October = South Carolina and DC

I was lucky enough to get away for a few days of healing. I attended a yoga retreat in South Carolina, for breast cancer survivors. We were right on the ocean, stayed in fancy villas, ate yummy foods, and did SO much yoga and meditation. It was wonderful and healing and empowering.

It was strange, the day I traveled there, I was ok, but maybe a little nervous. I have never felt nervous about traveling by myself before breast cancer (enjoy it, in fact), but I was nervous this time. After a few hours of traveling (not bad at all), I arrived at the main building where the yoga and eating would take place with my bags. I met several other women and the lead yoga teacher came up to me and gave me a welcome hug. She must have seen something on my face, because I had never met her before but she felt inclined to hug. Immediately, I became emotional and had tears running out of me. I guess it was just this feeling, this relief of, "yes, I can still do it. I am still me." David Byrne says "Nothing has changed but nothing's the same" - I mean, that is exactly it. It may be cheesy to quote a song, but that is what I felt. It is the same old me, but so much is not the same. After a few moments of tears, I went and put on yoga pants and felt wonderful and powerful and good for 3 days.

After missing my hubby, I got home for a week and then Mike and I went to DC for a few days. One day was for my work but first, we had 2 days of fun. We spent a lot of time looking at art. The National Building Museum had a great exhibit on the original planning of DC. I found some landscape pieces from the 17-18th century very intriguing at the National Gallery of Art. The highlight was the Phillips Collection. Besides looking at a huge Renoir that I had never seen in real life before, we were amazed by the Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence. You can learn more in this interactive site about this series. I had just finished teaching about the Great MIgration in my history of social welfare policy class!



this painting is 2nd Beach Newport in 1878!


this just makes me think "Run Forest, RUN!" I can't help it.


Mike did more exploring while I was in a one-day meeting and took some of these beautiful photos.






October was a beautiful month.

autumn treasures

I do love the summer. I love being near the ocean, being in the garden, and planning day trips that involve outdoor activities. It is great to have long days, lots of vitamin d, and bbq invitations.

Nothing beats the beginning of fall, though. Autumn smells wonderful and cozy. I love needing a sweater and a blanket. I love pumpkins and mums and apple crisp and hot cider. It really is my favorite season. I even like when it starts getting a little darker out earlier and you feel cozy warm inside. The farmers' markets are lush with bounty and filled with people in fleece coats and smiles. I guess it is a little bit of nesting that happens to me at this time of year. It is nostalgic, maybe.

I just realized I wrote a similar 'i heart fall' post last year. It was a lovely time to be wedding planning last year. Mike and I looked at wedding pictures this past weekend.

I celebrated the beginning of this autumn season with Laura. We made our own Rosh Hashanah meal to ring in the new year (sweets for a sweet new year!) We cooked a lot of farmers' market vegetables and I re-learned how to knit. Pumpkins and squash, and well, homemade ice cream can be for any season! I am going to try to enjoy every day of this fall season...

treasures

I can't seem to get enough of ocean-viewing time. We went to the beach house again for a short while. I caught the sunset, around 6 am or so. It was a full moon that night, so morning and evening were beautiful. September is a great time to catch the sun rising over the water in Stonington. When we get home, I can close my eyes and still see this view from my grandma's beach house, the ocean, the moon, the sun, the waves, the many many sailboats off in the distance. I suddenly feel like I want to drive right back. I guess I have to just try to treasure the moments when I am in front of the ocean and close my eyes and imagine it when I am not there.

the ocean

These days, when I am feeling a little stressed or down a bit, I am always craving the ocean. I guess it has become such a part of me, because I was around it so much growing up. There is no place like it for me. It is difficult, really, to put in words. I can say, though, that I love seeing the ocean at any time of day and in any season. In fact, most of my enjoyable ocean viewing moments are usually when it is not packed, blanket to blanket, but later in the day or really early or in the winter.

Every time we go to RI, I am always saying to Mike, I want to stop by the ocean. But most of the time, our days home fly by with no time for the ocean. This past short trip to RI, for Declan's birthday, we were only there for about 30 hours but we managed to fit in a quick ocean viewing. It was beautiful. I took Mike to Hazard Rocks, just down a few blocks from Narragansett beach, an old hang out and one of my favorite beaches anywhere. SInce the main part of the beach was completely packed and surfers were all over waiting for waves from the hurricane, Hazard Rocks is always a great place to ocean watch with less crowds. I got a little wet when a random wave washed over me. I forgot the name was given for a reason. It is so beautiful there, though. The sound...I should have taken a little video just so I could here the waves. Well, try to imagine the sound of the waves through these photos. Ahhhhh. It is a beautiful thing.

treasure foods

In the spirt of my 'treasures' project, I wanted to note some foods that have been a real treat this week. The first treasure was an adventure, making homemade Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream with coconut milk instead of dairy milk and agave nectar instead of sugar. I am trying to avoid sugar as much as possible and agave has given me a way to still enjoy ice cream! Coconut milk ice cream is delicious and you can buy it in whole foods or other natural foods stores but it is sooo expensive. It is very exciting to find a way to make it myself! I used a recipe from this book, roughly. Lots of love in this ice cream thanks to the help of Kevin, Holly, and my hubbie. I mean, they watched really, and experienced it.


Then, the first green beans of the season were picked in my garden this week. They are Mellow Yellow beans and I think we will be eating a lot of them in the coming weeks. They ended up in a yummy dish with whole wheat pasta, other veggies from the farmers' market, basil from the garden, oil and balsamic, and goat cheese. No pictures of that finished product but it was a treasure for dinner!

It warmed up quite a bit this week, finally feeling like summer. Since I can't crack open a cold beer these days, I decided to make myself an ice cold yummy treasure drink - watermelon lemonade (and yes, with agave instead of suger!). I adapted this recipe.

vacation at the ocean

Grandma gave us a week at the beach house in mystic. Stonington, really. It was a wonderful week. After 2 months of rain in NJ, the sun came out our first morning there and stayed out almost the entire time.

Mike and I had a great week. We got to see the family and have some fun alone together. It was a very peaceful week. I didn't even have to meditate, because it is just automatically happening when you are there.




It is amazing how the cottage feels after all of these years. The smells of the flowers as you walk up the beach path hill, the sound of the screen door in the front and the fog horn. The feel of the funny grass in between the rocks in the driveway, how that grass feels on my barefoot. The feel of closing the outside shower door and the sound of the water echoing in there. I have been going there since I was born. And some things are exactly the same. There is no other place like it when you wake up in the morning and see the ocean all around. And to go outside early with a mug of tea and just sit out there, seriously nothing like it. There is no other place like it.

a challenge - it begins with colour

I came across a blog with weekly color-photo challenges. This week, the challenge was to capture "wild card" or as much color as possible. It was tough since every day seems to be grey or dark grey but I decided to try it.

When I think of color at this time of year, I do always think about farmers' markets. I love going every week at the beginning of the season and watching how new colors are introduced each week. About a month ago, it was all mostly green and pink. This past week, blue came to the scene. I love going to new farmers' markets. Some fav's - Berkeley, Ithaca, Union Square...I enjoy mine too, it is just down the street. And next week, when we stay in Mystic, we will check that one out.

this is less of a creative shot and more of a documenting shot. in posting this, i realized that a lot of the time, i use photography to document. i know photos are about capturing but my eye is doing something specific, for documenting...i have done a lot of documenting, in mexico, in south america, and at different moments of random days. i wonder which is better...

life's treasures

I follow a few blogs here and there and I like when people come up with monthly or daily or weekly 'projects' for their blogs.
I have been doing a lot of thinking and being mindful of my life's treasures these days. In a book I keep going back to, Here for Now, the author has a great chapter on treasures. She talked about how our treasures are usually right here, right near us, or within us, even when we try to look far away for them. She asked the reader to think of your treasures. Listing them or thinking about them helps to remind us that treasures are present within us always, no matter where we are or what we are doing.

So as a blog project, I think once a month, I will post a 'life's treasures' entry. We'll see how it goes.

minutes before the ceremony - the photo is a little dark but i do love that face. it might be hard to see, but i see the love in his eyes. he has the best eyes.





my niece and nephew watching a frog eat grass, they have no idea how cute they are!