Breathe

It is, I hope, time for a breath. It was an expected busy few days what with a homeschool meeting and two scheduled trips into town within a week’s span. But Aunt Miney died after a lengthy illness so as of today we’ve been to town four days in a row and still have to go out next week at least once too (and depending on whether UPS will deliver our onion plants or not, maybe more).

Yep, busy, as in troublesome, bothersome busy, is always associated with leaving the place. Even things I want to go to, want to do, even days when everything goes really well and I actually have fun off the farm, I still come home with a headache. It still takes me at least a day to recover. It is still stressful. And then, if I’m not home, I can’t get butter and bread and cheese made – the staples of our lives. Of course, the milking has to be done anyway, and I’ve tried to keep up with the laundry which right now means there is some hanging on the line wet from the rain where I didn’t have time or energy to get it in.

But here is one of the main things I’ve been thinking: how rich this life is. We have saved for this time and so are not broke, but we have no income and view every purchase from the p.o.v. of having no income. Some things you have to do anyway and that’s where the savings come in. But what I’ve noticed in four short weeks of OPD is; we eat better because there are two cooks home now; the children have more resources and more choices at their disposal because there are two parents home now; we are overall less stressed; we get on each other’s nerves less by spending more time together (although we have always jointly and individually got things going on); we get more useful things and more fun things done. And without much trying to (except by being cognizant of it), we spend lots less money. So how did having a lot of income coming in get associated with being wealthy? It just ain’t so.

Tonight, after the funeral and saying goodbye to grandparents who will be going back to Florida tomorrow and a drive home of stopping at every hot dog joint for yet another hot dog (each child eventually had three hot dogs! and what an adventure to remember! and what fun! so to hell with the nitrates and nitrites), tonight the fog is so thick and mysterious. The moon is in Cancer and still waxing, very fertile. Yesterday we sold the billy goats, two weeks after putting up a notice in one feed store. This morning Chocolate finally had her goats, three little nannies! That is wealth and magic and good fortune and such is the milieu, the very world and universe, we choose to live in.