Hearing The Yes In No
Today has been an ongoing experiment in letting go of the great pressure that builds from within and pushes me in a frenzy of unfocused, nearly unconscious activity—accomplishing an ongoing list of shoulds while ignoring my languishing list of personal wants and needs. At the time of this writing, I have to say, it feels pretty damned good.
Things I maybe might think I should have done today:
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• More than two loads of laundry.
• Washed the kitchen and dining room floors.
• Swept the dead bug carcasses out of the 10 downstairs window sills.
• Cleaned out the fridge and freezer.
• At least some of the work I brought home.
• Trip to Tar-jay for the laundry detergent/TP/Cascade/light bulbs/gift for neighbor kid.
• Taken Lila to said kid’s birthday party that is just now ending, at an indoor amusement park type of place that is filled with inflatable bounce houses.
• Planted Cucumbers, Fava Beans, Haricot Verts.
Things I’m absolutely thrilled to the bone that I did do today.
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• Not much of anything.
• Read a few blogs.
• Enjoyed my half cup of coffee before anyone else woke up with the new Barbara Kingsolver book on my lap (don’t know if you’re reading, but thank you Lorin! A package for your new bebe is slowly filling and will find its way to the mail soon!)
• Read another chapter of it while the first load of wash and the dishwasher ran, and Lila watched part of a movie over breakfast.
• Said no to the requested pancakes, and gave her cereal instead.
• Cleaned up the remaining dishes from last night’s dinner with Cheril, Greg and boys.
• Had a leisurely talk with Mom.
• Followed by a lovely google chat with WordyDiva.
• Stayed in my pajamas until 1:30 in the afternoon.
• Ate leftover salad and quinoi-black bean salad for lunch.
• Ate the last few bites of homemade coffee ice cream from last night.
• Prepared tomato bed (with Lila’s patient and serious help) adding peat moss, manure and a little fertilizer.
• Planted the tomatoes then mulched them with fresh straw.
• Mulched one bed of potatoes with straw after cultivating soil and hilling up around the plant stems.
• Planted the 3 balls of Rhubarb a co-worker brought in for me.
• Some random weeding. Post about the Violets forthcoming.
• Cleaned up our mess and came inside, just ahead of a slow-moving rumbler of a thunder storm that is going to make me have to shut the computer down soon.
It’s interesting how so much of life is attitude. I look at the two lists above and see so clearly that the top list is for the most part things that I really have no desire to do today. I may feel differently another day, but today? No. Just, no. The bottom list is longer. I did things with my time and the things I chose to do have left me feeling self-nurtured and whole. If I had chosen to do the other things, I can guarantee I would have come to this point in my afternoon feeling stressed out, resentful and unlovable. I would have made someone else happy with the birthday party and I’m working on letting go of the threads of feeling bad about that. I really do need practice with this, with saying no to things that feel like too much. It’s so much of why I’ve been so sick these past few months. For years I’ve been trying to learn how to really take care of myself, and I think what they say about hitting rock bottom making you change your unhealthy ways is so true.
I am so ready to feel consistently strong, and healthy, and powerful, in my body and my life.
I’m also SO ready for those fresh tomatoes.
Whoops! Here comes the storm.
Time to pour a glass of Sangria, pop the rest of the movie in for the squirt and devour another gorgeous chapter. Oh, this book!
Peace out.
Technorati Tags: garden, self, satisfaction, consciousness
"Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?"
~Hal Borland
May 26th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I am so glad you went with what you wanted to do and not what you thought you should do. I’m working on the same for me.
Is rhubarb a bulb, rhizome, or other?
I wish I had hilled my potatoes, I went ahead and mulched it with straw. I wonder if I could just dump a bunch of dirt on top of that? Well, it can’t hurt anyway.
May 26th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Good. Just… good, OK?
xo
May 27th, 2007 at 8:17 am
It did feel soooo good to just go with my own sense of what the day needed to be. That sounds dramatic or something, but really, most days I squeeze myself into action that I don’t much feel up for.
Rhubarb is a rhizome:
rhubarbinfo.com
Mulching your potatoes with straw is probably perfectly fine, throwing dirt on top won’t hurt either, you’ll be building soil fertility with that combo, but I’ve done just straw many, many times. Actually I once planted them by laying them on top of an overwintered bed of chopped leaves and then mulching them with a foot of loose straw, adding to it as they grew. I had a LOT of potatoes from those few plants. I considered doing that again this year, but I decided I want to work on layering those leaf beds for next year planting instead. They’re in a sunny spot and will be for tomato/pepper/eggplant rotation with beans and maybe beets and carrots.
May 27th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Yep, SO good, Lisa. xo to you too…
May 27th, 2007 at 9:29 am
I was at a friend’s home last night. She has rhubarb plants with leaves the size of elephant’s ears! She is going to give me some plants since she wants to thin them. I don’t care for rhubarb, but Grandma Rosie loves to bake with it.
Glad your day was good for you–to be good TO you!
xox
May 28th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Sounds like a great way to spend the day.
love the new blog look.
May 28th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Feeding our minds and bodies with the positive, and losing the negative can be so hard. Glad to see that you are working in the things that fulfill you.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Are you loving that Barbara Kingsolver book or what? I’m almost done with it, and my husband is now starting to read it whenever I put it down. I would think that for someone like you, who grows so much of her own food, it would be particularly meaningful. It’s making us think about how to restructure our grocery budget to get more local foods.