We spent yesterday with Grandma and Grandpa, registering at the two places pictured above (with free gifts!). It was fun but hard work. I guess you have to earn your gifts? :)
It’s tricky, thinking of what you might need, what you want, what you’re willing to admit that you want, what you’re willing to “let” people buy you, etc. Mama and I are generally not wild about people going all out on our behalves. Not that we’re ungrateful. You know what I mean. So we feel like there’s supposed to be some kind of balance. We’ll register for expensive diapers and glass bottles, but not a playpen and glider rocker. Etc. But, you know, we have to make sure we have everything we need. Yesterday, that meant clothes, toys and cool socks that Grandpa picked out.
Tomorrow, we visit the OB for a follow-up to the abnormality that was there last week when Mama was very sick. If you’re the praying kind, the metta kind, the positive energy kind, the luck kind — and you want to share it — that would be lovely. And you would be lovely. And I will owe you coffee, tea and homemade cookies one day.
I guess it’s sometimes a post-holiday or back-to-school thing, where you have a bunch of new stuff all at once. Maybe I just don’t shop a lot. I don’t know. But I rode to work this morning with a new Thermos of coffee in my backpack with my new planner, a new book, wearing a new vest, new socks, new gloves and being kept dry by new fenders. The only thing I bought was the planner and the book, and those were to fill voids left by an old planner and all the books I’ve already read. I feel spoiled somehow, like I don’t have the right to be toting around all this shiny new shit that I didn’t buy but instead just took out of a gift box. The people I care about do give me some wonderful presents. So maybe I am spoiled in a way.
And of course having a bunch of new stuff makes a lot of people (myself included) re-examine their relationship to material possessions. I really love my new gloves and fenders and Thermos, but it’s the cycling in winter weather and not dropping five bucks a day to have good coffee at work thing that I really like. I suppose that’s a healthy relationship to gear, right? Using it?
I do have the tendency to pet my things though and often get very upset when a new scratch joins the dozens of others on my bike or when dust gets under the screen cover of my camera. Then I think about my bike and not riding and my camera and not taking pictures. Then, as Tyler Durden would say, the things I own end up owning me.
I’ve always struggled to have a healthy relationship to possessions, my body, my health. You can’t just ignore your pains or bike maintenance, but you can’t get attached to them, either. Tricky, I tell you. Tricky.
Photo Friday: Meditation.
