Last Week - Rewritten

Whoa - it's been two weeks since I've written and people are starting to wonder if I've disappeared. Well, @bikerly has been wondering and if @bikerly is wondering it's possible that other people are wondering, too. If not, @bikerly has done wonders for my ego in asking when I'm going to blog again. (@bikerly, aka Jim, always has something good to say at his blog. He likes bikes and Dr. Seuss. Visit his blog. Soon! You will laugh and smile. http://bikerly.wordpress.com)
So I’m sitting here ready to blog - but I don't know where to begin. 
I guess you could say that last week was busy. Crazily busy. I somehow thought that having both kids in camp was going to give me lots of free time but the reality was that I spent most of my time driving the kids to and from town. By Friday afternoon I was kind of a mess. Yep, I was frazzled. I yelled at the dogs. I screamed at Owen over the phone. That night I cried a lot and couldn't sleep and was feeling pretty bad about things, about my behavior, about how crazy life gets sometimes.
I confessed to my friend, via the wonder of text messages, that I was bitchy. He said something like, "being bitchy is okay as long as you can put a positive spin on things later." I was too tired at that moment to make sense out of what he said. But I'm wondering if it's this...
Last week had some pretty low moments - but a lot of good things happened, too. I did the best I could given who I am and what I have to deal with. My best, sadly, wasn't very good, but I survived and, thankfully, my family still loves me. Friends assure me that I haven’t damaged my children too badly with my yelling and stuff. (I hope they are right). And, best of all, I’m able to learn from my mistakes, pick myself up and move on.
So that is what I’m doing. Moving on.
This week is going well. I’m driving to and from town less because I arranged for the kids camp schedules to coincide. Because of this, I have some time home alone so I can catch up on work. I read that doing a 10 minute meditation each day greatly helps in reducing stress so I started that yesterday. I must admit, I don’t think about breathing in and out like I’m supposed to very well but I took the time to do some stretches and did manage to breathe. And the last two nights I’ve made a point to jump on my bike and pedal around the neighborhood for a few minutes. No worries about speed or hills or miles - just some time to pedal away the worries of the day.
All these things seem to be helping. I’m feeling good about the weeks ahead.
As for last week? It’s over and instead of thinking of it as a bad week I’ve decided to reframe the week with positive memories instead of negative ones. To rewrite history, I suppose. So, here goes. 
Highlights of Myrna’s Wonderful Week...the Last Week of July, 2010.

18 mile bike ride with Owen on Sunday morning. Had breakfast at a small town cafe.
My garden continues to bloom and be beautiful.
Took Rose, Ryan and Rose's friend out for ice cream on Wednesday afternoon. We laughed a lot. Ryan ended up with a chocolate mustache and bit of a chocolate goatee.
Made 14 cheesecakes for two parties and two friends. That's 2 big ones (like the two in the picture) and 12 four inch mini cakes. They all worked. Everyone loved them.

Dinner with friends on Wednesday evening. We had fun and ate a lot of good stuff including an awesome chocolate cake.

Rose had a great week at theater camp where she grew in confidence and in her acting abilities - plus she had a ton of fun. Plus, Rose packed her lunches each and every day - yay!

Rocket, the wonder pup, did very well at his puppy agility class.
Ryan had fun at Rocket Camp where he built several rockets including the one he's holding in the picture. He shot it off and it went really high. I was there to watch it go.

The kids had a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's on Friday night and Owen and I went out for dinner. I had an awesome margarita and excellent steak.
My nephew, Liam, turned one and we celebrated his 1st birthday in fine style on Saturday.

We finished off the weekend with a potluck dinner with friends. Four couples who all like good food, airplanes, belly dancing and fun. 

A lot of other good stuff happened, too.
Last week was a wonderful week. Yep. It was.

Comments

Joy Riggs said…
A wonderful post, Myrna, and worth the wait! It's much easier to focus on what's wrong or what we're not doing when we're under stress. It's all in the perspective, I guess.
August 4, 2010 at 1:52 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Change in Plans

Image
My kids, Rose and Ryan, started a theater day camp today called Young People's Theater Workshop (YPTW). YPTW is a program put on through the Northfield Arts Guild  during which the kids, grouped by age, write a play, rehearse it, and then perform it at the end of the three week session. Rose loves the camp and this is her fourth year. In her first year I saw a huge change in her confidence from the beginning of the session to the end. She has grown each year since and I expect she will benefit from the camp again this year. Ryan has never been in YPTW and has been somewhat reluctant to go. But, to save on gas (it's a 30 mile round trip to town), make our schedule easier and give me time to work, Owen and I decided that Ryan should give YPTW a try. Given how good the program has been for Rose, we're hoping Ryan will benefit from the program as well. I dropped the kids off this morning and right off the bat Ryan found two friends from his class at Greenvale. He found
Read more

Making tracks

Image
I just looked out my office window and saw my snowshoe tracks in the snow. For some reason they surprised me. Seeing them I had concrete evidence that I actually have been getting out on my snowshoes every day. That I've actually been going somewhere. And, for some reason, I find this comforting. I've been fighting my 30 Days of Snowshoeing commitment and am kind of mad at myself for creating the challenge for myself. I haven't wanted to get out every day and snowshoe. It's cold outside. I don't like putting on my snowpants, my hat, scarf, gloves, jacket. Perhaps because I'm doing the challenge alone, unlike the 30 Days of Biking challenges where hundreds of other people biked every day and helped motivate each other, I don't really feel like it matters that I'm doing this. And I've lost momentum and motivation and simply want to sit inside and read a book. Or sleep. Or watch Monk and Cake Boss on Netflix. But I keep snowshoeing. Every day. Ev
Read more

A Little Bike Schooling on the B Ride

I'll be honest with you, my two main motivations for riding my bike any distance are coffee and conversation. A good workout is also a motivator but going really fast is not. I'm more of a slow and steady - okay, really slow and not that steady - sort of bicyclist. But for months now I've wanted to join in on a group ride. From what I've heard people ride their bikes, chat away the miles and stop somewhere for a cup of coffee mid-way or at the end of the ride. Sounds like my kind of ride. Right? Maybe not. Most of the group rides I've heard about promise average speeds of 18 to 20 miles per hour or more and go 40 or more miles. Some sound brutal and talk about hill climbs and sprints. Granted, these are the "A" rides, rides geared towards competitive riders, riders who want to push their limits. "B" rides are supposed to be slower, "C" rides even more so but I've seen some C rides that sound too fast for me, some B rides with leng
Read more