A Pain In The Neck

It isn’t every day I get to write about a literal pain in the neck but I injured myself while getting ready for work yesterday morning. To be clear, I wasn’t doing anything wrong or even taxing. I just turned my head to the left and immediately felt something snap in the right side of my neck. Pain immediately radiated down my neck and into the shoulder.

It was a busy day so I persevered but noticed the issue hurt more with each passing hour. My hopes that it would wear off on its own were clearly unrealistic.

This picture from Lake Alma is about as bleak as my mood yesterday afternoon.

Luckily, my chiropractor is great and they got me in right away. By the time I walked in his office, the pain was up into my temple and down my right arm. I shudder to imagine how bad it would be now without his care.

I feel better now. Not good. But better and I’m hopeful that some rest this weekend will help me heal. If not, I’ll go back next week and try again.

This week has been rough as I have struggled with a cough and a sinus problem. These episodes have gone a long way toward reminding me just how precious good health is. We don’t often recognize it till it’s gone.

Be healthy and happy, my friends, and be grateful if you are in good health.

Gratitude

This has been a challenging week on a number of levels. When things turn difficult, I try to be mindful of the good in my life. After all, negativity breeds more negativity and it’s easy to become so focused on the bad that you can see nothing else. Gratitude is a key to happiness.

Here are some things I’m grateful for today:

1. It’s Friday and it’s a long weekend for some of us here in the US.

2. I have plans to see my cousin this weekend. Before starting my No Spend Challenge, I decided to give myself a budget for a movie and lunch out because I have been that excited to see the new Tom Hanks movie. We will walk in the sunshine, see the movie and have a bite somewhere.

3. I’m reading a really good book right now. A Man Called Ove is actually the basis for the movie I’m going to see. The curmudgeonly hero is quite relatable.

4. I spent last night doing fun chores including some decluttering and styling shelves with things I already owned. Decluttering doesn’t equate drudgery and can actually be fun!

5. Season three of All Creatures Great and Small on PBS began Sunday night. It’s a short season of just seven episodes but for those seven weeks I have a reason to look forward to Sunday night. If you haven’t seen the show, I highly recommend starting with season one. It’s the best thing on tv right now.

6. I have a roof over my head and can afford to buy groceries. Many people are not so fortunate right now.

7. Adventure season is just around the corner and I think there will be some good ones this year.

8. Pictures are a return ticket to places and people we want to remember. The above picture is from a rainy Saturday in NYC. The below picture was sent to me by a cousin this week. That’s me with my parents in 1977. What an angry baby! Looks like I could have benefited from some gratitude way back then!

9. My cat likes me and has spent as much time with me as possible this week. He is a sweetheart.

This is not the full list but these are the highlights. What are you grateful for today?

Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving in America. This is meant to be a day of thanks for the blessings we’ve enjoyed for the last year but it’s more a day of food and football. Tomorrow, as folks will spend the day buying a bunch of stuff they probably don’t need and can’t afford.

A Norman Rockwell painting we are not.

This painting is called “Home For Thanksgiving.” It was featured on the November 24, 1945 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. That was 77 years ago today.

The young man and his mother were real people. He was freshly home from the war and helping his mother with chores he likely would have hated doing in the Army Air Corps. Kitchen Patrol or KP duty probably didn’t seem so bad in the warmth of his mama’s kitchen.

Rockwell paid them each $15 to sit for the portrait. I read once that they owned the local dairy in their Vermont small town and that the young man was Rockwell’s milkman.

This painting was donated to the Eugene M. Connor Post 193 of the American Legion in Massachusetts many years ago. But they didn’t know it was an original and left it hanging in a hallway for decades. When someone offered $500 for what the Legion thought was a print, they took it to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts for appraisal.

After learning they owned an American treasure, they loaned it to the museum for display and safekeeping.

Just last year, the Legion sold it at auction for $4.3 million. This hefty sum went into a trust and interest earned will help pay bills and fund future repairs for the Legion.

It’s a beautiful slice of Americana and I like how it illustrates a nation transitioning from wartime into peacetime. Something so everyday like peeling potatoes probably felt almost luxurious to the soldier and his mother who had suffered untold sleepless nights in his absence.

Her relief is palpable.

Gratitude would have been the only thing that mattered in many households across the nation that Thanksgiving. Our soldiers were headed home. Life was returning to a new normal. Life was good.

Wherever you are in this world today, I hope life is good. Happy Thanksgiving!

Health And Gratitude

This hasn’t been a banner week for me. I’m doing better (thanks to those of you who have expressed concern. I’ll live!) but I’m not up to par.

This week, I have worked and slept and haven’t done much else. There has been no exercise, no household chores, no projects, no blog posts.

While I feel a bit like a slug this week, I’m ok with it. We can’t be 100% everywhere all the time. My energy is mostly getting used up at the place that pays my bills and, for this week, that’s most important.

Something else that’s important is gratitude for good health. Feeling a little under the weather is a temporary problem but always a helpful reminder to be grateful for the days we are well.

A Good Day

Gallipolis in Lights, 2021.

A person stocking shelves in the grocery store recently asked me how I was doing. When I said I was doing well she remarked how nice it is to talk to someone having a good day.

My response to that was you can either have a good day or a bad one and a bad day isn’t fun at all. A nearby shopper chimed in that there is always something to be grateful for and a reason to smile.

It’s sometimes difficult to remember these lessons and life often throws us circumstances that make it hard to practice what I preach.

At least we can try.

The weatherman is calling for rain today and I’m using that as an excuse to stay in and rest. Later today I’ll bake cookies and have a Christmas movie marathon with my parents. We will eat too many cookies and watch movies we’ve seen thirty times but it’s exactly the kind of day I need.

Whatever you do, wherever you are, I hope you’ll try to have a good one. Remember, it’s a good day to have a good day.

Veterans Day

It’s hard for me to pass up vintage pictures. In fact, I have a small box of photos of strangers that I’ve picked up in antique stores and junk shops over the years.

I call them “the family.”

I mostly buy candid photos rather than portraits. Occasionally they are labeled but they typically have no names or years, no stories, and no way to identify the people in the photos.

Sometimes I buy them because the photos are cool and I simply like old photos. It also makes me sad to see them languishing in a box on the floor, unwanted and without anyone to remember them.

This 8×10 of a sailor was a dollar in Denver last year. He looks like just a kid and I’m sure he was. It’s not labeled. No name or year.

I wonder what ever happened to him. I hope he made it home. I wonder if there’s anyone left in his family to even know his name or wonder what he looked like or how smart he looked on his uniform.

Our history is teeming with stories of young men and women who joined up, generously signing that proverbial blank check to our nation. Far too many don’t ever make it home. Others do but leave a piece of themselves in far off lands, instead bringing home more trauma than anyone should have to endure.

On this Veterans Day, I hope we all will remember that.

Say thanks to a veteran in your life. Say thanks to a stranger. Be grateful to the kids like this one who you never knew. After all, they served for all of us even though they didn’t know us either.

It’s the least we can do.