To quote Freddy Mercury – “I love to ride my bicycle; I love to ride my bike…” Oh how I love to ride my bike with my friends. I am ever so grateful to have the health and wherewithal to be able to go out and ride. And then there is the local scenery – can’t be beat. Good times!
Swimming can either be really fun or really boring. For me, just swimming laps is great exercise but I have to force myself to keep going to get to X yards unless I am with friends and we are having social time in between laps. Masters swimming, on the other hand, is awesome. All I have to do is show up and do what the coaches say and I am challenged, learning and having fun. I don’t always like what they want us to do (I am the worst back stroker in the history of the stroke) but I always enjoy my masters workout and I love my team!
If you ever enjoyed swimming or if you are looking for a great way to get fit, look into masters swimming near you. You don’t have to swim in meets or be competitive to join most teams. I swim in the slowest lane at my workout because I’m no powerhouse but that’s not an issue. Swimming is fabulous and I’m glad that one of my coaches recruited me from my dull existence as a lap swimmer into the team. Thanks Mike! And thanks to all of the coaches at Walnut Creek Masters.
WC Masters having a 3 AM swim (I’m in the white cap, just to the left of the lane line on the left)
Today’s theme is, once again, friendship. Yesterday I had lunch with 2 women I have known for about 10 years. We used to ride together before I started racing triathlon and had to pick up the pace. We still swim together – sort of. We don’t always swim at the same time because our lives have changed but we see each other at the pool from time to time. I have not been present for a while. I have not paid attention to my friends or spent time with them and yet, we all met for lunch and it was warm and fun and wonderful and everyone agreed on that. I’m grateful for people who are really in my life, even when I fail to pay attention to their lives.
Okay – not my most inspired post but it’s a day late and it comes straight from the heart!
I was raised to kind of hate myself. My mother didn’t really mean to do that to me, it just happened. She kind of hated herself and taught me that I was hate worthy, too. It’s a long story but the good news is, at the age of 61 I’m finally getting on top of it! This whole week has been a shining example of that.
Work has been weird – I’ve been unhappy in my job and pretty vocal about it. I’ve also been passed over for promotion 3 times at this company and it’s been hard. It happened for the third time on Jan 1 but honestly, the act of thinking about something good, something I am grateful for, made it all very bearable. Instead of getting angry because of my fear that the company hates me, I decided to just wait and see and talk to my new manager to find out what’s going on. I managed not to indulge in endless ‘you’re being let go, don’t let the door hit you in the ass’ fantasies and then hating everyone because it was so upsetting (this has been my standard M.O. in the past)
Today we had that talk and she told me that when she learned how discontent I am in my job she felt bad and she was worried. She wants to work with me to find a better position so that I will like my job again and not quit. Whoa! I didn’t see that coming, but neither did I have any trouble accepting it when it happened. This is huge, my friends – huge.
Today was a good day.
I’ve made a number of missteps in my life but marrying my now ex-husband and having 3 babies with him was not one of them. That’s because those babies have developed into 3 remarkable people who I love more than anything. I’m going to write about each of them, in chronological order so there are no accusations of favoritism. And no, my darlings, I don’t have a favorite – I really don’t. Only bad mothers have a favorite and I am a good mother – but you already knew that.
Like most mothers I have learned so many things from my children – how to live on very little sleep; that my heart can fill to bursting in an instant from the simple act of a child uttering a few syllables or smiling or giving me a messy kiss; that I am not the most important person in the room; how to hold my breath and count to 10 when I’m about to lose it; that love grows when you have more people to love; that how the world looks and feels is truly a matter of perspective; that making the world safe is hard but spurs innovation; that I’m a better person than I thought I was; that fear makes me very angry; that my emotions can swing from extreme irritation to extreme ardor in the time it takes for a child to say something funny or crack a smile; that I can be utterly selfless and not even notice.
All 3 babies taught me these things but they are all so different and I want to honor my gratitude for each of them, one day at a time, in birth order, in the coming days.
This is day 5 on day 6 because I got distracted last night and didn’t write my post.
I had another day of having trouble choosing what to write about so there’s that. I’ve settled on rain – it is raining and California was in really desperate need of rain so we are grateful it is happening. Even more important is the snow up in the Sierra. We are ahead of target on snow pack which we depend on to keep the water flowing all summer. It’s a little dreary but it’s beautiful!
This is Lake Folsom at the height of the drought – so low you could see old towns that were covered when the dam was built and cars from unsolved deaths of years ago.
As of today the water has risen 28.5 feet. I couldn’t find a picture but I think those docks are back in the water now.
Today I had a plan to spend some time sorting through things and getting rid of stuff. Purging is everyone’s favorite topic these days and I have to admit that although it annoys me that I have so much ‘stuff’, it’s really a nice problem to have. I am grateful that I am choosing between this coat and that instead of sitting in a doorway, stuffing newspaper down my shoes and wishing I had something warm to wear. Really grateful.
Another day of realizing that my life is an
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Some people come in to your life, even for a brief time and, without even trying, make a huge mark. For me it was a former colleague named Fred Ochs. I met Fred in 1980 when we both were in … Continue reading
As I sat on my bed thinking about what to write about today I came to realize that my life is a cornucopia of goodness – I couldn’t settle on one thing. I have so many things to be grateful for and yet, over the last couple of years I have spent a remarkable time feeling angry and resentful and afraid and unhappy. Today I am grateful that I have wherewithal and the desire to turn that around and to consciously work on focusing on the positive as I have so often advised others to do. Today I am grateful that I am finally finding an inner voice that is pro-me. I’m looking forward to enjoying its riches and wisdom from here on out.
I’ve decided to take on the 30 Day Gratitude Project. I think there are a bunch of things written about this but I’m just winging it. I’m going to write something every day to acknowledge what I am grateful for in the hopes that it will lift me up and help steer me in the right direction. I need to make some changes and being positive and grateful is one of them.
Day #1 –
I wanted to start by writing about how grateful I am for my family but that will wait and will probably be expressed in a series of other posts. Today I am grateful for health and friends to celebrate it with. I took a hike with 2 good friends. We didn’t wear a GPS device or even a watch so I can only guess but I think it we hiked for about 2.5 hours and covered somewhere between 8 and 10 miles. It was a beautiful day, it was a beautiful place and my friends are beautiful. I’m grateful to have them in my life and to have the vitality at the age of 61 to go on that hike and suffer nothing more than sore feet and slightly sore glutes as a result. Mostly what I endured is the warmth of friendship and love and the strum of hard worked muscle fibers that have what it takes to go the distance.
Happy New Year to all! I will hold today to be a harbinger of things to come and on the dark days I will remember the strong, happy, uplifted feeling of a day like today.
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