Being Aunted Into Calm

 It was a slow day today, full of laundry on laundry, slow sifting through the camping boxes, ferreting out the sand and stray dirty socks and dead batteries and putting everything slowly back where it ought to be, neatly folded and washed. It feels incredibly good to just keep the washing machine on a continuous hum and spend all day with my arms buried deep in warm, fresh clothes. Everyone is shifting sizes again so there is more than just a massive amount of dirties to catch up with, there's all kinds of hand-me-down business that needs doing too. I've been back and forth to the storage boxes for each size in the garage and I am also accumulating a box for my sister, Foxy that will go sailing off to Michigan to the littler cousins.

 My aunt and I shared a Face Time chat this morning after breakfast over hot tea for me and coffee for her. What a beautiful thing it is to have technology and also those who love us deeply. I took her on a little mini-tour of the rose garden outside my front door and told her all about the angst of being a wuss camper. She was her usual bubbly self and listened to all the things that tie me up in knots and smiled effusively and told me that it was of no eternal account. And the strange thing about it is that being loved, and listened too meant that her dismissal lifted the tangled net off my shoulders. By the time I hung up I was laughing more and freer, able to shift the guilt and weight of my To Do List and my personal division. Isn't it great what perspective, wisdom and a little well placed love can do?God bless the aunties of the world....

There isn't a lot left to this week and I am almost through with the nesting back into our life. Next I must sit down and begin madly planning things for the school year. Our schedule is a writhing mass, waiting to be addressed but for now, the Schedule Beast can quietly growl. I have had tea and aunting and I on my way to the garden for a ripe fig from our tree with my man....we shall step gently over the two tents that are still spread out, airing in the backyard, between the tipped over tricycle and the two hockey sticks and upended lawn furniture.

Shadow Self Returns From Camp

We just got home from our first legit camping trip as a family. We took the boys to the redwoods and pitched two tents beneath the huckleberry bushes and set up shop with our cooler for a pantry. Every meal was over the open fire or else cold leftovers, we swam in the river every day, picked wild berries and kept strict daylight hours. I wish I could say that I came home elated and freshened and all Walden 'ed up. I am afraid I actually came home desperately tired of stumbling out of my tent in the dark, groping for the door of my kids tent zipper and trying to shush whoever was waking before the whole campground was awakened, I was sick of scrubbing dishes in tepid water and getting them sort of clean, I was was exhausted from lighting fires to try to cook anything and I was dying to take a shower and peel off the filthy blue jeans I wore every day all weekend. There were brilliant memories and great times and we were all glad we went and are already planning our tent pitching next year....but still I have this secret disappointment. I didn't feel like I wanted to. I wanted to be alive in the woods and feel free and lighter, to come home inspired to live more simply and to embrace more of the world of a life between the campfire and the tent. Instead, I feel worn thin and so grateful to live where I do and when I do. Have I softened with old age or am I just realizing that I have not given this pampered shadow self of mine enough voice?

Home From Florida

Just back home again after a week in sometimes sunny, sometimes torrentially rainy, Florida. Great to get away, wonderful to be with family and inspiring to experience beauty in new little ways. Nothing in this world quite like tent camping in the rain to make you ultra-grateful for your own dry bed. :)

Not a whole lot of anything happening around here today except for laundry and schedule resuming and extra naps when we can grab them; time to share a few select pix from our little family rendezvous in The Sunshine State.

And a grand time was had by all! 

Next stop...Laundry Room! See ya'll on the flip side.