fun
Can your inner child come out and play?
Remember when you were a kid and your friends would randomly stop by your house and ask if you could come out and play? And you would. Just go out and play.
At least I did. It was such a simple thing. No coordinating schedules. We’d let our parents know and off we’d go.
Riding our bikes. Swinging on the swings. Climbing on the jungle gym. Running around. Playing hopscotch. Jumping rope. Sliding down the slide. Swimming in the pool. And so much more.
It was just fun and simple and I must admit that my inner child misses being able to go play. I’m not the only one, because it seems that more of us adults are taking time out to feed that playful and creative side of ourselves.
After a tough day at work, a co-worker and I were talking about plans for the evening. She was going to buy some art supplies and paint with her boyfriend at home. Not painting the house or the walls. But painting on a canvas just for the heck of it. To unwind at the end of the day with some creativity.
The next day I was so curious about how it went. They had a lot of fun and she took some pictures on her phone that she shared with me. They looked great!
Many businesses now offer places where you can go and paint and craft in groups, as I wrote about a few years ago. But you have to pay and that can be a luxury that some of us cannot afford too often. I thought it was brilliant to just set up paints and have fun painting at home. I used to love doing that at school and at home after school when I was a kid. I plan to do this myself and maybe try it with some friends.
Apparently now adult coloring books are the rage. They are flying off the shelves and becoming best sellers. Jacksonville.com reported on the trend recently.
“We cannot print them fast enough,” said Amy Yodanis, Quarto’s head of marketing. “We are getting orders of 60,000 at one time from some of our biggest retailers.”
There are coloring clubs and coloring contests. Parade magazine devoted a Sunday cover to the trend. Dover plans a national coloring book day on Aug. 2.
“People are stressed and anxious all the time,” said Jeannine Dillon, Quarto’s publisher. “Coloring is a way to calm down and unwind at the end of the day.”
The coloring books sound pretty fun to me and I wonder how many people will be coloring on August 2nd to celebrate national coloring book day.
Not everyone is into coloring or painting. Just like when we were kids. Different people like different things. Some friends of mine went to tennis camp this past weekend, as they have done each year for several years. There are cooking camps and writing vacations. There are yoga summer camps too.
In light of this new back to childhood trend, it makes sense that a new long-lost Dr. Seuss book is being released.
What Pet Should I Get goes on sale this Tuesday, July 28th. I’m sure lots of grown-ups will be reading along to find out the answer to the question.
Have A Ducky Week!
This duck (goose??) is a poser. Yup! It walked right up to me, apparently expecting to be fed. I didn’t have any food, so it just looked me in the eye and posed for this picture. So cute!
If you follow me on Instagram, you can see all the pictures that I took. G and I were in Watertown, walking around the park to burn off some calories from our meal. I don’t know the name of the park that we were in. It was my first time visiting, but there were some beautiful scenes. Here are some more sights for you to enjoy.
Hole Punch Droppings.com: Seek vengeance but do no harm
While I consider myself a good and kind person, and hopefully most others do too, I did revel in making a Schadenfreude Pie for Pi Day a couple of years ago.
I like seeing people get dessert. But as I mentioned in that blog post, I also enjoy seeing people get their just deserts. One of my favorite shows is Revenge. And it’s back tonight. I cannot wait!
A recent Boston Globe article discusses the idea of open offices coming to an end. One of the issues mentioned was that working in close quarters makes it easy to overhear conversations. Some people insert themselves into conversations that they were not invited to participate in and things can get awkward to say the least. Co-workers can start to feel uncomfortable around each other. That discomfort can start to fester. Anger may ensue. Revenge may be sought.
Well, a new company called Holepunchdroppings.com thinks that they may have the answer to the problem and help diffuse the situation with humor. And right in time for April Fool’s Day.
The website provides some very interesting scenarios in which sending some hole punch droppings, just might be the answer to the problem. Or not. Below are some examples.
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“I really don’t like the project manager for my department. I thought about sending her glitter, but that is really hard-core, I am not even sure it is legal in this state. Instead I sent her hole punch droppings. Her cubicle is now littered with them and yesterday at check-in I casually mentioned that perhaps she should not be managing the project if she couldn’t keep her cubicle clean.”
“The guy in the cubicle across from mine keeps borrowing my personal stapler without asking. Last week I sent him an envelope of the hole punch droppings, the literary blend… with the “you know what you did” message. And today he looked me in the eyes and actually asked before borrowing my stapler. ”
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Who knows whether this latest foray into office vengeance will be a hit? But it least it keeps things interesting.
As Nemesis tells us about the business, “Hole punch droppings are absolutely not confetti. This is vengeance not a celebration.”
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Photo Credit: Holepunchdroppings.com
Christmas Surprise Traffic Stop
With all the negative news about the police lately, it’s nice to see something positive. Although I probably shouldn’t have looked at the comments below the video. I guess I could be cynical about it too. But I’ve written my fair share of blog posts about racism in this country recently. I need a break. Especially during the Christmas season.
For my own mental health, maybe yours too, I’d like to believe that there are some good police out there who genuinely are trying to do something nice. This is a heartwarming video. For now, I think I’ll leave it at that.
