even dyed her own yarn that she knitted it from.

 

*I have been cooking up a storm.

My kids are loving it. I’ve baked homemade bread and cinnamon rolls and new cookie recipes and new enchilada recipes. My coworkers are loving it, too. I’ve brought lunch for all of us on several occasions when I wanted to try a new salad or soup recipe that I knew no one in my family would eat.

 

*I have been reading up a storm.

I’ve read 5 books this summer. I’ve read 2 Jane Austen books. That doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment, especially because at the beginning of the summer, I downloaded every Jane Austen book onto my Kindle (they were free!) and told myself I was going to read every one of them by the end of the summer. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I hadn’t read Jane Austen since college, and I quickly remembered they take a very long time to read. But, hey! I read two of them! I think I will save the rest for winter reading.

 

*I have been running up a storm.

Okay, so that is a little white lie. I just wanted to keep up the storm theme I had going on. I have been running and walking though, on a pretty regular basis. My dog is loving me for it, and I am starting to enjoy our early morning jaunts. I try to get out by 6, and it does help me feel a little bit more energized for the day ahead.

 

It’s now time for me to get off my computer and go enjoy the day as much as I can.