This past weekend, I played the game Hungry Hungry Hippos with my kids. This is the exceptionally straightforward game with four colorful hippos and a ton of marbles which create a lot of noise and chaos for about a minute while each player tries to gobble up marbles before the game comes to an anticlimactic …
Category: Self Care
My Break from Facebook
Facebook and I recently took a long break from each other. To clarify, I’m not a Facebook hater. I maintain the same account I opened over ten years ago when my alma mater joined the community. I used to enjoy posting updates and photos. It was exciting to see the number of “likes” increase and …
Time to Be
Entering a new year offers a ceremonial opportunity to initiate change and establish new habits. Visions of goals and new routines fill our minds and planners and many of us will enthusiastically pursue our resolutions, at least for a time. In our pursuit to make our lives more healthy and balanced, while simultaneously less stressed, …
Living My Daydreams
Growing up, I used to daydream about starting over, particularly when I found myself in conflict with friends or wading through the messy drama of the teenage years. I would read fiction books that would transport me to different places and journal about what it might look like outside of the struggles that I was …
Resets – Life Lesson from a Toddler
It feels as if my life is on super-speed this season. Thanksgiving came and went, but in addition to the typical holiday excitement and stress, it also brought with it a good old-fashioned North Dakota snow storm. We had barely shoveled out of that when December came crashing in with work expectations, school expectations, social …
Balance.
I have this idea that at some point in my life I will achieve perfect balance. I daydream that I will eventually find the ideal combination of time and energy for exercising, preparing tasty and healthy meals, maintaining a perpetually clean, well-decorated house, dressing in cute, affordable outfits, and, most importantly, being a supportive wife, …
Finding Quiet Time
As an introvert, I require regular alone time in order to continue functioning as a (mostly) rational person. Growing up in a family of introverts, logging the necessary quiet time was never a problem. Moving away from home as a young adult, I was still able to frequently carve out space to rejuvenate emotionally and …
Unexpected Moments of Unrestricted Joy
Sometimes I think it is easy to feel disappointed. It can seem as if one bad thing is happening after another, and even the best moments seem to not quite meet expectations. I find that there is an - expectation→ anticipation→ disappointment - loop that occasionally tries to take over, and it can often succeed …
