Inspiration

Simple Pleasures

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Recently I was making more homemade English Muffins, which takes a tablespoon of honey. I had poured the amount into the bowl and decided I wanted the taste of honey, so when I was done I licked the tablespoon. It started my mind wandering with a domino effect from one thought to the next. The first thing I thought was I have not had honey in a while, and it is such a simple pleasure. I started (mind you I did not have much sleep that weekend) to think about how honey is made, and the simplicity of the bees, flowers, and pollination, and that the reward is such a simple sweet pleasure.

The next thought that trickled into my brainwaves was how often we disregard simple pleasures, or maybe we just take them for granted. How often do we pile our plates with a plethora of flavors, overwhelm our senses, and forget that sometimes the simplest dish has the greatest impact. A fresh tomato, avocado, or strawberry just by itself, no extra sugar or sauce needed.

Oh, how honey has made me get nostalgic.

It seems that in the summer months when the days are longer and fresh fruit and vegetables are abundant that sampling local fresh goodies is easy. As the days get shorter and darker, it is often easier to stay inside, work more, and go the efficient route. We tend to stick to soups and stews, and heartier meals, yet that does not mean that we have to miss out on simple pleasures. Like pumpkin, squash, and other fall inspired pleasures that hit the spot.

What simple pleasures in fall do you crave?

Start young: play money, toy cash register

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As more and more people around me have babies it makes me think about kids more and more. There are so many things to think about: car seats, cribs, bassinets, strollers, names, kinds of diapers, bottles, the list goes on. As they get a bit older the list shifts a bit to other very important ideals that a couple should, for the most part, agree upon in how they want to raise their kids.

When I recently came across this article on how to teach your kids about money it made me think, wow everyone should be starting very early in how they want to approach money with their kids. I was talking to a colleague just the other day. Yes, I can tell you this now, and it is possible that I have no idea what I am talking about! We were discussing how expensive it is to raise a kid these days, let alone thinking about paying for them to go to college. I paid my own way through college. I was in a work/study program, and I worked outside of that too. My parents could not afford to pay for college for any of their three kids. While it would have definitely been nice to have it paid for, it taught me a lot about money, about growing up, and about taking responsibility for my decisions. I probably would not have worked as hard to learn if I was not paying for it.

Now that does not mean that I will not help my future kid(s) out with college, but I want to do it in a way that helps them grow, learn, and understand what their decisions mean financially. Too often, I think parents write a check and walk away, and that does not help their kids learn about life. The above article starts with ages 2-5 on how you can use play money and play “store” together. Oh how I remember the plastic cash register I had when I was little. I loved watching the coins come down the side like it used to at the grocery store. Toy cash registers today I believe have scanners and credit card swipers. Oh well. Parents could still teach the value of money, and include a bit about how someone has to pay for what is put on that credit card.

Start young. Whenever we begin having kids I know I will start young too. I think conversations about wants, needs, and money help kids know and appreciate all that they have in the world. It does not have to be in a way of shame, but from a place of abundance and gratitude.

Stressed Spelled Backwards is Desserts

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I have been stressed out lately. Lots happening at work. Lots happening at home. Last week I think I hit my limit and decided it was time to shift priorities and re-focus a bit. Then I found this quote, “Stressed Spelled Backwards is Desserts.”

It got me thinking in a deeper way, maybe feeling stressed is not always a bad thing. So often we try to cram every possible moment of our day full of doing things. Accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. Get it done. I know I often do. A full day of work, a good run, a blog post, more work, oh and somewhere in there is a bit of eating (or a lot depending on the day). That does not sound like too much, and yet some days it is exhausting. Last week I had one of those days. I came home and was wiped out. No run and no work was happening for me. I changed into comfy pajamas and curled up on the couch in front of the plethora of television shows I am behind on for some mind numbing entertainment. My dessert after feeling stressed.

My hope is that each time we are stressed out, it gives us pause to slow down. To look again at our priorities and find out how they can be shifted, changed, and balanced. How can we turn our life from feeling stressed to pampering and taking care of ourselves? Is stress really a way for our bodies and minds to tell us that we have had enough? That it is time for a much-needed break? Or that it is time to pull out the desserts, put our feet up and relax a little?

What do you think?

“I have been taught to filter.”

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My father always said that children were to be seen and not heard. I think of it often when I have a hard time finding my words. I think of it when I am angry and pissed and I struggle to keep my emotions in check, because when I am mad it is harder to use my words. I was not taught to use them. Since I knew to keep my mouth shut, I learned how to filter. If I ever made a bad choice, and got into trouble, then the potential punishment was in the form of his wooden fraternity paddle. That thing scared me. As did my dad’s disappointment.

I began to read voraciously when I was very young, and I started writing and illustrating my own stories too. Sometimes I wrote to get out of my world. Now I write to make sense of my world, to put the puzzle pieces together and try to understand it all. The thoughts and opinions I have of myself and how I perceive each situation. Did I handle it well? Did I react confidently and with poise? Or, did I go overboard and lose my cool? I remember a few classmates in college that impressed me with their writing ability. I can remember someone in particular that was able to put pen to paper about womanhood in the rawest of forms, and I never felt I could write like that.

So when I saw “Shrinking Women” it reminded me of my days studying Sociology, Women’s Studies, and Women’s Writing in college. While I was intensely into my studies, and at times felt like a hard-core feminist, I could never write poetry. I actually even had a hard time following poetry in general. Unless it was short and sweet, I was usually not interested. Lily Meyers, who wrote, “Shrinking Women” kept me listening. Maybe it is because I relate to her story. She won Best Love Poem at the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational last April, and is a 2015 future graduate of Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT).

Here are a few lines that stood out to me:

“My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have been taught to filter…You have been taught to grow out. I have been taught to grow in…I learned to absorb…That’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades…How much space she deserves to occupy…I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word: sorry.”

Lily will make you think about how women view their body and their space, and how your actions might make your sister, friend, daughter, or niece view their body and space. It gets good at around 1:25 minutes. Maybe her passion, youth, and talent will make other women get rid of their filters. Enjoy.

Need for speed

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In a meeting one day this week someone made the comment: “Addicted to Speed.” It really made me think. We are so extremely addicted to things that are fast and furious. Think about it for a moment. We get impatient when our smart phone does not sync our email fast enough, or when our internet speed is too slow one day. We may be on the phone with a colleague and they say they sent that document to us via email, and we wait on the phone watching our inbox until it arrives.

We cannot download content fast enough over the Internet, we hate waiting for HTML images to download from our email. If we want to view a photo on Facebook and our phone does not have the best signal we get frustrated. The need for speed. We so badly want to honk the horn when the car in front of us is not driving the speed limit. Yes I am the worst offender and often I am in the passenger seat. Note to all: husbands dislike when we try to use the horn when we are not driving.

We want the pot on the stove to cook faster, either because we are very hungry, or we have other things to do. We dislike automated voice controls because they are slow and frustrating and if we could just talk to a human we could be done with our phone call faster. We want the cashier to go faster, but we miss out on that moment in our day when we can just stand and breathe.

We tend to always want to move to the next best thing, and get their as fast as possible, whether we are competing with ourselves or someone else. Why has the world gotten so fast? What are we missing by going this pace? Will we learn to slow down and just appreciate the moment?

#whytheneedforspeed