23 Sunday Dec 2012
For a brief moment, I escaped from the hustle and bustle of the season-to-be-jolly and met my dear friend at Allied Arts. A peaceful, beautiful place filled with photo ops, gorgeous gardens and handmade crafts. (Plus, all sales benefit the Stanford Children’s hospital. Yay!)
Sharing my moment of peace with you and wishing you wonderful holidays!
P.S. I’m so grateful I bought my rain boots. Definitely getting my money’s worth this week with lots of rain and flooding here!
16 Sunday Dec 2012
This was not the post I planned today.
It was not the day that anyone at Sandy Hook Elementary had planned, either.
What has helped me most, a quote from Mr. Rodgers:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ― Fred Rogers
I choose to see and remember the helpers and the heroes. To let the love and strength of their actions fill my heart, so that I may focus on sending love to the families of that community. Because hearts filled with love, and actions of love, are ultimately the only thing that will heal our world and everyone in it.
09 Sunday Dec 2012
Rainy day puddles + first pair of rain boots since my childhood = happy me!
For years I have struggled with the idea of buying rain boots. (“Struggled?” you ask. Seriously?) Okay, clearly, not my biggest life struggle, but struggle is still accurate. Primarily because I am money conscious and practical, and I do not enjoy shopping – especially for clothes. (My favorite thing about Star Trek? Everyone wore those “unitard” clothes. That would be awesome! No more worries about what to wear or what fashion law I’m breaking every morning. Think of how stress-free that would be! Think of the time savings! I’m convinced that unitards are the reason they had the time and energy to explore the galaxy. Oh when, oh when, will this happy future come? Sigh… I digress…)
My practical brain says, “it doesn’t rain here that often, so rain boots might not get regular use”. But it also knows that when it does rain, we often get flooding because our area is just not prepared for heavy rain. Which means puddles. Which means soggy feet. Which means cold, miserable me. But is it worth it to have a pair of shoes just for those days? I haven’t had rain boots since I was a kid. Until now…
Until I saw the happiest boots on earth, in my size, on sale. Even still, I kept them in the box with the receipt, waiting to see if we’d get enough rain this season to make them a worthwhile expenditure. (And secretly convinced that the mere act of my finally buying rain boots would bring on the driest winter in our history.) And then it rained. It stormed. It flooded. It puddled! And I put my boots to the test. Let me tell you… It was AWESOME! The parking lot at my son’s school flooded – several inches deep. But I was unstoppable. No more time wasted dodging puddles for me, the shortest distance between two points was once again a straight line. And walking through puddles? Oh. So. FUN!! No more standing back, trying to keep my feet dry while my kid splashed and jumped in puddles. Now, we can splash together.
Yes, I’m a rain boot believer now. I wish I could buy a pair for everyone and there would be peace, joy and happiness in the world – at least on rainy days.
And now, I’m curious… what makes your rainy days better? (Now that I have rain boots, I don’t want to miss out on any more rainy day fun. I have a lot of catching up to do!)
02 Sunday Dec 2012
Last weekend, by some magical alignment of the universe, there was a extreme negative low tide, during the daytime, on a weekend, a weekend that we didn’t already have commitments, and I received the notification in time and I got my family ready to go and we made it! (See? I told you it was magic!)
There’s nothing like walking across the ocean floor on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, without scuba gear. Everywhere you look, the treasure of the ocean – miles of green kelp and sea grass, colorful multitudes of anemones and starfish, muscles holding tight to every solid surface – were alive, within reach and beautifully displayed.
Nature is my favorite kind of magic.
Enjoy!
27 Tuesday Nov 2012
Thankful
At Thanksgiving and always, I am thankful for so many things – my friends, my family, for having “enough”, for the worries I don’t have, for the opportunities I do have, for having a long list of things to be thankful for. But most of all, I’m thankful for every minute I get to spend with my (not so little) guy – especially when we’re hiking together.
On Thanksgiving and always, may you all have more things to be thankful for than you have to worry about.
21 Wednesday Nov 2012
I chaperoned my son’s class field trip and discovered another treasure in my back yard Hidden Villa. It’s an organic farm and nature preserve, full of animals, creativity, gardens, hiking and well, their description is much better:
Hidden Villa is a nonprofit educational organization that uses its organic farming, wilderness, and community to teach and provide opportunities to learn about the environment and social justice. Hidden Villa stretches over 1600 acres of open space in Los Altos Hills, CA.
In other words, a photographer’s dream! I’m looking forward to going back with my camera, and without 60 children. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures I was able to capture this time.
12 Monday Nov 2012
And now that I’ve shared that “Nightmare Before Christmas” earworm (you’re welcome!) here are some pictures from my Halloween – including a rare photo of me. (Hint: I am not a Power Ranger.)
Being a Halloween fan, I hear a lot of negative “interesting” comments about Halloween. As a nod to the recent elections, I will now share my responses to those comments in Argument/Rebuttal format:
Argument: Halloween has gotten too commercial.
Rebuttal: Yes. Yes, it has. Although, I admit, I prefer that to Halloween disappearing completely and all the focus being on Christmas. (Since the stores put up Christmas stuff in August, that may still happen!) But you don’t have to buy lots of stuff to have fun on Halloween. Especially if you like to make stuff – there are oodles of fun decorations you can make. And jack-o-lanterns are good, cheap, non-commercial fun!
Argument: No one comes to my neighborhood for Halloween.
Rebuttal: This is truly a bummer. I’m fortunate to live in a neighborhood where LOTS of people go trick-or-treating; we get about 200 people at our house. I LOVE standing outside and watching hoards of people in costume trick-or-treating, parents with little kids, big kids in groups experiencing the freedom of running around the neighborhood at night. Everyone is happy and chatty and saying ”thank you” and “have fun” and “Happy Halloween!” I wish our neighborhood was like this all the time; I don’t even know or see most of my neighbors and I’ve lived in the same house for over a decade.
Aside from the fact that we live on a busy street, I think the main reason we have so many trick-or-treaters is that we decorate. And our neighbor up the street REALLY decorates! He transforms the front of his house into a graveyard and his porch into a séance room – at a level that rivals Disney’s Haunted Mansion. Several other people on our street make it clear that they are open for business for Halloween – with jack-o-lanterns, etc. It’s lovely.
My advice:
If you do these things, word will spread that you have the Halloween spirit, your heart will grow by three-sizes that day and over time trick-or-treaters will appear.
Argument: These kids are not from my neighborhood; people are driving them here just to go trick-or-treating! Some of them aren’t wearing costumes!
Rebuttal: So what?
Maybe no one gives out candy in their neighborhood. Maybe their neighborhood isn’t safe. Maybe they don’t have money to buy candy and treats during the year. Maybe they don’t have money to buy costumes. Are they being nice? (You don’t have to give candy to people who aren’t nice. Although, I’ve never had a problem with this.) Are they having fun? Good! That’s what Halloween is about. I wish I could solve the world’s problems by giving out candy from my front porch at night. But until then, at least I can at least make one night a little happier once a year.
So… give out your candy, enjoy the “HAPPY” in Halloween, be glad you have a neighborhood that’s safe enough to trick-or-treat in. When the candy’s gone, put a nice note on your door, take in your jack-o-lanterns, and turn out the porch light. (And make a note to yourself buy extra candy next year!) Then watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” – it’s a Happy Halloween classic!
And now my question for you… what are your favorite memories/traditions from Halloween?
04 Sunday Nov 2012
Bowling was one of my recent “family fun” experiments. My son had never bowled before and I’d bowled only once. (Years ago. It was a required “fun” team-building event for work. Ugh. I was so stressed out about having to learn to bowl in front of the whole office and about all the work that was piling up on my desk while I was having “fun” bowling. I was miserable.) Guess what? Our family loves bowling together!
But what I love most of all, is my son’s unique bowling technique. He is the Zen bowler. He hurls the ball with all his might (occasionally so hard that it goes into another lane – oops!). But once he releases the ball, he turns around and walks away with a big smile on his face. Seriously. He doesn’t wait to see which pins are knocked down. He doesn’t try to use Jedi powers to “help” the ball knock down the pins. (Yes, I am guilty of that.) He doesn’t try to steer the ball kinetically by twisting and contorting his body in the direction he wants it to go like most bowlers. (FYI… this makes for some hilarious people-watching opportunities!)
It occurred to me that his Zen bowling technique is the key to a peaceful, productive life. Instead of sacrificing a night’s sleep, or a day’s productivity, by letting my brain chew on a problem that I can’t do anything about, I need to just know that I gave the ball my best throw, forget about it and deal with the remaining pins on the next throw.
Simple.
And to think I’ve been trying to learn meditation, when I really just needed to have family bowling night. Who knew?
So now I’m curious… what unexpected life lessons have you learned from an activity or hobby?
28 Sunday Oct 2012
Funky!
It was one of those days. I was just “blah”, not for one specific reason, but for a bunch of little reasons. Any other day, those little reasons would have glided off me like water on a duck’s back. But on this particular day, all those little reasons combined and stuck to me like tar and feathers. They were a force that defies both coffee and logic, like – “Hey, there are worse things in the world”, “Count your blessings”, “But it’s a beautiful cloudy day; you can make soup!” – logic and coffee usually works for me. To put it in technical terms, I was in a “funk”.
I was sick of this funk, but all my attempts to escape it had failed – which only added to my funk. (Curse you, diabolical funk logic!) Later that afternoon, I picked my son up from his appointment and he decided he wanted to play in the dirt, looking for special rocks, before going home. Which was fine, it’s one of his favorite activities. But it’s not one that I’m including in and it’s one that can go on for hours without end and there was nothing around for me to do. Zip. Nada. Nothing. This did not relieve my funk.
Until… I saw one leaf, alone on the dirt – one small, star-shaped, bright-fall-red leaf. Without thinking I reached for my phone and started taking pictures, playing with different camera app settings until I got this one. And magically, the blahs fell away, like leaves from a tree. Saved, at last, by a funky leaf picture.
21 Sunday Oct 2012
Special
My 7 yo has a collection of “special” rocks. And by special, I mean any rock he finds. Even gravel. Even rocks that are actually a clump of dried mud. Why? “Because they are all special, Mom…”
He collects rocks everywhere, especially at the beach. I have a hard time limiting his collection, (especially at the beach, where I am usually collecting sea glass and can’t really make a good argument for not collecting). So I put his rocks in a “special” basket on the front porch. And, when the basket is full, I admit (not proudly) that some of the rocks get “set free” to be found again.
But last weekend, my son created this bit of awesome happiness from some of his special rocks – just for me! The faces make me laugh out loud and the “love” fills my heart with joy, every time I seem them! Now, I finally see what he sees; what was so special about these “ordinary” rocks.
And now I want to make a bunch more of these special, smiling rocks and set them free. (Because I’m never setting mine free – they’re way too special!) Wouldn’t it be amazing to be going along your ordinary day and come across a rock smiling at you? Now that would be pretty special.
