Reflections on the puddle of life

In my quest to find a bit of equilibrium, I had a bit of a chilled out night last night and instead of rushing around like a crazy person, filling my time with tasks or pointless internet browsing (I do too much of that) I let time fill me. And it was good. I had a bath, and lay in the bath with the window open, listening to the rain, which is beautiful, and it got me to thinking about the things that I like and fill me with peace. I already know that I like lakes and big hills and being outside in the countryside and those sorts of things, camping, but these things are not so easy to come by when you work, and live in a place that is flat and not really surrounded by countryside (though this weekend I intend to explore). So I need to get a little inventive. Here are my thoughts.

Rain
Listening to the rain is what started all this off. After my bath I went downstairs, switched off the TV and opened the windows and sat in the darkening room listening to the rain fall. There are two types of rain which are blissful: the type which rockets down, often accompanied by thunder, that floods the streets and soaks you to the bone in a matter of seconds. When it rains like that, we’ll often sit out in the garage with the garage door open until it stops. Sometimes the kids will come out and run around in the rain, getting drenched and screeching and giggling. Sometimes I do too

The other type is the gentle, but persistent rain. The kind that drums on the windows with light fingers, that you can go walking out in with your umbrella and your wellies on, or a raincoat with the hood pulled up. And through which you can still hear the birds singing and the everyday sounds of the streets; cars passing and splashing, people chatting, those kinds of things. It was that kind of rain last night.

Chatting with my lovely hubby
When I was sitting in the living room with the windows open listening to the rain, my husband came and joined me and we sat together in the half-light talking about things, work, kids, life, those kind of things. It was funny, talking like that. We always seem to come to a point where we discover we’ve been thinking the same things – for example, last night when the rain was falling and we were listening to it through the window, my husband said ’it’s times like this that I wish we had a veranda out back that we could sit out on and watch the rain fall, just chatting like this.’ and in the bath I’d been thinking the very same thing.

I get the feeling that in 20 years or so time, assuming we’re both still here, we’ll be sitting out on that veranda in our rocking chairs, old and wrinkly, and we’ll be rocking away and every now and then one of us will say ’Uh huh’ or ’you’re right about that’ and the other wouldn’t have said a word but we’d both know what we meant.

I kind of hope so anyway.

Camping, hiking, being near lakes and generally being outside
I’ve already mentioned this. The problem with all of these things is that they’re not really easily accessible, but when I get chance I love getting out and about in the great outdoors. There’s a thrill in big hills, a desire, a desperate desire to walk up them. Unfortunately, no one wants to walk up them with me

Walking barefoot
There’s something wonderful about walking around with no shoes on, especially if you have the pleasure of walking over a range of surfaces: a thick carpet, stone, wood, grass. This morning I didn’t put my shoes on at work for an hour and it was bliss, and sometimes on the train home from London I’ll slip my shoes off and let my poor, shattered feet breathe.

Bean bags
Bean bags make me want to jump into them. We take one camping and I set up a nice little reading corner where I can lounge against the bean bag with a good book and chill out in the strange, green tent-light. I’d love to have a room filled with bean bags I could jump and roll around in. If only they weren’t so expensive…

For a time I tried to convince my boss he needed to buy me a bean bag for work purposes, so I could set myself up with a little, quiet thinking corner, but all he ever did is laugh at me. No one ever takes me seriously.

Sitting cross legged
In lieu of bean bags, I like to sit cross legged on the floor. It’s one of my favourite thinking positions. What’s so great about chairs?

Reading
I nearly left this one off my list, perhaps because reading is so much a part of me, like breathing or sleeping, I hardly think about it as something I can use to help chill me out. But of course it does. I love books. I love, actually, everything about books. I like having them around me. I like picking them up and flicking through them. I like the soft, worn feel of the pages of a second hand book and the second hand book smell, and the crisp, delicious feel of the pages of a new book. I like books printed on paper or cotton. I love hardback and paperback. I love bookshops and libraries and websites about books and reading. I like organising (and trying to find space for) my personal library, cataloguing my reading and purchases and choosing the next book.

Laughing with my kids
Because they’re funny, and a good giggle always does you some good. Especially when it’s followed by a loving hug. Hugging is fun too. Can’t leave that one off the list.

Hugging
Yep, there it is