free association

(This is me reading the newspaper on the train from St. Louis back to KC.  It felt so lovely to be reading the newspaper on a train, for some reason.)

I have no idea what I am going to sit here and write about.  Usually, I have an idea that I have been mulling on for awhile.  Often, I start writing about that idea and then go a completely different direction than I thought I would go.  Many times, an idea comes to me while I am sitting still and quiet during church.

But today, I have no idea what I want to say. 

I am sitting on my side porch.  It's the first time I have written out here since...pretty much forever, it seems.  I thought winter would never end, but perhaps it has, finally.  I hope. 
I hear the crack of a bat hitting a ball as kids across the street play baseball.
I see green--thank God--and white blooms, and red tulips, and the corpse of last year's garden, which someday, someday, will come to life again.

I also hear my son in the front yard sobbing because Matt can't make him a rope swing that will propel him across the yard and onto a platform where he can than push himself down a yet-to-be created slide.  He is swearing, between sobs, that if this masterpiece of a creation becomes a reality he will never, ever need to play a video game again.

My house is a little bit messy.  I need to pick it up before my weekly date with Mr. Selfridge and a friend and a bottle of wine. 

I need to wash sheets. 

There is a wasp buzzing around the windows inside my porch.  This makes me a little nervous.

Jack is no longer crying because Matt has propped a very tall ladder against the very tall maple tree in our front yard.  Jack has climbed up the ladder and is now standing on a perch up in the tree.  This makes me very nervous.

I am sipping a Diet Coke.  I try very, very hard to be healthy.  I religiously dump fruits and greens into my Blendtech every morning to make myself a green smoothie.  We eat pastured eggs and chickens and grass-fed beef.  We devour vegetables and fruits from our garden and our CSA.  But I can't give up Diet Coke.  I just can't.  Sigh.

I am excited because the essay I published last week over at Practicing Families about our relationship with our Old German Baptist friends is going to be re-published on the blog at Mennonite World Review.  Some day I want to be a writer, you know.

I am feeling pretty good today.  My insides feel pretty quiet, mostly calm. 
As long as I don't close my eyes and imagine Jack falling out of that tree, I'm OK today. 
I'm peaceful today.
I would say I am almost happy today. 

Maybe it's the sunshine.
Maybe it's the green.
Maybe it's the porch.
Maybe I'm just getting a little break.
Maybe I will wake up in despair tomorrow.
But for today, I am inhaling...exhaling...inhaling...exhaling...inhaling...exhaling....