Where did you plan to take your dream vacation? Go virtually. Print a brochure, read a travel review, download a native recipe and make an afternoon of it. Eat authentic food and have a conversation about what you learned.
If you patient is snoring, no need to delay the trip.
- Read the brochure, and use your mind's eye to insert yourself into the scene.
- Call up a friend to whom you have not spoken recently. Discuss adventure.
- Play music from your destination.
- Get a movie about or set in yout destination.
Close your eyes, and let your spirit free to roam your surroundings. Yes, this is permission to daydream.
Where is the day care?
Cannot pull it off to the pitter-patter of little feet and curious hands? Bring them along.
- Do a native craft with them.
- Discuss the indigenous wildlife while they draw the animals. Do not correct the purple fur on the lynx. It is their virtual vacation as well.
- Sit in the recliner and rock to the sound of reading aloud the brochure. You have just been promoted to tour guide.
- Dress up for a native dinner party. See how imaginative the children can be in recreating native costumes from their own toy boxes and your closet.
Exercise that long dormant inner child.
To keep or to toss, that is the real question.
Organize a seldom used storage space. You can always find laughter in the closet and the cabinet.
- Stroll down memory lane by seeing which clothes you can donate. Laugh out loud when you see that double-breasted leisure suit, right before tossing it in the donate box.
- Rearrange the pictures in your photo albums and consider putting some of those into the frames in the Hall of Fame-ily.
- Look under the bathroom sink. Look at dates and wonder why in the world you ever kept it in the first place.
- Rifle through the stack of magazines strewn about your coffee table. Remove the address labels and toss them in a sack to take to your patient's chemotherapy waiting room. Are there not some books on the shelf with which you could part? They should go as well.
- What floor covering is in the bottom of your closet? Rediscover it. See if you can fill a garbage bag with items to either donate or pitch.
So what does this accomplish? You have...
...exercised your right to control your living environment.
...harmed no (human) animals in your quest.
...strummed the charitable strings in your own heart.
...rightfully identified there are those who are not as fortunate as yourself.
...lifted a burden off your heart.
...improved the living situation in your home.
And it did not cost you one penny. There is no better reward than one without a price tag.
From my inner child,
Keep playing,
Ann Marie
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