A Recipe for Slowing Down

Last Tuesday evening, after I arrived home from work and the farmer's market and the grocery store and my library writing session, after I put the quinoa on to cook for Wednesday evening's Geography Club, I was rushing outside to find soccer balls (for the activity we were providing--South America Geography Soccer--which was not nearly as fun as it sounds) and cut mint for the quinoa, I somehow slammed my own finger in the front door, catching it right on the nail, which is perhaps one of the top five most painful spots on the body to smash. I did a lot of screaming and yelling and jumping up and down and cursing and clutching my finger.

When I finally released it from the grip of my left hand, I saw that it was only bleeding a little, but it would go on to swell and bruise a good deal (making finishing the quinoa salad complicated). It was my middle finger. My writing finger. The one I need to type the k, m, i, 9 and the comma. The one I need to steady my pen with. "What are you telling me, Universe?" I cried. And the answer came, not from the universe, but from myself. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps I am trying to do too much. We went ahead to Geography Club the next night, because we had already promised to bring some South American fun, but I have decided to decide to slow down. To find time when we have nowhere we need to be and nothing we need to do (sometimes this time must be wrested from the clutches of Responsibility, but wrest it we must).

Some useful ingredients for a Slow Day:

Hibiscus tea, slow-steeped in the sun:

A slow breakfast of eggs with avocado, goat cheese, grilled tomato and toast with rhubarb-grapefruit jam:

A very slow game of cribbage:

A slow and shallow river (yes it really is an actual river):

Three fast frog-catching boys (they slow down once the frogs are in hand):

Slow-moving wildflowers:

And not-so-slow but paused for a moment damselflies:

And a couple of mysteries:

(The first is a freshwater sponge--did you even know such a thing existed? I didn't) and the second remains mysterious, but I'm working on it--slowly).  Edited to add: That crazy bug is most likely a nymph of a dragonfly in the cruiser (Macromiidae) family, of which we have two species in Maine: Stream Cruiser (Didymops transversa) and Swift River Cruiser (Macromia illinoiensis). I know you were lying away last night wondering what it was; now you'll be able to sleep soundly.

The only other thing I would have liked more of in this day was some slow, lazy reading time. Our summer books have been sadly neglected (with these chapter-book listening boys; they're letting me read them Charlotte's Web right now. Meanwhile C just finished re-reading them the second Harry Potter...as long as they get their fix of magic, I guess they'll let me slide in with some classics).

How have you been slowing down this summer?