Posts Tagged ‘sabbatical’

Still focusing on life within the confines of my own home and garden.  One small task was catching up with the magazine stack.  Some of this is fun: Birds and Blooms is just a mind-rest between magazine covers, for instance.  (Yes, they are online, too.)  Other things, like the trial of “Real Simple” is a longer read.

A recent article there on how to cope with stress perked me mentally.  Some of the suggestions were above my pay grade: “Oh, I go sailing…you just can’t stay stressed with the sails overhead.”  Well, la de da…..I will have to settle for an old cassette tape or LP of Christopher Cross singing about sailing.

Others were more in my line of pay and time: coloring.  I do color with pretty pens with glitter sometimes—I color book illustrations or various herbals I have that are full of black and white drawings.  Sometimes I use colored pencils, or my favorite–pencils you shade with and then touch with a water-wet paint brush for instant water color blending!  I don’t make myself work on artistic perfection…I just color.  It does relax me.

Another good suggestion was a bottle of bubbles, preferably combined with a small child to chase bubbles.  Small children make me twitch.  A cat will chase bubbles and more entertainingly.

My very own idea: sorting things.  Nothing helps drive off fruitless worry and stress like actually affecting something.  So whether it is organizing the sock drawer or sorting beads by color, it is a great way to feel like something is accomplished without straining any body parts.