SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT AUGUST 

There are many good things about the month of August. The eighth month of our calendar year has a lot going for it. So I made a list and came up with seven things to celebrate, if only in a quiet way.

1. Not-too-warm days--80s aren't bad for our corner of the kingdom, especially if the humidity stays lower.
2. Cool nights--haven't turned on the heat every night, but a few "cool" nights hovered around "chilly" and I tried a low setting for heat. Changed my mind later, and piled on covers. (There's a reason I made all those quilts.)
3. Birthdays--Greatgrandson Bayne is now six years old (you may remember him as a 6-month baby, weighing 2.2 lbs. at birth--much bigger now). Friend Liz is something-or-other years old now, and writing her wonderful romance and women's fiction books.
4. Garden produce has started rolling in. Last night I was gifted a bag of summer and zucchini squash, along with a dozen or more new crop peaches from my Ohio daughter's tree. Ummmm!
   
5. School has started in several counties up here in Northeast Indiana. School's opening was always a big deal for me, especially when I was in school myself. Now that I'm out of the school-age business, I still get a kick out of seeing big yellow school buses parked in school lots, waiting for the end of the day. 
6. Road repairs are being finished. This is a so-so contribution to nice things to say about August. I spent twenty minutes yesterday trying to get to an appointment located only five minutes from my house. Fortunately everyone in that office knew what was going on so I didn't get any demerits. And once the roadwork is finished, I'll be one of the folks who says, "Wow, didn't realize how bad they were! This is great!" (The key word here is finished.)
7. Another sorta good thing: When the oven died on our kitchen range, we had to come up with alternative ways to cook the things we normally have on our menu. Those items were always prepared by baking or roasting. While we wait for some kind of help to revive the oven, my daughter trawled websites and came up with slow cooker and Dutch oven (stovetop) ways to "roast" a chicken. So the good thing about this is: We had to figure out something and exercise our creative muscles. (We being the royal "we"--it was all up to Lis.)

-----

I'm sure there are a lot more good things to say about August. They'll have to wait till 2023 though. Next Thursday is September 1st! Really!!

Hope your August was enjoyable. See you next month for the start of what I always think of as autumn. (I know it doesn't come until the autumnal equinox around the 21st of September, but I don't want to be late.)

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

 READING!

I'm not back to reading the way I used to--new book each week (or more), reading my way through a whole series by one author (and some of those folks write a LOT of books), or haunting the library's shelves for new writers or new stuff by some of my old faves.

BUT! I am back to reading. It happened this way:

I will confess, I was getting worried about my sanity. Reading had always--at least since age six--been my way of living, of coping, and of entertaining myself.

• 
  recently I noticed books lying around, unread
• some of them were recent purchases (why did I buy them, if I wasn't going to read them?)
• some had been sampled, then allowed to lie fallow

You can see why I might worry a little.

I also began pursuing other activities in place of reading, such as:

• watching videos; I could account for the art videos--I was learning more techniques used in watercolor painting, and after I watched the videos, I could practice
• harder to account for were the mystery/thriller/suspense programs, except--they were the subjects that I used to choose in books; the DVDs meant a whole book could be absorbed in 1.5 hours, instead of days

Granted, those are creative endeavors, more or less. But then it became obvious I wasn't reading anything--none of my magazines, no kids' books (always a nice change of pace), no nonfiction (used to read memoirs a lot, and books on writing techniques, and how-to books about making quilts or painting pictures).

-----

Not sure why anything changed. One day I ordered a few books I'd heard about in a YouTube program--books of poetry, memoirs of authors, biographies of poets and other writers. In no time a stack of ten or twelve books stood beside my favorite chair. I read a few pages--maybe a chapter--sampled different writers. 

Did I begin to feel a stirring in my blood at that time? Maybe. Maybe. At any rate, I began haunting websites where used books abound. I'm now increasing my personal library of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries (most of mine were lost in a mini-flood 20 years ago). Mary Oliver's poetry is finding its way to my door, along with The Poetry Handbook, her thoughts on writing poetry. 

One of the loveliest things about buying from the used-book sellers--aside from affordable prices--is the frequency of deliveries: my current purchases are arriving in three (or is it four?) batches. Something to look forward to! Free shipping is nice, too!

-----

Maybe it's a change in the weather--our August days and nights aren't up in the danged-hot range this year. The AC runs only because humidity sometimes soars, but heat indices in my little corner of the world are safe (so far) or at least endurable without danger to life and limb.

Maybe it's a change in my attitude; I didn't notice my 'tude had slipped, but that could be it.

Maybe it's just a Mysterious Something that happens once in a while. A wind blows through--the sun shines from a different angle--trees wave and bend and nod--and the season changes. Including the internal season of humankind.

-----

Hoping you're happy in your corner of Life--that your activities please you--that you have something to look forward to.

'Til next time, blessings from

Thursday's Child (possibly lost in a new book)

The To-Be-Read Pile

 LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE.....

There was a time when living life in the fast lane was the way to go. Everybody knew that. We had to go faster, farther, do more, get there quicker (wherever there was). It was the only definition for success going. The Eagles had a song about it. Had to be true.

Uh-huh. Until it wasn't true any more.

I can already anticipate reader response to this topic--they'll say: once she got to this age, she had to slow down, so now she's making it into a virtue.

And?

Let's get something out of the way right now: This is not about "stopping to smell the roses" or "getting off the merry-go-round"--that was 60s stuff. This is about living deeper. Ready? Take a deep breath.......

Think back to a time when you were deeply committed to something--your children, your marriage, your church, your hobby (whatever it was); politics; teaching; practicing medicine; playing in an orchestra; playing on a sports team, volunteering somewhere in your community . . . it doesn't matter what it was, or when it was, you had a strong attachment to that activity, that role you played. And while it was strong, it was also deep. So deep you didn't--couldn't-- always tear yourself away to do things or go places other people wanted you to do or go. 

In some instances, you may have lost friends or other relationships because of your commitment. Or, you may have been fortunate enough to have understanding folks around you who helped you honor your role and still remain part of a family or neighborhood or group.

My belief, based on my own experience and observing the experience of others, is that a deep commitment is a way of living in the Slow Lane. We continue in our path--either chosen by us or having been led into it--and we do that despite distractions and even well-meaning invitations to join in something else.

Consider world-class athletes who train for the chance to go to the Olympics. Consider musicians whose CDs you have in your collection who practiced for hours (literally!) every day of the week so their music would be the best they could make it. Consider scientists who work long hours in laboratories, sometimes alone, sometimes on teams--trying to find the answer to a puzzling disease, or the structure of cells, or how and why our climate is running amok.

My life wasn't geared toward any great goal--looking at what I did "back then," I see it was almost always something I saw that needed doing, at home or at church or in my community. I had a lot of company then, doing what I was doing--and I can say our attitude was one of "let's get this done." Or, as the Brits say, "Just get on with it."

-----

Some of us never had to make the decision to give up our Slow Lane life. But I suspect many of us had to wait until the time was right--the children grown and flown, retirement from a day job, a move to another part of the country, a broken marriage, a death--we never thought we'd live through some of these changes, but we did. And when we came out on the other side, we found we had something called "free time." Hours and days unscheduled. A grand gift. And possibly a bit scary.

We may also have found ourselves a tad adrift--no job to go to, no family commitments, perhaps even no close friends, if we'd moved to a far-away place. This is the ideal time to consider living in the Slow Lane.

I know, whole books have been written on this subject, so you won't find this post definitive. The main things to remember are these:

--Slow Lane living is about depth, not speed.

--Former commitments don't have to be renewed. New ones can be explored.

--Not every hour of every day needs to be filled in. (There is no prize for a full calendar.)

-----

I've always been a schedule person (goes with being a list-maker) and I've discovered scheduling is still important to me, well into retirement, so I choose to continue to use it. Keeping track of medical appointments, birth dates of people dear to me, and due dates for library items are right at the top of my list. But I don't obsess about that keeping-track. I do it for peace of mind.

Life in the Slow Lane doesn't have to be filled with sloths. Tortoises are welcome; at least they move around, a little at a time. Maybe a better word to use for Slow Lane living is Patience. 

Maybe that's what Slow Lane living is all about--being patient, making a space and a place for Peace of Mind. I can do that. How about you?

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

P.S. The resurrection lilies in the pic below happen only once a year. I wait through the long period of lots of green leaves, their death into long brown stuff, and then the shoots come through, a few at a time. Then more. and finally a whole clutch of them in all their glory. Worth waiting for.

Resurrection Lilies with Holly Hippo

 WORDS - WORDS - WORDS

[Last week we had a visitor from Arizona--my oldest daughter. It was the first time we'd seen each other in three years. Many things have changed in three years: my youngest daughter now lives with me; COVID has turned life on its head and given us a whole new set of behaviors; and, not surprisingly, we're all three years older! That last-named change--getting three years older--has become evident in my slower speed. Returning to what I call normal life takes longer after a time away, or, as in this case, time spent with others in my home. But it was a wonderful visit--my son and his wife also came to visit one afternoon, so it was almost a mini-family reunion. We were missing the Ohio daughter/sibling--she and her husband have been recuperating from the virus. Fortunately, she was able to visit by phone. As time passes, and travel may again become uncertain, we are grateful for time we could spend together, in person or with the aid of technology.

Because I had a well-filled week, I'm repeating a post about words of wisdom that appealed to me once upon a time and, funnily enough, still do. Hope they make you smile, too.]

-----
What is it about quotations and words of wisdom and sayings that intrigues us?

Here are some to entertain you - possibly give you a nudge - even make you smile in agreement.

-----

Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway.

            -- John Wayne

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.

            -- Will Rogers

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

            -- Tallulah Bankhead

Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.

            -- Robert Newton Peck

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

            -- Mark Twain

-----

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.

            -- George Sand

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

            -- William James

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

            -- Evan Esar

-----

This thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.

            -- Mary Pickford

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

            -- Mother Teresa

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

            -- Helen Keller

-----

Have a blessed week! Keep on keepin' on. And--look for rainbows!