Reclusiveness Equals Energy

I don't know how folks can afford bagged cow manure, it's about five bucks a bag at Lowes, nor how there's a line item for fashion in a family budget. I don't comprehend the availability of excess income, enough to make new car payments, nor does budgeting for restaurant meals ever seem feasible, but my own very narrow view only revolves around the finances of a single mom of 39. Not a lot is ever possible, and I'm very OK with that.

Back to the manure, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to run to a nearby stable and haul off their excess. A win-win situation for both the owner and myself. We loaded five more truckloads onto Grandma's garden area, on top of the three last time, and she easily needs two more just for her fruit and vegetable areas. It's not likely I'll get to her flower gardens as I still need to manure my own many garden beds.

Since we garden so differently, and so passionately, we've never thought to pool our time, and to work together, it'd be much as two chefs in one kitchen. We're both too strong-minded for that, we don't compete, we both get joy in the other's successes, but gardening is solitary and personal, at least to the two of us.

This year I hope to only finish manuring the food areas, the flowers'll wait until next year. I need more wood chips everywhere, again I'm happy to pay by the truckload, rather than by the economically impossible bag route of procurement.

I busted outside happily as soon as it hit 43 degrees yelling, "The work'll warm us up," so excitedly that even JoJo and Allen, two very lazy ones, came with me for the first three loads. They're both athletic and very strong, but physical work usually sends them both jumping back into bed in response. They proved me wrong for once.

Again a quiet day, Sabrina's boyfriend came by to play cards with the kids last night, no outbursts anywhere, other than Tony continuing to rudely provoke folks. Slowly everyone's been learning to just walk away, to not feed in to it, which is extremely difficult, as his button pushing abilities are extraordinarily personally vicious, ugly and hateful. If he doesn't change this behavior - and it's not looking likely, as it has seemed to blossom even uglier over the years - his adult life will stink.

"How can you stand him?" my two other 8th graders have been asked, after Tony's been hateful to them.

My blood pressure is responding right now, even as I write all this, just thinking about how awful he can be to other humans, it's absolutely shocking.

I'm finding myself unable to resist the seduction of Burpee catalog's beautiful pages. I shouldn't even have looked, preferring to snobbishly shun hybrids, but dang o dang o, there's a zinnia I might not be able to resist.

I believe I took a bye over the holidays - checked out physically and emotionally, unable to deal with the festivities this year. I've carried such huge emotional loads for so many, many years. I don't break, I've cracked a little however, burrowing deeply into my rabbit warren here, ignoring humans, and hopping around with a little too much paranoia, conveniently leaving my cell phone upstairs constantly, and forgetting it for hours, also noticing again my crackly electro magnetic field is affecting it again.

My reclusive nature taking over, as I get older I find it so blessedly calming to me. The crowd scene at Disney was immense, I do not ever feel energized by all that, I restore and recharge myself best when left alone.

Standing on the two beaches, one was Daytona, the other just slightly north of St. Augustine, felt wonderful to me. CW asking me, "Why do you like these lonely remote beaches?" The second beach was very much so, and I exhilaratedly sucked in the salty sea air, while noticing that the cool sand under my bare feet felt magnificent. "I'd rather see people," CW explained, as if I were a moron, or at best, a hermit.

Like Kryptonite, the crowds force my energy to seep away, like I'm bleeding to death from my soul outward.

But on quiet beaches, in gardens, by streams and rivers, and in the woods, I regain my strength.

I need this inner strength in order to face the oppositionalism, the challenges, the negative emotions that flow towards me from some grown kids who are still stuck in their arrested development mentality, where they were once badly broken by the failings of the system, or by the perceived abandonment by their birth parents, or by the very real abuse and neglect they've suffered. It's easier to deal with this in children, than in grown folks, who insist upon self-destructive tendencies, not ever learning from arrest, jail time, probation, nor court dates and lawyer fees.

Dear Lord, grant me the serenity I so deeply need, the grace with which to deal with people, and the strength each day to get up, and to do it again and again and again.

I can do this.

Especially today when it's gonna be 62 degrees preceding a rain event that always makes me happy, knowing it's drenching the manure, feeding the soil microbes and all the earthworms, nourishing my perennials, and restoring my well water that I drink from each day, literally and figuratively.