Shhh!

Mornings are usually a busy time for me. Housework, critter care, exercising and making my lunch take up all the time I have before work. Today I put aside some of the chores and took some time just for me, time to enjoy the silence. Time to reconnect with myself. We all have busy days - things we have to accomplish in order to pay the bills and sustain our household. But often we allow the busy-ness to take over and become our lives. It seems like there are always tv, radio, ipods, and cell phones ringing and blaring in our ears. Is it that we need noise to insulate ourselves from our thoughts? Today I embraced the quiet, even if only for an hour before work:

• I got down on the floor with the dogs and petted and stroked and scratched all their itchy spots. They give me so much, and I have felt recently that I hadn't been giving them enough real attention. Spending fifteen minutes fully engaged with them made me feel like the most important person in the world, and I believe they loved every minute of it.

• When I was outside feeding the ducks I stopped and just looked around, and ultimately fixed my eyes on the nearest group of trees - mostly alder and maple. Without their leaves it was possible to see how active with bird life they were - it was like a bird playground...they flitted from branch to branch chirping and playing. I'm so glad I took a minute to really absorb their antics.

I'm going to make a commitment to myself to incorporate time for quiet into my life with as much careful scheduling as I incorporate activities I care about.