July 11th, 2019
I am sitting at my desk in my office at Duke to write this first entry in a diary. Its 8:37 am. I’m going to give it at least 10 minutes. I’m not sure how many entries I will make, but I wanted to start because I want to be able to look back and read what I was doing and thinking on a particular day.
Yesterday, the most memorable moment was when Keira and I were swimming with Alexandra and Harvey. I relaxed in the pool, looked at the blue sky, and warmly appreciated where I was, with my family, and how lucky I was to have a family and to be there.
Harvey kept jumping in the pool so that the water was over his head and I had to help him get above water or he would drown. I guess he is either very brave or just unaware how close to death he is. He must have ended up drinking some pool water because he barfed up some cherries and stuff into the pool. I was pretty grossed out, but tried to push the barf into the filter hole in the side of the pool. I had to pick up the barf cherries by hand and throw them in the hole because they were too big to be pushed with the water.
I guess this is what kids are good for, just getting over your feelings about something and getting it done. It’s amazing the amount of things that one cares about that kids help you discover really don’t matter. For example, making a mess. I used to let Harvey’s messy eating habits get to me, and sometimes they still do, but it feels better to think “what’s the worst that could happen? I’ll just clean up the mess afterwards.”
Another memorable moment from yesterday was meeting Keira at the tile shop to pick out tiles for our new house. We quickly decided on a Carrera marble-like porcelain tile for the floor of master bath, and ended up going with the same tile in all the bathrooms. I feel the tile is not perfect somehow, but I didn’t see any better tiles there. For the laundry room we picked out a grey slate-like tile. The kitchen backsplash is still somewhat undecided due to concerns about matching the white color of the tile with that of the quartz countertop. Keira currently likes a light grey color, so we’ll probably go with that.
I guess what was memorable about the shop was all the different tiles there, hundreds to thousands, but we only saw maybe 6 or 7 total. I found myself wanting to see the rest of the tiles. Maybe there was something better. But the tile person said she was trying to keep us in budget, so presumably some of the other tile options were more expensive. Actually we were hardly discussing price at all, which was quite a different experience from the visit to Fergusons. Maybe we could have chose cheaper tiles if we had known which were the cheapest. Maybe she showed us the expensive ones. I actually have no idea! It’s surprising to me I didn’t think about that more at the time and am only realizing it as I write this.
Actually, what I was thinking was that the tile shop is an allegory for life. I did ask to see a few more tiles besides the marble-like one, but I ended up going with the original. Before seeing options, I felt like maybe I was missing out. But after seeing other options, I felt that the original was really the best. It’s weird that simply seeing some options can decrease the anxiety we feel about our choice. How do we know it’s the best if we don’t see options? The reality is there is an infinity of options, and if we seek to find the best, we will not be able to enjoy what we have.
It’s 8:53 am.