thank you Coldplay

i was going to title this post with a quote from a song, noting here in my first sentence how silly it was to quote from a song so unknown--it is one thing to quote cohen, quite another to assume anyone who doesnt listen to CBC radio 2 will understand said post title to be a lyric of sorts--that i could not even remember who sang it, what the song was called, or even the tune to which the rest of it goes. Instead i thank Coldplay for a song with an idea at least similar to the one line of some random song that i can no longer remember.

The (coldplay) song i speak of says "slow it down" or, rather "slow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow, it down" (the band is not in pain, those adhering to proper spelling onomatopias are pronounced "oh (my goodness)" not "ow (my goodness i just stubbed my toe"))
Anyways, slow it down. This is my new mantra, the advice i desire to heed, even if impossible considering committments to work/farm and things only just starting to speed up (rapidly) at both.

Summer is officially here, as of two days ago, and with it the ominous mass influx of hungry tourists/growing vegetables. I am actually afraid. Last season was horribly demanding, spending from five a.m. til the bike ride up the hill at 11p.m. going, moving, stopping only for a few minutes to go to the washroom, and about that many minutes to eat something; occasionally remembering to breathe, never getting enough sleep. Between the farm work and the real work, i threw in a bike ride--the only time i was actually sitting. But not this time. I cannot do it again.

I no longer possess this odd, somewhat masochistic desire to run myself completely ragged. I am learning to give some of my time to things that i want to do, not what i am obligated to do (and no, i am not sacrificing any bathroom break time to do so). Like right now, as i stand here writing instead of squatting out there weeding (betcha thought i was still talking bathroom breaks, hey?!). Practicing yoga has taught me alot about balance (beyond standing on my head), and allowed me to be open to it.

And really, i am simply enjoying finally feeling healthy, strong, oriented, present, and...calm (another shout out to yoga here). Though it may be inevitable that i will be tired from the early starts/late finishes to my days, plus my devotion to all things physical, i am done with mental fatigue, with contributing to my own stress. Im ready to slow it down.

Evidence that i already have (besides the creation of this post at the sacrifice of weed strangled cilantro, and that i actually sat down to eat breakfast the last few mornings)? Observe-- a text message from my ma describing our date last thursday:

       "It was a lovely day. So relaxed and easy."

WHAT? My ma described time with me as relaxed and easy? Does she know she wrote that? She must have been into the wine. But its true. The day was relaxed and easy, though just having her write that to me really resonated with how important it is to me, and wonderful it is to be taken that way, to be relaxed.

And when i forget to be during the coming craziness, i will turn on Coldplay and read that message, maybe do a little yoga...or maybe take a little nap.

the sunny side of rain

i could be making pancakes right now. We have been rained off of the farm, and what could be better than cozying up with a stack, an espresso, and last weekends Globe and Mail (im busy, i can only read a section a day...Wednesday is for the crossword, actually...); its been awhile, and it would be a lovely way to deal with yet another wet, grey, "spring" day, helping to resist the urge to crawl back into bed and sleep until the sun decides to shine again.
instead i am eating the same cereal i have for the last four days, not because my seasonally affected disorder has disabled me from finding joy and putting effort into my breakfasts--i simply, really, wanted more to spend this newfound time writing and cereal is quick, that and its really good cereal, i made it myself.
So that is what i am going to do until heading off to yoga--which, like pancakes, keeps me from being as miserable as the weather. Rain now has come to mean that instead of weeding, i can attend practice, and that--actually wanting the rain to come-- is probably the truest sign to me that im on a different path...
Breakfast, time to write, and yoga: its a pretty sunny day after all

what i will say

Most often, when i have not written here in awhile, i have half written and left unpublished to finish when i have either more time or less wine, more than several posts. Such a habit was the reason for a promise i made a while ago ( it would be dishonest to assure that my end of the bargain--the only end, that is--has been completely upheld; though i finished several posts in a row, there remains a few scattered thoughts from that time...). This habit holds strong: tonight i half wrote a personal record of four posts. Will i get to them anytime soon? Will you get to read them while they still hold relevancy to me? Considering i still have point form almost posts from the first month i started writing here...hmmmm. I apologize for this tendency, this lack of dedication (or rather, dedication to too much wine with too little time--added to too many thoughts and ideas and not enough, actually, dedication), and general absence from what could be a larger part of me.
Lately i have been trying at best to make more time for, well, me. This means getting in my run, my yoga practice, sitting down to eat breakfast, socializing beyond work and half-written-good-intentions-for-communication, sleeping. And writing here is a large part of me, no matter how concealed that large part is.
So please bear with me, lend encouragement, and continue reading--when there is something completed to read, that is). Maybe then there will be four "brand new" fully finished and published posts to read. Until then, at least i finished this one (and it is not for lack of wine...).

WHOAH--here we go

Last Mothers Day i was sick. That is an understatement: i slept for nine and a half hours after throwing up during dinner service (i was able to run off line, no really awful visual of ruined customer dinners here), only to wake up, wash my face, look at my couch and flop for another three hours. At 2:30 pm i woke for the second time, hardly able to stand, and, at the insistence of my concerned landlord (he is the epitomy of an Italian man, with an insatiable restlessness that is equalled only by his desire to take care of--hence getting me to see a doctor about illness for the first time in about, oh, seven years...) i biked (couldnt stand, but i could sit on my vehicle of choice...) to the walk in clinic, was given a bunch of "could be this"'s plus a box of antacid tablets, biked back home, took said tablets, and made pancakes.

[Yes. Pancakes. I know, i know: enough already with the pancake talk--it seems to be a recurring theme here since realizing their recurrent theme throughout my life, and since recently dubbing all tuesdays off of work as honourary "Shrove Tuesdays" i suggest, dear readers, that you either take this obsession as any other constant topic source like work itself with a skim-reading like immunity, or take advantage of the wealth of breakfast recipes coming your way...]

Then i went to work (where i exercise my own immunity...). I worked through it, just as i had the night before, minus the throwing up. That is how i deal with sickness: I dont. Which is what i am doing this Mothers Day. Round two.

I am stressed. That is an understatement, too. Mother's day weekend to most people with mothers means a special breakfast, perhaps pancakes (could feel that idea coming, hey? just helping to build your immunity to maintain your readership...) at home or out, flowers, homemade cards, and a ma who stays in her bathrobe through all of it--except, maybe, if the pancakes are had "out." To me it is a weekend of greater significance. WHOAH WHOAH WHOAH! i take that back--nothing is of greater significance than my mom--sorry ma, if you are reading.... But for this daughter, it is also the weekend that marks when the farm begins to take over my life.

We time our planting schedule by this weekend, for it is after the full moon after Mothers day that everything in the greenhouse can go safely outside without risk of frost. Dont ask me why, i think logic and science is very much governed by tradition here, i know only that this means that all of a sudden planting is urgent, as is weeding and picking what was more casually planted earlier. Suddenly there is not as much time for pancakes, or sleep really, or running, or biking, or yoga, or writing here, or spending time with friends and family, or spending time with just me and my camera/book/artwork, or working in my personal garden. For the next five months; nothing but work. I know how tired i will be after that last full moon. That reality stresses me.

And is affecting me phyically. i have been sick of the last week or two--sick the way i do sick, which is to ignore, not succumbing to the plugged nose, foggy head, achiness--and worse over, jammed my big toe in yoga so that it swelled and purpled, charlie-horsed my ass somehow, and seriously pulled the intercostal muscles in my upper ribcage so that any movement besides none at all is somewhere between a wee bit and tear inducingly painful. And i am sleeping through my alarms (all six of them including an obnoxious rooster call) daily, despite not yet being without a sound rest. Perhaps my body is stockpiling hours in advance, but really it is just adding to the stress that i wont be capable of the 430am wakeup, and then what?

I know that there is really nothing i can do. That I dont really choose or make a conscious change to go with the season, but that somehow, one day i am just in it. But until then i am sickening myself with stress, and no stack of pancakes can relieve that.