thanks ebola scare

Monday was weird in mildly stressful ways, but we made it through. Late that night we shared some savory, creamy rice plus garlicky chicken thighs with the skin still on and even found each other laughing by sunset. Capped it all off with some perfectly good romance. Win.

Yesterday was flat out magical, from an early morning with Handsome, daytime field trip with the master-gardener group, and sweet evenings texts with my beautiful oldest daughter. I even had the energy to write a menu and grab all of our groceries for the next two weeks then get my inconsistent self in the gym. (By the time I got home it was too dark to run.) Handsome was gone on an overnight business trip, so the farm was quiet, perfect for draining away weirdness residue and siphoning extra energy. Tuesday’s magic stayed with me all last night and into today.

Today I had nowhere to go and no strict schedule to keep. So naturally my eyes popped open thirty minutes early. After coffee, chores, housework, and some lazy autumn decorating, I went outside for a four-mile run and got that old familiar craving for twice as much. Or three or four times, maybe. Everyone around me is training for a marathon or at least a half, and I regret not making a fall race a priority. I miss running being part of my weekly routine, and October first seems like a great time to hit refresh. Wish me luck.

When I’m not running and listening to all things Eminem or Shakira, I am listening to a condensed chapter of Sting music, and it’s so great. My favorite song right now is Desert Rose. Here is the best song lyric you will ever sing to yourself while trying to maintain hope and forward momentum:

Our dreams are tied to a horse that will never die.

The whole song is beautiful, really.

Then after some more stuff I needed to do today, the magic began to fade.

By necessity I performed two mundane, out of the ordinary, and fairly gross tasks: I unscrewed the metal guard and cleaned out the shower drain in our master bathroom, which had recently become… let’s just say… insulated with my long hair. Then I bleach-scrubbed the whole operation until my eyes were oozing something like watery milk. Then I dealt with a possum in the chicken coop who was eating barbarian-style our prettiest butterscotch-colored hen. In broad daylight! And by “dealt with” I mean I closed the beast up in the concrete house, shooed away the rest of the flock, and started trying to reach my husband, who was at that moment still in Dallas, Texas.

I feel like impressing on you the crucial detail that I performed both of these unpleasant farm duties while in full date-night make up (yes, folks, even eye shadow) and with my hair freshly washed, blown out, and curled and teased like nobody’s business. I was even wearing a clean, pretty sundress, because October or not, Oklahoma is in the 90’s again.

Chances are good that I lose some “hobby farmer” creds by not dealing with the predator more directly. (I may or may not have posted a rabies-related plea for help on Facebook before finding my own gun.) But on the other hand I did locate the appropriate screwdriver for the shower job then replaced it to the correct toolbox immediately. So there’s that. And let’s not forget date-night makeup on a Wednesday afternoon, okay? It counts. With our schedule lately, it counts for a lot.

Between book club titles, I am reading Dorothy Must Die which is difficult for me to groove. More up my alley is A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman. Have you nibbled it yet? My gosh. I mean, you guys, please read this book. It’s short, beautifully written (along the flavor of Ann Voskamp but somehow more youthful sounding), and inspirational from both the artistic stance and the spiritual. If you have any ache in our soul or itch in your body to be creative or discover your purpose in life, give this slim volume some of your valuable time. You won’t regret it.

One of her early chapters offers this:

As we continue to uncover the shape of our unique design, we need not feel the pressure to figure out what to do with it.

Believe in myself and I sink into the waves of worry, procrastination, daily tasks, and diagnoses. There is no dry ground in sight. But sink into God and he will buoy the soul on top of the water.

Which obviously reminds me of the Sting song Shape of My Heart which happens to be playing as I type this.

This afternoon, once my eyes cleared of the watery, milky, bleach-related secretion, I walked out to the vegetable garden to empty some kitchen scraps into the compost. Excited to see how much my small square of kale had grown in two days, I was in for more unpleasantness. Someone, probably Lone Wolf the rooster, had eaten it! It was all chewed down to dark green nubs. Deep breath.

So… a possum eats a hen. And a rooster eats my kale. And I am wearing really good makeup, but it’s all smeary from bleach fumes. I cannot decide if this is some strange brand of reverse karma or just your run-of-the-mill weekday chaos.

What phase is the moon in right now?

Thank goodness for monarchs and soul-nourishing books. And Sting.

I blame the Ebola outbreak for most of this.

The End.