Have you ever heard the proverb “Begin as you mean to go on”? It means that beginnings count. How you start is how you’ll continue. New beginnings are a way to start over. Gretchen Rubin (there she is again!) calls it “the strategy of the clean slate” in her book on habits. (The link is to a video she did on the subject.)
So, although I didn’t plan it that way, I started out in our new life here at Lowell & Jan’s with a clean slate about food: I just wasn’t going to eat any sweets.
Both images are from their respective Amazon pages; click on the image to be taken to the appropriate page. I used my two available Audible.com credits to get these books in audio form and am almost finished with Sick Girl.
I’m not going to write much in the way of commentary here because it’s not needed. The book covers should tell you all you need to know about the worth contained between them. For those of us who are reasonably healthy, it’s good to be reminded of how precious that health and life is. It’s also helpful to be reminded of how utterly tactless we can be to those who are suffering. Even doctors and nurses–maybe even especially them–can add to the patient’s pain by their manner and words.
For an interesting and informative interview with Amy Silverstein about her second book (and her second heart transplant), go–where else?–to Gretchen Rubin’s recent blog post:
“I Simply Have to Put All My Energy into Hope and Life, Rather Than Trying to Avoid Doom and Death.”
That article will sell you on the books if nothing else will. You can get paper or digital versions at your library if you’d like. I was not able to find the audio versions at mine and thus went through Audible.
Today is Thursday (news flash), and tomorrow U-Haul is going to pick up the pods in the in-laws’ driveway unless we call them and extend our rental for another month. But that will cost TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS. We do not want to spend that money. It’s so frustrating, as we rented them in the first place so that we wouldn’t have to move everything in and then move it back out again when the carpet got installed, only of course, as I’ve mentioned, they’re having to re-stretch the carpet in the main living space and so it all has to be emptied out anyway. At least we don’t have to re-do the bedroom.
I said last week that every Monday was going to be a Progress Post. Well, today, Wednesday, is the first post I’ve written this week. Monday our peerless contractor and his son worked most of the day on installing our very small number of cabinet units, and I kept thinking that I should run and take a picture, but I wasn’t sure where my camera was. They were actually supposed to be on a much bigger job but they made time for us. I wanted a before and after set of pictures for today, from all the boxes on the kitchen floor to everything being put away, but all I have is this one shot that was taken partway through the process. (Pretty bad shot!)
. . . is one less day you have left.
Sound morbid? It’s not. I quoted my dear friend Nancy’s father, something said at his funeral and which I wrote about last summer:
“What you do today is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.”
Have you ever seen the pictures of King Tut’s tomb as it looked the day that Howard Carter first broke through the wall, revealing those objects to the light of day for the first time in thousands of years? Well then, you may see a certain resemblance in these pictures. We too have our precious objects all piled up together. But, although you may not think that it looks as if anything has been done except for dumping, but believe you me (as my dad used to say), there’s been a ton of work done (mostly by Jim) to get this far. And now I’m realizing that I can get rid of a ton. (Might have been nice if I’d realized this before the move, but oh well.)
So today was the last regular class for Bible Study Fellowship, and we sat around in our circle and discussed the Gospel of John for the last time. I have always loved the final chapter of John, when Jesus appears to His disciples as they’ve been out fishing, tells them where to cast their nets, and invites them to come eat, cooking fish over the fire He’s built on the beach. I’ve just looked up the Sea of Tiberias and found the lovely painting pictured here by the French painter James Tissot. (By the way, I’d always assumed that the fish that ended up getting grilled was one of those caught by the disciples, but the wording of the actual text makes clear that Jesus had brought it along: “ When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.” [John 21:9 NIV]}
Hope you recognize the quotation in the title as being from Gone With the Wind. Mammy says it when Scarlet has her baby, although I can’t remember if it was baby #1 (Wade) or #2 (Bonnie). Bonnie’s the one who ends up being killed in a horse-riding accident. (Spoiler alert, and not that Bonnie has a thing to do with the subject of this post. Also, Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in the film, was looked upon by some as giving in to the racism of the novel by agreeing to play that part. And then she won the first Oscar ever by a black actor and couldn’t sit with the rest of the cast at the awards ceremony! Well, all that is a subject for another day.)
Anyway, why is this a happy day for us? Because our house is under contract. As I talked about in an earlier post, moving involves lots of drudgery, even this one.(We’re only moving across town, and we’re getting rid of a lot of furniture by
Today’s pretty happy around our house. My son, Gideon, was informed today that he has been accepted in the MFA program in creative writing at Virginia Tech. Getting to this point has been a long, long process that actually started well over a year ago when Gideon was a senior in college. At that point he really wanted to go to grad school and worked pretty hard on writing all the ridiculous stuff that the various schools required—mission statements,
Well, yesterday the “for sale” sign went up on our front lawn. We are selling our lovely, lovely house (note that I don’t use the word “home”). I can still remember the day that we pulled up in the driveway and opened the front door. My heart just about stopped as I saw the soaring living room. (The heart issue might also have come from the fact that we’d set off the burglar alarm.) Then I remember the months-long stretch when the bank couldn’t seem to make up its mind to go ahead and sell us the house.