Archive for the ‘Self Care’ Category
L is for letting go
Posted in Authenticity, Beauty, Celebration, Connections, Family, Gratitude, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Love, Memories, Relationships, Self Care on April 18, 2013 | 4 Comments »
B is for Back
Posted in Gratitude, Health, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Self Care on March 25, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Brin and I have found a Chiropractic office that is FAB-U-LOUS! Dr Andreas is new to Back to Health so my timing was serendipitous. He has patiently explained my ex-rays, treatment plan, why and what he is doing as he adjusts my back and neck. I am thrilled to have found the entire staff at Back to Health and if you are local I highly recommend them. You know that feeling of belonging you get when you’re in exactly the right place at the right time? That’s been my experience here—I feel deeply cared for and that my whole health is truly essential to these doctors.
O is for one little word
Posted in Inspiration, Laura, Lifeology, Our words, Self Care on January 20, 2013 | 3 Comments »
My word for 2013. Jeff’s artwork!
I …
Posted in Honoré, Lifeology, Self Care on January 15, 2013 | 1 Comment »
…am woefully behind in terms of getting in step with 2013! This year, my get up and go has been practically non-existent. On both ends of each day since we rang in the new year I‘ve made plans and lists and promises to: do this, be that, just start, finish up, begin again, renew, jump-start, refresh, re-engage, disengage, schedule, unschedule, create, recreate, reflect, reverb, and chastised myself over and over again for not following through.
…certainly have many ideas to explore, projects to push forward, things to celebrate and do, places to go, and people to enjoy spending time with…
…am not exactly sure why I find myself in this gyration, this whirligig; I just am. Not a complaint, merely sharing a glimpse of where I am at this point in time.
When I started composing this post, I had not a clue about what I’d write, certainly not what I have written.
And now that I have, I think this is what I needed to do, ’cause as my mother was fond of saying: “time to get crackin’ kiddie, time’s awastin.” I feel better now. I guess I just needed to acknowledge and put it out there.
Cheers~
One Little Word (OLW) 2013 ~ mother
Posted in Celebration, Connections, Gratitude, Kathy, Lifeology, Self Care on January 1, 2013 | 1 Comment »
That’s right. Mother…the verb, the noun, the proper noun. I printed out the visual thesaurus for the front of my album as I have for the last 3 years. I was pleased. It seemed to hold plenty of words for intentions and actions for the year. Then, I went to my American Heritage Dictionary. Glory be…there was a treasure for my OLW work. NOTE: I need to start reading that thing again. Words/meanings/joys.
As for the picture below, Samantha brought the branch + acorn to me after a particularly blustery September day. The acorn fell from its cap a few weeks in. We glued it back and pampered the thing through Thanksgiving…we even put it on our Thanksgiving table. Yes, we mothered it.
Let your word present itself to you or seek it out but find it…it wants to be found.
“From the tiny acorn…”
W is for words!
Posted in Authenticity, Celebration, Commitment, Laura, Lifeology, Our words, Self Care on December 30, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Every year Honoré, Kathy, and I share our ‘one little word’. We were inspired by Ali Edward’s blog posts and OLW workshop, she writes:
“And what do you do with this one little word?
You live with it. You invite it into you life. You let it speak to you. You might even follow where it leads. There are so many possibilities.”
Jeff has supported us and so many friends in our celebrating, envisioning, and living our word each year by making them out of wood on his scroll saw. He was a busy elf this year—aren’t there some good ones in the word-pile below!? Look for our posts in January when we share our one little words for 2013. Happiness & bright blessings for the new year to you and your loved ones dear reader. ♥
Do you have one little word for 2013?
summer celebrations
Posted in Books, Celebration, Family, Food, Just for fun, Laura, Lifeology, Movies, Self Care, Summer on June 23, 2012 | 2 Comments »
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I’m a summer baby born at the end of June. So this week I’ve been making birthday plans to celebrate all week long! One of the most important self-care lessons I have experienced has been the power of celebrating myself—how far I’ve come in a year and my vision for the upcoming year.
- Home cooked dinner tonight with my family and maybe a DVD. (The only night my family will not groan when I pick a DVD and say, Oh, not one of those movies!)
- Jeff and I will have dinner tomorrow in Orlando at Margaritaville with my dear friend Antonette and her mom (my adopted mom)!
- Monday at Crescent Beach and maybe St Augustine with Jeff—dinner at South Beach Grill and their famous peanut butter pie for dessert!
- Wednesday night you’ll find me celebrating with my WriteNiters at La Cuisine our local French restaurant.
It already feels like it’s been summer for several months here in Florida, hot and humid and except for exercise I’m pretty much an indoor gal during the summer. My first career was as a movie theatre manager for United Artists so the movies are synonymous with summertime and a great escape from the heat.
These are my top picks this summer:
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has an amazing cast including Judi Dench and Maggie Smith:
- Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
- The Dark Knight Rises
- The Odd Life of Timothy Green
- Hysteria
My family and I have been visiting a friend’s swimming pool at least a couple afternoons a week and it’s a refreshing way to sneak in those extra activity points. Another friend is building a saltwater pool which I can’t wait to try next month!
Reading at the beach is one of my all-time favorite activities (this does qualify as an activity right!?). Here are a few books on my list; hopefully the weather will cooperate and give a us a few cooler days to make it to the beach at least once a month. I’m an umbrella shade, picnic lunch, good book beach goer!
Summer novels:
A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Surprisingly there are three non-fiction titles:
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff
The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony
Happy summer—here’s to a slow and savor pace for your summertime celebrations!
summer is here…endings & beginnings
Posted in Celebration, Exercise, Funny Stuff, Just for fun, Laura, Lifeology, Self Care, Summer on May 18, 2012 | 1 Comment »
I was so busy last week I totally forgot to post about my day! Then I realized all three of us missed the week which I think is truly funny and so like each of us to be in synch like that.
This week on Wednesday my client’s online training group celebrated their learning and accomplishment over the past five months at a graduation ceremony in Maryland—I was with them in Spirit!
I treated myself to a day OFF in the middle of the week. I did go to CrossFit and helped Jeff briefly with a project plus we went for a swim, but the majority of the day I lost myself in a novel. Pure bliss to not have to stop and do something else except turn page after page after page. Ahhhhhhh, the life of a bibliophile for me. 
This period piece is set in Boston 1915 a year after our heroine lost her mother and sister on the Titanic. She seeks solace in a medium’s crystal ball and seemingly impossibly an opium den.
Summer is here and we’re swimming in a friend’s pool as often as possible—daily if our schedule allows. Relaxing, soothes sore muscles, and is great exercise. Here are pix of our pool companions!
They love playing the fishing game with a rubber frog on the end of a fishing pole!
The gang: Oscar Jr., Jim, Molly, Noodle, and Oscar Meyer
goin’ with the flow…
Posted in Commitment, Health, Laura, Lifeology, Self Care on May 1, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 30:
7:00am CrossFit (I’ve been participating for a year!)
8:30am Donate blood
11:00am -1:30pm Weight Watchers Open Hours
2:30pm NAP!
3:30pm Client call
Whew!
I’m not the ideal candidate for donating blood: my blood pressure runs very low like both my parents; my veins are small; I’m not a big fan of needles. The last time I gave blood it took fifteen minutes compared to the four or five it took each of my family members to donate. Brin and I came straight from our workout (see pix below) same as last time but my blood was flowing even slower this visit and they had to stop and dispose of the half bag I’d filled. I was so disappointed—its a painful process for me when it’s successful but to endure for nothing was sad. I may need to find another way to give back to my community and keep the love flowing.
STRONG is the new skinny!
Up, up, and away....I'm inching my way from a sixteen inch box to twenty inch.
rain and if only…
Posted in Earth Day, Honoré, Self Care on April 23, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Sunday it rained all day long…which was a very good thing since here in the Washington DC area, we have been running a rainfall deficit of at least 5.5 inches. Yesterday least .5 of an inch of that deficit was made up. So, what does one do on a rainy Sunday? Perhaps the question should be: what doesn’t one do?
7:20 am: I slept in (normally I’m up between 5:30 am – 6:00 am, 7 days a week) and greeted the day with my very favorite morning activity: Morning Solitude and Quiet Time (that I’ve dubbed MSQT). A cup of hot tea, a half glass of orange juice, a tall glass of ice water, a few assorted books and/or magazines to read, along with a few select blogs, and my journal. For several plus hours I just basked in the extra peace and quiet of Sunday morning.
10:00 am – 12:30 pm: In this house, we normally watch the Sunday morning political talk shows and yesterday was no different, except, my sister was in town – she lives in Miami – and she came by for a quick visit on her way to New Jersey. We had a somewhat decadent breakfast/brunch: bacon, omelette, steak fries and raspberry coffee cake, all very good.
1:00 pm – 5:30 pm: Several years ago, my favorite VAs – virtual assistants Laura and Antonette -introduced me to a game that they call If Only I had an Hour… and it works like this: at the beginning of a designated time, participants call into a central number and share with each other, plans for a project or to-do-list items that will be tackled in the next hour. After everyone has shared, we each go off on our industrious ways and for the next hour (that we’ve given ourselves) we do! At the end of the hour, we all gather by phone, report our progress and share plans for the next hour. And this is the way the game is played over the span of 4 -5 hours. Very inspiring and it is amazing what one can and does accomplish in an hour!
Ever since I’ve been retired, I’ve played this game with my friend Pat (and sometimes alone when a I’ve needed to jumpstart myself). Usually, we work on a fun knitting or quilting project that we’re both doing. We have found that playing If/Only goes along way towards doing (as in finishing) the project. Yesterday, we each made significant progress on block we’re each knitting for what will eventually be a sixteen-block knitted afghan – we’re almost 1/4 of the way finished!
And to celebrate , I ended our game with a glass of wine… Also, throughout the afternoon, since I was knitting at the dining room table, I also watched at least 3 TV movies…I think that’s some sort of record for me in one day! But wait, there’s more…
5:30 pm – 11:30 pm: Dinner was light, beef veggie soup. Watched the Washington Capitals lose to the Boston Bruins in sudden-death OT. Not a hockey fan but, …and then more TV movies and dozed off and on, until I went to bed.
Yesterday was Earth Day, when we take extra time to think about how we can and must take actual actions that sustain and renew this planet, our home. Mother Nature blessed us with nearly, if not more, a half-inch of sorely needed rain. Coming on a Sunday, this was a great opportunity to relax and chill. I used the day doing just that: enjoying a longer than normal MSQT and making some progress without any pressure on a knitting project. Rain on!
Cheers~
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