This'll Get Us Through Winter

So, I had this zen phase last winter during a mental breakdown, during which I subscribed to "The Daily Om." They send you cheesy zen articles (such as this one) which are awesome. I know several of us suffer from SAD, but we don't have to! All we have to do is "Keep the Sun Inside" like the article says.

Power, Beauty, And Warmth: Keeping The Sun Inside

Anyone who has endured a long, dark winter can attest to the power the sun has to both invigorate and relax body, mind, and soul. It can be daunting to begin the months of fall and winter, knowing that we may not see as much of the beautiful sun for quite some time. But it is important to remember that even during the darker days of fall and winter, the sun is still there shining, as beautiful as ever. Just because it is hidden behind clouds or setting early in our part of the world, does not mean that we cannot access its power, beauty, and warmth.

One way to do this is to find a warm spot in our house where we can sit or lie down in peace. Closing our eyes, we imagine that it is a very warm summer day and that the sun is shining on us, allowing it to warm our body. We may feel as if a small sun has taken up residence in the area of our solar plexus or our heart.

If you live in a part of the world that loses a lot of light in the winter, you might want to do this exercise each night before retiring. You could also do it at the beginning of each day, giving yourself a chance to plug into that great source of energy. Keeping the sun inside of you when you are missing it on the outside is a way to say hello to the sun and let it warm your soul.

Remedy #3,562

I ordered another thing yesterday that will definitely change my life. It is this little blue light box, to counteract my SAD/winter insanity. Other life-changing remedies I have recently subscribed to include B Vitamins, Fish Oil, and various cheap aromatherapeutic agents that all smell the same. I don't think any of these really work, except to cause people to flee from me because of my fishy burps or overwhelming lavendar smell.

The blue light box, however, will obviously work. Plus it will make me as tan as this lady in the picture. (Although she does look like she's gritting her teeth, doesn't she? Maybe she hasn't used it for long enough yet.) I hope that just my face gets tan and not my neck or any of the rest of me, because that always looks awesome, like when my mom puts on her peachy makeup and then her face is a totally different color than her neck. Or like in Junior High when spring arrived and we'd all slather on the self-tanner that made our legs orange. Or it will burn my face off, like that sun lamp my Homecoming date my sophomore year of high school used, that made his face was all burny and peely-looking in the pictures. I was so pissed. I tried not to go, and then to not have our pictures taken. That relationship was weird; I sat on his lap like a little kid a lot but we never made out. Not once.

If it doesn't work, I'll bring it to winter meetings and we can still sit on the back deck and pass it around as a source of warmth and pretend we're in Mexico or someplace tropical. Or use it as a Speak and Spell because I think it is obviously a recycled Speak and Spell/Light Bright.

i suck this week

i suck this week. i have nothing to say. i have thought about nothing. my mind is empty as a mummy's mind. i have been teaching and grading papers rather than visiting our blog. it has made me stupid.

i apologize in advance for this stupid post about life savers. for reasons unknown to me, i just bought a roll and was thrilled to discover that they got rid of the lemon and lime flavors, and replaced them with raspberry and watermelon, which is awesome.

cherry is not as good as i remember it being. i used to buy whole boxes of luden's cough drops because it was like winning a roll of all cherry life savers. they were so delicious. but now the cherry ones just taste like a cough drop to me.

what an awesome name for a candy, though, and what if they really did what their name suggests?