Summer fun list

Summer Fun List Review—How Did I Do?

August 30, 2024

My jigsaw puzzle assistant

While the calendar says that the season is nearly over, I know that here in Florida we have many more days—months, probably—of “summer” left. But September is just a few days away, so I’m calling it on the Summer Fun List. Let’s see how I did! 

Summer fun list 2024

Rewatch the movie Clue. I enjoyed the stage production so much, I want to rewatch the movie. Done.

Beach weekend getaway with my husband. We tried, but nope.

Playdates with friends—as many can I manage! Whether it’s lunch, coffee, floating in the pool, or a trip to iSmash (see below), I plan to spend some quality time with friends this summer. Coffee, lunch, floating in the pool, thrifting, crafting—it was great!

Ride “Dougie” (fellow boarder’s horse I’ve been given permission to ride) while Tank enjoys his well-deserved retirement. Done.

Go to the movies—if I can find something I want to see. With my husband, with a friend, or even by myself. Twisters...dumb, but entertaining.

Complete at least one jigsaw puzzle. Done.

Watch the Summer Olympics being held in Paris (ah, Paris!) on TV. Done.

Make key lime ice cream. Bought the ingredients but never made the ice cream. I still hope to do it.

Go to iSmash—I have some frustrations I’d like to work out! Nope, and I’m losing interest in paying to smash things, as therapeutic as that sounds.

Watch Black Cake on Hulu. I loved the book. Done, and I loved the TV version, too.

Read by the pool. One way to enjoy the outdoors in a Florida summer is to get yourself wet. An afternoon spent reading and then dipping into the pool when I get hot sounds appealing. I usually prefer to skip the “wet” and “outside” parts of a reading afternoon, but I’m trying to shake up my routine a bit. Noooooo, who was I kidding?!

Create and read from a summer reading list (see below). Done.

Summer reading

Summer is prime reading time since I’ll be trying to stay cool. Here are some possibilities for my summer reading. Even though I’m a fast reader, there’s no way I’ll get to all of them. The ones with an * are priorities (completed titles in red):

Library books:

The Lost Bookshop, Evie Woods (already on hold) 

The Husbands, Holly Gramazio (already on hold) 

*My Murder, Katie Williams 

*In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore 

Laziness Does Not Exist, Devon Price (In progress)

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler 

Enchantment, Katherine May 

*Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser. The Project Gutenberg e-book version is here

*Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan, Elaine M. Hayes 

TBR shelf:

*Au Revoir, Mary Moody 

*The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, Rumer Godden 

Touch Not the Cat, Mary Stewart 

Traveling While Married, Mary-Lou Weisman 

*Draft No. 4, John McPhee 

Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art, Jennifer New 

August has been its usual difficult self. It’s been even more hot and humid than usual, Tank has been having a hard time with the heat, and as readers of the Happy Little Things newsletter know, we’re preparing to sell our house and move. Posting here on Catching Happiness may be erratic in the coming months, depending on what house-related shenanigans are taking place. I’m excited, but already feeling stressed and overwhelmed with the constantly growing list of tasks related to the move. I’ll do my best to continue to share simple pleasures and everyday adventures as we enter this new stage. Wish us luck! 

How was your summer?

build

Summer Rerun—Tools to Help You Build a Foundation of Happiness

August 16, 2024


Now and then I dip into the Catching Happiness archives and share a post from the past. I chose this post, from December of 2018, because my word of the year for 2024 is build

Friday’s quote from Operation Happiness got me thinking about the concept of building a foundation for happiness—the kind of foundation that will support us when we’re deep in grief, facing some of life’s more wrenching experiences, like losing a parent, watching a child struggle, or coping with the serious illness of a friend.

Building a foundation for happiness of this nature involves more than investing in some bubble bath and chocolate, or even a great book and cozy blanket. While comforting self-care rituals are nice (and necessary), by themselves they won’t be enough to support us during our darkest hours.

I went back through the Catching Happiness archives, and I thought about the things that have helped me most during my hardest times, and here are four I’ve found useful in building a foundation of happiness that sustains me. Perhaps they’ll help you, too.

Create and strengthen close personal relationships. Relationships are the number one contributing factor to happiness, according to a long-running Harvard study. I’m grateful that I have quality relationships with my family and my husband’s family. I also have many close friends, and many “virtual” friends I know only online. They’ve stepped in to offer support, love, encouragement and more when I’ve needed it most. I have several people I know are only a phone call or text message away if I really need help (and I hope they know I would do the same for them). It’s easier to walk through the dark valleys when someone walks beside you. 

Determine and write about your personal values. Surprisingly, this is one of the keys to coping well with stressful situations. Sometimes painful feelings result from not doing what someone else expects you to do, or from making hard choices. When you’re tired of struggling, remembering why you’ve chosen to think, behave, and live the way you do can help. Reminding yourself of your personal values can give you strength when you’re suffering.

Treat your body well. Eat healthfully, exercise, and get enough sleep. If you’re run down or sick, it’s much harder to feel happy. If, like me, you have a few nagging injuries, look into how to treat them…then actually do it! Care for yourself the way you would care for a child or someone dependent on you.

Make a list of simple mood boosters. This may seem frivolous in comparison, but there is a time and place for using mood boosters. When you’re knee deep in misery, you’ll be hard pressed to come up with anything that might lift your mood, so now is the time to think about what generally makes you feel happier. See “Five Ways to Feel Happier (in 10 Minutes or Less)” and “The Dark Side” for ways I boost my mood when sadness threatens to overwhelm me.

If your happiness is built on a foundation of deeper values and practices, it will stay with you, running like an underground river even when you face un-happy experiences. Happy feelings will return, and sorrow and grief are temporary. 

For more ways to seek deeper happiness, check out:

Link love

Soggest Link Love

August 09, 2024

What my windows looked like all week
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Greetings from waterlogged Florida. Even though Hurricane Debby made landfall well north of us, we’ve had nothing but rain, rain, and smothering humidity all week. Hat tip to Tampa Bay Times Columnist Stephanie Hayes for combining soggy with August to create Soggest…the best word I can think of to describe what it feels like here right now. 

But we have better things to do than complain about the weather, right? Right?!

Right. Here are some fun links to check out if your August is a Soggest, or if you simply want a break from real life.

The Frugal Girl’s “How to add more fun into your daily life (on a budget, of course)” lists both mindset shifts and practical tips for adding more inexpensive fun to our lives when it feels like all we do is grind. One of my favorites: the “pit stop of fun.” Plenty of these could be free, but last week I picked up a milkshake while I was out running errands and I brightened my day for less than $5. 

It will still be summer here until at least October, so I have plenty of time to enjoy these “99 Activities for Celebrating Summer.” I already regularly do some of these activities (enjoy seasonal fruit, grow potted herbs, work jigsaw puzzles), and I want to do a few more (plan a weekend escape to the beach, watch a sunset…preferably at the beach, make ice cream). Which ones would you like to try? 

Tired of pursuing happiness? Maybe it’s time to “Give up on happiness. Go hard at wonder.” Monica Parker, author of The Power of Wonder, compares the feeling of wonder to watching a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. “It is beautiful, complex, and even a little scary. This profound mix of awe, curiosity, and fear, is something that, when achieved, can expand our resilience and deepen our interpretation of the world around us.” 

Here’s another article related to increasing positive emotion by accessing awe: “The surprising benefits of ‘awe walks’ for your health and well-being.”

If you were as enchanted as I was by American gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik, the “Clark Kent of gymnastics,” here’s a fun interview with him. 

I found “The Haunting Mystery of Artist Laura Perea…” fascinating. 

I can’t wait to see Wicked on the big screen! Here’s the official trailer:


Have a great weekend!

 

 


House Hushing

Hush Your Life

August 02, 2024

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

Recently I’ve come across a concept in the decluttering/home organization world known as “hushing” your house. Author Myquillyn Smith wrote about it in “House Hushing & Why You Need It”:

“To Hush your House, begin with just one room and 24 hours.

“You’re gonna find a place in another room to act as a temporary, 24[-]hour holding space…. Then you simply remove all the smalls, gee-gaw[s], tchotchkes and decor and stash it in your holding area. It’s like a cleanse for your surfaces. A home reset. And the best part is you experience no decision fatigue because you are not making decisions. You’re just temporarily moving stuff out. 


“Once you hush a room in your house, you can see it with fresh eyes. It’s so easy to become house-blind to all the visual stuff we see daily. With a hushed and quiet room, you get to experience a sense of peace in a matter of minutes.


“I always like to wait 24 hours before I bring anything back in so I can fully experience the room with less. It’s a great feeling and once you live in your hushed, quieted room for a day, you’ll start to feel how wonderful it is and you’ll want to protect that feeling.”


I’m intrigued by this idea for decluttering, but I’m also thinking about what it would be like to “hush” my life in general. In other words, could I remove everything from an area of my life for a set period of time, and then thoughtfully add back in what was truly necessary and desirable? In the rush of life, how much of what I do is truly necessary, and how much could I let go of to make room for more peace and happiness?


Since hushing is temporary, I could:

  • Stop reading or listening to the news
  • Stay off social media
  • Choose to buy nothing
  • Stop watching TV
  • Stay home instead of go out
  • Close my computer and stay off the internet
  • Skip running errands

Twenty-four hours might not be enough time for hushing my life—I might want to do it for 48 hours, or even longer. However, this isn’t an exercise in deprivation. It’s an experiment to see if removing some things results in a more peaceful, happier life. It’s a way to see if something is bringing me joy, or bringing me down. It’s a way to get a little distance and perspective on things I might normally do on auto pilot.

I think I’m going to try hushing some things in August. How about you? Is there anything in your life you’d like to hush?

Fireflies

Beautiful and Quiet

July 26, 2024

Image by Monika from Pixabay

Today’s post is a poem written by Marilyn Kallet of Tennessee, courtesy of American Life in Poetry. I was looking for something with a summer feel, and this fit the bill. 

Fireflies

In the dry summer field at nightfall,

fireflies rise like sparks.

Imagine the presence of ghosts

flickering, the ghosts of young friends,

your father nearest in the distance.

This time they carry no sorrow,

no remorse, their presence is so light.

Childhood comes to you,

memories of your street in lamplight,

holding those last moments before bed,

capturing lightning-bugs,

with a blossom of the hand

letting them go. Lightness returns,

an airy motion over the ground

you remember from Ring Around the Rosie.

If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies

again, not part of your stories,

as unaware of you as sleep, being

beautiful and quiet all around you.

 

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Marilyn Kallet, from her most recent book of poetry, Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, Black Widow Press, 2009. Reprinted by permission of Marilyn Kallet. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation