The first day of fall 2025 opened with fog and closed with a thunderstorm so severe it shook my ridgetop home.
We suffered through relentless rain for the first half of the year before everything dried up and drought took hold again. Last night, though, was wonderful. Relentless rain, thunder and bright streaks of lightning kept me looking out the window. It was a nice night to read a mystery and to drift off to sleep with the rhythm of the rain on the window.
There’s just something about fog and rain that make the world seem a little more mysterious and more enjoyable. I don’t know what it is but I’ll enjoy it all while it lasts!
I once read the line “some folks feel the rain and others just get wet.” Whatever you do, please try to enjoy it!
In my world, weekdays are for work, weeknights are for home, Saturdays are for adventure and Sunday is for home. I find this a nice balance and one where I get a powerful mix of rest and chores at home with something fun to do on the weekend.
That has not been the mix lately. Last week left me so busy and sick of the world that I actually took a nap on Friday after work. A nap!
This is not who I am.
So yesterday, after lecturing all do you dear readers about the importance of getting out in the world for adventures, I did the unexpected.
I stayed home.
It was nice to sleep in, rest the knee, fix a good dinner, do a few chores, and finish the book I was reading. I even had two meals on the porch! All the same, I was super annoyed to squander what was a great road trip day.
Oh, the fun I could have had!
I’ve been jonesing for a trip to the big antique mall at Springfield and a morning roaming around Yellow Springs. A day roaming downtown Marietta is always fun and a boxed lunch on the Valley Gem would be delightful. I’ve been wanting to visit Hawthorne Hill in Dayton. That was the home of Orville Wright and it’s open for tours. It was a little warm for a hike but I could have managed.
I’m still babying the knee a little so rest is good but a gal can dream.
Sigh.
The good news is that I got some rest and saved my money for adventures ahead. There’s fun on the calendar next weekend and I have plans for my annual October vacation. I’ll need my energy and money for all of that!
Around here, mindfulness is the word as I try to slow things down, soften the edges of my own life, and remove myself from places where I do not belong.
Around here, I’m holding onto my post vacation haze as best as I can and am working to follow through on my promises to eat better and enjoy more quiet time doing what pleases me. Reading a book in bed has never been a bad idea.
It feels like fall right now and I’m loving every minute of it even though the forecast is for upper eighties next week. I’ll live in this moment and take my meals on the back porch. This weekend I made a hearty soup and began planning for more new-to-me soup recipes. Any dish that starts with onion, celery and carrots in a big pot is fine by me.
Around here, I am suffering the consequences of reinjuring a knee that had been healing. This time, though, I’m taking it more seriously since the doctor has been more plain and scary with his language. I turned down a hike this weekend because a trip to the grocery store Friday night had left it too inflamed and angry to be out in the woods.
Although, natural ground is quite pleasing as opposed to the harsh concrete and pavement that covers so much of our “civilized” world. What does that impulse to build and pave over everything that is natural say about our choices as humans?
Around here, I’m making a conscious effort to leave the tv off and the smartphone out of reach. I watch very little tv but tend to turn it on for noise. I have been listening to more podcasts and music lately and have been reading more books. I have been better able to focus on what’s in front of me which is no small accomplishment in a world of constant distraction.
Around here, I’m enjoying more porch meals which are always accompanied by a show. An orchestra comprised of all the best things found in nature make an amazing sound track for even the simplest meal. I wish more people understood the beauty in being quiet in nature. The buzz of a hummingbird’s wings as it hovers over a flower, the constant thrum of locusts, chirps of crickets, the occasional tree frog, and coo of the Mourning Dove are just a few of my favorite sounds. Even the rustle of breeze through changing leaves sounds remarkable when you allow yourself to enjoy such small pleasures.
Around here, it’s the start of another week. More busy days, more dr appointments, more meals to cook, and more meetings are the sort of toil sure to keep the week moving forward. I hope to squeeze in plenty of porch meals, reading time and other things that bring joy to my days.
Around here, I recognize that this won’t just happen. I have to make it all happen so that around here is a place I really want to be.
My last few months have been occupied by thoughts of routines and rituals.
Why?
Well, it occurs to me that we spend a lot of time doing things we have to do – cook, wash dishes, brush teeth, make the bed, and mountains of other chores. We tend to build routines around these chores so we remember to do them and to simply make them more efficient.
After a while, it starts to feel like work. Depending on the routine, it can range from boring to drudgery. Why would we want to spend our lives like that when there are ways to make those routines something special?
After painting my bedroom earlier this year, I began focusing on bedtime rituals. This was easy because the new paint color and decor made me long to spend more time in my room, enjoying its new vibe. You can read about the new bedroom here but note the winter bedding has been swapped out for blue and white floral sheets and a fluffy white comforter. The curtains are now flowy and white too! It’s much prettier now!
I turn on some music – typically a classical selection of soft music accompanied by the sounds of nature. Frogs, rustling leaves, and flowing water are understated and relaxing. I flip on the nightstand light and turn down the bed before stepping into the bathroom. There I brush and floss before washing my face and moisturizing.
This step is vital because I visualize literally washing away the day and letting it all go.
Sometimes I journal or read in bed. Sometimes I scroll Pinterest but try to avoid stressful places like the news or Facebook. No need to junk up my brain with social media nonsense when I have worked so hard to clean away the grime from the outside world.
I often start to drift off while reading, sometimes outlasting the music and sometimes out like a light.
This is the only time of my day when I’m able to do exactly what my body says it needs.
This is my evening ritual and it has mostly served me well.
This summer I began turning the ceiling fan on low and that has added a whole other level of relaxation to the evening. Soft sheets, the fan breeze, and waning summer light create a delightful space to simply exist without external demands.
Scout has embraced this ritual as well. If I don’t collect him on time, he will follow me around, silently asking with those big, beautiful eyes why we aren’t resting yet.
Why not romanticize these chores a bit and transform them into a ritual I can enjoy?
I’ve been doing this for months and occasionally wonder what other ways I can incorporate rituals into my day. The bedtime routine has worked great because I do it every day around the same time.
The rest of my day tends to be incredibly unpredictable and often rushed. I have thought about working on a morning ritual, inspired by blogger tips about waking with the sun or sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee. I don’t know what those people do for a living but I tend to drag my sleepy-eyed self out of bed before the sun is up and race to make it to work at 7:30.
There’s not much time for porch mornings!
Perhaps ritualizing meal prep would help me make tastier, healthier dishes to nourish my body. That sounds reasonable.
Do you have rituals? I would love to hear about them!
I slept late this morning and then luxuriated in bed, cleaning up the open internet tabs on my phone.
I rarely think to bookmark things and simply leave them open for “later” – whenever that is. Scrolling my open tabs is quite the archeological dig through my own brain and strange interests.
There are state parks to visit and quirky restaurants in places I might visit someday. There are things I have looked up and intended to tell you about like a ghost mural from last September’s trip to Philadelphia.
There are a bunch of stories and websites about slow living while working full time, about analog living, and about how winds of political change are impacting mental health and human compassion. There are websites devoted to writing prompts that sound great but that I haven’t used yet.
There are recipes and nutrition plans, stuff about knee pain, and sleeping better. Material for a book that I’m attempting to get off the ground and stories about how slavery nearly was ended in 1846 mingle with music videos and blogs about celebrating our accents rather than trying to neutralize our regional dialects. There are ideas for a monthly work project and an eBay listing for a 1940s Admiral radio that I like but don’t need to buy.
There are LOTS of recipes that need to either be printed or copied onto recipe cards
I started out with 240 open tabs this morning and have it whittled down to 150. Probably 25 of those are recipes that I may try to deal with today. One is a vegetarian gravy that I have made several times and enjoy. It deserves a spot in the recipe box. The Mexican Alphabet Soup recipe I evidently found last winter looks like it deserves a try!
Are these open tabs hurting anything? Probably not. It also wouldn’t hurt to have a better way of organizing them either.
As I scrolled through this mess on my phone it made me marvel at how my mind works and made me wonder how many “tabs” are open in my actual brain. It’s no wonder I can’t focus on anything with all the diverse interests, ongoing projects and streams of thought that run in so many different directions.
Wonder if there’s a website to help organize it all in my mind. Maybe I’ll go look……
Awakening to a sun drenched room on a summer morning is a much different experience than doing so with the early morning blare of an alarm clock.
It reminds me of summer vacation when I was a kid. Sugary cereal, Barbies and She-Ra action figures were the most important things on my to-do list.
We had a library-by-mail service back then and I relished those deliveries in the brown paper envelopes stuffed so full of books they hardly fit in the mailbox. This was my very favorite treat back then and it was completely free.
What a gift to a country kid who loved to read.
Maybe that’s why I still get such a kick out of my Book of the Month Club deliveries and the other book mail I buy.
I was off yesterday and got to wake up with the sun. I don’t eat cereal anymore and there were no Barbies involved but it was a good one anyway. I played some LPs on the record player while making breakfast and doing some chores. After a hot shower, I settled in with a good book and nothing else to do till bedtime.
I went to bed early with a clean kitchen, a happily snoring cat who hogged the bed, and a clear conscience because my to-do list was done and I had fun too.
