Party's Over, Folks!

It's happened.  Each year there is that moment when Summer looks around with bleary eyes and says, "That's it for me; it's been a great party, but I need to go home and get some sleep." It isn't that Fall is here, it's a fading of leaves, weeds gone to seed, a slant and color to the light that shows the smudged mascara, tangled hair and wrinkled clothes of a party girl who has had too much. But this year it seems too soon.  Did Hurricane Irene (which was a tropical storm when it reached us) kick Summer in the arse even while wreaking such havoc and destruction just a few miles from us? Certainly Irene tore even green leaves from the trees, leaving them far too underdressed for this time of year. Anyone who knows me knows that I love Fall, and have little fondness for Summer.  But this year the energy feels different...it's not time yet.  Mama Nature has aged; she's creaky, and wrinkled, too tired to get up and face another day.  Perhaps she's feeling guilty about the hundreds of homes she destroyed, the lives taken by that cataclysmic tempest in a teapot of mountain villages.

Or hey, maybe it's just that too much rain and wind has simply left the trees stressed.  Maybe the little gray cloud that's been haunting me of late is oozing into how I interpret the energy of this seasonal cusp.  It just seems as though the clock is racing, calendar pages keep flipping, apples are in season before the tomatoes ever reached their prime, and we're all in a race whose finish line seems obscure, here one moment, miles away the next.... 

Joy In the Morning

The only way to start the day....

Glorious!

Early morning Lola...she needs a sip of my coffee!

If flowers were smiles...

Plan for the rest of the day?  Making corn and tomato salad, pesto, tomato-basil-mozzarella salad!

That Old College Try

Well, after a long talk with Linda, I've agreed to keep the chickens at least through Fall.  She has a plan that, if we're able to implement it, will make Winter care much easier, and provide electricity to power lights to increase the chances of Winter eggs.  Whether we can see that project through remains to be seen, but at least getting through Fall lets me feel like I gave it a legitimate try!

Chickening Out?

I'm trying to decide if wild enthusiasm followed by deep regrets is my modus operandi, or if I'm just not realistic enough. Do I allow myself to slowly tiptoe into that bracingly cold ocean, acclimatizing myself ever so gradually, or do I wade in quickly, ignoring the cold, sure I'll warm up....and then have a cold, hard smack of reality when that first wave hits?  I think it's somewhere in-between.  I want to go into that ocean, want to ride the waves, let the water take over.  I check the temperature, read the tide tables, then decide that regardless of all that, it's gonna be great and stride right in.  Sometimes it's everything I could wish, being carried to the shore as much by exhilaration as by the water, and sometimes I wind up wave-battered, squished into the sand like a used cigarette butt, dragging myself to the surface and up onto the shore, landing bedraggled and sad on my towel. Until the next time, anyway.

No, I'm not planning a beach vacation (although having taunted myself with the above, am now wishing Linda and I could steal away to some New England beach).  It's the chickens.  Yep, some 9 months after deciding we had to have chickens, 3 months of hard work and too much money, and 7 weeks of being a chicken owner, I'm having serious doubts.  Oh, I researched, read books, joined a 500+ member regional chicken listserv, subscribed to Backyard Poultry and Mother Earth News.  I picked the brains of our chicken-owning neighbors (who laughed at the books, the listserv and my obsessiveness).  I felt ready to enter the world of chickens.

Here's what I didn't know: first, chickens poop, all the time, everywhere; they're really pretty gross about it and don't care where they do it. It's their second favorite pastime after eating (okay, that made me laugh), and right above digging up hostas. People say chickens are smart.  Nope, don't think so.  Stubborn doesn't equal smart.  Chickens do exactly what they want to do.  We may call them 'domestic fowl', but they're worse than cats when it comes to going wherever and doing whatever the spirit moves them to do. Chickens get worms, and I don't mean the early-bird kind.  Even if their coop is kept very clean, and they're given premium food, and ample--and then some--free ranging freedom, they get worms.  If one is a certain type of person, all that equals frustration and stress.  When I first told one friend about the chickens, she said "you do like to complicate your life, don't you?" which kind of surprised me.  No way! I like life simple. I don't think I complicate it, and yet....I consistently take things on, envisioning that fabulous outcome, whether it's something I'm doing for myself or other people, and find myself with regrets.

It seems that at 50, one should stop trying things on and maybe focus on some real commitments, be it to learning to spin, raising chickens, learning to parasail or getting a graduate degree.  Pick something, give it your all...make it work (thanks, Tim Gunn).  Linda says you should never stop trying things on, figuring out what works and what doesn't, what you like and what you love and what makes you miserable (I'm paraphrasing). 

So I'm trying to decide if poultry farming was a huge mistake.  I have this homesteading-wool spinning-picking dinner from the garden-preserving food-chicken raising-and then writing about all of it-Earth mother image of myself. That image doesn't allow room for being prissy about cleaning chicken poop, or figuring out how the heck we're gonna get water and food up to them in the winter, or the stress that comes from constant worrying about these funny little beings that now depend on me for pretty much everything. 

I abandoned something else this year that I really thought I wanted to do, only to discover it no longer gave me any joy.  And maybe that's my answer...although the chickens have amusing moments, and tasty eggs, I'm not feeling the joy.  It feels like one more thing complicating a life I've been working hard to de-stress. Is it quitting to keep seeking out what may bring more joy and discarding what doesn't, the way a chicken tosses the kale out of the bowl to get to the cantaloupe guts at the bottom?  Is there any chance that feasting on the sweetness is wiser than choking down the bitter when there's choice to be had? And if so, does that make me a wisewomon, rather than a quitter? 

CELEBRATE!

Log Jam

It's been quite a week!  The chickens have come home to roost, and unlike my creativity, are already bearing fruit, er...eggs!  We started with the seven rescue hens who moved Monday night from the generous foster home provided by our neighbors into the coop that has consumed our lives since late March. Tuesday evening, Linda purchased two more hens, at least 3 weeks older than the seven, and we suspect one of those two is responsible for the TWO medium eggs we've gathered this week.  They'll be Sunday's breakfast.  These hens weren't free range, or raised organically until now, so we know we're not talking primo eggs, but it's a start.  I've posted more pictures here.  Unfortunately, I'm not feeling nearly so productive. 
Yesterday I got confirmation that an "essay" I wrote is going to be published.  I've been published in this magazine before, but probably not for at least 9 years.  It's exciting and I was profoundly honored to have the editor tell me how my piece affected her; it was high praise, and such validation for my lofty literary goals.  A dear faraway friend congratulated me, read the proofed piece, and offered her assessment that I "practice what I preach."  I should be brimming with excitement, motivation, determination.  Words should be flowing from me like water tumbles down Kaaterskill Falls.  Instead, every word it's taken me HOURS to write today has been dragged kicking and screaming through a crevice in the logjam blocking mind and soul.  The words and thoughts and feelings are 'there'; I can feel them jammed up, can feel my self bulging and swelling from their weighty pressure as they yearn to pour out.  But....nothing.  It's 2:00 on a Friday afternoon, the marvelous gift of a Friday off already more vanished than not, with virtually nothing to show for itself. 
Ah...except laundry.  Laundry has become my saving grace, the thing that seems my only measure of productivity...it has a beginning, middle, end.  I start with piles sorted in whatever way the mood strikes, and feel the deep satisfaction as each pile vanishes from the kitchen floor, rematerializing clean, soft and neatly hung, or folded and nestled, still warm from the dryer, into the cradle of a purple laundry basket. I seem able to control this small chore, able to see it through to completion, while words and thoughts never make it out of the rinse cycle.  How is it possible that faced with a writer's small success and validation, I'm even less able to loosen that logjam?  And appallingly, painfully mixing metaphors as well?!

Moving Forward

Do you ever feel like a derailed train?  Not just a train with one wheel dangling off its steel cradle, but one that has skidded right off the tracks into a quagmire of gooey, sticky, soul-sucking mud?  That's me...the little engine that couldn't (or wouldn't).  Take today for instance: in an effort to reclaim my far-too-long self-silenced writer, I promised myself that I would dedicate each Friday morning through the Summer (my workplace is closed Fridays from today through early August) to a "writing retreat", three hours dedicated to writing, be it poetry, writing exercises, giving shape to the novel begging to be written, or the blogs...anything short of grocery lists.  No internet, no calls, no distractions, no chores...just me, pen and paper (literally or figuratively). So how did that go?  It became a hair less than two hours, which I interrupted with research about and cooking of marrow bones for the dogs, and sending emails to Linda about that. 
And it's been a year this month since I declared that I would lose 75 lbs.  My progress?  At first, I was the soul of commitment!  Lost 38 lbs.  Then I gained 10 back, and sitting in the freezer for the first time in 374 days is Ben and Jerry's Karamel Sutra. 
My seedlings have dried up; the only things to have made it into the garden thus far are some beans, beets and basil. And I'm not even going to talk about my grand plan for getting way ahead on tasks at work, only to be doing a little bit of scrambling after all.
Do you see what I mean?  What does all this say about me?  Pop astrologers (versus the real deal) say Geminis are flighty; am I the embodiment of that?  Am I hopelessly lazy?  Is it self-sabotage, and if so, why?  Fear of success and the further expectations that success would birth?  What I do know is that every wheel that sinks deeper into the muck leads to some pretty intense self-judgment and depression, kind of a "what's the point?" mindset.  I have plenty of inspiration all around me.  Kim's blog is a testament to keeping at it, and not letting a slip become a downhill plunge from whence there's no return.  Time spent with Cait reminds me of how profoundly important it is to celebrate and honor the creative spirit.  Dawn's blog inevitably reawakens the desire to weave my life into a tapestry of sacred creativity.  With so much inspiration, and the non-judgmental support of a loving partner, all that's lacking is my own determination to to power up the engine and get back on track. 
So today I've lit my Brighid flame, not for my flamekeeping vigil, but to invoke the creative spark, to coax that flame into a roaring Fire of Goddess-directed passion and drive.  I'll rev myself up out of the mud, recommit to writing, weight-loss (which is all about having the health for the rest of it!), and the goal of living a more local, sustainable Earth-centered life.

Chugga-chugga-chug...