I’ve always felt useless when people I care about are hurting. I care deeply, but don’t know what to say. I want to FIX it, wave my magic wand, make the bad stuff go away, but I can’t.
I found two things lately that really resonated. I saved both of them because they seemed an ANSWER. When someone is hurting, you don’t need to try to FIX it or say the ‘right thing,’ you just need to BE THERE – if not physically, then in spirit.
I found this from Winnie the Pooh –
A.A. Milne – Winnie the Pooh – Illustrations by E. H. Shepard
And then I heard this song, “Standing With You” by Guy Sebastian –
A. A. Milne – E.H. Shepard – Winnie the Pooh – DreamsQuote
Last night I gave into our desire for comfort food, since our weather has been gray, cool, and rainy lately and made hamburger patties and macaroni and cheese. It hit just the right note with my husband, and he declared the meal ‘delicious’ several times.
Mostly we are trying to watch what we eat in an effort to lose our lard, get as healthy as we can, and be able to continue doing most of what we would like to do. We have found two places locally who are offering REAL FOOD and STU’S CLEAN COOKIN’ – individual frozen dinners with few ingredients – all of which you can pronounce and understand – with measured portions that are GOOD for us. We feel as it we have found a treasure trove.
Particularly when the weather is good, I like to spend a lot of time outside – working in our veggie garden, gathering harvests of lettuce, spinach, radishes, yellow squash, zucchini, broccoli, onions, and tomatoes each time I can for us to enjoy right from the garden. Much of the time I am helping with the lawn or weeding my flower beds, so it’s nice to have veggies from the garden and a good-for-us delicious dinner that only has to be nuked to be ready to eat.
As soon as I finish here, I’m planning to go out and take pics to share with you, hopefully harvest my first gathering of veggies, plus get things ready to cover the plants for some possible freezes this week.
I hope that you are well and happy this morning, and that your Sunday is a nice one.
This is always a good thing to remember, particularly when the world is challenging.
I am maintaining my sanity (I THINK :0) ) by spending a bit of time each day fully relaxing. Part of the time is spent doing yoga stretching poses, where I concentrate only on relaxing and breathing INTO each part of my body as I change positions.
Then, when I’m simply lying on the mat after my practice, or even for awhile in my recliner, I stretch out under my throw, close my eyes, and go to another place. This time is MINE. I can bring up favorite memories of people I love, see and hug people I can no longer see everyday – but who are in my heart forever, re-visit places I’ve gone, re-live experiences, entertain wishes, and more.
When the world “is too much with us” (William Wordsworth) – we can ease into a world of our own making, giving us a bit of respite. As long as we are breathing, we have a place to ‘go’ that brings us joy. And remember that each day is an opportunity to make NEW memories.
We’re sharing this lovely weather with a lot of good folks in the United States today. We are at a balmy 6 degrees right now with the forecast snow falling. Thankfully, we were able to get out yesterday – after a week on top of our ridge line – empty our mailbox and replenish supplies.
My favorite kind of snow is huge, fat flakes that make you feel as if you’re inside your own personal snow globe. It covers everything prettily, making you smile. The sun comes out, warms everything up, the snow melts.
Sadly, most of the time in Arkansas we get an ice storm first and THEN snow on top of it. The combination causes the evergreen trees that line much of our driveway to bend down into the driveway, weighing a TON (more or less) and many time either breaking off into the driveway or just making it so we have to chainsaw our way down the driveway at some point – assuming we ever want to get out again…
About 20 years ago we had a really bad ice storm. We stood on our front porch and listened as the ice broke tree limbs. It sounded like gun shots. Thank goodness we had a generator, even though it took all our efforts to keep the one we had running. It cracked the head and so was trying its best to overheat. We rigged a water source to keep cooling it off. We also have a well as backup. We were without public power and public water for 14 days.
We saw that most of the ice was gone yesterday. Most of the remaining was on our deck. Poor Amber, our 95 pound yellow lab, rediscovered how slippery ice is. She landed in a heap while attempting to do her usual rush to get inside the house. She looked a bit disconcerted, then leaped up again and made it onto the back porch.
The forecast this time is for snow all day today, tonight, and tomorrow, and then again on Sunday. It’s cold outside, but not nearly as bad as the poor people in the north are experiencing. I hope that they have stocked up and have good generators to make it through.
I just got the makings of beef stew in our crock pot, so we’ll enjoy a nice comfort food dinner tonight.
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