6 posts tagged “seasons”
The title says it all. Those are my feelings on summer.
It seems also appropriate that I got up at 6:30am this solstice day ...on a FRAKKING SUNDAY! The heavens should not allow the longest day of the year to ever occur on a weekend. It's just mean to turn the sky up to full-bright at such an ungodly hour on a day of the week when it's perfectly acceptable to sleep in!
Craig is to blame too. He left the house early-squirrely to get up to Monroe for a hamfest. bah! I hope he's having fun. He'll suffer my wrath when he gets home! ...Actually, we'll likely just take a nap together, which will be rather pleasant.
So, I've been up for over an hour already. I've filled the bird feeder, done the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, made myself some coffee and watched this week's episode of Top Chef Masters. (LOVE that show!)
I think I'm going to make myself a pancake and some eggs, then go dig in the garden for a bit before it gets too hot. I also need to clean the bunny room and get some laundry going, then I'm going to build my solar oven prototype, and maybe by then Craig will be home, and it will be nap time.
Don't much like summer weather, but YAY for the days getting darker again!
It started snowing about half an hour ago and we already have about half an inch covering everything. The snow is supposed to continue through tomorrow morning. We're expecting "6+" inches. Ah, spring! *L*
The sun is shining brightly, and it's warm ...inside the house. I had to walk carefully out onto the icy deck to touch the glittery layer of frost that's sparkling in the bright sunshine. And I turned on the morning news to find out we're under a winter storm watch for Friday/Saturday, with a possible four inches of snow expected. *L* Crazy weather.
My laptop is allegedly with the carrier! Unfortunately, the carrier is DHL, so I'll be spending the next several hours checking the front and back doors/porches/yards/sidewalks. heh. The only other thing I've ever received via DHL was my Kindle, and that was "delivered" to the back sidewalk, just inside the unlocked gate - couldn't even be bothered to walk it a short ways up the sidewalk to the back door and give a knock. But, I should have my new laptop today! Oh happy day!
Autumn always seems to bring on the bittersweet nostalgia. Autumn and spring. My need for mental sorting and filing seems to occur simultaneously and most naturally when I'm hit with nesting urges. And it kind of makes sense, I realized this morning. In the autumn we're needing to stockpile winter supplies and get the home in good shape for sealing it up against the cold for the season. In spring we're sweeping out the winter cobwebs, airing the home out and starting to plant for the warm season. It makes a bit of sense that my head would be in the same mode, filling up on happy memories to see me through the winter, then making room for more in the spring, both times sifting through the headspace, handling all the old memories one more time and deciding where to put them for the next season. I kind of feel too like I'm taking my very recent past and filing it with/knitting it to the rest of my memories, which is why the past suddenly seems that much more recent as I'm touching all the old mental files.
I think I'm going to come up with a couple of really basic rituals for the equinoxes, just some simple projects to acknowledge what's going on inside me. When I'm done with my housework, I can see the clean and nicely decorated house, realize all the work I did, and just enjoy it. Right now I don't have any similar way of acknowledging all the mental processing I've done. I think having some tangible sort of evidence of the mental work would go a long way toward clearing my head and making room for the next six months' worth of memories and experiences. Maybe I'd have the photo albums and scrapbooks I wanted (rather than the boxes filled with loose and unorganized memorabilia I do have!) if I made a point to document that stuff twice a year. I think the plan right now will be to document the past six months as best as possible before the month is over. I still haven't got around to my Ireland scrapbook, and I wanted to do a few pages from our Norfolk trip too, plus jot down all the other memories from the summer, maybe even sprinkle in some of my more significant (non-whiny, non-meme) journal entries. Yes. I think that's a good plan, at least a good place to start.
When did that happen? Seriously? How did August 1st sneak by me? I just saw a back-to-school commercial, and my mood shot from somewhere around "meh" right past *smile* and all the way to "WOO-HOOOO!"
I'm weeks away from back-to-school shopping (a tradition too awesome to do away with just because you're not in school any more), another week or so away from my birthday (which I haven't decided how I want to celebrate yet, but it will be celebrated) and less than a month from breaking out the fall colors to decorate my home.
Summer is slipping away, days are getting shorter, and I feel like dancing. I want to craft like a mad-woman. I want to paint. My house is pretty damn clean, or I'd probably want to clean it. :) Maybe I'll finally get some curtains sewn. Maybe I'll paint the bedroom. I don't know, but it's time to embellish things.
It's almost time for candles and wine and socks and sweaters and boots and all my favorite things.
I have to take a few minutes to drag out my calendar and schedule all the things I want to do from now until the end of the year.
Slept terribly last night. It's the light. I'm a winter and a night creature. I melt in the warmth and I can't stand these long days. I'm still high energy at 11pm because it's only recently gotten dark, and I'm up at the butt-crack of dawn because it's getting light. In between bedtime and uptime I'm not sleeping well for whatever reason, but I'm sure it has something to do with the difficulty I'm having both getting to sleep and getting up. The sun is mostly evil, I tell you. Winter is my favorite season, but the summer solstice is probably my favorite day of the year because it marks the last of the ever-longer days and the start of the ever increasing ease of my spirit. It's almost solstice time: June 21st, 13:06 EST. I do my happy dance.
Been arguing with myself about whether or not continuing to do my morning pages is wasted time these days when my head is about as clear as it ever gets. I've been doing them anyhow, out of duty and discipline. This morning I realized I do need to keep doing them. Preventative maintenance. D'uh. If writing morning pages clears my head, then continuing to do them will maintain that clear thinking. Guess it's a forever thing now, rather than a remedy when I need it.
Anyhow, when I first got back into the morning pages thing several weeks ago, I realized how chaotic my thoughts were, how much I was trying to keep always at the forefront of my mind. A few days later I had an idea, a bit of inspiration of yet another way to try and sort out and store those thoughts so I don't have to keep mentally cycling through them all day every day. I've tried just about every day-planner/goal-keeping/organizational method that I've ever seen, and most work for a few days and then fail hard. This idea was so simple and stupid... Well, I've been using it a few weeks now, and it's still doing the trick!
I've always been determined to live a well-balanced life. I like to have things to do in all the important areas of my life. I always have a lot of ideas of things I could be doing. In fact, it's not an exaggeration to say that at any given moment there are at least a dozen things I'd like to be doing. It's that bottle-necking that often leaves me just sitting, not being able to decide what to do, but not wanting to forget or neglect any of my thoughts and plans. Just keeping track of everything was taking most of my brain and energy.
I sat down recently and listed the important areas of my life, the categories I want to always have something going in, in order to have that balance I need. I came up with eight categories: Mind, Body, Spirit, Home, Husband, Sharing, Living, Dreams. I wound a ribbon around some pins on a piece of cork board and made an octagon with one of those headings at the top of each section. Then I sat down with some scrap paper and wrote every damn little thing I've been wanting to do for weeks now on little pieces of paper, and I pinned them under the appropriate heading. When I got done, the board was full, except for one empty category. I thought to myself, "AH-HA! There's the source of this unbalanced feeling!" and I came up with a few more things I could be working on that would fit in that category.
The nice thing is, any time I want a reminder of what I have cooking these days, I can just look at the board. It's all purged from my head now that I have a good place to keep it. I can add to it and pull things down and rearrange at will. All my life I've felt I had so much chaos in my head, juggling ideas I fear forgetting, trying to keep track of everything I wanted and needed to do, and now I keep it all on scraps of paper pinned to a 12x12" piece of cork. I've had it on my desk for two weeks now, and I'm still completely loving it, which is a significant record. I give you, my brain on cork:
I call it my well-rounded life. Since I've taken that photo, I've pulled down three completed projects (THREE! -COMPLETED-!!! YAY!) and put up six new ideas. It's holding steady right there though. I have a few of more of those little scraps about to come down, other things I've managed to make a lot of headway on, but there it all is. At any moment I want to be working on any one of those things. Now instead of spending so much energy just trying to keep track of them, I've been able to come take a peek whenever I'm ready to work on something different, and feel good about picking any of the available options. This silly little board is holding all the stress of remembering and prioritizing for me. It's all fair game now. I love my well-rounded life.
Between the fast approaching solstice, my morning pages that simple bulletin board, I'm really feeling amazingly well these days, despite the severe lack of sleep. Good head space makes for the absolute best days!
