Blue Sky Feeling

I'm full of the joys of a Friday evening, looking forward to a gentle weekend ahead. Just a few fun things planned, time for whatever feels right to be slotted in, there'll be plenty of knitting of course.

One of the great things about where I work is that our hours are organised so we work slightly longer days Monday to Thursday and then finish up an hour or so early on a Friday. That hour always feels so precious to me. Today it meant that I got out in the garden for a short spell. I was following instructions to get half an hour of natural daylight. I was rewarded by seeing a huge queen bumblebee, my first bee of the year, fly through searching for somewhere suitable for her nest. I tried to tell her how lovely she'd find it here soon, when all the daffodils that are pushing for the sky burst open, but she was gone before I even managed a picture.

The daylight advice was one of the tips for improving sleep from the Goop newsletter this week. Not sure where I first came across these newsletters but they're often really interesting. Sometimes a little "I'm a movie star, these are the amazing hotels I stay in" but more often a bit more attuned to the reality of the masses. This just chimed in perfectly with me trying to improve the quality of my sleep to get me better. I'm really not a bad sleeper and actually I find that I've learnt to do many of the suggested things already in the past years. Exposure to natural daylight in winter though is definitely something I am lacking. Hurry on spring so that it's not just Friday nights that can be spent outside.

We learnt on the Optimum Health course about how the reticular formation in the brain helps us filter the mass of stimuli we're subjected to and pick out what we're interested in or need to be aware of. It seemed like that Goop newsletter came along just at the right time but apparently I've just given my subconscious a different set of things to pick up on. Another example was catching sight of a book last night that I bought years ago and never got around to reading: The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff- the principles of Taoism and their relevance to modern life revealed through Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet. I'm off to read some more but I'll leave you with the start of the Foreword:

"What's this you're writing?" asked Pooh, climbing onto the writing table.
"The Tao of Pooh," I replied.
"The how of Pooh?" asked Pooh, smudging one of the words I had just written.
"The Tao of Pooh,"I replied, poking his paw away with my pencil.
"It seems more the ow! of Pooh," said Pooh rubbing his paw.
"Well it's not," I replied huffily.
"What's it about?" asked Pooh, leaning forward and smearing another word.
"It's about to stay happy and calm under all circumstances!" I yelled.
"Have you read it?" asked Pooh.