The Quiet Kind of Fun

Ever since our move 2.5 months ago, life has felt a little like a never-ending marathon of stuff to do. After all, in the last two and a half months we've spent a week in Cambodia, bought a car, celebrated both Angel's birthday and mine, attended a marriage ceremony, planned and hosted a goodbye party with 180 people in attendance, experienced severe water leakage in our apartment, and released baby turtles into the ocean. That's on top of the normal busy work involved in moving, like buying appliances and furniture and getting internet set up...and the normal busy work involved in life. Angel started a new job, I have 2 four year olds over to play and learn with me every morning and I stay on top of all the housework and am involved in a variety of other interesting projects.

My little sister left some of her old t-shirts behind when she moved to America a month ago. So now we wear them. And yep, we gave her a t-shirt with a picture of us on it years ago, back when we were newly engaged, and we thought it was the funniest thing ever.

In addition, until the last few days of August, we hadn't lived in our apartment alone. My brother and my cousin were staying with us for the first two months, and then as soon as they left, we housed and took care of a 6-year old boy while his parents were out of the country for a few weeks.

We aren't normally the type of people I would call "busy," so this new pace of life has come as a bit of a shock. I'm not saying any of this to complain. Much of our "busyness" has been of a very exciting and fun nature. Angel loves his new job, and I love the kids I hang out with everyday. My eyes light up when I think of all the stories and experiences we've had in the past few months.

At the same time, I have noticed that even an 'Energizer Bunny' such as myself has started to crave some quiet downtime of the sort that's fun without requiring tons of energy, and I've realized that in our current season of life, fun of that sort has to be strategically planned and enacted

I've started to identify the kinds of quiet fun that are helping me get into a long-term sustainable rhythm for this new and exciting lifestyle.

Reading
I've always loved reading. But in the past few years, I largely stopped reading books for fun. Part of that was due to my new interest in blogging--I started reading blogs instead of books. Part of it was because I'd already read all the books I owned and didn't want to buy any more in the year before we left for China, and then I didn't have much available to read while we were in China, either. Now I live close enough to my parents' goldmine of a book collection, and I'm once more devouring books whenever I get a free moment. In the afternoons, I often take a few of the littles to the apartment complex's playroom. There, they climb all over slides and little toy houses and I lay on the floor engrossed in a book. Everyone's happy.

Recent reads include The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden and The Monogram Murders. I just finished reading The Fellowship of the Ring and I'm on to the second in the series.

Writing
I don't write well in 15 minute chunks, but when I get a couple solid hours with nothing scheduled in them, I still love stealing away to my computer and writing something. There's a reason I've kept blogging for years. I may never have a gigantic audience, but the words keep coming anyway. These days, I'm also enjoying researching for and writing lesson plans for my preschoolers and for character-building activities for a teens group I'm involved with on Saturdays. Perhaps I should warn you now--at this point, I'm planning on participating in Write 31 Days in October--which will give me plenty of excuses to write. The topic will be stories of growing up as a TCK in Malaysia--I was under the impression that I hadn't written much in the way of true stories of interesting events, lately, so I'm setting out to change that. You can read my page explaining the series here.

Watching TV/Movies
Watching movies together has always been a favorite activity of mine and Angel's. In Michigan, we had the coziest couch, and renting DVDs from Blockbuster and watching one while cozied up under blankets with a big bowl of popcorn and two homemade smoothies made for some awesome evenings. Our couch in China was probably the least comfy couch ever, so that became much less of a habit, but now that the couch we ordered finally arrived (one month after ordering) we are enjoying our old habit once more. Now we just have to get a blender so that we can have smoothies. There's no DVD rental shops here, but this is another area in which it's fun to raid my family's collection.

Here, on Wednesday nights, movie tickets are only 8.50RM (with the current exchange rate, that's $2 USD), which makes movie dates out at the cinema a really feasible option. That's great news for our date night habit! The cinema in China was very expensive where we lived, so we only went when the school gave us vouchers for Teacher's Day or for a really big movie like The Hobbit.

Embroidery
This is something that I've loved doing since I was a little girl. Especially when watching a movie or a TV show, I like keeping my hands busy. Crocheting or knitting isn't my thing, but embroidery is. In China, I embroidered a table runner which I gave to one of our coworkers. Now I need a new project to start on!

What are the sorts of quiet fun that you partake in when you need to rebuild your energy for the next big thing?