Here's to maintaining some self-respect and sanity while tending to the growth and maturation of young minds, including your own young mind. Here's to recognizing that it isn't necessary to know how everything is going to turn out in advance, and that often Life has much better in store than one can imagine. Here's to hope and happiness even when Life gets complicated, especially then... That's when it's needed it most.

...afterall, the car may only seat seven but room for friends is unlimited...

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Yoga, Injuries and Life Lessons.

I broke my baby toe about a week and a half ago. I've been protecting it like a mother bear after my children attacked it mercilessly for a few days following the initial injury. Even with the potential pain, I needed some stretching last week. It was surprisingly easy to keep it out of harm's way. Carpets aren't nearly as prone to kicking and crushing broken toes as children are. I was relieved, and the Yoga was very effective and wonderfully soothing.
As I go through my workout, there is a move where you transition from downward facing dog to upward facing dog. Basically, from an "A" shape, feet never moving, through a plank position pushing forward until your torso is facing forward with your arms unbent at your sides. (I'm sure that's really confusing. It was hard for me to figure out how to do physically, let alone describe with words.) As I pushed through the plank position this time, I remembered a time when I had taken a terrible fall down my friend's front concrete steps a few years ago. I caught myself on my hands. I had not broken my wrists, but it took weeks for the muscles to heal to the point where they could bear weight or support anything at all. . . like a skillet I needed to place on a stovetop. It was much longer until I could twist my hands naturally. Now, I caught my breath as I realized that it has been more than I year since I needed to baby my right wrist through that move. I remember wondering if it would ever heal completely. I hardly remember it happening, it's healing, it was so gradual. . . but it has healed.
The next thought I had was of gratitude, that I had this thread of Yoga to remind me of where I've been physically, and show me where I am now. I think there are many threads in our lives, if we will practice consistently, which will serve us the same way. The things we practice, which we love and which make us who we are will serve to mark our path and show us how far we have truly come.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Mark Twain thoughts.

Take out your brain and jump on it—It gets all caked up. —Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens, at age thirty had a dime to his name. He was distraught and alone. He tried to end his life and failed. I think we can all agree that our world would not be the same if he had succeeded. That was twenty years before he wrote Huckleberry Finn.

Near the end of his life, he wrote this:


What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.
Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.
"A Humorist's Confession," The New York Times, 11/26/1905


Find your work, not someone else's work.

Love your life. Celebrate it.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Some Photos and Some Quotes.

Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction. —Al Bernstein


Penicillin, X-rays, rubber, even Silly Putty and Post-It Notes
were all fortuitous by-products of looking for something else.
—Hirsch Goldberg.


Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
Remember that Columbus was looking for India
when he found America.
—Tom Stoppard


In every problem or set back there is the seed of an equivalent
or greater benefit—if you will only stop and look for it.
—Bob Moawad

quotes from the book think big. . . compendium incorporated

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Photo Printing.

A while back I got caught up on about 6 years worth of unprinted digital photos. I sent them to Costco and in one fell swoop I was set. I felt that I had truly come a long way in terms of emotional health. I was able to look at photos of the last four years of my marriage without a great deal of pain. I wanted the photos, and I was ready to document the good times of those four years, at the very least. I want my children to have a record of the happy things we've seen together. I want to make a beautiful record of family vacations and the fun things we've done, for them to look back on and enjoy. So, anyway, like I said, I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Until yesterday morning. I went to look for photos of my youngest's first birthday (she just turned five) and you know what? I hadn't printed them. There were about six months that I missed when I was ordering prints. It just happens to be, what a surprise, the most emotionally difficult six months of my life. I love the photos, and I had uploaded them to Costco, I had just not ordered the prints. So yesterday, I did. Among the photos I took during those six months are some of my all time favorites of my children. I can't say why I didn't get them ordered before. I can say that I am really happy to have them now. I'm very very happy. Another little milestone.