Doing nothing

It’s 4 pm and I’ve done nothing today. Well, that’s not literally true. So what do I mean by doing nothing? I guess it comes down to not making any progress on the bigger projects, either ones that I’ve already started or the ones that are waiting in the wings. I haven’t been in the shop to work on the ukulele or on some of the things I’ve promised friends I would do. I haven’t figured out a stand for Odie’s small cage so it will be easier to move him when he comes out of his large cage so we can clean it. Every day I feed him and think to myself, I must make a rolling stand because dragging this thing across the floor and keeping my hands beyond lunging distance is driving me crazy. I guess it will drive me crazy again today.

I started the day by doing my 30 minutes of what I call ‘upright and locked’ after I took the osteoporosis meds. I could have walked on the treadmill or gone for a walk outside. I sat in my pj’s and watched a crazy guy from Yorkshire walk on a knife edge in a rain storm and then set up his tent at the top of a mountain in the Lake District. In the intro to the video he said that the helicopter and the mountain rescue folks he saw and captured on his camera were actually evacuating someone who died, presumably from slipping off the ridge this guy was climbing. The video was 50 minutes, not 30. That’s 50 minutes of watching a guy and his dog walk in the rain, set up a tent in a gale, make a meal on a camp stove, and lie in the flapping tent while he tries to talk over the noise of the wind. After I watched that one I watched another of his videos. I have no idea why I spend so much time watching stuff like this when I could be out walking in the sunshine or riding my bike. I really enjoy both of those activities once I actually pry myself out of my chair.

Then it was time for a cup of tea. Last night as I was rummaging through the cups on my tea shelf, I came across a mason jar without a lid. It looked like it would hold quite a bit. I like my tea in big mugs that are also microwave and dishwasher safe. I made a cup of tea and drank it out of the mason jar. (No comment from you Wallberg!) I put milk in it so it wasn’t too hot on my hand but then I remembered that I once had a fleece sleeve for a tea tumbler and went in search of that. I didn’t find it and it probably would have been too small anyway, but I have quite a collection of yarn leftover from various crochet projects so I decided to make a sleeve for the mason jar to keep the tea a bit hotter and the hand cooler. When I want to wash the jar, just slip off the sleeve, and, if I spill tea on it I can throw it in the wash.

I started it once, thinking I would make it the length I needed to go around the jar. By the time I had one row beyond the foundation chain done I could see that it was not big enough so I pulled it out and decided to make it the width I wanted for my hand instead. That worked much better and I finished it in probably half an hour. Of course, I had to make a cup of tea to try it out and lunch was on the agenda.

Wasn’t I going to have a shower sometime today? Before that I picked up my ukulele and, instead of playing my usual stuff, I started just messing around until I had a melody of sorts. Richard heard me and asked if I had made that up. When I said I had, he told me to record it and he would write it out for me. I did and he did. Cool! That’s the first time that I remember playing something that didn’t exist before.

All right. Shower. Although the upstairs shower has been working for quite a while now we tend to use the downstairs one out of habit. I wanted to test out the bath mat that I finished crocheting a couple of days ago so I used the upstairs shower. I ended up washing my hair in soap because the little tube of shampoo that I put in that shower was all but empty. The bath mat was most satisfactory and it’s hard to make it skid even though I haven’t yet tacked on bits of anti-slip material. Add that to the project list. Next time I use the upstairs shower I want to have shampoo so I found a bottle with very little in it and got some of the shampoo from downstairs put into the bottle and brought it upstairs. Note to self: do not buy a litre of shampoo at Costco ever again! I have short hair and Richard, well, let’s just say that neither of us needs much shampoo to take care of our flowing locks. I think that bottle has been hanging around since at least 2013.

And now, it’s time to feed Odie. There are many days when I berate myself for not accomplishing anything but today I decided to notice what I was doing by not accomplishing anything. Turns out it was a day of following my whims. That’s not a bad thing but it’s all too easy to have a whole run of those days and I do want to get the big projects done.

I have great plans before I go to bed to get up earlier in the morning and get a whole bunch of things accomplished. When I wake up it’s too easy to turn over and go back to sleep and then putter away over tea and watch the birds and the squirrels outside the front window.

This phase of life is so much different than I thought it would be when I was working. I remember thinking that retirement would be so cool because we could take extra time to go to the start of long cycling trips and take our time coming home. I never dreamed that I wouldn’t be doing long cycling trips or running half marathons. I probably still could do both if I wanted to put the work into getting into good enough shape. There’s the trick: I can’t seem to be bothered and that, in itself, is bothersome. I know there will be a time when I will be limited by my physical abilities and not my lack of motivation and I don’t want to look back and kick myself that I should have done things when I could have.

I’m not sure where the balance is in all of this. I enjoy myself when I make the effort to tackle the big projects and I haven’t found the right carrot to get me out of whimsy mode and into get-busy-and-do-it mode. Sometimes I have spurts of motivation and get a whole bunch of stuff done in a day or even a week. I would like to find a way to summon that up at will. If I figure it out, I’ll let you know but now it’s time to feed the bird, and that is not negotiable.