Carry Small Dogs,Take The Stairs

I've been practicing if it makes you feel good, do more of it pretty much all weekend...

It started on Friday when I took the day off and was thinking I'd do something nice for myself, give myself a facial or some kind of girlie thing like that but out of the blue I had a hankering to burn some brush [we have mucho trees in our yard] and next thing I know I was a flaming fire-tender for two days straight,












no kidding, I could not stop once I got started 

[see pyromaniac]

so it was a good feeling thing that Jess and Elizabeth slept over Friday night because they're s'mores experts and since I had this fire going we took advantage of it, chowing down gooey chocolate-marshmallow-graham cracker sandwiches under the night sky which was a good feeling thing to do...

Saturday morning I found Elizabeth at the kitchen table eating a small bowl of ice cream. I looked at Jess like is this what you feed your kid for breakfast and she said, "hey, your freezer is on the blink so we thought it was best to save the Ben & Jerry's!" which I had to agree was a good idea although I passed on the Half-Baked chocolate bomb and had an egg instead.

[are you sensing a theme here?]

After discovering the freezer had miraculously righted itself, I went out to check on the fire pit only to find hot coals still simmering so I filled up a wheelbarrow with a load of pine branches and started back in with the fire-tending, 

day 2.

The girls went off for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. 
I stayed home and hauled wood,

who needs to lift weights if you haul wood  

and then, but what if you live in the city?

well,carry small dogs,take the stairs.

The girls came back and we had more s'mores for lunch and then Ann stopped by to sit with us around the camp fire. I suggested we do a first day of autumn ritual and write down and burn any thing that was clinging to us like dog hair, anything we had had enough of, so we wrote on some paper and threw these bad feeling things into the fire

[which I was still stoking]...

Today I was out pulling weeds when a strong and steady weep broke over me, filled interestingly with angst and feelings of lack and not enough-ness, and missing my mother, but more feelings of not enough-ness since angst was really Ann's and I don't need to borrow other people's stuff if I can help it. 

know what I mean?

Have you noticed when you decide to let go of something or make a change, sure enough the very thing you're burning in the fire pit will show up just to test you, to see if you really meant it. 



Have you noticed how that happens?












although I did feel very energized and happy at my fire

finally this afternoon I whacked myself in the head, right over the eyebrow [small egg forming] with a tree branch and thought it was time to settle my ass down and stop pushing so hard to pick up every twig or pull every weed or... fill in the blank with nuttiness

This is when I get out the paint brushes and think of my friend, Penny the painter, a walking joy-bomb, 

and I think, painting 
a glass of red wine, 
is a good feeling thing to do
as is writing 
or sitting with my cat 
or buying mums at the Farmer's Basket 

so I come back to the girl inside me [see below]










a very good feeling thing...

amen.

- girl by Elizabeth