Hi friends.  Welcome to the Friday Recliner for another week.

This week I’ve been keeping myself humming along experimenting with paint colours for my bedroom wall and cleaning out a few cupboards which were transformed just like that from diabolical to joyous with only the smallest amount of elbow grease and not a cent spent. I call that an easy win and instant morale boost that balanced out the leaky fish tank, the mouse invasion (possibly only two mice involved) and the chooks that insist on wandering about on my back verandah which they know annoys me no end. First world dramas these.

Anyhoo have you got something lovely planned for the weekend? Hope so. Remember little things count and simple pleasures do to

First things first though, here’s a few good things as we head into the weekend  – – –

A Good Word

A Good Look

I will find myself in beautiful books too

This whimsical loveliness from Tamsyn Morgans

A Good Laugh

If people did everything in a rush 

Anyone relate?

A Good Idea

from Laura Tremaine

For When Your Anxiety Levels are Rising

“It’s understandable, of course, that a lot of us are struggling under the weight of our current circumstances right now. For me, work projects + remote learning + 7 months of this introvert never being alone….well, it’s a lot. And I tell myself that the next day will be better, or the next week, or after this next thing, but really? If I don’t prioritize a few key things every single day, my anxiety really starts to roar. ⁣
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Here’s what I’ve been focusing on this week:⁣
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Sleep. Lack of rest is the #1 trigger for me to start to come undone. I have to make sure I’m sleeping enough each night, and building in some margin during the day to relax, read, etc.⁣
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Journaling. Getting my feelings out on paper really helps me to release them (or deal with them). Sometimes I’m not even sure what I feel until it flow out into my journal. Even if you don’t keep any sort of a regular journal, sitting down with a pen and paper (even if you throw it away after!) can be so helpful with untangling what is happening in our brains.⁣
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Stillness. I’ve been sharing about this a lot lately, but stillness has become an important part of my day. I set a timer for 10 minutes and just sit there. No pressure to meditate. No need to figure anything out. Just sit in stillness and see what comes to top. My mind usually races for a few minutes until it settles. I feel clearer after a bit of stillness, something we don’t always allow in our busy lives, even when we’re just staying at home. ⁣
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Today, please take 10-15 minutes to do something for your emotional wellbeing.
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I’d love to hear what you’re doing every day to take care of yourself. Share in the comments so you can help others who need ideas”

A Good Read

A personal story from author  Ann Patchett for The New Yorker

Its a longin but it kept my attention all the way

My Three Fathers

Marriage has always proved irresistible to my family. We try and fail and try again, somehow maintaining our belief in an institution that has made fools of us all. I’ve married twice; so has my sister. Our mother had three husbands. None of us intended this to happen. We meant to stick our landing on the first try, but we stumbled. My parents divorced when I was five. My mother and my stepfather Mike had their final parting when I was twenty-four. She married Darrell when I was twenty-seven, and they stayed together until he died, in 2018, when I was fifty-four. My problems were never ones of scarcity. I suffered from abundance, too much and too many. There are worse problems to have.

The second time that my sister, Heather, married, in 2005, she wanted a real wedding. She and her new husband, Bill, threw a terrific party in a barn that had been fancied up and turned into an event space. My husband, Karl, and I had eloped a few months before, and those beautiful words of love and commitment were still fresh. We drank the champagne, danced in a line, blew soap bubbles into the night sky above the bride and groom. Only my former stepfather, Mike, was sullen. His third marriage was nearing its end, and he was in love with my mother again. But my mother was happy with Darrell, so Mike danced with me for most of the night.

My father, who had always hated Mike, hated him less now that he, too, had lost my mother. Now my father contented himself with simply hating my mother, even though thirty-six years had passed since she had left him for Mike, in 1969. Beneath the glow of the little white lights that were draped over the ceiling’s crossbeams, my stepfather’s love for my mother and my father’s hatred of her looked remarkably similar.

Darrell noticed none of this. Eight weeks earlier, he had fallen down the brick stairs that led to the back door of the house where he lived with my mother and fractured several vertebrae. He was wearing a brace beneath his suit, beneath his clerical gown. He was a retired Presbyterian minister, and he officiated at my sister’s wedding, despite the pain it caused him to walk and stand and breathe. He hung on through the dinner and then got a ride home.

But the story I want to tell happens just after the wedding and before the reception began, while the photographs were being taken. Or it happened months before that, when I first realized that all three of my mother’s husbands were going to be at Heather’s wedding—the family equivalent of a total solar eclipse. I wanted a picture of that.

– – – Keep reading

and one more

The Best of Parenting from Around the World

 – – – – Read here

Remember you can browse through the  previous articles and posts linked to in The Friday Recliner right  HERE.

And if you enjoy The Friday Recliner would you be kind enough to copy the link and send to a friend to enjoy as well.

Till next week friends, have a beautiful weekend – rest up, do something you love xx