Shift

My shoes got soaked but it was worth it. I was awake before 5am but made myself stay in bed until 6:30, then I put on my shoes and headed out for a little amble with the dogs. The grass was wet with the heavy morning dew which still hung in the air painting everything with an impressionist brush. Back at the house I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my socks, made a coffee and headed out to the swing to enjoy another early morning.

The dew had clung to spider webs on the short grass making them shimmer like fairy castles. The birds were singing and the air was punctuated by the occasional bellow of one of the dairy cows next door. She must have just calved and is calling for her newborn veal calf that has been taken away from her. As the sun got higher in the sky it started burning off the fog, creating a bright halo as it did so.

I felt wonderful. I was enjoying our property so much and vowed to remember when we were in Presquile where we were bound to get caught up in the beauty of that place and start looking at real-estate listings. I've got to REMEMBER!!!!

Eventually I realized that my mood had shifted from slightly hypo-manic back down to slightly depressed. What??? How did that happen? I followed the trail of my thoughts back and came to the part where I was wondering what I'd do if anything happened to Carm. How would I stay in the house? So I started thinking how I would turn the basement into an apartment...  how grimm... no wonder my spirits sunk.

As I sat there trying to get my thoughts back in line, a flock of perhaps 20 swallows came into view. They were circling and swooping low in front of the barn and then high in the sky. They were only there for a few minutes, but carried my mood with them leaving behind peace (and maybe a tiny bit of hypo-mania). The peace didn’t last though and my mood wavered up and down all day.

I have a hard time figuring out what is a "normal" mood and what is one that I have to be concerned about. It is important to nip mood swings in the bud, before they become full-fledged relapses, but at the same time it would be good to just be... Does rhapsodizing on about the beauty of nature fit into normal? Or does it reach into the hypo-manic? I really don't know, but I'll try to enjoy it regardless ;-)

I was outside waiting for my friend Karen to arrive for tea and lunch so took the shovel with me to clean up the lawn a bit. As I shovelled up bits of dried poop a few times I disturbed butterflies that had landed… why I’m not sure? Maybe the moisture? Or the calcium? It was a juxtaposition of beauty against hummm… what is a good word to describe poo? Actually, the poop isn’t really all that vile – one of the big advantages of feeding a raw diet is the firm poops that quickly change to dry bone white. No sticky messes for us!

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
Rabindranath Tagore