Friday 6 - trying to stay positive

It was difficult to stay positive this week. I don't have TV and I unsubscribed from The Oregonian and I deleted Twitter so I learned about George Floyd via a haunting Tik Tok video that made it so I could not sleep. The next day I found a very helpful Lifehacker article about how to help and I tried to do all the things it said including phoning the DA myself and you know I don't like to talk on the phone. But speak, even if your voice shakes, I tell myself.

Here are some things I focused on this week to try to stay positive.

1. Be grateful for my kids' piano lessons. They are doing really well, even being restricted to Zoom lessons, and this week in particular Libby had really great lesson in which she wrote a new song in 30 minutes.

2. I started my new role as a state officer for the volunteer organization I belong to. I'm not officially sworn in until July but it seems the job was meant to start this week, so I started training and throwing myself back into the work. We had a good meeting yesterday with my local chapter and I got to say something important that I felt good about.

3. Back to my kids, I am grateful for their positive attitudes. Mae has even adopted a daily gratitude practice of sorts. I taught them a sort of game that I wrote about on my Christmas blog and they really like it. It's just a practice where you review your day: the high point, the low point, and something random (usually something funny). Everyone enjoys it, and then Mae and Libby take it a little further by talking between themselves reviewing their goals and accomplishments for each day. It is so precious I have to pinch myself. Libby developed a checklist to check in with herself at the end of each night as well.

4. Menchies frozen yogurt recently reopened and the kids I went there this week and it was so nice! We were allowed to stay and sit at tables, no masks required at any time. I miss sitting down in a restaurant.

5. The sun was out this week. It will rain again next week. But we had sun this week and I finished painting Libby's dresser in an ombre pattern and it turned out better than I had imagined. Also my new wood chipper arrived today so I hope I can test it out before the rain starts again.

6. Mike and I are happy about the return of the show World of Dance. It's a nice way for us to bond as we root for our favorite dancers and laugh at the judges. With the judges. We like the judges. It's just that they are funny.