My Day and Laura's Mosaic Metaphor

I just read Laura's blog post about her 24 hours and how all the pieces fit together like tiles in a mosaic.   She exercised, worked, spent time with each child individually, slept enough, and read.  Her husband was traveling but she and her nanny G put the pieces together for a good day. (lauravanderkam.com)

My days in retirement are so different than they once were or than Laura's are now.

The day got off to its usual slow start with my back exercises, breakfast of granola and yogurt and fruit, and newspaper and online reading with my cup of coffee. I pulled out all of Jim's sweaters and began the seasonal process of washing them and putting them away.  I went to church to practice the organ and spent a fair amount of time looking over the hymns for Sunday and finding alternate last stanzas and choosing registration for them.  I stopped at CVS for a prescription and got gas in the car.

The only sculpture that was larger than lif!e!

I went home for a quick lunch and then picked up dry cleaning enroute to Elkhart for an appointment to check my somniguard's fit.  Yesterday's South Bend Tribune advertised that Stephenson's in Elkhart had big sales so I made a stop there first and bought some crop pants for 50% off--a total of $21 for a perfectly fitting pair!

It was just a few blocks to the Elkhart Dental Clinic where the adjustment didn't take long and there was no charge.  I went back to downtown Elkhart so that I could get in some walking in a different place than my usual routes.   What fun to discover that Elkhart was full of realistic looking sculptures as part of an Epic Art Adventure!  Maybe it wasn't great art, but it greatly amused me to see the gardener, policeman.  musician and the street cleaner--all looking as if they could stop to talk to me.   I played country music on my ride home--totally unlike me but it seemed right.

I made one stop on the way home to get coffee ice cream--because there was a small crisis in that Jim was out of his favorite dessert.  He was grateful.

When I got home,  I read and may have napped. I did another load of laundry.  Jim came home around 5, the usual time, and we had a glass of wine and then an easy supper of hamburgers and yesterday's potato salad and broccoli salad.

We went for a walk trying to get our10,000 steps in. I worked on a lesson plan for my adult reading student at Hope Ministries and read her IEP from years ago.  I enjoyed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions--a very quick read but worth reading. I wrote an email to a friend struggling with poor health.

So that was my day.  As Laura wrote, there were opportunities for exercise, learning, and work--even if it is volunteer work or housework.  There was time for companionship with Jim.

In the newsletter from  St. Gregory's Abbey in Three Rivers that came in today's mail, Father William referred to "memento mori" in the sense that "as each day of our life passes by, it's a day gone , one that we could have used well or badly, to grow closer to the Lord or further away."

I don't think my day had many elements of spiritual growth but it was a good day in unexpected ways.