Overseas Diaries: Where the Time Goes

We are 3 weeks into the New Year and already I feel like this year is blazing forward, with time just bleeding away like a wound I can’t keep contained. There’s not enough time! Ok, take a deep breath… There is just something about the New Year that really motivates me and puts innumerable ideas in my head about things I want to accomplish. Living in Monterey, where there is ALWAYS something going on, doesn’t help the growing list of activities I line up for myself. The only problem with that is that I get so excited about so many ideas that all of a sudden I’m stressed out and overwhelmed about getting them done, when I really should be enjoying each thing as I do it. I guess one of the promises I must make to myself in 2014 is to slow down, enjoy the moment, and not worry about doing everything at once. It will all happen eventually. Just breathe.

With that in mind, this post is about just that idea. For the last several days, Monterey has been experiencing some unusually high temperatures for January. We are talking high 70’s and even into the 80’s, which has caught me a little off guard. When we moved here, I thought it was going to be cooler, colder even, and this heat wave has me a little befuddled. Despite that, I’ve felt determined to get out there and use the sunshine, as I was taught to do growing up in a place that doesn’t necessarily get so much of it this time of year.

Living in Monterey has presented so many new things about coastal living that I hadn’t previously appreciated. We live just a few blocks from the water and, although I am not the biggest of beach bums, I do appreciate the beauty and wonder that the ocean provides. On days like these, instead of heading to the aquarium where I’m hard pressed to pry the kiddo away, we have been walking down to the tide pools at low tide to see what kinds of cool things we can see in the wild. It has turned out to be quite a science field trip experience for us and I love it! Here’s some of what we saw: