Kindred Spirits

So I admit, I wasn’t too great at posting much about my trip back to England while I was gone. I believe I did get one or two posts up but that was it. To be honest, there wasn’t really a whole lot to write about, lots of time was spent with family and friends reminiscing. However some great stories were recounted.

My friend Mary and I, who’ve been friends since I was 9, had a great time retelling stories from our childhood. Mary and I were introduced by one of the teachers at school. Mary was a year below me, we were both sort of misfits. I would wander around the school yard looking at the flowers etc and daydreaming. Mary would time herself running back and forth across the playground with her new digital watch. The teacher was right to introduce us, we hit it off right away and have been really good friends ever since. Due to her parents jobs Mary moved around a lot. So after a few years of us being inseparable she moved to another town, not that far away, but far enough (by English standards), for us to only see each other every couple of months. Then of course she moved again, and we saw each other less. In fact in the past 10 years, we’ve seen each other twice. But each time we get together, its like we just saw each other the day before.

Some of the things we did and believed as kids is hilarious now looking back. We had so much hope and determination, we believed that we could save all the animals in the world, we even wrote a book (at the age of 10) on how to save the environment. We developed our own code and wrote “secret” letters to each other. We wrote plays and made up silly games, all the stuff that kids are supposed to do, right. We got up to so much mischief too, and are still amazed that my mum was always aware of what we were up to, and what trouble we’d caused.

For some reason we got to talking about us wearing swimming costumes under our school uniform on the days we had swim class. I remember it always being a right pain, as I had to take off all my clothes when I needed to go pee, Mary made the same comment. Then my other friend, who was also there having dinner with us, asked why we did that… we looked at her as if to say, well what else were we supposed to do. April then said… well you could just push the gusset to one side… so at 29 years of age, I have now learnt that you don’t have to remove a swim suit to go pee. You have no idea how often I have thought to myself, while wearing a wet swim suit that there has to be an easier way, seemingly Mary was the same way... kindred spririts!

Summer Solstice

I had such a pleasant weekend. It was very low key. Friday, I ended up going to bed early (I am starting to get old, being in bed before 11pm on a Friday, not sure what's up with me). Saturday we got up and went out to get breakfast (we try and get up before 10am every weekend day, so we can go out and get a scrumy breakfast) before getting our weekend errands out of the way.

We spent the rest of the day being lazy.

A friend of ours was having a Summer Solstice party Saturday night, so we headed over there.

It was a lot of fun, they have a pool in their backyard, and had lit the yard up with lots of candles. We drank, and chatted then had a swim in the pool for a bit.

I met some really great people, and had conversations about all types of things. I really do enjoy meeting new people and learning about their stories. I love to hear the different points of view that people have. We got talking about luck. Did you know that statistically certain birth months are luckier than others. Apparently May and July are the luckiest… I was born in July, and I have to admit, I do think of myself as being a lucky person. This comes from a book called Quirkology. It caused quite a discussion. I believe that people create their own luck to some extent, I also believe people have more influence over their bad luck than their good luck. I think far to many people attribute poor decision making to bad luck, as they don’t want to take responsibility for the decision’s they make. But that is just my opinion.

We also got talking about the “Book of Questions”. I’d never heard of this things, but turns out I was the only one at the party who hadn’t. People started rattling off questions, it was quite fun to see the different ways people would respond to a situation.

The intent of the party was to celebrate Summer Solstice. I am not pagen, nor were most of the people at the party, but I think it was a great excuse for a party. We were not the only ones to be celebrating. Back in the UK thousands of people gathered together at Stonehenge to celebrate.

(Night) Swimming

I have an amazing friend, well I have lots of amazing friends actually, but I want to tell you about one in particular today.

Her name is Michelle Macy. I find her amazing because she set her mind to doing something, which I would find impossible. Michelle has been swimming for a long time, and a couple of years ago she set her mind to swimming the English Channel. She put in long hours training, swimming in the freezing sea in Alaska, swimming at night, taking freezing cold baths, to allow her body get used to cold water temperatures. Last September, she achieved her goal. She swam the Channel in 10hours and 2 mins. I don't think I could even sit in a bath for that long, never mind swim.

She swims because she finds joy and purpose in the water. She raised an incredible $2,500 which she contributed to University of Minnesota Cancer Research Center. Her goal is to raise $50,000, and I know she can do it. She'll achieve this goal via Macy Swim for the Cure cause.

For more information go to www.macyswim.com

Good Luck Michelle!