Tag: life

Cleaning out my brush

Sometimes, it really is the small, mundane things that gives us the most value in life, should we choose to do them with intention and focus…

Washing a pile of dishes…, folding the laundry…, cleaning out the towel fuzz that has ended up in my brush…, making the bed with fresh sheets…

These are the places where a mindful, intentional, meditative action becomes infinitely more than just a simple task of keeping house, but puts us in touch with the universe, the Divine, that dwells somewhere within.

Post-a-day 2018

Cry me a river

That cathartic cry…

… It really does make All the difference…

… even if it does come from a commercial for Shriner’s Children’s Hospitals, or from the fact that the shower keeps messing up, and today’s issue is that it is giving only freezing cold water, making it miserable alongside the sudden quite cold temperatures outdoors.

Sometimes, we just need to cry ourselves a river, so we can float on forward.

Post-a-day 2018

What happened today

I got out of bed at 3:45am, and met my friend outside at about 4:10am to drive to the airport.

I flew in an airplane to Chicago, where I met my cousins and then drove to Wisconsin.

We met with my brother and his friend at Devil’s Lake, and then hiked about six miles together around the lake.

We admired willingly the spectacular and deep-breathing-inspiring colors of the Fall, and awed at a Bald Eagle who flew over the lake for a bit.

We checked into our joined suite rooms, and then dunes down the street at an all-you-can-eat Mongolian stir-fry place, each eating more than we’d intended.

We gathered in the joined living area of the suite rooms, sipped digestifs, chatted about nonsense, played ukulele, practiced/learned some yoga and some acro-yoga, talked about nerd stuff, joked about my brother’s classmates back in college who argued about some terms in calculus, cracked up when my cousins began to argue about those terms in calculus, and consciously enjoyed our collective company.

I chatted more with my brother as he prepared for bed and I, unknowingly, was locked out of my room.

We laughed, and, eventually, I gained access back into my room with my cousins.

My cousin and I listened to voicemails from our grandparents, filled with wholesome delight.

I took the first good shower I’ve had in months (since the one where I’m living has been quite the nonsensical mess since I moved in there), and reminisced about Japanese onsen while I untangled a crazy knot in my extremely long hair.

I earned another badge in my Fitbit, because I walked over 22,000 steps today.

I stayed awake and in a good mood for over 19 hours.

I breathed easily almost the entire day, for the first time in a long while (it has felt, anyway).

I was myself, and so were the others, and we were spectacular.

I and we did good today, both grammatically correctly and incorrectly. 😉

Post-a-day 2018

Old men and fashion

It isn’t often that I hear an old man comment on clothing, – other than it being related to how impractical this or that might be – but the old men usually make it count whenever they do comment on an outfit.

Tonight, leaving the classroom, the professor asks me if my skirt is made out of coat-ties.

I tell him that it is and that my mom and I made it.

With big nods and a big grin, he tells me how he thought so, because, well, it’s one of the ones in the back part, yes that one there – he owns that tie… he has that same one!

I was totally tickled by it, and he was delighted at having recognized them as ties (because we removed the back seams and opened each of them up, making them double the width), and so we both just chuckled along the hallway on our ways out, delighting in the small world that involved my skirt. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

Babies making babies

How many 18-year-olds do you cross, where you think to yourself, ‘Yes, this person is well on his/her way to being a wonderful parent!’?

And yet, just a generation or two ago, the 18-year-olds were just about to become parents.

I haven’t even considered the fact that I don’t have children of my own, though I’m very post-college-aged, and yet my mother started having children when she was college-aged, and then she had already finished having her children long before the time when she was the age I am now.

I mean, sure, our bodies are primed for making babies when we’re around 20, but our brains seem to be on a different planet at that age.

Just about every male aged eighteen years is a total idiot so far as I’ve experienced… (Remember that I teach high school)… and, while the girls aren’t total idiots, they definitely don’t strike me as the motherly type.

Just a thought.

Post-a-day 2018

Book characters

In class tonight, talking about literature, I mention that – and this is somewhat quietly after someone else mentions that she loves the character ‘so much’ – I mention that I kind of hate her.

The classmate who always sits by me says, almost immediately, “Hannah, you don’t ever like nobody,” and we both crack up, knowing that it is kind of totally true (at least in terms of the books we’ve discussed for class).

Post-a-day 2018

Be better for myself

Those late nights when I’m desperate for a movie before bed, and I have an early morning the next day… when I don’t watch a movie, but do something else beautiful, like play uke or guitar before my bedtime reading, and then just go to sleep…, those nights are each a success.

Depression has this sneaky way of, well, sneaking up from normally-no-big-deal things, like watching a good film, and taking hold before I’m even fully conscious of it…

And so those nights when desperation longs for a film, and I do not give in, and I do do something good for myself, are key to my being the happy, healthy, holy person I want to be (and know that I truly am on the inside).

Post-a-day 2018

Crazy lady travels free

I was just thinking about when my coworker and I took a group of kids to England and France a few summers ago, and things associated with that.  At the end of the trip, I stayed in France to go visit my old stomping grounds down south, and so I left the group to go home on a flight with my coworker (per our own full agreement and arrangement ahead of time).  I waited too long to decide to do that, so I had to pay $350 for the flight change (Ugh).  We also each had to pay $937.50 for the trip in the first place (Meh).  Therefore, I had to pay a total of $1287.50 for a 10-day trip that included all accommodations, food, tours, and transport, and another ten days on location at my own expense, which is really not bad at all.  At all.

However – and this is a BIG however – as part of our arranging and hosting this trip in the first place, the tour company gave us each a training trip.

Mine, as I selected it, was a long weekend trip, with food, housing, tours, and transportation included, to downtown Rome, Italy.  Therefore, my just-under 1300 dollars actually got me two separate trips to Europe, with almost all expenses paid for most of the time on the trips.

I really do come up with the craziest stuff to have happen in my life.  And – what is possibly the best part of this all – I don’t even seem to notice how absurd it all is, until I find myself ruminating on this and thats one afternoon, years later, and it suddenly hits me that, say, taking a free trip to Europe is not a normal thing in life.  I take this moment to nod my head to my cousin for the question she exasperatedly declared one evening at my apartment a few years ago: “Hannah, do you even know what real life is like?”

Indeed, fair cousin, it seems I do not know that most of the time – reality bites, so I live somewhere else, and I love it.  🙂

Post-a-day 2018

Take care, friends

I am strong as a person, and I know it – I can take care of somebody else, easily.

That’s why one of the most appealing things to me in a partner is someone who will take care of me…, because I sometimes just want to take a break from taking care of everyone else – of anyone, actually – and have someone do it for me, instead of the other way around.

But I feel as though I am failing as a friend, if I ask that of a friend… it’s only acceptable, it seems, with a partner in life…, but maybe that’s just because the best kind of friends aren’t really in my everyday life right now, and so I can’t even imagine it being acceptable behavior, their taking care of me for once.

And then this reminds me of something from today.

I stopped in on an old co-worker’s class today while I was subbing, and the prayer she read to begin class was about reaching out to those who seem upset or alone, because, how does one know that that person has friends to cheer him up?… I might be the only one who’s even considered cheering the person up, it said… perhaps the person feels just as lonely as I do, and just no one has ever taken the time to see, it read…

And I cried during the prayer, because I felt like that person who feels so alone, but who no one would consider might ever feel like she’s all on her own and alone, with no one even to check on how she’s really doing, and not just how she might look from the outside…

Post-a-day 2018