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Paint the very atmosphere
Frustratingly, Blog-City has been losing my entries. I hit "Publish," it says they're published... and when I navigate away they're gone forever. What's up with that?
Speaking of frustrations, I'm not at all happy with my sinuses. Maybe they just don't like the Indiana pollens, but I've been stuffy for the past several days straight, despite taking 24-hour Claritin-D. Today's been marginally better, but there's still some palpable pressure there.
Also, over the weekend, my grill ceased working. Lauren gave me a Weber Q a few years ago and it's worked well for us. When I went to fire it up on Saturday... nothing. Well, okay. We haven't bought propane for over a year, so we're probably due. It kind of sounds like there's propane in it, but I've changed few enough of these tanks out--what do I know? So I take it and exchange it and... still nothing. A bit of experimentation suggests that the problem might be with our hose. Maybe. We try a remedy that Lauren found on-line, disconnecting the hose from the tank and opening the burners for a minute or so. It worked... sort of. Propane wasn't coming out strongly enough to actually heat the grill to a grilling temperature. So: we've wasted over an hour and still can't cook on the grill. Oh, and I probably exchanged a not-empty tank for a full one. Again, frustrating.
And yet, I'm getting by all right. I try to remind myself how good life really is and not sweat the small stuff. I remind myself of the importance of attitude:
And we can do it. The world isn't infinitely malleable, but it responds to our thoughts about it or, maybe more to the point, we respond to our thoughts about it. I can get frustrated and complain, or I can remind myself that this is part of living and probably beats the alternative. I can see washing dishes as an onerous chore that I don't want to spend my time on, or I can see it as something that has to get done--I can even see doing the dishes as an expression of my adult responsibility or as an act of love that I do so that Lauren doesn't have to (though it would be nice if she'd see it that way every so often too!). And how I think about it not only influences whether I do it, but my own experience of doing them. If I tell myself one story about dishes, it's tediuos at best, but if I tell myself a different story, it's a pleasant task, even a rewarding task. But if anyone has a good idea about my grill or my sinuses, I'd still appreciate it.It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, this is the highest of arts. --Thoreau, Walden