We're experiencing a mild cold spell in the northwest that is making things in the pasture and turnouts a bit icy. Yesterday, I walked Tumbleweed up and down the barn aisle to give him his little bit of exercise. He'd love to be let go to run, but that would be ill-advised. I think all the horses are getting a bit stiff and stir-crazy right now.
But the days are getting longer, and that is a welcome change. Yesterday, it was super-charged sunny here until about 5:00 pm. My husband and I were pleasantly surprised.
I've continued organizing closets and drawers, doing one or two each day to keep from being overwhelmed. I've found so many precious items--memories--that had been buried and somewhat lost.
One of the treasures I uncovered was a set of DVD's of my children's lives. They were in an odd format, so I've had to reformat them using a special program, then put them through Windows Live Movie Maker and save them as .mov files. It has been so fun to watch my kids when they were little. They crack me up. I was good at just letting the camera run and capturing the day-to-day stuff, rather than just the big stuff like sports games and music recitals. It's the day-to-day stuff that I find the most fun to watch now. I plan to make them each a DVD with these clips when I'm finished.
I guess what I'm most happy about, watching the old movies, is that I was a loving mom. You can hear it in my voice, and the way I interact with each of them--and it brings back so many memories of my deep love and appreciation of them. Going through a divorce, you can start to doubt those things, but I shouldn't have. There are not too many people in this world that follow behind you and take your hand during the dark moments, reminding you that you're a good person. My grown children do that for me, my husband--and I am so thankful for that.
Last night, my husband and I played a little game. I've been writing a lot of poetry off of random "word prompts," and I thought it would be fun to see what he'd write with the same prompts--words like "London" and "pink". But it quickly morphed into us taking turns giving each other our own, random prompts, then listening to what memories those words evoked. We had so much fun, and I learned so many wonderful, minute details of his life--and him mine. We did it for two hours, and would have gone longer, but my daughter stopped by after work for some of my homemade lasagna, and we visited with her.
It did strike me, however, that we watch so much television--other people's lives--when we have these wonderful human beings, we chose to spend our lives with, sitting right next to us--the people who have our back in life--that care if we live or die--that care if we're struggling or doubting ourselves--and they have all these stories to tell us. It's worth taking the time to listen.
In fact, this all kind of fits into the concept of decluttering and deciding what brings you "joy" in life and what you want to take forward with you. Time is a precious and limited commodity. I have managed it well these last few years with my horses, but this year I plan to manage it better with my loved ones.
I also plan to not squander it on people who don't have my best interest at heart.