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Hope, Contentment, Gratitude

Some days, I feel like I can see my future, and for the most part, I’m content with what I see. Other days I’m not so sure. I suppose we all have our vision of what’s ahead and I’m lucky if I believe my options are good ones.

Yet I can’t help it, I hope for something a little better. I want some things I don’t have now, not material things (although financial security is always a good thing) but some sense of satisfaction with what I’ve accomplished.

My writing, for example. I wrote a novel, but it’s so flawed that I really need to scrap much of what I’ve written and start over. The writing is good but the plot needs some help, and some of the basics such as location need to be fleshed out. There are other flaws I’m acutely aware of but don’t know how to remedy. So I’m a little stuck, and don’t know whether to keep plugging away at this novel or start a new one altogether.

It’s an election year, and I have hope for the outcome in November–and deep fear as well. Enough said.

To be perfectly honest, hope isn’t an overriding feeling in my life. In fact, I’m greatly discouraged by much of my current situation and don’t have a lot of hope for anything changing in the foreseeable future. So I’m trying to grab hold of hope and implement it into my life. Look for the ways things could change and believe in them.

I’m grateful for much of what I have, and if I have any hope at all, it’s that those things I’m grateful for will stay in my life. My job, for example. It’s not a perfect situation–what job is perfect, after all–but I’m so thankful to be working. In the current climate I’m one of the lucky ones.

My mom and dad are both living, in their 80s and healthy, and I have hope they’ll be around for awhile. My mom just lost a close friend, a woman she’d been friends with since they were three years old, who was also healthy but died suddenly of a stroke. Barb had been playing tennis almost literally until the day she died, so losing her was a shock to everyone. I hope I don’t have that kind of shock any time soon.

Hope is a funny thing. It needs to be coupled with gratitude or we’ll get lost in the mire of what we think we’re missing. Contentment is good, and contentment with hope sounds like an ideal situation. I have a little of all of this, including the mire part, and I want more hope in my life.

But if the future rolls out the way I see it now, I’ll be okay.

 

Image Credit:  ©krissikunterbunt – stock.adobe.com

 

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Happy Birthday, Sweet Babies

Today is Walter and Mimi’s eighth birthday! We’re honoring the occasion with a little treat, a lot of snuggling and a sprinkling of catnip. Nothing like the love of cats to make everyday worth celebrating. And no, despite appearances, you can’t order a kitty from Amazon. At least, not as far as I know!!

Walter
Mimi
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These Days…thank goodness for all of you

I’m not good in heat. Some people thrive in it, but I prefer cold weather. Sweater weather. Weather that allows me to show off some of my hand knit scarves, gloves and hats.

Now, snow doesn’t thrill me, at least not while I’m living in the South. If it snows in my neighborhood, roads might be closed down for days and the parking lot in my apartment complex certainly won’t be plowed. So I’d better be well-stocked, especially with cat food. I can figure out a meal for myself with a little flour and water (well, not literally, but I usually have enough staples to make do) but not for the cats.

Anyway, it’s July now, just the start of summer weather. We’ll have this heat until late September, maybe even October. So I need to deal.

I set my thermostat at 78 degrees, just like the experts recommend, and it’s way too warm most of the time. So when I’m home on the weekends I turn it down, knowing full well what that will do to my electric bill. Fortunately the cats tolerate warmer weather well, besides, it cools off decently in the bedroom, so when I’m at work 78 degrees works fine.

And I’m mostly home on the weekends these days, given the restrictions COVID-19 places on us. At least, those of us who choose to follow them, and I choose to follow them. Some of my friends have gotten pretty lax about it, and that concerns me. However, I can’t dictate their choices. 

(I’m typing this sitting on my sofa, and my sweet kitty Walter is giving me the most plaintive look because I won’t allow him to sit on the laptop. He’s doing everything he can to get in my way, such as leaning on my arm, reaching out across the keyboard, and softly meowing. At least I can blame any typos on him.)

This is a tough time for all of us. Even though I don’t relish hot weather, I still feel like I should be getting out more while the sun is shining. However, where can I go? The pool is out, as is the lake, because so many people are hanging out there and I’m not going to put myself and my co-workers at risk. I do take short walks, but I get so darn hot and don’t really enjoy them.

Connecting with all of you is a bright spot in my day. Thank goodness for blogging and bloggers. The writing, as mundane as mine might get, is a release, and reading what all of you have written is a connection with others. So thank you.

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Self-Quarantine, Mini-Vacation and COVID-19–I’m One of the Lucky Ones

The latest odd event in my life is an unexpected three days off while the building I work in is thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. This mini-vacation has happened because one of the lab employees has a confirmed case of COVID-19. They did what they could with contact tracing and sent a dozen or so employees home for two weeks of self-quarantine, then surprised the rest of us with these days off.

It was weird, learning about this. We were at one of the busiest points of our day–nearing the end of it–when the director overseeing our department stopped by and sent us all home. I had to ask her twice if I was just supposed to drop everything and head out. About an hour or so later, simultaneous text and phone messages confirmed what she’d told us.

Since our daily work load is based on daily deliveries, and those deliveries aren’t going to stop, I don’t know what they’ll do when we get back on Monday. Five days of shipments would mean a straight 24-hour work day, so they can’t expect us to get it all done in one day, but there are promises made to vendors about timely work. Besides, we can’t just keep getting further and further behind.

But I can’t worry about that now. It would ruin this time off. Yes, I’m told we’ll be paid, although how they’ll coordinate that is an additional question mark to me. We get fourteen days of COVID-19 paid time off just for self-quarantine purposes. Will we be expected to draw on that? If so, what happens if I come in contact with someone with a confirmed case and am sent home for two weeks? Will I have unpaid time off? I can’t expect the company to pay for an infinite amount of coronavirus vacation.

The obvious thing to be worried about is getting the virus myself, but somehow, that doesn’t concern me. We don’t know who the employee was who contracted COVID-19, but we do know about many of the people who were sent home, and it was in a department with which I rarely come into contact. Plus, I’ve been taking all the precautions. I wear a mask, I avoid communal rooms such as the break room (the rest rooms I clearly can’t avoid), I wash my hands frequently and stay six feet away from others whenever possible. That last one isn’t always possible, but I do my best.

I’m just glad my coronavirus story doesn’t include being laid off, and I pray that that good luck continues. I don’t know how I’d survive without my job. These government subsidies aren’t going to last forever.

So what do I plan to do with this unexpected vacation? If I’m smart, I’ll dig into the mess that rests in my second bedroom, clean it out and set up an office/sewing room. Every time I try, it overwhelms me, so I need to break it down into manageable, doable pieces–and start getting together a bunch of boxes for Goodwill.

I pray for that fellow employee who has the coronavirus and wish him or her a speedy recovery. I also pray that no one else at work contracts the disease, although I realize that’s being optimistic.

And I pray for a quick end to COVID-19, for the time we can look back on it and breathe a sigh of relief that this particular pandemic is over.

Image Credit: ©vvvita – stock.adobe.com

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A Cookie is Just a Cookie (but ten cookies is a little much)

Ah, dieting.

I’ve been trying to lose weight–just a small amount–for about a year and a half.  I’m no closer to my goal now than I was in the beginning. I even shelled out what for me was big bucks on an eating modification program (I’ve been told not to think of it as “dieting” but “eating modification” and while I can see the logic of that mentality, the bottom line is, eating modification is, for me, dieting). I lost three or four pounds right away and then–nothing. For the next three months, no more loss. So I gave up on that program.

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Curse you, Joe, for bringing in donuts! Now where’s the one with the chocolate sprinkles…
Since I don’t have much to lose, telling my friends I want to lose weight is typically not very well received, especially those friends who could afford to lose a bit more. My co-workers, too, are not particularly supportive, in more ways than one. Not only do they roll their eyes at my plight, but they are constantly bringing in food to share. In one case, one of the women bought milk shakes for all of us. Surprise! It was, excuse the pun, sweet of her. I not only couldn’t say no, I didn’t want to.

Not to put the blame on others. I could easily be better at modifying my food intake. I tend to overdo it with favorite foods (my current favorite? Quaker Oats Simply Granola), so much so that I’ll swear off of that food for a time, only to find something to take its place.

I should say here my doctor has recommended I lose some weight. He’s with me in that I don’t need to lose much, but he was definite in saying I need to lose some.

I know I stress eat. I know I eat when I’m bored. Given the amount of stress I’ve been under lately, I’m lucky I haven’t gained any more weight. Okay, I did gain back that three or four pounds I’d lost on the eating modification program. But, no more than that.

Weigh yourself every single dayHere’s the thing that’s so hard for me: as an adult, I’ve had little problem with my weight. In fact, for about ten years I was too thin and tried to gain weight, but to no avail. It was when I was a teenager that I had a problem, and in that time and place, few of my peers faced the same struggle. So being overweight was isolating and heightened the insecurities I already dealt with. Now, I’m tapping back into some of those same feelings, and it doesn’t feel good.

But I am an adult, and I have tools now that I didn’t have then. So tomorrow is another day. One day at a time. And all the other platitudes. I will lose this weight.

Image Credits: All © geosap–stock.adobe.com