Sunsets+Shopping=Serenity. Sorta.

I did manage to clean my floors yesterday after all. After talking with my tribe, they encouraged me to just pick one thing to do (to get out of my mental funk) and I realised having muddy floors bothered me more than anything else. So I mopped them. And I felt so much better.

And then, since my long-suffering dog had also been neglected for his morning run due to the heavy rain, I brought the kids out with me to give him a late afternoon walk.

Off he went into the sunset.

Off he went into the fields.

And then he found his friend Sandee who is a shepherding dog. She tries to shepherd him, but she has a hard time because he’s a hunting dog and he can run faster. They both have lots of fun and sleep the better for it.

So I managed to get my act together despite being in a funk.

And then today I went into La Défense to get some shopping done because I wanted to go to certain clothing stores while the sales are still going on. Of course I had to get my weekly groceries as well, which is much less romantic, but that did not deter me.

I met my friend Amina at Starbucks and we got caught up on our lives. They’ve installed this new light photography on the screens in the mall, which is really pretty.

And we hit the stores. Gap for Gabriel because he is thicker around the waist than most French kids and the pants fit him with room to spare. And my favourite store for girls (and women) – Cyrillus.

I could splurge since it was the sale season. See what I got for Juliet?

So although this has not magically brought my husband home or prepared my English lessons for tomorrow or made the dinner for tonight, it did give me courage to face all of that because I got out of my home and spent time with a friend.

Speaking of friends, Greta of G*Funkified has written a gorgeous review of A Lady in France here. Greta is . . . simple elegance. That’s what I think of when I think of her. I was first introduced to her through her story on grief. I’m drawn to grief because of my own experiences, which makes me a sensitive listener (a plus), but perhaps a rather morbid person. The jury is out.

Greta wrote about losing her husband to a drunk driving accident when she was newly pregnant with her second baby – before they had even told anyone she was pregnant. She wrote about that here. I sobbed. She also wrote about being a phoenix – getting remarried and having two more babies in addition to her first two – here! And her husband is an amazing father to all four of his children.

But Greta is more than that. She runs a gluten-free household for her daughter who has coeliac disease. She hosts photography improvement posts, runs every marathon she can, including Disney (see aforementioned photography post), and she lives in a really rural setting, which she insists is not romantic, but I think it really is.

A huge thanks to my friend Greta, who was willing to read my book and share about it.

So that was my day – a little sunset, a little shopping, a little craziness since there was a lot of running around – running around which culminated in an orthodontist appointment that took hours. But all in all it was pretty serene.

Sorta.

The post Sunsets+Shopping=Serenity. Sorta. appeared first on A Lady In France.