to stop and breathe

I've been living a lot of "I can't wait until..." lately. Living in the now? Psh, not so much. And, I know me pretty well by now -- I won't stop doing this anytime soon, although I'll continue to lament my ability to be so very happy with the abundance I have right now.

What am I waiting for? Time. Much more time with Pic. Real time with her, not just stressful time near her. Time with Cardo. Time to take nice long, leisurely two-hour walks (as we did this past weekend! so very needed). Time to read, write, take pictures, think, sleep.

I tend to go through cycles of stress and boredom. It's as if I don't know how to live in the middle, with just enough to keep me busy. If my plate isn't overly full, it's missing. Right now, things are falling off my plate all over the place. I'm afraid, though, that I'll forget this feeling in two weeks. I'll have slipped into not-enough-to-do (as far as I'm concerned) ennui and I'll be pushing to once again take on too much.

When we decided to not send Pic off to school, I was still a bit unsure about our decision and so I set myself up with too much to do to do anything really well (did you follow that?). I'm feeling so much more confident in and excited about our decision now, but I've locked myself into obligations for the next several months. I (mostly) enjoy these obligations, but I'm unable to balance between outside obligations and family time and togetherness.

I had thought that my life would be in a comfortable rhythm by now, but I still seem to be figuring it all out. I think I might be bored if nothing ever changed, but I push too far, too much, too often. (I feel silly even saying that, as I know many, many people who successfully do so much more than I do.)

I've got about a month of tricky scheduling ahead and then several months of needing to really work on a rhythm.

As for that month, though, I plan on traveling, reading, sleeping, crafting (perhaps), cooking, baking, planning, walking, picture taking, ecc, ecc, ecc.

I'd be interested in hearing others' plans for finishing out the year.

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Speaking of picture taking, I haven't posted any pictures in a woefully long time. I haven't carried my camera with me as much and I've been lax about uploading my pictures to my computer. However, I do have some shots awaiting their display here. I usually don't take pictures in shops, but I couldn't pass this up:


I was inordinately happy to see this in Goodwill recently.

"I'm throwing out Hug-a-Canada!" (embedding has been disabled by request.)