Katesy is 1 year old! Happy Birthday!
Quote of the Day: “Only when you’ve been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is on top of the highest mountain.” Anthony Hopkins
Exercise Log: We went from Jen’s house today and did hills in the cove. I was really tired but glad that we did it. We went 4.64 miles (-2.46). I figure that the stronger I am, the easier chemo and surgery will be. Beautiful, colorful clouds in the sky. Did you know that it actually gets light before 6? I couldn’t sleep past 4 and so about 4:30 I got up and worked on all the things I was too tired to finish last night.
When we were walking today we saw a huge blooming tree that I have never noticed before. Jen knew exactly what it was. It is called a Pea Shrub and this tree had a massive amount of blooms on it. Then we started to notice it in bush form and at other houses. I find it interesting that you can pass the same house many times in the past but then one day you notice something you’ve not noticed before. It seems like this happens a lot when we are outside walking. Everyday, there are new trees, flowers or bushes that come my way that I’ve never noticed before. I looked it up and this is what it said about the Siberian Pea Shrub. Alternative NamesRoss caragana, Siberian pea tree, pea-tree Uses Medicinal: The plant is used for cancer of the breast, the orifice to the womb, and other gynecological problems (Kiangsu 1977). So maybe that is why I was drawn to this tree today.
So, I’m was listening to Dandelion Wine today and here’s what struck me. The chapter was about two 12 year old boys who are best friends and inseparable when John delivers the news that his father has a new job in a town 80 miles away and they will be moving. Everything in the town starts to look precious to John as it will soon be taken away from his experience. John notices the windows on a house he has never noticed before and asks Doug if they have always been there to which Doug replies “Yes”. John answers: “I never saw them before today…Doug, what was I doing all these years I didn’t see them?” Later he says: “It’s just, if I didn’t see these windows until today, what else did I miss?”
I think it’s a good question to ask ourselves now and then “What did I miss?”. Due to man’s natural optimistic nature, we always think we will have more time in the bank to make up for the things we miss every day. We always tell ourselves that we’ll have time to do that again or later but really most of us never get the opportunity back. Here’s what I regret missing: taking time to see a sunset because I thought my time could be better spent packing my luggage, playing games with my kids instead of making sure that my house was clean, taking a quiet moment to understand how another person might feel- stepping into their shoes, standing by while someone behaved badly instead of confronting them, being in too much of a hurry to let another driver in and trading something urgent for something more important.
Katesy playing with a flower on the deck
I love our morning walks and was just thinking today how amazing you were doing the “hills”. That is so interesting about the pea shrub. What a strange coincidence. Don’t also forget that you found another lucky penny!!!
“The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.” Anna Quindlen
Love this, love this authors writing and books as well……she’s reflecting about when her children were younger…….