Something for nothing

I know I've been incredibly absent. I've just been so busy, and okay then, overwhelmed, and I've realized that this great mechanism I spent my youth developing--this no holds barred barrelling down the highway at a million miles an hour until I got where I was going and could take a pit-stop thing--it no work so good no more. My (nearly 40-year-old) body seems to have had enough, and in its evil scheming has hatched upon a plan to derail me if and when I don't treat myself well enough. That is to say, if I don't eat fairly well and get some regular exercise and go to sleep before midnight for any length of time, it slams my brain into low gear and I get a full-on bout of depression. Clever, clever body. Duplicitous body.

I am trying hard to learn to live with this new schema. So, it's hit and miss, I'll admit. I'm still not eating as well as I should, and I have to work hard to get in some exercise every day. I absolutely have to give first priority to having some meditation/prayer/contemplation time first thing in the morning, because I realize that I have to will myself to start over every single day. I would make a good addict.

A wren has built a nest on our front porch. I tore down the starling nest that showed up earlier in the spring, because I really didn't relish the mess that I knew (from experience) would come with it. But then the sweetest wren built a nest on the other side--right over the little cafe table I have there--and I just couldn't bear to tear it down, so I very quickly and quietly moved it to the other post. She seems to have accepted this change of affairs; I think it threw her for a minute, as she landed in the old spot with a bit of grass and did a full 360 and I could just see that little bird brain thinking, "What the ... ?" But then she spotted the nest, and gave sort of a bird shrug, and she's been in it several times since so I think we're good. The Girl wanted to name her Rag Doll, the Boy voted for Puff Puff, and I wonder why we have to name everything?

I am sorry that I've been so negligent in visiting and commenting. I miss writing. I miss reading you all, though I have been trying to catch up. I have a little tiny cauliflower out in the garden, and an apple tree I need to plant, and children who I want to throttle and kiss simultaneously, and a job I want to do right by, and a blue sky full of thunder. I think of you often.

xo
PK