Cheers

After seeing the date of my last post and having heard from several of you folks who actually take time to read my stuff and have asked for more, I thought I might try to carve out a few minutes to babble. Since I started doing this blog I have found that, like many things in life, it takes a deliberate approach to find the time to do it. It is just frigging amazing how many distractions and time killers there are in a day, a life, for me. There are so many animals to feed and tend to, human, equine, canine, and whatever birds are, oh yes, avian. There are phone calls of little importance to answer, the solving of the various mini-crises that arise. There are all the multitudinous tiny things that make up living each day at a low level of creative output that frustrate me to no end.

Add all that with three weeks of nearly solid rain and mud to the now pressing holiday commitments, everything from present buying and wrapping, food buying and prep, and various visits to and from relatives and friends, throw in a funeral, a dog fight or two, a face plant on the hardwood floor trying to prevent a dog fight, resulting in a cut lip from hell, and the ongoing needs and hospitalizations of my aging parents.

It all means getting almost zero time for riding and training my horses, doing any biographical work on the life of my famous dress designer uncle Wilson, making any more leather bags, or any sewing, painting, welding, and now, writing blog entries. Stop this crazy ride, I want to get off.

I do remember very well as a young kid the mercurial sense of time. Time floated gently by and drifted around the pleasant distractions of the day. It was irrelevant to me whether it was 9 am or 4 pm. I woke up to no alarm, I ate breakfast and watched Captain Kangaroo on the TV, and then the rest of the day lasted indefinitely. There seemed to be a flow to it like a lazy river meandering and sliding its way along. There were moments, who knows the actual length, where making mud pancakes swept my imagination away. There was unknown length of time spent playing in between the sheets hanging to dry on the clothes line, watching the sunlight patterns shift like paint on canvases as the sun dried them. And time spent watching pill bugs crawl and then roll up into their safe secure little balls. I still wish I could do that. Making forts was an especially fun thing for me to get lost in. I used boxes when available, appliance ones being treasured, laundry baskets, blankets draped on chairs, and chairs themselves proved very handy for many similar projects.

All of this was time spent with absolutely no regard for the time being spent, or wasted. It came with no guilt about not getting something else more important done mainly because there were no expectations yet for getting anything done. Homework hadn't' entered my life yet, and all the other thousands of things that happen as you get older and have gaining responsibilities. It just was an endlessly soothing part of my life in the past.

So how to return even a bit to such a quiet and peaceful way. I don't know yet, but I will be thinking more about that as we get thru this bloody holiday season and look to the new year. Simplify and slow down and enjoy the moment, will be my attempted mantra.

Now I am off to the barn to feed the anxious equines. I will finish the wrapping and cooking, and try to get all of the stress out of my mood. I look forward to a Christmas day tasting of our newly made Bourbon soaked oak chips, Oatmeal Stout beer. Yum.

Not much philosophy on the horses today, nor news about Jackapotomus. Just some time spent on scribblings. But I am truly wishing every one a much slower and mellow, and appreciated Christmas season, and many more to come. Cheers.