Misty Sunday Morning

A cool grey misty Sunday morning in July. We had rain in the night. It’s not a morning that would have me singing Hallelujah! But I am relaxed and comfortable in my skin. I made a tour of the garden and the greenhouse before our breakfast of bacon and sourdough pancakes.

I have the making of chicken soup in the Instant Pot. I am at the keyboard early for a change. 11 days left in the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I can make it. I can finish my Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day Challenge, too. I am a few days behind. I can catch up. I have 14 cards to go. It’s not a matter of do or die. It’s about doing doing my best, persevering and finish what I have started. I hate feeling lackadasical and sagging, sighing and giving up. I’m testing my mettle. Here are my 2 index cards from yesterday’s effort.

Sometimes scrolling is not always a waste of time. I found someone interesting and inspiring on Facebook yesterday. His name is Paul Alexander. He had polio when he was six and was unable to breathe on his own. He was paralyzed for life. He lived most of his life in and out of an iron lung. Yet he was educated and became a lawyer. He wrote and self published his memoir Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung, in April 2020. It took him 8 years to write it. He passed away at age 78 in March 2024. What a remarkable man! A story like his makes me keep trying to put my best foot forward.

COUNTING MY BLESSINGS AND SQUASHES

No matter how I feel, I get up, dress up and show up has been my mantra for a couple of years now. Getting up and dressing up are not difficult any more. However, showing up is. The more I don’t make a showing, the harder it is to do so. Blue skies are here again but my blues haven’t quite lifted. Maybe they never will completely. Maybe I should not obsesse about my moods so much. I should live and let live.

Easier said than done. Everything takes a huge amount of effort and energy. At least I find it so. Each night I go to bed thinking of all the things I want to do the next day. With each morning, I fall into ‘after my cup of tea, breakfast, read this and that’. Then I will begin. Before I know it, it is almost lunch time and I have to bring out the pots and pans. I go on the same merry-go-round – again. Does this sound familiar?

I’m living Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. I am ashamed of myself. I am not living up to my expectations and certainly not my potential. But at least I am showing up here today. I am trying. I’ve gotten over my bluer than blue mood. I am not so overwhelmed with grief for our burning planet. I am just being with the awareness, accepting and going forward with my best foot forward.

I try to count my blessings. I am taking an inventory of our garden and harvest. Considering the extremes and weirdness of our summer, we’ve done well.  Even with the heat and lack of rain the garden have given me 11 spaghetti and 10 butternut squashes and tons of Swedish beans. Isn’t that amazing? Considering I had a summer cold for a month, I was able to put in a full garden. True not everything did as well as the squashes and beans. But there was lettuce and spinach for salads. We had broccoli for a few meals, and enough snow peas for stir fries. Enough kohlrabi to make up for not so many tomatoes. Then there’s the chili peppers and……..

I’m rambling on and on. The sentences running into each other. The grammar something else. The words might not be making sense. I better call it quits. Till tomorrow then.