Happy Friday! And Happy Almost-September! 😳 Tomorrow is the start of September! I repeat: September. Starts. Tomorrow. And it’s Labor Day weekend. And school has started. So summer is over. I know technically the calendar says September 22 is the start of fall, but everyone knows summer is over once school starts. Seriously. It has been proven in the polls. And by “the polls” I mean a poll that I ran on one of the Facebook pages I manage. A majority of the people said summer is over once school begins. (It was a close vote, but that doesn’t matter, right? 😉)

Since summer is over we can chat about our summer faves. As I compiled a list I realized they all have something in common: they’re all “wellness” items. So, without further ado, here are my summer faves: wellness edition.

Note: Some of the links used in this post are affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase using one of them I’ll make a commission at no extra cost to you.

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Happy Wednesday! Is it just me or is Wednesday sometimes the hardest day of the week? Even though the weeks typically fly by, I still wake up on Wednesdays and feel like the rest of the week looms ahead. That’s a good description for how life feels sometimes. I marvel at how fast the year goes by, but at the same time, it sometimes feels like the year is an endless sea of work. Now don’t get me wrong. I love the work I do. This is the first time in my career that I can say I really love (most of) the tasks I do on a daily basis. But when I say daily I mean daily… sometimes it is seven days a week. It says a lot about my mindset this year that I haven’t updated this blog much. Not only that, but two of that small number have been posts about how to take care of yourself when you’re in a funk, or frustrated, or generally just feeling down. Yep, that’s how I’ve felt a lot this year and I hate it. So, I decided I needed to take active steps to fix my mindset. Now, before I get into what I’ve done, I want to say that if you have concerns about your mental health, you should definitely seek a professional. They’ll know how to give you the best support and care.

I knew that a lot of my frustration was due to certain stressors in my life and while I can’t necessarily change those stresses (or if I do, it’ll create a new set of “issues” that I’d be frustrated about), so I needed to make changes to my lifestyle that would leave me feeling less frustrated. Here are three things I’ve done to help create a positive mindset.

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Over the summer there were two water-related issues in the house. 1) A room flooded. All the carpet had to come out. My life was in disarray for a little over a month until the room was fixed and everything was back to normal. 2) A few weeks later there was a tiny leak the size of a pin-prick in my closet. The carpet in my closet had to come out. I stayed with friends for a few days until the room was fixed.

This post is about the tiny leak. Sometimes it’s the smallest issues that throw you for a loop.

This is how it started: after showers, I noticed water pooling in the middle of the bathroom floor. There was a wet patch on the rug and every time I stepped on it I felt like I found a new wet patch I hadn’t noticed before. I dried the spot, put a new rug down, and that was that. It happened again a few days later. There was a wet patch in the middle of the bathroom floor and I could have sworn I knew how to dry off after taking a shower, but considered the possibility it was a basic life skill I abruptly lost. I dried the spot and replaced the rug.

As I started to get ready I noticed a spot on the floor of my closet. Little One doesn’t go to the bathroom inside of the house, but maybe I ticked her off and she decided to show me, or maybe I missed an outing and she couldn’t hold it any longer. I cleaned the spot.

A friend came over. We were going out and thought it would be fun to get ready together. I realized I must not have dried the spot well, because the corner of the rug was wet. I pointed it out and we started to get ready, but the more we walked over that rug the bigger the wet spot became. Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy I mentioned it to my friend and she agreed. Definitely growing.

And then I saw wet footprints on the carpet in my closet. That’s right. I had a to-do list a mile long, a weekend that was supposed to be quiet in which to complete it, and the motivation to do all the things. But this happened…

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