The Life-Altering Power of Changing Your Mind
ne of the skills I’m most grateful for every day is the ability to interrupt my thought patterns. I can sit pretty steadily in a hell of my own creation if I don’t do this because once I go down that spiral it picks up steam.
I was really taken by how both Dara and I survived what could have been a completely miserable experience by choosing to change the directions of our thoughts and focus on something else.
LA Week 7: Femme Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
Here are some things I didn’t know about pools until recently. The unheated pool temperature will be an average of the daytime and nighttime temp. So even if temps soar into the 80s, if they’re dropping to 50s at night (which is possible here, and lately we’ve been more early 70s and sometimes 40s at night) that means the pool is way too cold to swim in during the day at about the 60s. Brrr. Heating a pool is mad expensive if you do it all the time, so most folks do it on special occasions. My grandmother has a pool and even though she’s been in her house in Rancho Mirage (by Palm Springs) for 15 years I’ve literally been in the pool twice.
5 Strategies We Used To Fight Less (and Cuddle More) During Our Cross Country Move
I am really happy to report that the work that Dara and I employed to mitigate the stress on our relationship has been wildly successful. Every step of the way we have been having fun together and able to feel completely supported. Even when we both have mini-breakdowns under the stress of the transition. Even when we sometimes get snippy with each other.
These are strategies that are really great regardless of whether or not you are going through a big life transition!
Florida Keys: Curating the Sunset
My second favorite thing we did on our trip to the Florida Keys was curating the sunset. I absolutely love doing this. By curating the sunset I mean, finding out when the sunset is going to start and finish in my vicinity and setting aside the time and effort to go enjoy it. This means not just noticing that the sunset is happening but finding the exact right place to watch it happen.
I call things like sunsets “God TV.” If it’s something naturally occurring that is interesting to watch, I call it “God TV.” I like watching the sky turn all the different colors, notice the changing shadows around me and finding a spot to watch it that affords a lot of great ambiance.
The Keys are ALL ABOUT THIS.
Dara’s Experience During Diagnosis and Surgery for Breast Cancer
As a follow-up to my post about Dara’s experience with chemo I thought it might also be helpful, and provide some background for other posts around my care taking lessons learned, to talk about the process of her diagnosis and the surgery prior to chemo for her breast cancer. This is also another information dump sort of post—it’ll be interesting for someone who might be going through this process or having someone they know going through it to read a detailed experience.