“The Dog” Journal
Welcome to the Dog Journal, a blog where I periodically share my best finds for taming those puppies that gnaw at your planner.
Could be a quick time management tip, a smell-the-flowers moment, a comment overheard on the elevator. Whatever the inspiration, I hope you’ll blog right along with me by commenting and sharing your tips and stories for taming an overbooked life.
Holey Cow!
The black sweater was on the “reduced” rack at Nordstrom. Even so, I was sure the sales clerk would be grateful for my vigilance.
“There’s a hole in the front,” I whispered, holding the soft knit creature a few inches from her face. I figured she’d apologize, thank me for my trouble, and put it in some bin under the counter. Not so.
“It’s supposed to be that way,” she said, flipping it around to show two more holes with runs down the side, and hanging it back on the rack.
I’m well aware that faded, creased and occasionally knee-out jeans sometimes sell as new. But somehow a woman’s sweater with holes takes shabby chic to a whole new level. If the style is holey, then it seems the holier thing to do would be to buy these garments from the authentic poor who are actually wearing them and give them at least the price the designers – in this case, Elizabeth and James – are actually commanding. Here, the donation would be at least $154, after two reductions from a list price of $395.
The buyer would then have a real piece of shabby clothing. And the seller might get a much-needed week’s worth of groceries.
Florida Re-Frame Just In Time
There must be something better than eating blueberry pancakes on the beach at Pass-a-Grille, Fla., but I’m not sure what it is.
Maybe the walk down the beach to work them off, watching kids scoop out sand with two hands to make a castle, or breathing in warm salty air.
All I know is that a long-weekend escape here to visit a friend feels like it might just get me through another month of Ohio winter. Judging from the license plates along the waterfront, I’m not alone in my need for a Florida reframe.
Just in case I need a reminder that we’ll soon be living in the sunshine state, too, a beach view’s going up on my wall. And maybe some blueberry pancakes on the griddle. Spring can’t come soon enough.
Time Flies With Laughter Meditation
Every coach needs to be the client sometimes and feel that breath-sucking moment that comes from being challenged outside your comfort zone
I got to experience it last week when a seemingly innocent conversation with mine led to the astonishing agreement that I’d meditate 20 minutes each morning and 20 minutes each night. When I hung up the phone, I wish I’d countered with “How about TWO?”
Twenty minutes doesn’t seem like much EXCEPT during meditation. Then distracting thoughts bounce around like pellets in an ice storm.
Friday night, though, some friends and I beat the 20-minute discomfort by trying something new: laughter meditation, using a CD by laughter meditator extraordinaire, Sarito Sun.
For more than 35 minutes, broken by five minutes of silence, we laughed. We bent over laughing. We got on the floor and kicked our legs in the air. We danced around the room. We were a laughter choo-choo train.
Especially during the laughter but mostly during the silence, too – the ice pellets stopped bouncing. So little room for mental multi-tasking during laughter. So much room later for amazing deep sleep.
Ice-olation Wears Thin
Who, in an overbooked moment, has not imagined how WONDERFUL it would be to cocoon in a comfortable armchair, wrapped in a blanket, reading a good book?
“I could stay there forever!” I’ve thought.
And yet, when the opportunity arises – as it did this past week in the ice-covered hill that was our neighborhood – forever needed to end after about 24 hours.
First, there was the observation that a neighbor in her 70s (who apparently tolerates the cocoon for only a few hours) was skating toward her mailbox, arms flailing. She made it back with a few letters – hopefully not just bills.
“Ridiculous!” I muttered. And then found myself doing the same thing the very next morning. An irresistible itch had set in to escape the four walls.
By the time the sun came out on Thursday and did its sparkling, magical melt, I had learned something from the other side of an overbooked life. Solitude is delicious at first, but a little goes a long way with me.
