Regret Is Meaningless

Yesterday I went through things in the kitchen and in one bedroom closet, and gave quite a few things to the complex manager. 

She's using what I give her to set up an apartment staged for potential residents to view. 

I'm starting to see progress. And so is she.

Moving & Shifting...

This has caused the shifting around of things, of course, in the living and dining area. 

I've moved the coffee bar where the dining table was, and the dining table where the coffee bar was, to give more room to walk through with my new living room arrangement. 

Not sure if that is going to work or not. I'm just doing a bit at a time and letting it sit while I rest my ankle. I can't do it all at once like I did in my younger days anyway.

And really, I've learned that this is a better way to figure out what you want. By doing a bit and then living with it a day or so to look at all the variables.

I can see I'm going to have to repaint the kitchen table. It's chipped on top. The same shade of yellow, but with a more durable paint.

I think the cabinet paint I already have will hopefully do the trick. 

Abi Update...

Abi is no longer limping, but she is still taking medication for inflammation and pain for her ACL. If I could just get that dog to stop jumping like a puppy!

She is now snuggled here beside me in the chair, fast asleep. Charlie is in his basket with his "blankie" on the couch. 

Cold Weather & Gray Days...

It's supposed to be quite cold here for a few days. So I will be staying in. 

This cold is really hard on my ankle.

You know, every time someone asks me how I broke both sides of my right ankle, I tell them I stumbled and fell one way, reached up to protect my camera, and then veered the other way. 

And of course they say: "Bet you wish you'd just let the camera go and protected yourself."

But you know, you can't sit around and regret what you did or didn't do. It's futile. 

I reacted in an instant, for that's all I had. And I can't go back and redo it. 

So I just live with what happened and move on.

I think we waste a lot of time with regret. I know I have. It's something I try not to do. 

Of course there are days when I'm fixated on something that happened. Something I did. Something I said.

But we aren't given "do-overs." 

There's no director to yell "cut" to allow us to try to get our lines right.

Getting Older, Gaining Wisdom...

If there's one thing you learn as you get older, it's that it's ridiculous to waste time on thinking what you should or shouldn't have done in the past. 

That's wasting your future. 

And that's the opposite of "living in the moment."

These days we hear and read a lot about this: Being more present in your day-to-day life. Making each moment count.

But it's really quite true,isn't it? 

So much time goes into planning the future. Vacations, visits with loved ones. Moving into a dream home.

All "some day."

But there's only so much planning one can do. When trying to plan everything, you're missing out on now. Today.

And then sometimes things happen beyond our control, and those plans go up in flames.

How Much Planning Is Too Much Planning...

Sometimes I think many parents these days are over-planning their children's lives. Some kids have schedules that would rival that of a business magnate. 

I believe that children learn creativity by entertaining themselves. Having time to play in the mud. Not having so many electronic devices and learning to play with mundane objects. 

My kids loved to play with pots and pans on the floor. Or use spoons to play drums on them while I cooked.

There's something to be said, I think, for learning to entertain themselves with what's at hand. Instead of constantly buying them new toys in shiny packages.

Of course we want our children to have more than we did. That's natural. 

But life is not always a shiny package full of wonderful surprises, is it? 

That is a reality we come to learn as time goes by.