I also read a feature in this morning's paper about taking life slower and enjoying it more. That's a notion which has certainly been on my mind lately; I just have to, some day, reach the end of the list of "to do's" for the "will you do's?" that always seems to grow.
In fact, when I returned from my weekend in Seattle and Vancouver last week, the telephone messages involved three "will you do's?" added to an already long list. I've taken care of most of those and am working really hard (but not hard enough) on rehearsing the response "Let me think about that."
So, with those two newspaper articles in mind, I'm gonna take a cue and add to my blog postings throughout the day. Plus, I'm going to try to live the day with a few different twists which include "do for myself's." So, I'll go slowly into the day plotting my own route and planning to post intermittently throughout. Stay tuned . . . .
. . . 11:25 a.m. Just returned from Bonners Ferry where I went to Mass at St. Ann's. I saw Fr. Carlos---out of uniform---at Wal-Mart the other day, and his gentle nudge made me decide to go. He knows not to see me on a regular basis, and he understands. Two things I got out of Mass: the difference between a sermon and a homily. When a priest does a sermon, he picks a topic; when he does the homily, his thoughts are based on the readings and the Gospel. The other point I came home with and do appreciate: Fr. Carlos' "sermon" was about the missions around the world and those at home where we're all expected to evangelize the existence of Jesus Christ. Well, the part I liked was that St. Francis of Assissi evangelized in his village---but not through words----more through deeds and example. I'll take that route.
An added bonus to the nudge from Fr. Carlos. I stopped at the Boundary Trader to pick up some groceries and grab a cup of coffee. I turned around at the bakery counter, and there was Nissa Clark. Haven't seen her for probably 20 years. Yup, another one of those students. We had a great visit, talking kids and horses. Now, the day goes on . . .
. . . 1:30 p.m., Barbara, Laurie and Pita left a while ago from their usual Sunday visit post-shopping. We talked about Barbara's upcoming trip to Albuquerque with her judging team, about rigs, about horses, about dogs and about school. I'm going to be helping Laurie with barns this week. About five minutes after they left, the phone rang. It was Barbara; she had a flat tire right in front of Eva Whitehead's house. So, Bill put his lunch aside and drove down to help them. He's now eating his lunch. I'm heading over to Mother's to give her some cinnamon rolls from the Boundary Trader and some freshly preserved strawberry jelly from yesterday afternoon's inside project. It's mighty good-looking stuff. . . .
3:10 p.m. Mother was making applesauce and doing her crossword puzzle. Laurie was talking with two women looking for a rideable horse to buy. Barbara was doing lesson plans for her upcoming week away from school. Pita and Kiwi made several rounds around the house. It was a nice visit, and we talked about going to dinner together this Saturday when Barbara is gone. I came home, and Bill was out in the woods. I wrote a note to Jeff Bock and thanked him for his contribution to a project I'm doing for two upcoming Young Writers' Conferences in Moscow and St. Anthony. Jeff got his assignment in late, and noted that nothing much had changed since high school back in the early '90s. Any writing assignment from Jeff, whether on time or late, is worth the wait.
. . . 4:25 p.m. I thought I might burn a pile of vegetable stalks in the garden, but that's a few days off. We're supposed to have dry weather this week, so I'll probably try to burn on Tuesday. I've got to remember to ask Bill to put the brush hog on the tractor; this should be a good week for mowing weeds and tall grass in the pastures. In the meantime, I took the rake and started on those huge flower beds. I love this large yard, but there's a lot of work with the fall clean-up. With the weather being decent this week, I should be able to chip away at it a few minutes at a time. This day has hardly been a slow-down day, but it's definitely followed a different routine---and I think that's good from time to time. Now, I'm headed out to get the barns ready for Lefty and Lily. Lefty, by the way, wore his new baby horse blanket to bed last night, and he's had it on all day today. He doesn't seem to mind it. When it turns really cold, I'll put Lily's heavy blanket on her too. That way she won't have green manure stains all over her pretty white hair. Appaloosas are much prettier without green manure stains. . .
. . .later. A day in life ended pretty much the same way it usually does. I prepared dinner while Bill kept working in the woods; he had his first bonfire of the fall season. Since there's no more need for permits, he burned some small slash. My stuff in the garden was still too wet. Back to dinner. The Schwan's man gave us a special on chicken alfredo dinner, so I bought. It was an easy enough Sunday meal, cooked in the microwave and complemented by slices of those garden tomatoes and French bread smothered with that new strawberry jelly. The horses went into their stalls for their dinner just before we ate ours. Bill watched some of the Boston-Cleveland baseball game while I worked upstairs at the computer compiling a large amount of data sent from 24 writers over the past couple of weeks. I'm using their thoughts---written well by the way---for my keynote speech at the Young Authors' gatherings. Then, I'll open up these contributions in their entirety on a blog for the young authors and for the folks who contributed. It's some pretty fun stuff. By that time "60 Minutes" was on----a staple here at the Love house. We both watched the segment on forest fires in the West and all the Global Warming. Bill said they left out a few things to contribute to the argument. I asked Bill if Global Warming and all those auto/factory omissions caused the 1910 burn-off of most North Idaho forests. I guess argument of omission works well whenever you want to push an idea. Anyway, he headed upstairs to do some work, and I watched a fascinating and touching documentary called "Dwarfs, Not a Fairy Tale." The film followed some wonderful segments in the lives of Little People---everything from being stared at, to being dismissed, to having productive fulfilling lives. The usual at this house includes several nodding offs in between seeing that all cats and dogs are in their respective quarters for the night. Festus and Lonesome are always the last hold-outs among the cats, but last night's rain convinced them that playing the "find me if you can" game was not a wise option. Final nod-off from yours truly occurred at the end of "Cold Case." I caught about half the show off and on.
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