Celebrating

After a week of rain on and off, the sun shone this Saturday and Sunday and temperatures were in that lovely range of 50s and 60s. In other words, we enjoyed some glorious fall days.

It was also Larry’s birthday weekend.

In celebration of his special day and my slowly easing pain from the pinched nerve (fingers crossed!), we spent some time outside enjoying the blue sky, the changing leaves, and the air that just feels fresher somehow.

Saturday night, we drove to Gretna, a nearby town, to have dinner at J.T.’s at the Lavalette. The house was built in the 1880s, with additions constructed in the 1920s.

It’s a lovely old house that now provides an excellent place to enjoy good food among the best things about old houses: huge windows, eleven fireplaces, hardwood floors, high ceilings, and a wide, wrap-around porch.

The Lavalette House before dark.

The Lavalette House after dinner, with darkness setting in.

Sunday, we traipsed around outside our house and in English Park, down by the Staunton River.

Larry at the end of the driveway, getting the paper out of the box.

These trees are in our neighbor's yard. I like the red and yellow so close together.

 

These red leaves are on one of the oak trees in our front yard.

Looking across the Staunton River.

We made a lot of noise as we walked over the leaves carpeting the ground beside the river.

A view of the river between the trees.

An Eagle Scout planted an orchard in the park as part of the steps he took to become an Eagle.

The sign explains the purpose of the orchard. It includes apple, pear, and plum trees.

What have you been celebrating lately?

Random 5 Friday: Down by the River

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a good week. My thoughts go out to those who are in the middle of snow and ice and power outages.

It’s time for Random 5 Friday, a great meme started by Nancy of A Rural Journal. Click HERE to find more bloggers who have posted their Random 5!

The Staunton River at Altavista, Virginia. Seeing all these spots in the photo makes me think I need to clean my lens cover.

One

I was off from my newspaper job on Thursday, so Larry and I had lunch at a local café. I had the vegan four-bean chili—delicious! I failed to get a photo, though.

Then we went to English Park and enjoyed walking around and taking photos of the Staunton River. It has been a while since we’ve been down there. It’s always good to see what changes have occurred and to hear the sound of the water once again.

I like the look of the light in the trees surrounding Larry. The river is right beyond his feet.

Two

We watched a bit of the Winter Olympics, including figure skating. I get a little nervous when I watch the skaters go into one of those high jumps where they spin in mid-air. I’m always wondering if they’ll land OK.

Even when the announcers sound disappointed in the performance, I think, Well, most people can’t do any of that on ice. Looks pretty good to me.

Three

We enjoy watching the snowboarding, too. I’ve never been snowboarding. I’ve never even gone skiing. But it seems like flying through the air must be such an exhilarating feeling.

Wintergreen Resort is not that far from where we live. I’d like to try skiing sometime. It would such an adventure, and this year is about adventure. But I am rather clumsy, and I don’t want to deal with a broken bone. If I don’t go skiing, am I being practical or afraid—or both?

Do you ski or snowboard?

Four

When you do creative endeavors such as writing, painting, drawing, crafting or photo editing, do you listen to music? If so, what kind?

I am experimenting with what works for me. I don’t listen to music when I’m doing editing work or journalism. But when I’m writing fiction or poetry, I often like to listen to music. Words get in the way, though. Any suggestions for some good instrumental music to listen to?

Five

I love doing research. I love learning new things and making connections between what I learned yesterday and what I’m learning today.

The research I’m doing for my novel is fun. I have a lot to do, but it’s so interesting, it doesn’t seem like work.

What do you love to research?

Let the wind take those thoughts away

“Let’s fix some sandwiches and go down to the park for a picnic.”

Larry didn’t hesitate. He hears “go” in a sentence, and he’s ready.

So we fixed some sandwiches and chips, added some drinks and drove to the park. Our town has several parks, but we always visit the one by the Staunton River.

It was a cold and windy Sunday. The temperatures were in the 50s, but the wind made it pretty chilly.

That didn’t stop us. We just put on our jackets, sat close together on the bench by the river, and ate our food.

Larry likes to go. Me? Less so. But on Sunday, I needed to go.

Some things are happening that have upset both Larry and me. The things don’t affect Larry and me directly, but they might affect our community. We’ve both felt a lot of shock and anger.

I can’t be specific about it here. And the specifics don’t change the effects on me.

When things upset me, it’s hard for me to let go. Whether it’s my OCD or depression or the generalized anxiety, negative thoughts lead to more negative thoughts, going around and around.

Thoughts about the situation followed me Friday night into Saturday morning. I woke up often, and every time I did, my thoughts went back to the anger.

I played the “what if” game. I imagined scenarios that only made me angrier.

I felt jumpy and irritable. The symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome flared.

Worst of all, I felt the beginnings of hopelessness, which scares me particularly because it’s a hallmark of my depression.

That got my attention.

I will not let what others choose to do or say affect my mental health.

So I’ve tried different things to counteract the anxiety.

I’ve prayed the Serenity Prayer. I’ve reminded myself of things I can do nothing about.

I’ve also concentrated on what’s most important to me: God, Larry, my cats and my writing. I’ve used visualization as I’ve thought of them.

On Saturday, Larry had a day-long class, so I was home alone. I did some chores, looked after the kitties, took a nap.

I had another spell of anxiety in the evening. I wanted to go outside and run, or at least walk really fast.

I couldn’t do that. But I wanted to do something. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to get away from myself.

The picnic helped tremendously. After we ate, we walked around the area, taking photos. We rode back into the newly developed area of the park so I could get some shots of the railroad trestle and some other interesting sights.

Despite the chilliness, the wind felt good. It metaphorically blew away the negative thoughts and replaced them with fun, the beauty of nature and the joy of being with Larry.

And then we went for ice cream.

This will not be an easy week. But when the thoughts creep in again, I’m going to imagine being in the park by the river with Larry, in the wind and the coolness, among the green grasses and the wildflowers. I will imagine the wind lifting me above those thoughts.

What do you do when you can’t get your mind off of a worrisome subject?

Anxiety, depression and a way to live with the river of thoughts



The Staunton River, running along the edge of Altavista, Virginia.



How sly they can be. How quietly they slip amongst the other thoughts, seeming to fit in at first. It’s only after they’ve taken a foothold that you realize what they are: the negative thoughts. The old, familiar negative thoughts.

I’m stupid. I’m useless. I’m a waste of time. I can’t do anything right.

They are the kind of thoughts that used to run through my mind with abandon. I thought they were normal. I thought they were true.

Everybody hates me. God hates me. I hate myself.

Even after therapy, medication for the OCD and depression, self-help books, getting older, meditation, prayer, faith—all the things that have helped me through the years—it’s still possible for me to get caught up in negative thinking. The kind of thinking that makes me feel hopeless and helpless and depressed.

I’m a failure. Things will never get better.

What all the treatment has done for me, though, is to help me recognize what I’m doing and stop it.

What I’ve learned helps me to talk back to the thoughts, to engage new, more positive thoughts. It helps me to realize that a thought is just a thought.

Just because I think it doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because I think it doesn’t mean that I wanted to think it. Just because I think it doesn’t mean it’s any more important than any other thought floating down that river.

I learned that water imagery from my therapist.

He showed me a photograph of a river with a bridge arching over it. He told me to imagine that the river was the flow of my thoughts. I was to imagine that I was on the bridge, looking down on the river, on the thoughts.

In the same way, I could distance myself from my thoughts and observe them: the words, the feelings, the images.

I didn’t have to engage with them.

I didn’t have to believe them.

I could just observe them, from afar, from high up on the bridge.

Just because I think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

What do you do when negative thoughts creep in?

November river

  Here are some photos of the Staunton River on a cold November morning:

  What is November like where you live?

Down by the Staunton River

I find a lot of comfort from being out in nature or experiencing it vicariously through photographs. On this Open Tuesday, I bring you photographs of a piece of nature that soothes my spirit when needed.
I live in a small town, Altavista, in Virginia, and one of the most beautiful parts of the town is the river that borders it. It’s the Staunton River.

That’s pronounced as it were spelled “Stanton.”

The Staunton River is a segment of the Roanoke River, according to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and runs for 81 miles from Leesville Dam (about 10 miles from our home) to John H. Kerr Reservoir.

English Park, one of several parks in town, is down by the river, and Larry and I love to go down and enjoy looking at the water and the ducks and geese that hang out there.

We haven’t been biking yet this year, but that’s another activity we like to use the park for. This year, we’ll have an extended trail to explore, part of a park renovation that started last year.

I took the pictures on this post on Sunday. I walked along the bank, trying to get good views of the river.

That’s not always easy to do. There’s a lot of vegetation—trees, shrubs, weeds—that grow along the bank, so it’s sometimes hard to get close.

But I love the lushness of the growth.

There is one area that I particularly like. The bank looks down on rocks in the river. As the water runs over the rocks, it makes a beautiful sound that never fails to comfort me.

Visiting the river is one of the ways I enjoy nature, and nature is always a balm to my anxiety.

  What places in nature do you like to visit? How do these places make you feel?