I’ve been bouncin’ around this here fancy marble for a half century or so now and I think I’ve learnt a thing or three. There will never be enough hours in the day for everything I need to accomplish and the sleep I want. Life is full of hard choices like that.
Parents grow older and one day all the pieces of their mind that they gave in their lifetime pop up, decide to call the tally due, and leave en masse without warning. Children become young people and adults before your eyes, but in their own minds they are still on the playground playing keep away…at least some are, and I’d like to strangle them.
I have been advised that prints and stripes cannot be worn together. I don’t know who made the rule, but it is evidently a rule. I have been staging my own personal mutiny with wild print socks under my stripe trousers on a regular basis in defiance of this rule. So far, I’m winning my rebellion.
Anything you say can and will be used against you everywhere, even if it is please, pardon me, or you’re welcome. The general public has become a frightening domain of folks who are looking for something to pick at.  What in hades has happened to us?
Still, some things will always be true. There is no smell I’d rather rise to than that of bacon and fresh brewed dark bean juice. The moment in the wee hours when everyone is still and peaceful in slumber and I can look upon them without a retort of ‘what are you looking at?’ is my favorite time of the day. There is no better way to close the day than in the dim listening to the crickets sing. And, there is a calm to thunderstorms that make everything better. EVERY. thing.
I realized about a decade ago that I was not put here to gently lay stones and pave a cobbled path for others to follow. No, I was put here to blaze a trail through the brush and light up the sky with fireworks, peals of laughter, and squeals of delight at the little things that others miss as they rush to jobs they hate, to pay bills they can’t afford without the job they hate, but they have because of the job they hate.
The lesson had been long lost on me. Learning it was liberating. There is a resonant joy to dancing skyclad in the rain. There is a perfect harmony to working the soil. And, there is a bone deep gratification to spinning a tale that takes you, and others if they choose, to somewhere else for just a little while.
It took a number of decades to realize the point of being here in this time. There are LOADS of distractions to keep us from seeing where it is that we are meant to go and how to get there. I like to think that I’m on the right path and have many more decades to pursue it all. For now, there are a number of ‘F’ words that I haven’t explored today…no time like the present.
Enjoy the gifts you have been given. You never know when they will be out of reach. Today looks like it will be a grand conflagration of my favorites. A thunderstorm is inbound, I have a small window to work on words with a quiet house, I’ve enjoyed a large cuppa jo with fresh eggs, and there are fresh linens on the bed that I believe need to be broken in. (that’s a mucha hint as you get).
Have a grand reading weekend. -Abyrne