Choose Your Marinade

Its a quiet day full of small things like egg gathering, working on the laundry, helping people sound out words in comic books and expressing awe every time the thunder booms outside the window. I have been to the mechanic to fix the random piece of plastic hanging down under the front end of the car (Zip ties? Alright!), have been to the bookstore to pick up the book I have been pouting about missing with my book club a couple of months ago, so that I have travel reading (The Orphan Train) and have made one last playdate/mama hang-out session appointment so that we leave town with our social tanks all full.

I have been learning in the past few months how important it is to accept your negative emotions but to not live in them. Learning to step outside of how I feel and observe it objectively is a really astoundingly life-giving skill. I'm still not super good at it but its in my toolbox. I love knowing that nothing I feel defines me, that emotions are real and important and yet they pass, that the weight we give to things is the weight they carry, and that I am mistress of my own ship. I can choose how I feel and what I focus on, and I can also solve the problems I feel badly about. Validation + Empowerment + Optimism. 

Any little small-time, rainy day can feel gloomy, closed-in, overwhelming or lacking in life, like a place where problems and hard feelings stew until they are your own private marinade, a flavor you own. Instead, I'm living deep, being brave, feeling peace, slowing down, looking my boys in their twinkling eyes, reading stories, dreaming up some new painting ideas and flipping through travel guides for The West Coast. 

My beehive swarmed which, basically means that the whole flock up and flew away because the queen said to. There's no telling why exactly, maybe they felt cramped, maybe they hatched a new queen and she was a rolling stone, maybe the girls didn't like the new plastic, comb frames I put in before I left for Michigan. This is disappointing, but its also a good reminder that we only give shelter to bees, we don't really "keep" them. They are wild animals and not really controllable in the sense that we normally reserve for livestock. 

The six chickens in the backyard are giving my five eggs a day, and just to keep themselves all in the running, they are rotating which lady hen is taking a rest that day. I feel slightly annoyed but if I step out of entitled ego, I realize that rest is good for bodies, even chicken bodies and I can chuckle imagining a chicken council with the elected madame being given her daily pass in rotation. Maybe they are holding out until I buy the larger coop I am saving towards!

May your day be full of quiet empowerment. May you know the power of validating your own feelings and the strength of stepping outside of them to see gratitude. May your marinade be peace and may humor cover it all. 

I'm off to start packing!