_____ a Day

I started a daily journaling practice back in 2020: I got a 5-year book and every day, I would write a few sentences about what happened that day. I enjoyed how it made me think about the day, and after the first year, it was fun to see what I had being doing a year ago that day, then two years, and so on.

The journal would have been finished this October (I started it on a random day when it came), but back in February, when Maggie was having health problems, thinking about the day became something I didn't want to do, and I gave it up. No regrets there, it happened and I'm not kicking myself. Life is messy, and often doesn't fit into plans.

I read a book recently in which one of the main characters is telling the other about how, in therapy when he was a kid, the therapist had him start writing a daily journal, but only a simple one: every day, he wrote about one good thing that happened that day. Sometimes it was a big thing and some days, he had to scrape to come up with anything, but he found it to be a good practice.

This idea bounced around in my head for a bit, and this weekend, I picked up a blank book and started it. 

I was amused to see this option in the blank books, which honestly is a lesson I could stand to be reminded of:

But I like the one I got. It feels good in my hand, and the elastic to hold the pen is handy too. My rules (that are more like guidelines, or intentions):

• I am going to try hard to come up with at least one every day.
• I won't kick myself if I miss or skip a day.
• I will allow myself to add bonus good things.
• I will allow for negative-bad-things; not getting a flat tire counts as a good thing.

Do you do anything gratitude-y like this? Do you find it helps you on bad days?

Pomegranate Seeds

Thanks to this blog, I can say that it was around 15 years ago when I started eating frozen pomegranate seeds, which I found at Trader Joe's, though I don't seem to have written about the (inevitable with TJs) tragedy of when they stopped carrying them. Earlier this year, though, when I started making smoothies, I was checking on the frozen fruit options at Walmart and look what they had!

So I got a bag, and found that they were just as delicious and refreshing as I remembered them being. 

The next time I looked, Walmart was out of them. And then again. Oh nooooo.

When they were back, I bought three bags, because yeah, one wasn't cutting it for long. And as the third bag was dipped into this week, I looked at Walmart again today, and this happened.

It may have been all they had, but certainly it was all I could reach: they're on the top shelf. But that will hold me for a bit.

(When I started drafting this post on Friday, I titled it "Pomegranate Seeds, the Literal and the Metaphorical"--but the joke's on me tonight, as I don't remember what metaphor I was thinking of. Perhaps it will come to me.)

A Thought on Competency

Mom is doing better, in a manner far slower and less linear than she would like, but better. She doesn't need the walker in the house anymore, and just the cane when we go out. And we've gone out not just to doctor's appointments and the like, but out to dinner a few times, which is a very good sign!

As she gets better, there is less that I have to be the one to do around the house, the way it was when she was still so wobbly. And sometimes I have to remind myself of that, something I do know but can lose sight of, that she should do the things she can do. Even if she may do something that makes me a little jumpy, given her recent history. 

It makes me think of a situation in a book I read, where one character is asking another why he "let" a third character (an 80-something woman living on her own) do something that was potentially dangerous.

From: Wayward, by Mary Calmes

So that's the thing: as long as she is competent, she gets to decide things. It's a good reminder for me.

Please Continue to Hold

Blogging recently is just one item on my list of things that I need to do and fully intend to do but yet somehow just haven't done (see also: cut my fingernails so I can get my contact lenses out easily). 

And I will get there, sometime, I'm sure. But in the meantime, please enjoy this, which a friend brought to my attention when he saw it and thought of me: