July's 10 Thoughts on Whole Living

1.  Some of the best inner journeys start with the passport-stamped kind.

2.  When our stories start to sound predictable, it's time for a rewrite.

3.  Overrated: multi-tasking.  Underrated: unitasking.

4.  Summer tomatoes: the universe's way of reminding us that good-for-you food tends to be delicious.

5.  Midwives--of babies, ideas, peace--do amazing stuff.

6.  Expanding the mind: always a cool thing--so what if it sounds a little too 60's-trippy.

7.  Perpetually good advice from James Brown: "Get up offa that thing--and dance 'til you feel better."

8.  Running on a beach beats trudging on a treadmill every time.

9.  Ever notice how people brighten up when you recognize their efforts?

10.  There's a reason why nature is sometimes called Vitamin N.

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Maine Events

We are having a great time on vacation!  This trip has been wonderfully relaxing even though the weather has stopped cooperating.

I tried lobster mac and cheese for the first time, and I am hooked! Best ever.  Really.

Dave and I also were able to swim in the ocean for the first time ever in Maine.  Honestly, the freezing water was the one thing I always secretly disliked about Maine, but that has now changed.  The water was 67 degrees on Sunday, and it felt great!

We did some damage at the outlets, but I will share those purchases in another post.  I have only  read one book so far, and I planned to get 2-3 done so I'd better get reading. I hope you have a great week!

Weekly Wrap Up

TGIF!  Summer vacation begins today, and I am pretty happy about it.  Admittedly, I am easily bored so I will have to work a bit harder to stay entertained.  As I mention in a previous post, we will be traveling quite a bit so that should help.

Highlights of the week:

1.  We've been to Moreau Lake twice this week!  I love this gem that is only 10 minutes from our home.  The doggies and I love to swim there.  There are also hiking trails, camp sites, and picnic tables for lunch.  We buy the season pass for $65, and it is the best money we spend all summer.

2.  I am just a bit behind on my reading goal of 50 books, but I know I will catch up this coming week. I have read 23 books so far this year!  Unfortunately, my writing has taken a bit of a back seat, but I promise I will try to write more.

3.  I treated myself to a maple sugar exfoliation and back massage yesterday.  It was a new treatment that I hadn't tried before, but it was pretty enjoyable.  The only problem with massages is that they never last long enough!

4.  Today I am taking a spinning class at the Saratoga Cycling Studio (http://www.saratogacyclingstudio.com/).  This great place is owner by one of my gal pals, and I love taking classes there.  Angela is such a motivator, and she gets us through some tough rides.  After that, I am meeting up with my friend Rebecca for lunch.  Tonight is my first class' graduation!  I am excited to see them get their diplomas.  I can't believe that I've been teaching for 6 whole years.

5.  We booked our annual camping trip!  We decided to go at the end of August instead of the end of September.  It will be nice that we will likely be able to swim, which we definitely cannot do in September!

Have a great weekend!

Wisdom

Confessions of a Stay at Home Wife

I stayed home today to handle our washing machine appointment.   I am appalled by how unproductive I've been today.  Here is what I've done:

Wake up at 7:30 am, breakfast
G-chat with my bff starting at 8:30 am until the present moment, 2:30 pm
Took the dogs swimming
Went on the Nest and FB
Online shopped
Vacuumed the house
Got the mail
Booked a camping trip


I am bored.  This is not for me.

Travel Post!

This is a big year of travel for me, and I am loving it! In fact, I have traveled more this year than any other in my life.

I visited...

Manassas, VA in March

Pittsboro, NC in April

Rockville, MD in April

Cape Cod, MA in May

Where I am going...

Wells, ME in June

Fort Jennings, OH in July

San Francisco, CA in August

Lake Tahoe, NV in August

Eight states in one year is pretty good! What is even better is that four of these states I have never been to.  I love traveling, and I am so glad we are making it a priority again.  Happy trails!

Weekly Wrap Up

Another crazy week!

1.  Tuesday was the last day of classes at school.  The kids weren't tooooo zany!  It is hard to believe how quickly this school year passed, and even harder to believe that summer vacation is just around the corner.

2.  I am knee-deep in correcting exams.  I should finish today and have all of my grades submitted.  This is always a great feeling.  A sense of completion.  The finality of year 6.  Where has the time gone?

3.  I am making progress in my book Choosing Gratitude.  I find that book so thought-provoking and inspiring.  I can only read a bit at a time since it is so much to digest.  I will try to write up some of the key points that I have covered so far.

4.  One week from tomorrow, we will be in Maine! What's not to love about that!?

5.  I will be working at the pool tomorrow!  I am not starting for the season just yet, but they needed someone for opening day.  I really like working there so I said YES!

Happy Friday!

The Opposite of Lonliness

You may have heard this story in the news, but I wanted to share it anyway.  Enjoy!

Marnia Keegan died tragically in a car accident, days after graduating from Yale. Before she died, she wrote of the connections that keep us together.

The piece below was written by Marina Keegan ’12 for a special edition of the Yale Daily News distributed at the class of 2012′s commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves…” “if I’d…” “wish I’d…”

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

June's Thoughts on Whole Living

1.  It is important to occasionally go out on a limb--especially if you expect to get the best fruit.

2.  Walt Whitman may have said it best: "If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred."

3.  Think about places or environments that bring out the best in you.  Now figure out a way to visit them more often.

4.  Dwelling on small joys is more rewarding than obsessing over little annoyances.

5.  File this under cliche but true: The quirky things that make you "you"--even the so-called flaws--may turn out to be assets.

6.  When we look after our health today, tomorrow starts to look much brighter.

7.  Time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time.

8.  Those tiny changes we make in our personal worlds can be stepping-stones to big changes we make in the wider world.

9.  The upside to grand failures: They make great stories.

10.  Burgers and hot dogs can be part of a balanced diet.  Yes, really.

(www.wholeliving.com)

Upcoming Reads

As summer approaches, I get immense joy and excitement out of selecting my summer reading list.  I recently earned an Amazon gift card so I was able to stock my Kindle with a few new reads.  Here is what is on my list so far:

Of course, I am also looking forward to the arrival of: 

It will be delivered on Saturday, and I am SO excited!  This gives me the motivation to finish up That Old Cape Magic!

An Odd Realization

As I was driving home from work tonight, my CD player shuffled to a Christmas album.  As I let it play, I started thinking about snow.  Initially, I was happy with our snowless winter.  Upon deeper thought, I feel like I missed it.  I actually thought, "hmm it must be going to snow soon."  That is a crazy thought since it is June, but I feel like I missed out on a real winter!

We normally have 2 or 3 or 4 snow days in any given winter.  This year, we took them in May since we had only one snow storm all winter.  While a 5-day Memorial Day weekend was nice, I think I prefer my snow days the traditional way.  There is nothing like waking up extra-early to watch the news to see if our schools are closed.  Even though I am too excited to sleep on those mornings, I head back to bed just because I can.  I think I appreciate real snow days more because they are a surprise.  They feel like a small gift from the universe, a day to stay in and not feel guilty about it.

Here are some pictures of snow days past, in case you forgot what it is like...

Fen loves snow days too!

Yard Updates

We have been spending most of our free time working outside to get our gardens up and running.  Here are some of our newest additions:

This is our rose bush.  It is the biggest its ever been so we added a trellis to help it grow.

This is our strawberry plant!  Right now, it has almost 10 berries!  We have already picked 4 from the previous batch.  This is an ever-producing plant so we should have berried through November.  

Dave is VERY excited about this one.

I do not remember what we planted in here, but the only thing missing is new mulch.

This is columbine.  I am hoping the dogs don't destroy it since it is right 

where they do their guard duty thing.  We shall see!

Weekly Wrap Up

What a fast week!  I only worked 3 days, and as you know, days off go by much faster than working days.

1.  On Sunday, my sister, brother-in-law and nephew came to visit!  We went to the lake, and James got to try toe dipping.  We had a nice picnic lunch and enjoyed the day.  We brought the dogs for the first swim of the season, and they also loved it.

2. We spent Memorial Day with family as well.  We first visited my parents and grandparents and then went to see Dave's parents and grandparents.  We had a BBQ complete with burgers, pasta salad, and strawberry rhubarb cobbler (made by Dave).  It was great to see everyone.

3.  I tried a new spinning class at my gym with a different instructor, and I did not enjoy it.  She talked the whole time about her life instead of listening to music.  The good news is that the class was only half an hour, and I won't be taking it again.  Luckily Zumba was extra-fun this week to make up for it.

4.  We have had 3 contractors come to look at our solarium/3-seasons room project.  We have one more coming next week.  We have been getting mixed ideas, but we really like the proposal by the team we met with yesterday.  We will see how their estimate is and how it compares to next week's team.  I am excited that this project may get off the ground!

5.  We have been working on our gardens quite a bit this year.  We bought 5 new plants from the Farmer's Market last weekend and brought a ton more back from Dave's parents garden.  I plan to photograph our gardens over the weekend so I will update.  We are also still thinking about trying our hand at a vegetable garden, but its location would be disturbed if we move ahead with our 3-season room.  Time will tell!