Dispatch from Maine last month

Day 5 in Maine.

Good night’s sleep. Left alone while family goes down to the cousins.

Packing up and leaving home was difficult. Getting the bills organized, the emails returned, the work sched figured out, all while finding people to watch the chickens and rats. It was all so taxing and draining and all while trying to work extra so we’d have enough money

to pay for the rental house and the food and living while at the rental house. Akkkk!

I thought, “It would make more sense to just stay home! I could catch up on things and there wouldn’t be this terrible extraction process and it wouldn’t put us so financially in the hole.”

But I knew from previous years that we need a vacation.

We need the re-set button to remember what is important.

We need for our work-lives to fade into the background.

We need to remember that as a family we can live anywhere and work with what we have.

It makes me feel less stuck and trapped in the life we have and I think by the end of the week I'm much more appreciative of life at home.

For now I’m still enjoying the lack of computer to check emails, the quiet morning full of birdsong different from the birds I know at home and the view of the quiet bay down the hill.

I’m glad we came, even though Georgia had a very difficult time those first few days. I’m not sure if it was the change of scenery and pattern or if the Trix cereal and Hawaiian punch that Lily has been waiting for all year did something to Georgia when she ate it. She was like a possessed girl, imitating everyone in a shrill crazy voice and then belting us. She was in a time out alot and finally we bribed her with candy, which may have been counterproductive in the big picture but helped us get through the day.

I do miss the internet for that because I would be looking up food sensitivities; her skin is usually sensitive and prone to welts when she itches, but that is really exaggerated now and I’m not sure what it causing it. maybe the harmless florescent cereal she is starting her day with?

Sigh.

Anyway I finally finished the book Eat, Pray Love, which I really enjoyed.

I love vacation. I actually get to read a whole book!

I have been trying to meditate again.

Twenty minutes every day.

I’ve been doing it for about 10 days.

Over and over I read, hear, and see that the next step I need to take on this journey of mine is to meditate. Simple and mundane.

In Eat Pray Love, here is the narrator’s conversation with the medicine man she studies with.

“Ketut, Why is life all crazy like this?” I asked my medicine man the next day.

He replied, “Bhuta ia, dewa ia.”

“What does that mean?”

“Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.”

“So what do we do about the craziness of the world?”

“Nothing.” Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. “This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only-Make you in peace.”

But how do we find peace within ourselves?” I asked Ketut

“Meditation.” he said. “Purpose of meditation is only happiness and peace-very easy.”

My goal is to try to keep it up!