How are we at the end of August already?! It feels like school just ended, but it's starting again next week! Determined to soak up every last ray of summer sunshine, we started off the week by hitting the beach...
The water was already too chilly for me (but I like it bathwater temperature, so perhaps I'm not a good judge). The kids agreed it was cold, but had a good, long swim anyway.
I still remember when I was studying vocabulary words for the SAT in high school (sheesh, decades ago now!) and one of the words was "coruscate" ("to emit flashes of light; to sparkle or glitter"). I always think of the word "coruscate" when I see sunshine dancing on water...
This is how it is at the end of August here in northern New Jersey: One day, we're at the beach eating rainbow-colored snowcones, and the next, golden leaves are fluttering down from the trees. Tempus fugit, indeed.
Your turn: How are you making the most out of the last days of summer?
I've made no secret of the fact that I'm pathetic at traditional meditation--sitting in the lotus position and chanting "Ommmmm" just isn't for me. But I wholeheartedly believe in the benefits of hopping off the "Mental Chatter Rollercoaster" to clear my head, refocus, and appreciate the present moment.
I've often said that macro photography is my way of meditating, allowing me to focus (literally) on the small movements of tiny things and taking me out of my own racing thoughts. But you don't need a camera--even though I highly recommend it--to appreciate any of the following soul-soothing exercises that just might transport you to a meditative state:
1) Visually trace the outlines of a many-petaled flower, like a rose or a peony. Let your eyes slowly wander around the edges of all the petals, backwards and forwards. Breathe in its scent.
2) Follow the small but deliberate actions of aspider spinningits web.
3) Meditate on a flickering flame.
4) Carefullystudy the movements of antshard at work, each one with a purpose.
5) Meditate on falling raindrops. Watch the droplets create ever-expanding circles on the surface of water.
6) Star-gaze.
7) Lie down on a picnic blanket and ponder the changing shapes of clouds.
8) Watch the waves meeting the beach (hopefully, with adorable little sandpipers scurrying back and forth to the rhythm of the tide).
9) Study a cat as it methodically gives itself a bath, massaging its ears with its paws, cleaning its face, tummy, and tail. Along those lines, listen to a cat rhythmically purring while it kneads its paws on a blanket before curling up for a nap. (Cats have relaxation down to a science, don't they?)
10) Watcha fish gracefully swishing around in its tank.
11) Watch the falling leaves.
12) Watch thefalling snow, following the drifting journey of as many individual snowflakes as you can.
I feel calmer already, and no "Ommmms" were uttered.
Your turn: What's your favorite natural scene or creature to study, or a favorite outdoor activity, that puts you into a state of relaxation? Let's hear it in the comments section below--I'm all ears!
Does this ever happen to you? While going about your day, you happen upon a scene in nature that looks like it was created by a famous painter. That was my immediate impression of this sunset in the Bahamas a couple of weeks ago. It looked like it was painted by Maxfield Parrish! The golden-peach colors... The billowy pillows of clouds... The vague feeling that angels were going to burst into operatic song at any moment. Life imitating art!
I usually post just one "Monday Snapshot" at a time, but because this sunset was so dramatic, I'm giving it an encore!
While I'm a tad sad (and frankly, surprised!) to see summer winding down so quickly (the leaves here are already starting to turn color), there's something about the start of a new school year, with chatty kids climbing up into big yellow buses, that always feels fresh, exciting, hopeful, and creative.
Perhaps it's all of those sharpened pencils and crisp notebooks, with wide-open pages just waiting to be doodled-up with dazzling ideas. I love a clean slate, don't you? (That must be why I've been tweaking my website--what do you think of the new banner?)
Here are five good reads for the weekend that are all about the creative life at its pure and simple best:
My friend Cathryn in London practices mindfulness with her art, capturing the tiniest details of everyday life. Her sketchwork has always reminded me of early Andy Warhol illustrations, as in this post from her: Drawing August Part 1.
Would you get on a sailboat for 7 days with 10 members of your family? Would you still love them on Day 8? Well, I did, and I do! To celebrate my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary, my extended family headed down to the Abaco Cays in the Bahamas for a week of sand, surf, and...sweat! It was crazy-hot and humid, but that's what we get for booking a Bahamas vacation in August, right? (For those of you who took guesses at the location of my "Monday Snapshot", here's your answer: Treasure Cay.)
Despite the heat, it was a very cool trip! Here's what I learned in the Abaco Cays (pronounced "keys"):
1) Lizards, lizards, everywhere! In Rome and in Israel, cats are roaming around everywhere you look. In the Bahamas, the official critter seems to be the lizard. We saw mostly the curly-tailed variety, but those little guys were too quick and camera-shy, so here's another type, below. Handsome fellow...
2) The Bahamas are (sort of) eco-friendly. As you can see in the top photo, the beaches of the Abacos are pristine and relatively litter-free, but oddly, I saw no sign of recycling during the whole trip, aside from (maybe) one trash bin (possibly) for bottles. It felt weird and wrong to throw out cans and bottles with the regular trash. Bahamians are not "un-green", though. Look at this playground in Hope Town, pictured below, that was built around a tree instead of cutting it down. How cool is that?!
3) The spiders in the Bahamas have their own Halloween costumes!
I learned this red spider with the crabby "face" on its back (to fool prey) is called a Spinybacked Orbweaver. It's harmless to humans, which is good because I was getting "up close and personal" to snap pics!
4) Sharks hang out at the docks. I've seen two sharks "in the wild" before, both in the Bahamas, and both times, they were in shallow water right below the docks. I'm not talking about Great White "Jaws" type of sharks. Just small ones--nurse sharks or dogfish. We also saw a couple of sea turtles!
5) Toads are tenacious. This guy (below) hung on for the boat ride for a good hour, unbothered by the "paparazzi" (my family) snapping away. Then he calmly hopped off the deck and splish-splashed away. (What's the difference between frogs and toads, you may ask? For starters, toads can be out of the water for extended periods of time, have bumpy skin, and aren't shy around people.)
6) To get your "land legs" back faster, take long walks, ride a bike, or drive. There's a weird physical sensation that can happen after you've been on a boat for an extended period of time. For hours or sometimes days afterward, you feel like you're still on a boat, with your world gently rocking back and forth. My husband (a die-hard sailor) loves the effect, but I was getting dizzy just sitting still in a chair. (I'm still feeling the occasional boat-rocking, two days later.) Looking around the web for answers, I found out that the more you move around on land, the quicker your body will readjust. Good rest also helps. I kept myself moving the first day home by unpacking the bags, straightening up the house, and giving Delilah extra-long walks. (I missed her velvety ears so much while we were away.) Then I took a nap!
All in all, it was a great trip--hot and cool at the same time!
Your turn: What's the most educational trip you've ever taken? Let's hear it in the comments section below--I'm all ears!
I'm off on a summer adventure (can't wait to show you the pictures next week!), but I wanted to leave you with a few summertime reads. I hope you're squeezing every last delicious drop out of summer! Perhaps some of these earlier posts from me will give you a little inspiration to do just that. (P.S. For my friends Down Under, I'm including one of my winter posts--don't think I've forgotten about you!)
The photograph above shows you what just might happen if you have a 7-year-old daughter who loves strawberries, and she's in the general vicinity of a fruit "still life" you're in the process of shooting for your blog. Caught in the act, Strawberry Thief!
For my "Week in 5 Photos" posts, I usually try to spread out the photos over a few days, but I recently spent one fascinating day at theBruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, and I wanted to share it with you here. No, it's not a museum dedicated to Mr. Springsteen. It's one of my favorite types of museums--a well-curatedcollection of nature, art, science, history, anthropology, and random oddities. Another bonus: It's not so large that you become one of those "Museum Zombies" shuffling along endless corridors!
We were drawn to the Bruce Museum for theirRoz Chast exhibit, titled "Being, Nothingness, and Much, Much More" (open through October 19, 2014), a collection beyond what's been famously featured in The New Yorker. We had a lot of laughs looking around the exhibit, but my favorite cartoon was How Grandma Sees the Remote, which included buttons ranging from "Utter Mystery" to "Cause Nationwide Blackout." (I just finished reading Chast's new book, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? It's about the last years of her parents' lives--I laughed, I cried, I nodded in recognition. It must be the ultimate form of therapy to be able to draw--in intricate detail--the most painful scenes of your life and find the glimmers of humor in them. Roz Chast is an absolute master at it.)
Here's what else we saw at the museum...
I always have mixed feelings about real animals that have been stuffed for museum displays, but on the good side of the mix, I'll grant that they do help us learn more about the animals, simply by observing them much closer than we could in the wild.
This fox above, with her paws crossed oh-so-daintily, seemed to be saying, "Well, I do declare...!" (Channeling Scarlett O'Hara.)
I loved the look of this vintage typewriter, especially with its caption, billing it as a lightweight travel typewriter for outdoor use, "to be enrolled as an assistant in nearness to nature." (The precursor to the iPad Mini!)
Other than the Roz Chast exhibit, my favorite was "Extreme Habitats: Into the Deep Sea" (open through November 9, 2014). I'd seen a "Nova"-style documentary on ocean life a while back and was completely awestruck by the many deep-sea creatures that never see light, so they create their own light with their bodies to protect themselves and to capture prey--it's called bioluminescence. (So cool!) Unfortunately, it was too dark to shoot anything at that exhibit, so I took a picture of the cute little hermit crabs scrambling along in the touch-tank for kids (photo at the top).
On our way out, my son was mesmerized by the warrior statues. So much to see, for every age. We'll be back!
This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon.com, which means that if you decide to buy the book, I'll get some spare change, at no extra cost to you. But by all means, check your local library!
You'd probably never guess what I was doing about 24 hours before I went into labor, both times: cleaning the house. Well, technically, before my second child, I was out in the garden, pulling up weeds, but I consider that task in the same category: getting my house in order. There's something about cleaning up and clearing out that has an almost magical way of re-shuffling my thoughts into proper working order, so I can focus on the things that really need my attention. (You know, like getting set for a new baby...!)
Please don't let me give you the wrong impression: There are plenty of times when our house looks like a roving band of toddlers went marauding through it.
And we affectionately refer to our laundry room as "Laundry Mountain."
I'm just saying that when my life gets really, really, REALLY crazy (this week, for example), sometimes the best thing to do (for me, anyway) is put down the paperwork and pick up a sponge.
Because when my to-do lists are overflowing, I need a clean slate somewhere.
I can't think straight when I'm looking around the room and noticing (even with peripheral vision) dirty dishes not loaded into the dishwasher. Or an orphaned sock in the middle of the living room floor. Or the couch's throw pillows thrown everywhere except on the couch. So, that's when I get up and straighten up. Which realigns my mind. Win-win.
It's almost meditative. Cleaning takes me out of my "mind chatter" and into "clean slate" mode. Scrubbing a sink is easier for me than sitting still and humming "ommmmmm" (and I just end up falling asleep on the yoga mat.)
"But Mom," my kids have whined to me on many occasions, "Whyyyyyyyyyyyy do we neeeeeeeeeeed to clean our rooms?"
"Clean house, clear mind," I tell them. Turns out the kids think better, too, when they're not tripping over their own Legos. They're calmer in a clean room. They have room to groove, instead of acting like little bulls in little china shops, knocking over anything and everything in their paths.
If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you already know that I'm a big proponent of evaluating our possessions on a regular basis and figuring out what we aren't using anymore. If you have so much stuff to clean that it's exhausting to even think about it, it's probably high-time to weed it out. Pass it on to somebody who will get good use out of it. That could mean a yard sale, Craig's List, eBay, or Goodwill, but sometimes, it's as easy as putting a "FREE!" sign on it at the curb.
So, if your mind is feeling cluttered, take a look around at the current state of your house. Notice any correlation?
Your turn: Do you ever clean the house to clear your mind? Let's hear it in the comments section below--I'm all ears!
