Gratitude: discovering the meaning of life

Go on! Watch this.
It's less than three minutes  long
It will make you smile
It made my day 

So - did it make you smile? Do you feel a little gratitude for those crème brulées that you love? Have you been following your heart (to the crème brulée section of the supermarket)?

I have a little personal gratitude to share. For Jeanne, who gave me a sweet blog love award a few weeks ago (yes - I do have my tail between my legs, and am now virtually looking up at her with big, pleading brown blue eyes hoping she'll forgive my rather late lateness)
and …

...for all of you who keep popping by to check in on me, even though I'm lagging behind in the 'post' stakes ;-).  My new motto is ' the finisher is the winner.' I borrowed it from the Nice (as in French Riviera, Nice) Triathlon finisher t-shirts, thinking it was pretty apt for many aspects of life especially housework.

Every day, life has an uncanny way of teaching me humility: that I'm not, no matter how hard I try, ever going to be super human, and never will I be likely to grow even ONE extra set of hands in my lifetime - how ever many affirmations I write to the contrary ;-)

As I watched that film above though, I mentally ticked off each piece of simple, meaningful advice it gives, and realised that a good many of them are part of my daily or weekly routine.

So, while being consistently behind in blogging finishing off my own art projects, inspite of all the disorganisation and constant restructuring that characterises my homeschool beginnings, I'm happy. And grateful for life.

Just wanted to share that with you… including the 'blog love' award. I just love 'youse' all as we say in Skippy speak ;-) If you feel like sharing a little 'blog love' then pass it on to some inspirational, motivational and just plain likeable bloggers that you know.

Dutifully, I am posting a link to my first (actually second,  because it has a photo) post.

A Virgo always acts virtuously Jeanne so I am denying the rebel in me and obeying instructions ;-)

Now tell me dear friends, what are you grateful for? And what makes you happy?

Older, wiser, sexier... ?

Given the ahem, intriguing title, you may be asking yourself just what exactly I was up to during my time in Wales ;-) Was I on a luxury, week long spa with black peat body packs and  pure merino sweat blankets? 

Noooo friends - but given the copious amounts of great vegetarian food that I lacked the strength not to take extra servings of, I had to run a lot of kilometres through the black peat that week, startling more than one poor sheep out of it's slumber at the unGodly hour of 6am most mornings as I scaled the green hills above the retreat centre. Why so early? Can't miss breakfast! It's the most important meal of the day. Well, along with lunch and dinner that is ;-)

Many of the people I was with rose at dawn for their yoga practice. Regrettably there was no chocolate to encourage me to stretch that far so I opted for long runs where I could lose myself in the heath and banish all thoughts of chocolate from my head. Not that I got lost - my running partner had a map. This comes in handy when you're in unfamiliar territory. So does chocolate ...

In fact, I spent my week in meditation and reflection all about life and what the heart wants. So far it appears that my heart wants the same things as Ava Gardner. Ok - before I'm old and grey it wants a few things too ... but a girl can have a long term goal too can't she ? ;-)

For now, I'm back to working on the photo above. Reckon at my age I'm wise enough not to ever be seen in a midriff shirt again, but I'm working on my sexy sweeping glances and hoping they will be enough to clean the house. Efficiency girls! 

If you get the chance, check out this little pearl of a book by very talented cartoonist, Bev Williams. I've often bought her gift cards in England but it was more than I could do not to let out raucous squeal of delight in the middle of the rather British calm department store when I found a whole book of her anecdotes on life.  It almost made up for getting home 5 days late after the transport strikes!!  

There is more to tell of my trip - but I'm still reeling from the magnitude of it. So the telling of the tale will have to wait until I can find the words adequate enough not to reduce the whole marvellous experience to new age hype. 

In the mean time - I have been slowly getting back into blogging. Some of you may not be fully aware of this as although I've been finding just the right amount of time to read your blogs, my attempts at commenting have so far been thwarted by Libellule's unplanned for broken wrist, Chickpea's impromptu school art show, racing out at the last minute to buy gifts for the teachers, make costumes for the afterschool activity finales and generally trying to climb the new mountains of washing that have materialised out of thin air. Of course, this has been exacerbated by the amount of time it takes to master my sweeping glances which unfortunately seem to have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on any of the tidying up that needs to be done around here!

Joyfully I can say that the last day of school is tomorrow and there are week long summer camps coming up - for the kids - so I shall be free of school obligations, the loads of washing that mushroomed while I was away have started to dwindle and bit by bit life, and blogging, will be back to normal at La Rivière. 

Thanks for all welcoming me back... Here I come!!