Tag Archives: relaxing

The Constant Battle For Comfort

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Cats are connoisseurs of comfort. ~James Herriot

My Sunday thoughts this morning are on comfort. Not on the kind of comfort you might think I am referring to on a Sunday morning. Yes, I already read my devotions, said my prayers and then…I wiggled and tried to get comfortable in the chair I am sitting in. I wished I had an ottoman to rest my feet at the end of my easy chair.

Do you have those battles in your household on what is comfortable to each of you, the people you live with not understanding because what doesn’t fit you, fits them perfectly?

I am short, very short. Many chairs are not built for short people. One of my recliners hits my head at the wrong place and so the angle is always uncomfortable because it is hard to look up. The contour of the chair has my head crooked down. Most of the time I can’t rest my feet on the floor when sitting on certain chairs and sofa’s because I can’t touch the ground. Case in point, I never can touch the floor sitting on the church pews in church.

The same goes for the seats in a vehicle and the head rests. I always wondered at the wisdom of my grandchildren not being able to ride in the front seat with me because they weren’t tall enough. Their driver, me, was shorter than they were. I think I should invent a flamboyant booster chair for adult drivers that are short.

I like a soft bed, my spouse likes a hard mattress. I like an old dining room chair I bought at a sale and not the ones that sit by my dining table. The old chair keeps me at the level where the table is not above my chest. I keep replacing one chair with my old chair and my spouse keeps putting the matching dining room chair back up to the table.

Our stackable washer and dryer are gone and I am ecstatic. I could never reach to the back of the dryer without a little boost at my feet. I still have a bit of a fear of falling into my washing machine when I have to jump a little when reaching in to get my wet clothes out. It was a battle to get my spouse to understand what we had was not working for me because it was perfect for him.

My list could on and on. Can you relate? Small cars are not comfortable to tall people. Small chairs are not comfortable to large people. It’s irritating to them to always have to change the driver’s seat when sharing a car with a short person.

Don’t ever look at the top of my refrigerator or anything higher than my height. There is probably years of dust because I am the duster in the family and what I don’t see I don’t dust. I know its there but it’s easier to ignore.

It’s hard for us to understand what is uncomfortable for those around us if we have our comfort needs met. We dismiss the concerns and our lack of understanding on what works for others causes problems in relationships and friendships. We don’t want to give up our comfort or we secretly seethe with anger if we do.

I hope there are many that have found the art of compromise. Yet, we appear to living in an angry world. I can’t help but wonder if the anger stems from a need not being met or a concern not being heard. We seethe inside until we erupt like a volcano.

It might just take someone saying, “I hear you. We should work on seeing what might help.” Or it might take us not expecting others to meet our needs but seeing what we can do to make ourselves more comfortable. I bought the old dining room chair. Yes, it gets moved elsewhere but I can always put it back when I need it.

God made us all different. We have tastes and likes and needs that are unique to us. We are not like our neighbor. My neighbor likes a weed free lawn. I don’t really care about weeds. Some of them are pretty. However, what I do with my lawn affects his because my weeds infect his life. He puts up with my weed yard even if it causes more work for him. This year I sprayed my weeds. It’s a compromise. It’ll make life easier for him. He makes life easier for us by doing things for us that we can’t do anymore. We are both more comfortable in our lives because of it.

Yesterday a wise friend and I had a conversation about relationship dynamics. They pointed out to me our words, and I know mine are, get peppered with, “They won’t let me do that.” This person was right. We stop ourselves from living parts of our lives because of the lack of understanding of someone else of what we need for comfort for our body or our soul. I have to ask myself where I learned that. Do those people really stop us or are we stopping ourselves and using it for an excuse? Our life doesn’t need to fit someone else. It needs to fit us and only then can we be comfortable with others.

This is my Sunday morning rambling. I have no answers. I have a challenge for you. What are you going to do this week to allow yourself to have those moments of comfort that you need?

I’m going to get an ottoman so I can put my feet up in this chair that doesn’t quite fit me and relax. It can be moved when someone taller sits here. A small compromise for a big chair so we both can have our comfort.

“I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.”

Ani DiFranco

Sitting in the Season

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Sprinkled Notes published in the Albert Lea Tribune and the Courier Sentinel the week of November 28, 2018

Sitting in the Season
© Julie Seedorf 2018

IMG_1017As I write this, it is the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I realize I haven’t been out of the house since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving except to take my granddog outside on his leash. How does that happen that the days pass by and I veg in my home?

We had food, plenty of leftovers and it was cold outside, which made the perfect “I don’t want to go anywhere” scenario. I am not a cold weather person.

So what do you do when you stay in? Some people get bored, but I find there are many activities or non-activities to keep me busy.

I cooked and I cooked some more. First, the Thanksgiving meal and then full meals for my husband and I. Winter makes me feel like trying the “Becky Home-eckie” thing, as my husband calls it.

I found some good books to read, and, of course, I did a little writing. I also took a few naps, but I found one of my main activities while crocheting was watching Christmas movies. I really wanted to settle in with the Hallmark Christmas movies; however, we are now streaming and none of the venues I subscribe to have the Hallmark channel. For a short time, I considered adding another service so I could watch the Hallmark movies, but the entire purpose of streaming was to save money so I stopped my twitch of hooking up another channel and settled on the Christmas movies through Hulu.

After three or four movies, I had to switch to a game show. Although I loved the movies, it was almost too much happiness. They all seemed to have the same themes, which I already knew. There was laughter, love and looking for a simpler, more peaceful life and love theme. People reunited with loved ones they had been estranged from, kids and people found homes and the movies made me want to believe in humanity once again. There was no gun violence or swearing. There were no explosions or SWAT teams. There was no one insulting each other in the fun as we see all the time on TV shows. It was more like the old “The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet” and “Father Knows Best” shows — the same shows we decry did not show us real life.

Yet, here we are in the year 2018, binging out on Lifetime Christmas shows and Hallmark Christmas shows. I assume, and you know what they say about assuming, that more women than men watch these shows. What does that say about women in America? It may say that women really do want a kinder, more caring world where they are treated with respect by the men or women they love. In many of these shows, the women are independent women, striving for a career that makes them happy with a spouse or partner who supports that independence or even being a single in the world. High-powered careers may be valued, but being content and making the point that whatever you do — from candy maker to executive — is fine if your priorities are in order, which is family, friendship, kindness and caring.

Christmas music is played earlier every year. Houses are decked out in Christmas baubles before Thanksgiving. And stores start even earlier to hook us into that good feeling we must be looking for. It says something about us as people. We are looking for a “feel good” pick-me-up, and for many, Christmas does that because it has that legacy. I haven’t even begun to mention the reason Christians celebrate Christmas: the birth of the Christ Child.

In polling my readers, there are some who do not celebrate Christmas or can’t stand these holiday movies because they don’t depict real life. Yet, for many of us, that is the very reason we watch them. It’s kind of like the Calgon ditty, “Calgon take me away.” So Hallmark movies, “take me away.”

It is hard to find that simple peace within ourselves. It is hard to slow down and take the time to internalize what we are really looking for. I have a hard time being lazy when I am home. There is always something to do and reading a book, watching Hallmark movies during the day and simply taking a nap or sitting in silence is hard for me to do without feeling very guilty about slacking off. I don’t know about men, but I think women have a problem with simply being in the moment.

I actually had to force myself to sit in a chair or lie on my bed and read for an extended period of time. It was because I knew there were things that needed to be done, even though they weren’t urgent and could wait another day. It was hard to not pick up my cell phone and check the news or send a message and keep on reading. It was a book that I didn’t want to put down, but the niggling guilt that I should be doing something productive was simmering underneath as the words imprinted themselves on my brain.

I did succumb to doing something while I was watching the movies, but it was crocheting, which also soothes my soul. I forced myself to not check my cell phone every few minutes.

I don’t have many Christmas decorations up yet. That itch was there, along with thinking I needed to figure out Christmas cards, plan a Red Hat meeting and of course shop all the red-hot deals that were being sent to my phone. What was I missing?

What are we really looking for with the holiday season? Is it something we are missing in our lives the rest of the year? If it is, what do we need to do to simply be in the season we need in our lives all year long?