Sometimes you just need a quiet place to sit and think. This spot was cool, quiet and calming and exactly what I needed to get a few things done.
People tend to undervalue libraries. In addition to all the amazing reading materials, classes, and items for free use, a library is one of few places in this world where you can simply exist.
There’s no admission to be paid and no expectation that you buy or do anything in exchange for use of computers or other resources.
Around here things are starting to settle down after a few months of not feeling settled at all. It’s part of my annual life cycle but one I’m never completely prepared to face. To add insult to injury, a volunteer commitment turned busy, stressful, and strangely enlightening for a few months.
Things are better now.
Around here, Spring has sprung. My lilacs are blooming and the landscape is greening up. At the moment, it’s breezy and 54 degrees with a gorgeous blue sky.
Around here I’m slowly catching up on chores that were ignored in favor of restful things during busy times. In fact, it has been a good season for reading and for that I’m grateful. I have made decent progress working through my TBR piles.
It is time, though, to get some stuff done. So far I have meandered from one thing to another but probably need to make a list and stick to it.
Things here will be in turmoil for a while, though, because I’m having some work done in my master bath. I don’t mind because the results will be so nice. Eventually.
Around here I’m trying to figure out some adventures close to home and to maybe expand my horizons some. I need to drive new roads and see new things .
Around here, I’m retooling my eating once again, this time embracing an anti inflammatory way of living and trying to figure out what that can look like in my daily living. Good nutrition can relieve pain and other issues but the American diet is not centered on things meant to soothe and nourish our bodies.
I need to do some more research before my next grocery trip.
Around here, things are improving. The above picture is my current view. Scout is asleep in the sunshine, just a few feet outside the frame and it’s not such a bad view.
Around here, I remind myself that as the sun rises and sets every day, we too are given the opportunity to start again every day.
How will you start again today, tomorrow, and all the days after that?
Part of me is fascinated by space travel and the absolute heroes of NASA who have made it possible. This admiration exists despite my having absolutely no math or science skills of my own.
I happily mugged for the camera in front of the space shuttle Discovery in Washington DC a few years ago. I enjoyed touring the boyhood home of Ohio’s own John Glenn and devoured the book “Hidden Figures” about the brilliant women who calculated the math needed to get us to the moon for the first time.
And I sometimes stand outside my rural home late at night, gazing up at the stars and wondering what it would be like to be in space, to gaze down at this planet, and see how small we really are in this grand universe.
It’s all fascinating.
But I didn’t watch the launch of Artemis II on Wednesday.
I’m a young Gen X-er and suspect there are more than a few of us who passed on the opportunity to see history made.
That’s because I was eight years old when they wheeled televisions into classrooms across America for school kids to see Christa McAuliffe become the first teacher to go into space. It was a proud day for us all.
But it was confusing. What’s with all the smoke and fire? What did we just see? “Is it supposed to do that?” I heard a classmate ask just before a teacher swooped in to turn off the television.
Did this event traumatize me for life? I don’t think so. Still, it’s weeks like this when I think to myself “I’ll just catch the replay later.”
