THE CITY I LIVE IN seems to be in a competition with Chicago for the title of "Windy City." We regularly get high winds blowing in over the flat prairie. This wind has made our home life pretty interesting.
1. When we have a combination of snow and wind, we almost always end up with a 2-3 foot snow drift covering our driveway. The crazy thing is that the yard will be nearly snow free. For some reason the way our house is situated causes the wind to pick the snow up from the yard and drop it into the driveway.
2. We have had two trampolines over the years. The first one blew away in the middle of the night. The wind picked it up and carried it all the way down the street, past 5 or 6 houses, and dropped it into a pond where it presumably still is today. As the trampoline traveled down the street, it left pieces of itself along the way in the neighbors' yards. We had to pay $160 to repair our neighbor's fence. We tied the second trampoline down firmly, but it eventually wore out from use, so we got rid of it.
3. A few years ago my parents gave the kids a basketball goal for Christmas. It was the kind that you put sand in to weigh it down, as opposed to the kind that you cement into the ground. Even with 300 pounds of sand, the wind regularly blew it over. We had to be careful to not park the car near it on windy days. Eventually one of the metal rods that held the goal up, snapped clean through because of the pressure from the wind.
When my husband and I woke up one recent windy morning, we both had the same thought. We simultaneously experienced a moment of worry, only to breathe a sigh of relief when we remembered that we had nothing left in the yard to blow away.
We laughed together, and Christopher said, "That was like phantom worry." It was kind of like the stories you hear about amputees who still feel sensations from their missing limbs. Or maybe what more of us can relate to, the feeling of your phone vibrating when it really isn't.
It made me think, how many of the things we worry about are even based in reality? Maybe a huge portion of our worry is only a matter of habit. Maybe we simply need to retrain ourselves to think differently. What do you think?
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