It makes total sense for their business, but it’s new to me: I just learned that Amazon has a dollar threshold for returns. Under some amount, they just say this:
There are reasons to not love Amazon, and other political factors in their favor (in my book), and I will continue to track them (or check in as Sally tracks them), and then there are things like this don’t bother to return policy, which is awesome.
I will donate the bamboo knitting needles to the Dana-Farber Caps for Kids program.
I just learned that, starting now, ID is required to vote in my town and my state.
I love to vote. Nothing makes me feel more patriotic than the entire process of voting. I love seeing candidates and supporters from my party holding signs on the corner of the parking lot. I also love seeing candidates and supporters from the other party on the other corner. I feel a solidarity with these dedicated citizens, standing out in the rain and cold (or like today in the gorgeous clear fall air) for their beliefs, no matter which corner they have picked.
I just love voting.
I can’t help wondering what problem we are solving with this new law. Is there a problem in New Hampshire with voter fraud? All I can think of is this clip, specifically the interview with Deirdre MacNab, from my most trusted source of news and information: Florida’s Voter Registration Law
Our law is different and much more mainstream, but I have the same questions.
I have been learning things from Maddy, my mother-in-law, for over 30 years.
Lately she’s been teaching me about what I want to call “micro-gratitude”: being grateful for the very smallest things in life.
Many things are hard for Maddy right now: getting out a chair, walking across the room, keeping track of the round-the-clock caretakers, and worrying about whether we really did close the windows. But through all this, she continues to be deeply grateful for the feeling of warm water when she washes her hands.
Every time I turn on the water for her, she says “Oh thank you!” as if I had just given her a long-awaited gift. Without fail, she tells me how wonderful it feels. She luxuriates in the clear warm water and the ritual of washing.
I try to be grateful every day, but I tend to think of the big things, always starting with the health of my loved ones. Maddy is teaching me that there is plenty of gratitude to go around for the little things, some of it as close as the nearest faucet.
Hi! I’m back! Over the next few days, I will be posting some of the many lessons I have learned lately.
One of the biggest ones that I have re-re-re-learned is this: Just do it, take that single step to get back on track. For a career procrastinator*, this is the biggest challenge of all: once I fall behind, it gets harder and harder to catch up.
In my freshman year in college, I met a boy who skipped class for a week. I was astounded. How could anyone do that? Later, I learned that you do it by skipping just one class, for whatever good reason. Then just one more. Very quickly, it gets harder to go back – there is work to make up and there is work to even find out the work to make up. Procrastination feeds on itself, and before you know it, you are sitting on the sorority house roof drinking beer with your friends the day before finals and confessing that you haven’t been to a class since mid-Terms. OK that wasn’t me, but I was there and you get the idea.
I’ve learned lots of lessons lately. And now that I’m back, without making up any excuses or inventing tragedies that have befallen imaginary grandparents (you know who you are and don’t worry you clearly turned out responsible and honest), I’ll be finding those scraps of paper and posting A LESSON A DAY until I run out of material.
I will try to post this near the date when I learned it. If you are getting this via email (you smart person!) you’re all set. If you have stumbled on on in the blog, you’ll need to browse back through time to find new entries and anyway you should subscribe now!
Thanks for hanging in with me!
Jane
* In 1980, I sent for an application to the Procrastinators Club of America. They were a real organization, based in Philadelphia, and had trips like the one to England to complain about the crack in the Liberty Bell “It’s about time someone did something about this” they said at the time. I still have that paper application (really) because I didn’t want to rush it and not qualify.
These are some of the things I learned from the Color Me Rad run today. in which Sally and I ran (or so) a 5K (or so) and were happily pelted with color, along with about a million (or so) other very crazy people:
1. Go early! This many people converging on one place with limited parking means go really early, even if it means waking up at 5:50 AM on a Sunday. It was worth it!
2. Wear sunscreen, not just for the SPF of it. It turns out that the parts with sunscreen were the ones parts took up lots of color AND washed off the best. That second part is way worth it.
3. If you wear contacts, plan to throw them out after the race. Mine were bright blue!
4. Bring enough sheets to totally cover the seat of each passenger, and put them out before the run,.
5. Bring extra (expendable) clothes to change into for the car ride home, and plastic bags to contain everything you take off.
6. Meeting others? Set a meeting place and time way in advance. Remember the days before cell phones? Well this is a return to that simpler time. This is no place for electronics unless you have one of these and can…
7. Bring your camera in an underwater camera bag.
8. When you get to the check-in, buy extra color packets to carry (we had a waist pack) and use at the finale (see video at link above.) Oh – so that means bring cash.
9. Do the math: If the formula for making the color permanent is to pour vinegar on the shirts, dry them and iron them, then perhaps touching them with bare hands during this process would be a really bad idea – you think??? So much for the extensive scrubbing earlier in the day – green hands are back!
Here we are before:
And here we are, colorized:
You can read more about it, and see more, in Sally’s Blog!
From Jill:
“You can’t run through a closed door without getting hurt. It’s usually better to accept it as one of those little dead ends on a maze that helps bump you back onto the path that will lead you to the open door! (I learned this when I bought my VW Bug…that I’m still paying for…..HUGE lesson learned)”
As Barbara would say, it’s all about the “context.”
I have learned that if someone asks me “How’s your job going?”, they don’t necessarily need to hear the gory details, the highs, the lows, the frustrations and delights, if they happen to be my financial adviser who just wants to know how long I plan to stay in this position at this salary!
Sorry, Chris! Next time, I’ll save the deets for my peeps!
I learned, first from Jill and Carolyn, about Pinterest, and now I’ve learned how to use it. Such fun!
For some reason, there is a multiple-step registration process, in which you “request an invitation” … huh? But after that, you can browse millions of images and, more important to me, ideas.
This is perfect example. I found this idea on Pinterest. I clicked the image and it brought me to instructions. Then I made it!!
The point of Pinterest is that they show you how to do it. Here is one photo that gives it all away:
This was done almost completely with found objects – plus plants from the Goffstown Garden Club.
Later, I’ll post my version on Pinterest, providing a link to this. Such fun!
Today I learned another great thing about being optimistic: You get to have more fun!
Yesterday on a rainy afternoon, I was ready to bail on a Sunday morning 5K with a 90% chance of rain.
Sally told me that she was OK with not running in the rain, but not OK with not running if the weather turned out fine. And since we wouldn’t know until the start gun what the weather would be, we decided to go for it. I stayed overnight, we took the Red Line to Harvard Square nice and early, ran a great race, and had a fun morning together, including a great brunch (don’t do the math, it’s better that way.)
Optimism won the day. As it often does.
Yes, I’m still here and still learning and still happy to share what I’ve learned. So here come a bunch of lessons that I’ve been scribbling down, with more to follow as I find the scraps and can figure out what I meant…
I would like to think that I will now learn to just post as I go, but procrastination when linked with perfectionism is either a perfect storm for lack of progress or a great big lesson to be learned or maybe both.
Thanks for hanging in. I would love to hear your comments in any format or forum. But here would be awesome!
Jane's Lessons Learned 