It’s September 1st! Yay!!!
I love fall. Love it, love it, love it. There’s no better season and I have to say: this season is set up just about perfectly. The garden is going fallow early, which is what this girl needs this year, and life around me feels relatively settled. The people whose health I worry about are currently healthy and the kids are all settled. On our end, we’ve weathered a few of the minor storms that have come our way, our fifth rescue is becoming integrated and with the federal grant I’m writing due in 30 days, there is a light schedule at the end of my work tunnel. For now, I’m embracing that. (Don’t worry – I’ll worry later than I’m not busy.)
For now, I can happily celebrate my holiday season – which literally started this weekend – and spend the next four months in “my zone.” This time, I intend to deploy the mental tricks to keep me there as well.
You see, I’ve learned that by idealizing my life – creating a mental “instagram” narrative for myself – goes a long way to feeling incredibly satisfied. Yes, it may be a bit Walter Mitty-like, but I’m okay with that. It’s grounded in enough reality that I’m not totally fantasizing and, if I’m absolutely truthful, my anxiety would often swing me in the opposite direction where I would be stressing over all of the details in my life, causing me to take an overly negative. So, my rationale is that a little idealizing goes a long way – it makes up for the potential negative vision I have of my life and helps me put on my rose-colored glasses at the same time. Ahh, sweet denial. It’s an incredible place to be.
But the truth is, there’s not a lot of denial here. Our lifestyle is actually one I find quite fulfilling and over the last few years, we have collectively taken great strides to get ourselves to this good place. I would be dishonest to all of that effort and a complete fool not to simply enjoy. And so, since I’m not a fool – at least not all of the time – I’ll do my best to enjoy it.
It starts with the most mundane and recent: this weekend, we will finish up most of the garden. With potatoes, carrots and the last of the tomatoes squared away, we need to simply bask in our great yield. I’ve got two full freezers, a root cellar filled with potatoes, onions and garlic and a refrigerator full of carrots. The beets have been canned and the beans are still on the vine, slowly marching inevitably to harvest. Beans, it turns out, are a lot of fun. You pick them, let them really dry out and then, one day while you’re watching the fire crackle in the fireplace, you shell them as a form of therapy. Yep, garden life is good, particularly when the garden is in.
On to the major: family is good. Everyone is both healthy and happy. The storms of the past few years have blown out of rain and what remains is good. We are back engaging in healthy activities – including the Marine Corps 10K – and the kids are all settled. My niece on the farm now has 17 heartbeats to care for. It may seem like a lot but its mostly embolic of a life come full circle. The city girl came home to practice law and build a family and a farm. Joining her sister back home, it’s great to see the four couples and their baby brother enjoy activities such as a “Sibs Night” together. My kids have grown up and they’re all doing alright! The two girls married well and in their mid-20s, bought their raise-a-family-in-it homes. One got off the race track of law and is happily settled into county law; he other niece is a very popular 5th grade teacher and their brother is a college sophomore. An engineering major, he has bounced back from a tough semester to demonstrate he has what it takes.
And then to the most personal: life within these four walls. Many, many things have come together to make life within these four walls everything I could have ever dreamed of. Obviously, chief amongst them is my husband, who remains the love of my life. Together, we can for an additional five heartbeats – which is likely 2-3 more cats than we intended – but all are well-loved, well-cared for and life has settled into enough of a routine that I’m able to make sure that they’re also well cleaned up after. Since I am, yes, still allergic to cats, a regular routine of morning kitty cleanups ensures that my allergies don’t flare.
Beyond the heartbeats, our house turned out amazing. Yes, there is work to finish, but when you hit the 90% mark, your eye easily settles on mostly finished products. And mostly finished means that you can enjoy the surroundings vs. stress over them. Further, the money is largely spent. Not going to lie, that makes a huge difference. After years of always saving for the next thing or literally feeling like I owed a paycheck to Home Depot, being able to let the savings account grow without a purpose feels pretty good. Plus, while it felt like a series of endless choices, electronic transactions, trips to the hardware store and endless online shopping, I look around and I see a house that looks like us. The modern, post-and-beam design is the open concept we wanted which lets light bounce around the house, making it feel airy all of the time. At the detail level, the rest is a blend of old and new, mass produced and vintage, uniquely personal and universally pleasing. Darryl’s grandfather’s rocking chair sits next to my leather furniture I bought in 1999 when my first house deal fell through. The 12-seat dining table has the infamous black pew that I’m not sure my husband yet loves but on the sideboard sits a picture of us and the triathlon art I purchased for him after his first Ironman. There’s the picture of Tujague’s on the dining room wall and the Roger Tory Peterson framed prints on the living room wall. Yep… this house is us.
And finally… time. My goodness, time is both the bane and the whole of my existence. It’s what I seek most. In fall? I have it. Again, the stars aligned so that professional work should slow down pretty dramatically in the next three weeks, affording me the time to just be. I’ll need to work on finding work, but I can also relax a bit. And then, there are the series of holidays, days off and general focus on life, family and home. Man, this is my season! Starting this Labor Day weekend, we have some family days off and I can’t be more excited. Yesterday, we went for a bike ride and lunch at our local state park. Today, we’ll finish up most of the garden with a frost advisory overnight. In October, we will have friends staying at the house for a local wedding and will do a wine tour or some other fun adventure. Thanksgiving will bring a few more days off but the big celebration? Darryl and I will have 16 days – count ‘em… 16 days! – off over Christmas and New Year’s. I cannot wait! There is literally no better set up of the next four months than I could have ever asked for.
It is ALL happening and while it may take some idealization to overlook the cat barfing on the rug, my car needing an oil change, the mountain of leaves that will soon need to be mulched and the inevitable work stress that we will both experience, the number one thing I can do for myself and our little family is focus on the positive. That’s what I’m doing. Everything else? Not a part of the equation until January. By then, our bodies, souls and minds will be rested enough to take on new challenges. For now? It’s time to celebrate our hard work, good fortune and happy attitudes.
The Yuppie Homesteader 