October Day

I got up this morning with a long to do list. Laundry to do, the chicken coop to clean, canning apple sauce, picking and freezing the last of the green beans, mulching some of the garden rows, vacuuming, 

 I started the day with a quick walk to watch the sun rise through the mist over a field of Michigan soybeans.

The back to the house to start on my list. Except somehow with the warm sun shining outside, the list completely lost its appeal. Blue skies and butterflies gently beckoned through our glass front door.  The hammock between two pine trees in the side yard was calling my name. It had been woefully neglected since my husband put it up for me this summer.

The hammock and a  couple of books won out over the pile of laundry and gardening chores.

I spent most of the day reading and sleeping and watching the chickadees that flew in and out of the pine branches, often landing on the hammock and looking at me, trying to decide, it appeared,  if I really was a human or not.

I don't take a lot of days off and just decide to do nothing. Most days when I do nothing it because I'm not feeling well, and I always feel guilty about it. Today, I just decided to do nothing and not feel guilty about it. The nature of a woman is to nurture and care of others and in doing so we often forget to nurture ourselves. Nurses are especially notorious for this and it is one of the reasons there is a high burn out rate in nursing. We are always caring and doing and don't take a lot of time just for ourselves to just be.

I read two books today. That is something I don't often do these days, take the time to read a book from cover to cover, without interruption. The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker is the gentle story of healing and restoration that came to the author through watching and learning from her small backyard flock of hens. As a chicken lover myself a lot of her story resonated with me.

When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull up a Chair by Geneen Roth is a gentle and humorous book that encourages women of all shapes and sizes and brokenness to discover their true beauty and nurture themselves. A good reminder for this often busy and stressed out nurse.

All in all it was a good day. I didn't accomplish anything tangible, but did something much better--fully lived--mostly outside, on a perfect October day.

I ended the day with another walk--this time to watch the almost full moon rise over Michigan farm country.

And I will end with a quote that rings so true with me:

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. - Saint Augustine (354-430)

Linking to Straight out of the Camera (unedited photos) and Imperfect Prose.