Ordinary Life

What we really do everyday

Journal: 5 June, 2024, morning.

Today is “random stuff Wednesday.”

I bought two new bath mats: thick all cotton ones, super absorbent, the kind you love stepping and standing on. One of the great things about the internet: sourcing difficult to find things.

The small very old vase was my Mom’s. It sat on her bookshelf, the glass fronted one with moveable doors, for as long as I can remember. I keep the tiny oil can in it for no particular reason other than the memory of her using it to oil the moving parts on her old treadle sewing machine which I so wish we still had, but we don’t. When she got a new Singer with monogramming and fancy stitches, the old one disappeared. Who knows where? I think about that from time to time. Where does everything go?

I love these bookends. Such a classic look.

The pillow top is a gift from a friend. I love the texture and colors. It gives me pleasure when I look at it. I bought a pillow form to fill it but it’s too small and I need a larger one, which I will find at some point. Long lists, you know.

We had more rain this morning, a brief shower, and more expected this afternoon. Lovely life-giving rain. I hope the trees are drinking it in, in anticipation of the likely hot and dry summer. Remember last summer? When we passionately longed for rain? I do.

For the second time in a week, we had two little wrens inside our back screened porch. We successfully herded them out, but how and why are they there? There’s a small hole in one screen area, but why would they go through that? Mysteries…

I usually have two poached eggs for breakfast but today I made scrambled eggs and they were delicious. So many good food choices and we forget them, forget to cook different things. Habit. Habit is so powerful. We forget to think, we just continue on, getting on one channel and never changing, and not even realizing we are doing that. I try diligently to shake myself out of the prison of habit, doing five different things every day. Any five things. What they are doesn’t really matter so much as them just being different.

All this? Such is the stuff of ordinary days, ordinary life, despite whatever is happening in the world. This is our life, what we are actually waking every morning, getting up and doing. I like to think about those things, talk about those things. I dislike being only reactive to the news of the day, allowing that to consume my thoughts, being led where others want me to be. I refuse that, categorically. I will not give oxygen to things or people undeserving of that, nor will I amplify what essentially is the worst of human nature. Those things are not edifying, nor is dwelling on them mentally and emotionally healthy. If you want my opinion, just ask me and I will tell you, but I won’t focus on those things to the exclusion of all else.

If we do not live with purpose, we will wander around wherever the prevailing winds blow us. I prefer to choose my purpose and so I do that. I like being the boss of me. Every day we create the world we live in with our thoughts—the thoughts that become actions. The power in that is astounding. It is.

#journalingalife