Final round.

My new favorite thing in the morning is to lay sideways in bed and let my head hang off the side. You'd be surprised at how nice a little blood to the brain can be. Putting the head lower than the heart just feeds the gray matter and each breath I draw in tingles and invigorates me. 

I look at my stucco bedroom wall upside down and contemplate where I am going to move to and who I give affection, time, attention, and love to. Neurons pumped high on oxygen fire off signals and twitches as a dog dreams beside me, breathing hard in the heat. 

Final round of the auction block with the remainder of my sheep tomorrow and I'm trying not to think about anything. I am looking at a little apartment just north of here and wondering if I should go it alone or not. I wish the stucco walls would spell out the best answer, or maybe they are but it's not what I want or it's not easy. The robins sing a rather boring song, a dog in a crate whimpers from his full bladder. I contemplate hot coffee on a day that's already hot. And I think I might lose my job. 

I guess it wouldn't be lost. It just wouldn't be mine anymore. I'd know where it is. I just wouldn't be there too. 

The -just do your fucking job- guy is getting preferential treatment over me. When given three tasks and a raise, he has not come through with any of his tasks. But somehow that's turned into me being a bad manager. Not that he's lazy and evasive and doesn't listen to me. 

I am spent. Coming off a 50+ hour work week, I halfway welcome just getting fired. I could sling coffee at a place up the street or be a case worker for schizophrenics. Somewhere that I could go to work and go home at the end of the day without having screaming phone calls where I try to fire people but I am not permitted. 

I am wound super tight, working with a guy who freaked out on a customer so bad she complained via email to my boss and even though I wasn't there, it's my fault, not my disgruntles employee. 

So now I hang my head off the side of my bed and think. 

I need to move. My last apartment manager didn't fix anything. I don't have a key to one of my doors. My ceiling in my kitchen leaks when it rains but my drains don't actually drain. Minor annoyances in my mind. But now I have a new apt manager who has an affinity for parking lot parties and late night fireworks. I curl up on my couch as my dog crawls under neath me with that terrified of loud noises face. 

I feel like the grumpy old woman in apt D but when the stairs are filled with people and beer cans I need to step over when I'm getting off a 12 hour shift, yes, I get pissy.

So no sheep. Job going to hell. Indecision abounds still. Whining dogs. Little sleep. Hot as hell. And packing yet again. 

Yes. I will make coffee this morning. I will look at apartments in different neighborhoods and not think about it too much. I will dream of sheep and one day having a place of my own to keep them. I will walk the dogs, feed the cat and buy some strawberries to make jam with. I will put my head under my heart and feel the stress dissipate with every day off because fuck, it's my only day off this week. I need to go out and enjoy it. 

Such a good day

Today was beautiful.

I took a day off from work. A much needed day off. I laid in bed, 6am sun pouring through my window as I calculated out how few hours I had slept. So I doubled my number and got up a few minutes before my alarm, just in time for yoga teacher training.

A day to clear my mind, to sit on porches talking about nothing and so much with my family, wrapping up dreams into packages together with great resolve for the months ahead.
Then wading out to the gardens to pull weeds, organize thought, not answer emails, and soak up the June sun.

I got a lot done. I know that sounds odd to say about a day off, but that usually means a good day for me.

So now as my house fills with aromatics in the slow simmer of vegetables, onions, bay, and garlic as the egg noodles spin around in their pot. I'm adapting a recipe someone made for me. It's more homage than anything. It was delicious the first time. Now I am trying it with slow simmered cabbage with the onions, wider noodles, and hockey sausage.
 I slice off a tiny piece of pecorino Romano and let it melt in my mouth, swirling it with Shiraz. next on my list to do is sit on my couch with my new Aussie shepherd foster dog as he cuddles closer to me the way most shelter dogs do. I feel great. I feel recharged, happy to have a day to myself that actually was to myself.
Bruce Springsteen reminds me of relishing days off as sirens go off in the distance and the neighbors dog raspily barks in response. I hear the parking lot fill up with residents hunkering down for Monday morning work. I hunker down for yoga tomorrow morning and then a full day off making strawberry jam with my sister. I am not a jam eater, but I LOVE making it. And eating the piles of strawberries as we hull and slice them.

Dinner is wrapping up. The dogs are sleeping. I wish I had some way to watch a bunch of daily show episodes in a row. That would pretty much end the ideal day off. But I'll settle for a half a glass of wine, a nice hot shower to get the grassy dirt smell off me and then curling up in bed with a magazine, belly full and mind content and happy.

What a good day.

She let the tiger off its chain

I am laying in bed trying to find the right combination of positive thinking and musical soundtrack to drag myself up to meet the day. So far I have failed. I'm feeling my skin twitch as the poison ivy spreads up my wrist and pricks around for where to tickle next.
Stress wells up into a ball in my throat and a lump in my stomach, despite all better thought and reason. It seems like if I rationalize, there's really no reason for me to be worried and I know it doesn't help, but I think swallowing it just makes it simmer more.
I've been riding waves of emotions and hormones with weak knees, falling and weakly picking myself up jus to fall again.
I am puzzled as to how most people go trough life, married, same job, same home for years. I feel shifts constantly and discomfort and desires for change. I beat myself up that I'm being selfish.
I have to get rid of the sheep at work. They no longer want to have them there. They are getting rid of their grass fed cows so I won't have that anymore either. And while selling shares was kinda a pain in the ass, it aligned with my ideals and kept my feet moving. They are turning their pastures into more corn and soybeans, which do not align with my ideals. Taking cows off grass so you can grow animal feed with a bunch of petrol products because its easy just doesn't sit well with me. And now I'm sad that I will stare at a non diversified monoculture and my break from staring after grapevines 100x over is not to go look at births and animals out lush green grass but rather the burn of herbicide spray and the height of fertilized corn.
There goes another perk of the job.
And while I realize most jobs do not have barns and pastures and such odd perks, this one seemed fitting after all the stress, odd hours, back breaking labor, and farm based events. This was a big perk. And now I'm headed back to Craigslist for flakey people to purchase my Frankenstein flock of perfect traits from different breeds that were customized just for my needs, but now don't have the flash of purebred or the mass weight of market lambs. And so then I'm headed to the auction yard to doom them to a few final stressful days before they hit the stun gun and go into gyro meat.

As I work through the last of the beef in my freezer, I contemplate going back to vegetarianism or for a minute, think about moving back to my old house toget a desk job to pay the bills and then spending all my energy on my own project...... But then I remember the money pit and get sad. Perhaps my ideals do tie me to being broke.

And my tiger is in my throat, an irrational ball of energy, of unexplained emotions. Of wanderlust. Of seeking new things, new challenges, opening doors that I shouldn't or taking apart things just to see how they work. My tiger is in my feet that once out of bed, will move quickly on a meandering path that has a thread through it, however diverse the course actually turns out to be.


I like making art, but it always seemed so impractical to make something just to stare at. I think the more I work at it, the more I am making food into art, from the start where I craft a beautiful lamb, fill its belly with grass, say a prayer before the butcher, and then craft the finishing touches on its life.

I think I'm most unhappy when I discount my passions into something trivial or just a fleeting meal or a passing conversation that doesn't mean anything. Part of me wonders if this will calm as I age. But the other part of me really doesn't want to change.