SUMMER FUN - A TREASURE HUNT!

We've had four days of Summer--did you notice? Hot, muggy, sunny...then thunderstorms, less muggy, water everywhere...then cooling off, nice breeze, some sun but not too much.... Repeat! Yup, Summer, for sure.

If you're back into your usual Summertime activities--ball games ad infinitum, picnics, swimming, tennis, car trips, camping, hiking--then you don't need an activities director to help you fill your time.

But if you're looking for something to do--something different to do--how about a treasure hunt?

The ones I recall from my youth involved clues to follow: in elementary school, they were simple statements of where to look--the biggest oak in the park, the red see-saw, the rose garden. 

In fourth grade, we read Treasure Island and made our own treasure maps. I recall getting to singe the edges of the paper on the kitchen stove (the singed edges created authenticity in our  maps)--Mom standing by, probably biting her nails, ready to grab the flaming map and fling it in the sink. But nothing untoward happened.

Then in my teens, when somebody in our group had a car, we followed clues scattered around town--swimming pool, baseball diamond, grade school playground, library fountain. Again the clues were written on paper, and a new one would be found at the place where the previous bit of treasure was located. Sometimes the clue told us what to find--blue sock, purple necktie . . . .

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I won't ask you to go back to your childhood or teen years--but I will ask you to do some deep thinking and some keen observation.

For this Treasure Hunt you need to search for only three (3) treasures. Ready?

--Kindness

--Generosity

--Selflessness

That's it! Find as many examples as you can of each of these three things. Write them down. You won't need to turn them in--but keep the list for a few weeks. Look at it now and then. Share it with somebody if you want to. 

This isn't hard to do. Consider the following examples:

Do you find yourself smiling at some act of kindness you saw? It could be a dog watching a child eat an ice cream cone, not begging, not trying to snatch it away; and the child offers the cone to the dog.

Does your heart swell when you find out an anonymous someone gave a huge amount of money to fund a much-needed improvement in your community?

Do tears flood your eyes when you hear of the selfless gift of life by an organ donor?

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Feel free to pass this Treasure Hunt idea along to someone you know will appreciate it.

Blessings from Thursday's Child

EVER HAD A BORING DAY?

 Please don't roll your eyes and mutter, "Duh," under your breath. Believe it or not, some people never have a boring day.

I'm not one of them. I've had boring days. Just so you know I'm speaking from experience here.

First, I think we better have some parameters--there are different kinds of boring days:

--Nothing's Happening - no plans, no possibility of activity, nobody coming to visit, etc.

--Nothing Creative Going On - the day offers no opportunity to hammer, saw, paint, plant, write, sew, so on

--Same Old/Same Old - Nothing new going on; just a repeat of the day before and the day before that and . . . hard to know the name of the day or the date on the calendar.

Okay. So far, so good.

Next, what are our resources?

--phone

--Internet

--transportation (car, boat, plane, scooter) for getting out and about

--paper and pencil/pen for writing notes/letters/whatevers

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There's been no formal survey yet, so far as I know, but I can speak from experience here that there's a sure-fire way to keep from getting bored. Are you ready for this?

            MAKE PLANS

Take my yesterday (puleeze!)--had my usual Wednesday list, not too full of chores, just an errand or two and an extra-curricular thing (baking scones) that I wanted to do.

First hop out of the box--text from a friend (sent the evening before while I was in bed) wanting to stop by for a few minutes in the morning for a short chat. I replied, sure, come ahead. 

After she left--first thing on my list, go to the pharmacy to pick up refills. Got there, drive-thru lane was closed, had to go inside (picked up a couple of things I could've done without but since I was there.....); waited in line at the pharmacy behind people getting COVID vaccines (I'm very bad at waiting in line); one woman told me to go ahead inside the curtain--she and her kids were all done, just in the 15-minute waiting period before they could leave. Finally left the store with my refills and  three little items I paid for in the self-checkout lane. 

My mid-morning coffee, still in the coffeemaker, was sitting on the kitchen counter getting stale by the time I got home. I drank it anyway and tried to dredge up a scintillating topic for today's blog post . . . came up with what to do to avoid a boring day. Or, maybe, rearrange one.

(What I actually did was play online solitaire for a while to get my brain calmed down, then started typing.)

The rest of the day probably was going as planned--make the scones, do dishes, have lunch, take a nap, read . . . the normal day, after all. Not boring, but not jumbled either. Just a little jangled after the earlier morning's unplanned activities.

Apparently, if I'd had no plans for the day, everything would have been spontaneous. But since I was foolish enough to make plans ahead of time, I had nothing but interruptions. The upside, if there is one, is that I didn't have time to get bored. Just jangled.

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What to do with a boring day? Pretty much depends on your personality. If you absolutely can't stand doing nothing--or doing only the mundane chores you face every day--you'll likely call somebody, or get on your scooter--or, in your car/boat/plane--and tool around visiting people and places to give your eyes and mind something to feast on besides the inside of your house, head, and life.

If you're one of those people who can stand a lot of nothing, but feel adventurous, you might read a book that takes you out of your everyday--or escape into the world of a video--or surf the 'web for places to visit that you might never get to see in the flesh.

Writing a letter to a friend or relative can also get the creative juices going; I mean, who tells the whole truth about life in a letter? Lots of license there for making it all sound better--or worse--than it was.

If you're really, really desperate, you can eat a big bag of chips and a quart of fudgy salted caramel ice cream, with nuts. (Doubt that you'll be bored the next day.)

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Wishing you happy days--stimulating days--quiet days, if you need them--and once in a while, just for contrast and to help you appreciate the other kinds, once in a while a boring day.

 WHAT'S THIS ABOUT RENEWAL?

Early in April I wrote about renewal--spring had come, Easter was upon us, my neighborhood was seeing a neglected dwelling come back to life.

Now, six weeks later, I'm still thinking about renewal. Here's why:

--A week or so ago I received a note from a cousin's daughter. (I'm one of 26 +/- grandchildren in the Emery & Josie Jenkins clan.) At this time of my life, there are only a few of the 26 left--a couple of them, sisters, are in their early 90s; the rest of us are mid-70s to early 80s, with one youngster about 65. The note came from Debbie, daughter of a cousin who died late in 2019; she wasn't sure I'd heard about the passing of her mom and later her dad.

In her short note she filled me in on quite a bit of family history. I sent a reply by US mail, and gave her my email address. We're now connecting the modern way; I'm up to speed with my two 90-something cousins, and I know why my mail to one in Illinois has been returned--she's in the hospital/rehab after a fall resulting in broken bones, etc.

Just the simple note and emails have given me a new perspective about my life--I always knew I had all those cousins, most of whom I'd met, and I knew how they were related to me. Now they're more than memories--the next generation is alive to me; I'm learning things about the family that I never knew, or perhaps didn't remember.

--Last week I received an email out of the blue from a fellow student in my second-stage college days. There were four of us--two women, two men--all returning students after a period of absence from the campus. Three of us were English majors; the other woman was a French major, and I eventually also added French so I ended up with a double major. The four of us were unbelievably simpatico. Our backgrounds were varied: city/country, Indiana/other, married/single. But our backgrounds weren't what held us together--we had each tried college, left for one reason or another, realized we needed/wanted further education, and made the sometimes agonizing decision to return to school. (We were fortunate in our choice--the school was a satellite of both Indiana University and Purdue University--commuter campus only in those days--and we weren't the only students older than 18 and just out of high school.) Of the four of us, some had classes together, but our main contact was in the commons where we drank coffee, smoked (yes, Virginia, people smoked freely in those days), sometimes studied, and talked, always talked. We were serious. And we had a good time, but we weren't crazy like the times we lived in. We were, simply, hungry for other minds to interact with.

I hope my friend and I can get together, maybe for lunch. No plans set yet. And since we're all in advanced stages of life, there may not be a time we can get together. But there's the possibility and the hope.

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Renewal occurs in all corners of our lives--our houses and gardens; our attitudes and beliefs; our friendships and family connections.

In my case, I re-discovered folks I might have thought were lost to me. Instead, they were just somewhere along the way, waiting for me to turn and see them. My recent experiences were good surprises, the only kind I can accept. And for which I give thanks.

Wishing you good surprises and happy renewal!

 ONE YEAR AGO . . .

One year ago, you could say Life Was Under Construction.

A year ago at my house, I was in high gear trying to make room for my daughter's arrival. 

She was living at that time in Minneapolis--which was rapidly becoming an unsafe place to live. We decided the best arrangement was for her to move to Indiana and move in with me.

For a time, the garage was off limits to my vehicle--it had to live on the driveway while we arranged and rearranged, shifted and stored, and spent hours deciding what to keep, what to discard, what to donate . . . . You know the drill.

All this was going on in our lives. So was COVID. In fact, COVID had taken over everything: the news, the way we shopped, where we could go (or not), how we dressed (masks became de rigueur nearly everywhere), even how we greeted our neighbors (waves from across the street were okay, even shouting to be heard at a distance--close-ups were not).

And to top it off, practically every place I wanted to go was (a) closed; (b) open only at awkward hours; (c) open with difficult conditions to meet. 

I know you know all this--you lived through it, too, maybe worse than we did in our small city. 

So--one year later: businesses that survived are open again and serving customers in person. Mask-wearing is based on one's state of vaccination. Churches still request compliance with some of the former restrictions, at certain times, and for certain practices. 

And yet, things have changed, some of them for the foreseeable. Distance learning is common practice for all levels of schooling. Online church services make it easy for homebound folks (and ones who aren't ready yet to go out into the big wide world) to "attend" church. Committees can meet and actually see each other via the Internet--who knew technology could make that possible? Shopping for just about anything you can think of by phone or Internet is no longer a novelty--placing an order and then picking it up at the store or curbside--even having it delivered to your home or wherever--easy to do, costs a little, saves time.

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One year ago, I would never have thought we'd have all the new practices for learning, meeting in community, and shopping. Now--I wonder if they'll every go away. Perhaps not. Perhaps they shouldn't.

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To finish the original story--my daughter is fully integrated into this house, has her own space; some of her belongings now live in the attic and others in the garage, along with my stuff and the vehicle. 

She works full time at the Post Office and spends free time on various projects in and around our house, along with her own interests.

One year later, I have no wish for a different life. There's time for me to write, paint, make quilts and knit. I have companionship and help when I need it. As I listen to other people tell their stories, it's clear to me how blessed I am to be able to live in my own home.

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It's becoming clear that Life is always under construction--slower than our past year's pace, but it's always there. (We call it change and growl about it, but it's just Life, going about its natural way of doing things.) Why not stop growling and call it a blessing?

Any day can be a day to express gratitude--in fact, some people make a practice of daily gratitudes. Sounds good to me.