How was your day?

A couple days ago I saw a woman and a child walking hand in hand. They were basking in the warmer weather, taking it nice and slow, and enjoying their evening. I was also close enough to overhear a little of their conversation.

Child: "How was your day?"

Woman: "Long and boring. How was yours?"

Child: "Just the right amount of time and so so much fun!"

The child then went on to talk about her amazing day in great detail, practically bouncing up and down with excitement, pausing once to say, "I'm sorry your day was so boring."

* Image by pixgood.com

I laughed a little to myself, and then felt a bit sad. At what point did that woman's days become long and boring? Were they long and boring when she was a child? Is it possible to recapture the amazing experiences of a day with that childlike wonder? Moreover, what story is inadvertently told to that little girl through that conversation? I hope she doesn't think that once she grows up her days will cease to be so much fun and will instead be long and boring. Yet, will they?

I'm working right now to build in a sense of childlike wonder into each and every one of my days. It sounds really cheesy and it's definitely not easy. I would say that watching my cat chase his everything including his own tail is a definite inspiration some days.

This is Felix, playing with his new homemade mouse toy (thanks Ben and Lindsay). I'm fully aware that inserting my kitten into multiple blog posts just solidifies my cat-lady self, and I'm okay with that.

Sometimes L and I dance around the apartment. Sometimes I splash in rain puddles. Sometimes I re-read one of my favorite children's books. Sometimes I try to lose myself in daydreams. Then I catch myself trying to write something down on my to-do list. Then I start all over again.

So what if we lived in a world where you both worked hard AND had fun? A world in which there there was more playing, laughing, dancing and exploring? 

I would love to live in a world where our days alternate between "fun" or "so much fun" - a world where we would all bounce along on our way home, bursting to tell other people our amazing stories about our days.

The Story of 'Ol Doll

I've always loved my grandma's stories. Ever since I can remember, she's been telling and retelling stories from her childhood, stories from my mom's childhood, stories of her adventures, and stories of our adventures, in a way that I could have never even imagined they could happen. For my grandma, the mark of a good story is that it is never told exactly the same way twice. When she tells stories, she's in her element. She usually starts giggling way before the punchline. It's infectious.

When L and I visited her in Ruston, Louisiana over the weekend, she told us the following story about growing up on a farm in Missouri, the youngest of ten children:

"We had a horse named 'Ol Doll, and we had been teaching her how to kneel. So one day, I guess we had nothing better to do, we decided it would be a good idea to just take Ol' Doll up the stairs. I'm not sure why we did that. Cocky and I were always up to something. You know why your Uncle Cocky was called that, right? Well, he was always very proud of himself, always looking sharp and dapper. One time, his teacher at school caught him fooling around at school. She asked him what he had to say for himself, and he just grinned. ‘Well, aren’t you cocky!’ she said. And from that moment on, we just called him Cocky. Well, where was I, Ol’ Doll, right? Just like you, I’ve always loved horses, and Ol’ Doll was our oldest horse. So one time, we decided to take Ol’ Doll into Pop’s study. Taking a horse up three flights of steps is even harder than it sounds, but it helped that she could kneel. So we dragged Ol’ Doll up there, and just waited in the doorway of Pop’s study to see what would happen. Well, bless Pop’s soul, he didn’t hear very well. He was just working away at his desk. We must have been there for a full five minutes before he turned around. He nodded to us, just like any other old day, and then turned around to go back to his paper. But then he did the biggest double-take I had ever seen. His eyes got all wide - and this is one of the only times I heard Pop swear. Well, we sure got Ol’ Doll down the stairs a lot faster than we had gotten her up!"

If I hadn't heard that story so many times, I would have sworn it wasn't true. Who could ever conceive of taking a horse up the stairs? Now, I could hear that story over and over and over. To me, that story fits my grandma to a T. Always up to something mischievous, always laughing, and occasionally, always exaggerating.