rabbit holes and other distractions

My kids pulled out my seventh grade and college freshman yearbooks the other night, and Father G (who attended the same college) and I had a walk through our memories.  I have been trying for months to remember the name of that art history major in the intensive French class my junior year.  She was the year ahead of me, and always arrived at class so tailored and fresh looking, quiet, thoughtful, and yet quick to appreciate humor.  She lived glamorously off-campus, in a house with other impeccably, tastefully, and expensively dressed art history majors.  It has bothered me that I remember so many details about her life and dress--Her wool skirts! The dark neutrals she wore! Did she just come from filming a scene in Dead Poets Society?--but not her name.  What was her name?!  I thought a flip through the yearbook would remind me.  Of course someone living so rebelliously off-campus wouldn't make a point to have her portrait in the yearbook, but my husband remembered that he kept all of the paper Facebooks from his years at our school.  A little root through one of them, and I now know her name, but what a ridiculous amount of attention I gave to this silly question!

Additionally, in a yearbook photo of a college track race, I spotted a random alumna from my high school, Megan, competing against some women from my college (who were the focus of the photo).  Since I don't remember which college she attended, and google has been unhelpful on that front, I'll never know if that really is Megan in the photo or just my imagination.  It's maddening.

The entire time these thoughts were taking up valuable real estate in my brain, I was wondering why.  Why did I bother to give these thoughts room to grow, and why did it even matter what this woman's name was?  Or where Megan attended college? Who or what didn't receive needed consideration while my mind was dwelling on these questions?  It's something that didn't really deserve my time or investigation.  I've been contemplating thoughts recently, especially in light of the Charlotte Mason concept of "thought turning."  While the practice of "thought turning" isn't specifically Orthodox, I find it aligns with what I read in Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives and many other Orthodox writings: we must choose and change our thoughts.  I also find that, of all the spiritual practices I pursue, turning my thoughts, refocusing my attention, and avoiding mental rabbit holes are the most challenging.  Lord, have mercy!  Second to improving my own mind and soul in that respect, is helping my children to do the same.  It's a constant test.  More mercy, Lord!

Tangentially related to this (ha) is my latest finished project.  If I had just plugged away at actually knitting instead of checking my progress every few rows, it would have been finished weeks ago.  The pattern is Musselburgh, by Ysolda Teague, knit in Malabrigo Sock held with a mystery remnant of alpaca laceweight (and some Alpaca Cloud Lace when that got used up).  It's warm and soft and squishy, in the smallest gauge and largest size, perfect for my husband who prefers his hats to be windproof.  I know I started knitting it sometime in July, because I remember sneakily working on it in the back of the van during our trip to Michigan.  My age has started to tell; working on that black yarn, I had to use a flashlight to check my decrease row more than once.  The black was challenging to photograph, too, because it eats the light and everything else in the photo gets totally blown out.  The black is even darker in person than in the above photos.  Sweet T slipped the hat on and modeled it with pleasure as soon as I'd bound off, and then I tucked it away until Christmas.  T is the child that enjoys watching knitting podcasts with me, getting excited about all the Vlogmas videos available.  He was disappointed that I hadn't purchased a yarn advent calendar this year.  Maybe next year, T.  It would be fun to open a little gift every day, wouldn't it?

This afternoon I need to finish laundering all our woollens.  And make a spreadsheet of our Christmas Card addressees.  Good times!