Last week was tough.  It was happy and insanely productive but truly laborious from early Monday till late Friday.  I am not complaining or trying to get pity here; My husband has a talent for riding the tsunamis of life as though he actually thrives on it, like work and challenges are paradoxically the fuel he needs to meet those challenges.  But this comes at the expense of total depletion by the end of the swell.  So this past weekend was much needed.  We enjoyed Friday night together then agreed to sleep late the one day of the week we can both do that.

   Despite our hope to sleep late and quite irregardless* of the fact that we crashed long past midnight in the darkest, quietest room in the house (not our bedroom), our Saturday morning started as early as any work day. 

   That is just how things go sometimes.

   We both laid there and tried to keep our eyes weighted down and our bodies still, as if trying to fool ourselves back to sleep, but dawn had already found us out and the day was beginning. 

   Birdsong was still fresh and soft, not yet important sounding; coffee was brewing faithfully in the kitchen; and pulsing orange sunlight had silently elbowed its way between the living room curtains.  It was an earlier wake up call than we had craved for our Saturday, but it was a gentle and beautiful one. 

  

   After a few minutes of kissing and stretching and laughing about our mutual inability to sleep very late, Handsome and I rolled out of our cozy Green Room nest.  Pacino (our macaw) greeted us with sweet nothings and feathery cuddles.  Soon I was armed with two mugs of perfect hot coffee and a bag of stale hot dog buns.  The latter was for the chickens, not my husband.  He eats slightly better than that most days.

   I found Handsome on the east sidewalk untethering our comfiest patio chairs.  (We keep them bungee-corded to a metal garden table because of the ridiculous wind here.)  He welcomed me to sit with him, and I gave him his coffee. 

   Our twenty one chickens, six guineas, and one Tom turkey (named Clark-Grievous) discovered our appearance and had us surrounded in a flash.  We are catnip to our poultry children, just to let you know.  And this Saturday morning the Catnip Poultry Parents had stale hot dog buns to share. 

   So we luxuriated in the special Oklahoma morning, breezy but not windy and warm but not hot.  It felt brimming with possibility and pleasure.  We sipped coffee, feeding the skittish and hilarious birds, watching and listening to the farm wake up. 

   By the time the sun was fully visible through the trees in the east field, we had emptied both our hot dog bun baggie and the coffee pot.  The horses were whinnying about why in the world THEY didn’t get a pre-breakfast treat.   

   And I was grateful to have not slept late, happy not to have missed this.

*hi Margi!

   Life has been opening up to us lately in an almost magical way.  At a time when circumstances might look to an outsider (or a well meaning insider even) like we should be mourning, suffering, and constantly weeping over broken things, something unseen lifts us into bliss over and over again. 

   It is easy now to imagine that we will one day look back on these years with lots of joy and thankfulness and not so much sorrow.  In fact, the blessings in life are overtaking the troubles at an alarming rate.  I was not able to say that sincerely six months ago.  I was faking it till I was making it. 

   Happily, despair is now deep in the past.

   The larger my appetite for living grows, the faster time slips away from me.  Is that a sign of growing older?  Or one of growing happier? 

   Weekly, Handsome and I see joy and reward added to our plate far beyond what we deserve.  Scarcely a day finishes without one of us looking over at the other with a smile, shaking our head about “how cool that is” or “what an answer.”  This is a wonderful condition to be living, but I have to admit that sometimes it gives me tremors. 

   My weakness whispers to my heart that it cannot last.  That my hope is unfounded, our pleasures fleeting, my happiness a vain imagining.  Puke!  What poison!

   Refusing to succumb to this slippery slope, I actively scrape up every memory of prayers answered and dreams fulfilled out of the blue, focusing my eyes and heart on the abundant beauty surrounding us.

   I fix my schedule around repetitive domestic tasks, animal care taking, and working on every constructive thing I can think of.  Then I indulge in hobbies I might not always have time for. 

   I take Siestas.

   Handsome works himself to the point of dangerous exhaustion, both at home and at his office.  And together we treasure, among others, the gifts of romance, faith, family, and friendship in our life. 

   By the way, we hold close to us 

   Thusly  I dive back into another day.  And before I know it the day is really too short to do it all, to enjoy it all.  Life isn’t giving me quite enough time to share again everything I have been given.  I find myself trying to just keep up with the beauty and wonder of the world at my fingertips, and no spell ever breaks; life just continues.   And I love it.

   So whatever you are facing, keep facing it.  Don’t let any fear, circumstances, mistakes, or difficulty shake you off course.  However dark your storm, remember that especially in Oklahoma the weather can change with no warning.  And you are resilient and blessed beyond your widlest dreams.

xoxo

   I will soon be adopting the Spanish custom of taking a siesta.  Don’t judge me.  Lots of highly productive and fulfilled people throughout history have long spent the middle hours of the day at rest. 

   Charlemagne, anyone?  Don Quixote?

   Many solid reasons support this practice.  More than just a happy throwback to Kindergarten napping, taking a siesta is good for your digestion and maybe even your heart health; it helps prevent heat exhaustion and overexposure to the dangerous sun; it can clear your mind before a busy evening; and it might even reduce your electricity bill.  Yep.

   We’ll get back to that last one in just a sec.

   The custom of making the midday meal heavier than the late night meal is globally and historically a lot more widespread than the alternative, and unnamed experts and fancy pantses agree it’s healthiest.  And as big meals tend to make a person sleepy (in Bengal they call it rice-sleep), resting afterward is just perfectly reasonable.
  

   Especially where the climate is hot and the day’s burdens are agricultural, resting after a substantial lunch is also a safety measure.  We certainly meet that criteria.  Oklahoma summers are HOT man.  Like, regularly in excess of 100 degrees, humid, and windy.  So steamy it feels like you are standing in front of a wet blowing furnace.  That kind of hot.

   Why more people in our modern North American culture do not observe siesta is a mystery to me.  Doing so is neither laziness nor apathy; it is rather a wise and well timed conservation of health and energy.  I for one am going to start this as soon as possible, which is today.

   The electricity billing at our little farm has recently seen a major update.  We now pay different rates per kilowatt hour according to the time of day, corresponding to the demand being placed on the grid at that time.  The point of this new program is to encourage efficiency and spread the load across the clock, because electricity cannot really be stored.  It has to be produced pretty much right when it is used.  

  My husband can explain all of this brilliantly, but for now suffice it to say that the same power consumption at 10 in the morning is considerably less expensive than, say, 6 in the evening when everybody is home and busy cooking, cooling off, and watching Swamp People. 

   To be a little more specific, we arrange our farm days with the understanding that “peak time” is from 2 pm till 7 pm.  During these hours we avoid heavily electrified chores and activities.   And our house is total electric, so that kind of includes everything you might do indoors.

   And truly working outdoors during the hottest part of the day, in Oklahoma, is asking for heatstroke. 

   Finally, few people know this, but late afternoon is when taste buds are most receptive to both fruit and yogurt smoothies and sweet iced tea.  Scientifically, this is also the time of day when your eyes are best suited for consuming new release literature.  You cannot fight biology. 

   Catching my drift?  Siesta.  Grab a book and a cold drink, find your hammock, and shut down a few expensive appliances.

   I can think of a few other perfect solutions for the 2pm till 7 pm chapter of my weekdays, and they all fit nicely under this enticing Latin umbrella.

     So for at least the next eight or nine weeks, in the latter afternoon hours, my batteries shall recharge whilst the rest of you Westerners slave away in either the extreme heat or the extremely expensive air conditioning.  My evenings shall be freshly approached, my metabolism shall find reprieve from heavy nighttime meals, my reading lists shall gradually dwindle, and Handsome will be happy to have saved some electriciy dollars.  Dollars which will then be spent on more fruit and yogurt smoothies for the afternoons.

   If all of these compelling arguments have failed to sway you to siesta along with me, still please suspend judgment.  I won’t be able to hear your Industrial Revolution comments anyway.  Because I will be away, resting.

   To call me ruined by this beautiful place we call home would be fair.  There’s plenty of work to do, always, and nothing is ever really perfect by crazy-people standards; but I cannot imagine a more satisfying way to spend every day than to wake up here, work here, play here, and rest here. 

   The pleasures, challenges, and rewards of this crazy little farm march in gentle succession from dawn till dusk and at every moment in between, day after day and season after season.  I never dread coming home; in fact, I get homesick too easily now.  Home is now both my foundation and my escape, and I feel so blessed to be able to say that at such a relatively young age.

   Time passes too quickly within these gates, no matter how hard we try to manage our days and hours wisely. 

   One of the most beautiful truths we have discovered is that other people feel the specialness too.  Maybe not with the intensity we do, because visitors are usually only here for a few hours at a time, but we constantly collect warm, emotional reviews from friends and family of all ages about how good they feel here.

   One of our very beautiful, special-to-our-hearts nieces “K” once remarked that she feels happy here, that there is peace.  This only confirms for us that our country home was a gift from God.  I am not sure we have ever expressed to her our gratitude for that gift.  Thank you Sweet Girl.

   All of our prayers are not yet answered.  We wait and hope, ache, for all the beds to be filled here more often and for the dinner table to be crowded with happy faces on regular nights, without big parties. 
   That pain gets frequently eased with great mercy from the Lord.  But it is deep and pulsing and is always present. 

   And as so often happens, living with unsolvable pain makes us keenly aware of the abundant blessings we enjoy!  We have the gifts of knowing how to appreciate the things that are going well and of daily living so many miracles. 

   We simmer in love that comes in many shapes and languages.  We are surrounded by strong, compassionate people, both friends and family.  We get to care for a variety of creatures who mirror our spirit sometimes more than I would like to admit.  And we are constantly learning lessons we didn’t know were so vital. 
   The bottom line is that life here is good.  I am not bragging, just celebrating.  From the bottom of my heart.

  

   Over the years I have noticed both swells and droughts in my feelings of creativity or maybe in my productive creativity.  Writer’s Block is very real, and of course people from all crafts and disciplines have times of head-scratching and eye-rubbing because the seed of an idea refuses to germinate. 

   This could apply to office issues, home decorating, parenting, vacation planning, studying, anything at all that requires creative thinking or problem solving.  Universal but not terrible.

   One weird and slightly personal observation I’ve made of my own patterns has helped a bunch and might help you too.  Err, at least the ladies.

  Recognizing at what stage of my, ahem, lunar cycle I am tells me whether I have at that moment a propensity for wild idea storms, hard physical labor, painfully tedious attention to detail, praising and encouraging others, or just collecting energy from outside of myself. 

   I call this last time the Desperately Dry Sponge days.  It’s when I troll tastemaker blogs the most, re-read Charlotte Bronte, and flip through crinkly old marked up issues of my fave print magazines.

  Seems like every part of the month lends itself to something special and, when capitalized upon, can be uniquely fruitful.  Every stage of creating, by the way, is rich in blessing or benefit too!  All are necessary for the full artistic experience, and it may take more than one complete trek through the menu to complete a really good project.

   Maybe this explains in part why some bloggers may let a week or two pass without posting and then suddenly explode with  a long list of brilliantly written essays!  Or why after weeks of stagnant time in front of blank canvases, a painter can’t sleep for days because she is churning out her soul in color. 

   This brings with it a particular obstacle worth noticing, because how sad for the person who FINALLY feels the onslaught of motility in her craft but is bound by the structure of life to be at a paying job, care for others, etc, etc.

   Wait, shall we only go with the flow?  Remain tethered to the reggae vibe of our feelings?  I kind of don’t think so.  Part of adopting a discipline, of course, is the discipline part.  Working through regardless of the easy energy you feel.  So there’s a certain responsibility of any artist to try and produce with some amount of consistency, even if the end product is at times weak. 

   It will get better.  And who says you have to share the weak stuff with anyone?

   Pay attention to the added benefits here, too.  Check out what kind of emotional or psychological payoff you enjoy after managing to exact revenge on those thoughts like, “NOT TODAY ALREADY!”

   And by all means, when the monsoon hits, embrace it as much as you can.  Ride the waves of expression as much and as skillfully as you personally can do at that time, knowing that its time is possibly limited.

   How do you manage the swells and droughts in your creative life?  What practical methods do you have in place for those dry days?  And how do you rearrange your life for the lush days of outpouring?    

   The process of how people push through from frustration to completion is fascinating to me.  Crossing my fingers that you all share.  xoxo