Get Over Yourself

This morning, I clicked on one of those tempting articles that MSN offers before it lets me into my hotmail account. The header was "Get Over It - 6 Tips for Letting Go". No earth-shattering revelations there, but one of the things plays off of what I had intended to write about this morning anyway.

Tip one from the article: Distract yourself.
Put on music and dance, scrub the bathtub spotless, whatever engrosses you—for at least 10 minutes. "That's about the minimum time needed to break a cycle of thoughts," says Nolen-Hoeksema, who's been studying rumination for more than 20 years.

I tend to ruminate a lot. I am a ruminator. Not a ruminant which is a hooved animal who chews a cud. Hmmmmmm, perhaps that's the derivation of that word, ruminate -- to chew things over in your mind, no? :) I know, I know... I'm hung up on words and word origins. Annnnnnyway....

The other day I was once again ruminating about some personal issues that I can't seem to let go of and I spied a cute little clear glass elephant that my husband had just bought me at a thrift store. He was sitting beside the sink waiting for a bath (the elephant, not my husband), so I took his label off, scrubbed him up well & took him to the study to join my collection of glass and crystal animal figures and paperweights. He stood out like a sore thumb.

He was so clean and shiny and sparkly he made everyone else look dingy by comparison. I started loading my own little glass menagerie into my t-shirt-turned-apron and prepared a sink full of hot, soapy water. It took two trips to get them all and then I carefully washed and rinsed and dried each one.

I spent time thinking about where I'd gotten this one, who had given me that one, and then made another two trips with loaded t-shirt to put them back on the shelf where they all looked so glorious I couldn't help snapping a photo.



I didn't even realize it, but for those 30 minutes or so, my mind was on the animals and then how I wanted to share them on my blog, and not on my personal issues that had been so obsessing me earlier. That was a nice feeling.

I was also a bit surprised to find that this one little Heisey glass horse was giving me a toothy grin ---


I had no idea he cared. :)