I went for my annual the other day and all is AOK, so of course I am grateful for that. There is nothing better than a clean bill of health. Plus, the upside of age: there are certain things I no longer need to be checked for: I’ve aged out! Grateful Grateful grateful.

After discussing words last week, I chose nice for my word this week. Here’s how it appears in the books that I’m reading:

  1. Fiery, driven, and bright, she’d decided long ago that having a man in her life was never essential, more like something nice to pick up when she needed to and put back down when she didn’t.Candice Carty-Williams
  2. When a nice family showed an interest in Fashion Eclipse, Martha let her go to them. Geraldine Brooks
  3. He sounds nice over the phone. Javier Zamora
  4. They just make nice. Julie Cameron
  5. Mary Lawson’s A Town Called Solace is a nice example of the latter, with three protagonists, a mix of first person tense and third person past tense and, as a bonus, some interesting treatment of time.
  6. We’ve mistaken being nice with self sacrifice. Pedram Shojai
  7. Dust jackets were invented to protect nice fabric, at least until a buyer got the book home. Jane Mount
  8. Our heart doesn’t tell us what is nice; it tells us what is true. Eveline Helmink
  9. We should try to stay in a good mood to the extent that we can, and be nice to people. Fumio Sasaki
  10. Given that joy is often imagined as the result of some accomplishment or acquisition- something nice you get out there and do; something nice you get yourself. Ross Gay
  11. Men who paraded around as nice guys but secretly harbored incel thoughts. Carolyn Huynh
  12. Have a nice day. Gu Byeong-Mo
  13. I had nice clothes she recalled. Hugh Eakin
  14. She had an unmatched ability to cut to the heart of the matter in the nicest possible way. Caroline Kennedy

Here’s how I’m thinking about nice:

  1. When used ironically, nice can be awesome in a scene
  2. The majority of the times I saw nice in a book, I realized that it told me nothing about what it actually meant- it’s a throwaway word
  3. I am going to try to eliminate it from my writing- it will be harder to never say it
Ode by Elizabeth Alexander

I love all the mom bodies at this beach,
the tummies, the one-piece bathing suits,
the bosoms that slope, the wide nice bottoms,
thigh flesh shirred as gentle wind shirrs a pond.

So many sensible haircuts and ponytails!
These bodies show they have grown babies, then
nourished them, woken to their cries, fretted
at their fevers. Biceps have lifted and toted

the babies now printed on their mothers.
"If you lined up a hundred vaginas,
I could tell you which ones have borne children,"
the midwife says. In the secret place or

In sunlight at the beach, our bodies say
This is who we are, no, This is what
we have done and continue to do.
We labor in love. We do it. We mother.

26 thoughts on “Gratitude and Mindfulness: 11/5/22”

  3. Yes, a *nice* part of healthcare is that aging out of specific exams- only to be replaced by others and the reminders of lifestyle changes! Nice is such a wishy-washy word, and throwaway as you note. I use it too much still.

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  4. I agree. NICE is a throwaway word with too many meanings and uses. So BE nice, MAKE nice and even IT HAS A nice taste will be dropped from my vocabulary also. I will support you. Nice reading your posts.

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  5. Nice… a word to me that is bla. It always meant just ok. Nothing special. So I’ve never liked the word. I remember asking my sister while growing up, how an outfit looked. If she said nice, I’d change it. Because nice isn’t good or great or fabulous. It’s just ok. A Non descriptive word.
    Yes, it’s better than the words terrible or awful. But it’s not a particularly special word. The only thing nice is good for, in my opinion, is when you are asked a question and a descriptive answer might hurt someone’s feelings. Example: How does my hair look? And you want to say it’s a really bad haircut but you come up with , it’s nice. In that instance, an ok , bla, word can prevent someone from feeling badly. So that’s a nicer thing to say than, OMG your haircut is awful!

    I don’t think I use it very often. It’s a lazy word that shows or tells nothing of consequence.

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      1. Thanks for asking. I’m not feeling so great. But I’m hoping that will Improve in another week or so. Right now Im Just trying to block out the pain. And I’ll know more in about ten days what my next step in treatment will entail. One day at a time…I just hope this old body of mine keeps holding on. …cancer is not for sissies, that’s for sure.

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  10. Yes, YAY on being able to say goodbye to some certain things as we age!! 🙂
    “Nice” is overused, you are right, and it really doesn’t describe anything. Crazy how we can get so used to using one certain word when there are so many other better ones out there.

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  12. Oh yes we do!
    I enjoyed the exercise you did in the prior week comparing all the various ways the same or similar words can be interpreted. Nice may have been one of them but just now I came up with another more personal interpretation I may play with at some point.
    The first guy I dated, who was 21 years old compared to my 16 at the time, used to compare the qualities of a nice Jewish girl to those of a good Jewish girl. Since he was so much more worldly than I was, and never got into specifics, I started to wonder which one I was. I’m sure he used one of them as double entendre.

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