...11.22.09...

you must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip. ~j.m.barrie

today let's meditate with our calendars open. how does your week look? which day could you take off without your world grinding to a halt because you're temporarily unavailable to keep it spinning? good. now write in, "mental health day."

remember the "mental health" days we'd cite in high school in order to drop out for a day? it's time to revive the tradition. don't feel guilty about calling in sick: this is preventive action. sometimes i wish i were a physician specializing in women's medicine. i would surprise each one of my patients annually with a written prescription to play hooky for a day. i would convince them that hooky is absolutely necessary for their good health: physical and psychological. then i would give them an official note excusing them from real life. i think the crucial reason it's so difficult to be grown-up is that there's no one to write a note for us excusing us from the job, the marriage, caring for mom, and driving the car pool. don't worry. i'll write your note. will you write mine?

playing hooky is not the same as "sitting one out." when--because you simply can't stand it anymore--you sit one out by taking a sick day or vacation day, you don't have the creative energy for "hookiness." when we play hooky, the operative word here is "play" and no one's to know it but your authentic self. (or a good friend who's playing hooky with you.) send your husband off to work, call in and say you'll see whomever tomorrow, take the kids to day care. if you're at home, call a sitter or arrange with another mother to exchange hooky days.

now you have approximately eight hours to call our own. do whatever seems most frivolous, most totally self-indulgent. get a european body wrap, a pedicure, a cosmetic makeover, or a facial. treat yourself to an aromatherapy massage. go out to lunch in another part of town. stay at home watching soap operas, talk shows, classic sitcoms, or cinema on cable. rent ferris bueller's day off. read a fabulous novel in one sitting with a small box of govida chocolates in our lap. don't answer the phone. only do what you want to do, not what needs to be done. pick up the kids and your favorite carryout food.

when your day is over, all you've accomplished is caring for your soul.

luxuriate in your idleness. "it is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do," the victorian british writer jerome k. jerome confessed. "there's no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do...idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen."

~simple abundance: a daybook of comfort and joy-sarah ban breathnach

just BE.

robin.

welcome to coffee hour.

welcome to this Sunday morning.