Author: admin

Double-Edged Sword

My cell phone died on Thursday, when we were still on vacation. I was with my immediate family, so I wasn’t too stressed about it. My replacement phone arrived yesterday. It was interesting to me that I wasn’t incredibly eager to open the box and get it started. I found myself “finding” other chores to do, before setting up my phone.

When we were kids, my father bought my mother one of the first cell phones. (you know, the giant brick sized ones) We all thought that she would be thrilled, but she wasn’t overjoyed. “Maybe I don’t always want to be reached,” I remember her saying.

Our new technology is definitely a two-edged sword. I wanted to text my son to bring some things home from the grocery store and yet, I couldn’t, and I had complete FOMO with my friends. Still, the non-distracted peace, all to myself, was really intoxicating. The cable guy “fixed” our home phone line right around the time my cell phone was completing its re-installation. Both rang within minutes of each other. I felt something shift in me, hesitantly. I felt my pace quicken and my brain started whirling with texts to write and things to sort and look up. I think a small, peaceful, quiet part of me, let out a disappointed, resigned sigh and went back to her far corner, in the back of my mind.

“My mind is constantly going. For me to completely relax, I gotta get rid of my cell phone.” – Kenny Chesney

“I actually have this fantasy of giving up my cell phone.” – Julia Stiles 

Vacation Clean-Up

****Happy Birthday, G! My second eldest son is 21 today. It doesn’t seem possible. He is such an amazing guy. I’m so proud to call him my son.

Why do I feel such a desperate need to get back to “normal” after vacation? It seems like, in my mind, that things were perfectly orderly before we left, even though they weren’t. I am in a frenzy right now trying to get everything checked off of my list. Laundry. Grocery shopping. Returns. Appointments made. Bills. Paperwork. Cleaning. Pedicure.

I told myself that I would bring some of that fresh mountain peace back with me, but that was short-lived. I purchased a Native American CD when I was away and I played it on my way to taking my daughter to tennis and while I ran other errands. Even with the peaceful drumming and quiet flutes, I found myself tensing in traffic and grumbling at being stuck in lines.

I have zero phone access right now. I fell off of my fly fishing boat (long, funny story for another blog) and my ultra-amazing water proof cell phone, wasn’t so water proof. My home phone service stopped working about three days after the cable guy spent a day at our home. Not having phone service probably should make me feel peaceful, uninterrupted and un-distracted, but instead I feel antsy and irritable. And I feel frustrated that I feel this way. Phone-less could be such a freeing, natural way to live. The Universe is probably trying to teach me something, but I stubbornly seem to want to fight the lesson.

I am writing this on my blog today, in hopes that I am not alone. If anything, I hope that my honesty will give relief to others who might feel the same way. I wish that I could write that being out in untouched, beautiful nature for a week, awoke my inner zen and I am now unflappably calm and peaceful. That didn’t happen. But at least now I have the self-awareness to notice this fact. I suppose that is a step in the right direction.

Water Spiritual

Having seen many incredibly majestic waterfalls this past week, I have decided to post this beautiful poem by Anne Wilson Schaef. I hope that it moves you, the way that it touched me.

Water Spiritual

A waterfall’s

A lovely place

To sit awhile

And know God’s grace

Plunging home

To the sea

Oblivious to you

Unseeing of me

The water knows which way to go

Returning to the sea

It must be so

It’s not too complex

This water song

It just keeps moving

Right along

No care for this

For that, no thought

Life is so simple

We’d almost forgot

I sometimes wonder

What point did we

Forget to notice

Life could be free

To move like water

T’ward our home

Is an easy task

Not done alone

The Creator’s grace

Accompanies us

We’re not forgotten

This, we can trust

To worry is only

As we all know

A lack of faith

In what is so

To move like water

Powerful yet weak

Will bring us to

The peace we seek

Head On Home

It is the “pack it up and head on home” day of vacation. These types of days are always reflection and digestion days, for me. It is the time to really think about what I have experienced and how that experience has affected me. Have I changed in any way because of my experience? Did I learn anything new? How did this experience impact the relationship I have with my family members? Will anything that I have experienced impact or change my daily life at home? How did this experience influence how I view Life?

This trip is no longer the eagerly anticipated adventure in the future, but is now part of our family’s memory scrapbook. It is no longer a question of what awaits us, but now a story of what happened, in an adventurous week, in the life of our family. That story will be kept alive by shared memories, laughs, and some pictures to prove that it is part of our shared experiences. Yet, we all will digest it, in our own personal way, born out of our own perspectives and feelings and preferences. In that sense, the story of this year’s epic family vacation, will be the same story, yet a collection of individual stories, all at the same time. But, isn’t that true of all stories? Isn’t that true of Life?

Image result for great quotes about the end of family vacations

Friday Blues

Happy Friday, readers and friends!!! Happy Friday all!!! Honestly, this particular Friday is the first Friday, in a LONG while, that I wish it weren’t Friday. This Friday marks the almost end of a wonderful, memorable family vacation. It marks the end of something that we all have been looking forward to and anticipating for a long, long time. As my family grows up and out, I realize that each of these vacations are even more precious than ever, as our six schedules are becoming more and more complex to allow these long, interrupted periods of time with each other, to even be a possibility. Since I am experiencing my ultimate favorite thing – uninterrupted adventures with my family, I am going to stop posting and start adventuring and I won’t be listing my three favorite things. Please don’t let that stop you from sharing some favorites in my comments section and new readers, please check out previous Friday postings where I usually list three favorite products, tips, websites, songs, etc. that have wowed my world.

Happy Friday Friends!! Enjoy your day and have a wonderful weekend!!!

The Long Hike

I’ve decided that hiking brings the best out of people. Hikers are incredibly kind to one another. They always make way for people to pass through narrow pathways. They happily take pictures for other hikers. People come from all over the country, actually, people come from all over the world, to hike certain awe-inspiring trails, and the experience is always one of unified peace and pleasure, taking in the pure natural beauty of untouched nature.

Hikers never cut each other off, or jockey for positions on the resting rocks. The overall, unifying sense is one of unity, kindness, excitement, and care. There are all ages of people on hiking trails. I have seen babies in contraptions that didn’t exist when my kids were babies. The baby hikers are in containers that look like little Coleman tents strapped to their father’s or mother’s backs, and they all contain babbling or sleeping, precious, happy babies. Some people run the trails and some meander very slowly, their walking sticks poking at all the beautiful wildflowers and exposing what might be hidden underneath the blooms. Some hikers stop to take pictures at every bend, others hurry along, eager to make it to the highly anticipated destination in record time. And it is all okay. There is no one right way to hike a trail. The only thing every hiker seems to have in common, is an intellectual curiosity and an overwhelming joy to be beholding such unbelievable, marvelous sights. And then to look over at their fellow hikers and see that same joyous, anstonished awe-struck expression on their faces, reflecting their own feelings back to them.

I wish that we could live our lives like we were on an amazing, long, fascinating, sometimes harrowing, surprising, but always worthy adventure. If we hiked our lives with the same respect for other hikers, the same gratefulness for our natural world, and a genuine joy for the experience that one experiences when hiking one of many, many trails, life would be simple, but also grand.

Flocal

I bought this sign in an adorable little antique/curio shop yesterday. I’ll probably put it right above my desk. At the same shop, I also bought handmade earrings that I liked so well, I went to the etsy shop and bought a necklace made by the same local artist. The artist emailed me and we had a really fun exchange. In Florida, we call shopping the local little shops and farm markets, shopping Flocal. It is my favorite kind of shopping.

Your Soul is Alive

We are doing a lot of outdoorsy stuff this week, together as a family. It’s a good way to be together and yet be on our own, all at the same time. My second son asked us why people are in such awe of nature. We all had different answers. I said that nothing man has made can compare to the beauty and magnificence of nature. My eldest son disagreed. (He has always loved cities. On his fifth birthday, I had his birthday cake designed to be a tall building.) My son said that we are animals, too. So when we were all oohing and awing over a beaver dam, that is why we also marvel over the Hoover dam. I thought that it was a good point he made.

My husband said that we are in awe of untouched, wild nature because it is not something most of us see and experience in our every day lives. We all wondered if the park rangers are still in awe of the natural wonders they experience as part of their daily lives, work and experience. I hope so. I hope that the park rangers can view their work environment every day, the same way the rest of us are taking it in – with wonder, with amazement, with the breath-taking awe of an ecology living in synchronicity and teeming with a mass diversity of beautiful versions of Life.

“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. ” – Eleonora Duse

Their Roots Entwined

Last night I watched my four kids laughing, and joking, and teasing and talking and even squabbling a little bit, and I felt my heart soaked in gratefulness, awe and love for these most precious people, whom I have been privileged to raise. When they were little, I must have taken it for granted that they would always be this little band of four – the oldest, curly-headed ginger leading the pack, not far behind him, his brother, the adventurer and the instigator, followed by the youngest blue-eyed boy, (yet the biggest pup of the litter) and finally, keeping up and keeping them all in line, their brave and beautiful little sister. And then the growing up and the “growing beyond” happened, and it happened so fast.

Last night I got a glimpse. I got a glimpse of the roots that they all share which keep my children’s feet firmly planted on the Earth, even as their individual blossoms are spreading far and away. Those roots are strong. They have a base of roots entwined with a shared history, camaraderie, memories, and shared DNA. They all have had the shared experience of my husband and I, forging our perspectives and hopes and ideas, of what lives lived well, look like, and they will be able to nourish their own perspectives, hopes and ideas from the nutrients they share, from down deep under the surface of our family soil.