Theo's Questions

In the style of Tuesday 4, I've asked Theo to give me four questions to answer with essentially no parameters. Just like with Ward, I gave the example of asking, "What did you have for breakfast?" And just like his father, he came up with a completely different set of questions than I suggested. Which by the way, require more thought than Ward's did. Here it goes. Join me if you'd like.

My mother was in a nursing
home at this point.

1. What's one good aspect of something bad that happened recently? The first thing that comes to mind is that I spilled something on the kitchen floor. Very annoying, but when I was done cleaning it up, the floor was cleaner than it had been. A good aspect of a bad thing.

On a more serious note, my mother suffered from dementia during the last years of her life. It was a heart-wrenching thing to watch as the changes happened. But also while watching her, I learned that there is happiness to be had during all phases of life. Even when she was no longer able to communicate with words, she still expressed happiness in everyday things such as the warmth of the sun or the smell of bacon. She would do this with a little smile or a glimmer in her eye. Definitely a very valuable lesson in a difficult situation.

In general, bad things provide an opportunity to learn, always a good thing.

2. What's one bad aspect of something good that happened recently? About a year and a half ago, I got a new position at the library. The new position gave me an increased salary, as well as the ability to do more creative things. However, now I  have to work some nights and weekends, making it harder to coordinate time with Ward.

 3. What was the last new or novel thing you saw?

When we were visiting Annapolis last week, we found parking meters where you could only pay with an app on your phone. Cash or credit cards were not accepted. We couldn't get the app to load, so we had to drive around until we could find another place to park. During this search, we saw more parts of the city than we might have otherwise. I guess this is another example of a bad thing/good thing.

Last year, our first good snow was in Dec.

4. What is something you haven't seen for a while?

I haven't seen snow in a while, and that's a good thing. But that may change soon.

In general, I found these questions difficult to answer. They don't sound that hard, but I drew a blank on every one of them, I thought about them for a full day before I could come up with any answers. That makes me think, I'm not a good observer of my everyday life (I just realized that's the tag line on my blog. That needs some more exploration.)

And not to mention, I got confused with the first two. I switched my answers a couple of times before I got the right combination of bad/good, good/bad. Sometime, I will have to write my own questions and I will start with, "What did you have for breakfast?" :)

Until next time...