A good day

Today is what I would consider a good day. upon waking I took my dog for a nice long walk. (Here I must add that said dog pooped four, count em, FOUR times). We walked down to the new tea place and I picked up some detox tea, which I am always in the market for new blends of.

Came home, made some breakfast, did some work for school and then promptly set to tearing the house apart.

It feels sooooo good to clean the shit out of the house. Rearranging everything and moving things so it's less clutter-y. Mmm. Mm. And I did a million loads of laundry.

Everything that hasn't gotten done in so long around here. Though you know.... There are four of us in this house.... Hint hint wink wink little cleaning gnomes of the world.

Today I turned the corner. I am committed. I am going to change my life the ways I have always been saying I would. Taking a permanent break from sugar and a temporary, cleansing break from alcohol. Now. This may seem silly. Geez dory! You already don't eat gluten and therefore most things don't have gluten in them! However. I have a serious sugar addiction. I have been known to keep chocolate in the freezer and grab a small handful every time I go in the kitchen.

That's not good. Well, not so bad when you work six days a week and really don't spend much time at home, but now that I am home so much more, I go in the kitchen a thousand times a day. No bueno.

So that is going to be a seriously hard task to undertake. The alcohol will be much easier, and it goes along the same vein, cause how much sugar is in alcohol or alcoholic drinks, so yes.

cheers to a new day, a new direction and the impending doom of a cold cold winter. (I am clinking your glass, mine is filled with pineapple juice mixed with a couple tablespoons of apple cider vinegar of course!)

Today I have done some very satisfying things. Today I have done things that made me feel certain ways, lusting after something. Lusting after a life. A lot of which was me lusting after what I have and what I was doing, the actual realization that Today is a beautiful day. It is cold and windy and sunny and all my perennials are inside, my kittens are sleeping snuggled throughout the rooms, the sun streaming in. the most beautiful voices and instruments covering everything with an air of calm and satisfaction and dreams. Today a long while was spent looking though photos, photos of everything. Of life, of the little things, of all that comes together to make a whole. What is a whole you ask? I am not entirely sure. I am not entirely sure it exists. Or maybe everything is whole and we just perceive it not to be.

And now as i sit here at my computer, which is sitting on my mothers desk in a living room with plants by the window, a dog and cat snuggled on the couch together and a mug of homemade chai tea, I realize that this is just perfect. My lust and day dreams are of this picture. This house, these animals, this life, but in ten years. I am seeing my future. The plants hanging, drying from the rafters with a fire in the wood stove. The windows frosted that look out of the fields with our horses lazily grazing in them. Our kitchen filled with eggs and plants and herbs grown from our love and our fingertips.The noises have changed though. In my daydreams of the future there are chickens chuckling, wind blowing through the trees, the crackle of the fire, the birds singing their winter songs. The sounds of an old house breathing.

A I type this there is a swelling in my throat. You know the feeling. The feeling when you think of the someone you love coming up behind you and wrapping their arms around you. When you can feel them, smell them, hear them, but you cant see them unless you close your eyes.

You first feel the swelling in your chest, an overwhelming sensation. like heat swelling and rising up from your depths and it rises up into your throat and fills it, and it feels as if this would be the most lovely way to choke and die.

For me, thinking about my future, about the smells, the noises, the crickets at night, the birds chirping with the first warming of the night sky before dawn, the whistling of the pine trees in the winter, the cracking of leaves as they dry and crunch under feet and hooves. The sticky sweet and smokey smell of the air that is cool and so full of oxygen. The clearness of the mind and the views that seem uninterrupted. The unknown and yet comforting knowledge that there are animals keeping watch over the night, the fox's shrill screech and the owls deep throaty calls reminding us that we are indeed not alone.  

Today I will let this overwhelming feeling fill me and warm me and help to fill these bottles and jars and let the sweetness of this life and how lucky am filter through the funnel and in turn warm your belly when you drink these love(d) cordials.

This is not a "New Chapter"

Long long ago, in a land not too far away, there was a little girl named Dory. She lived with her parents in a big old stone house with white washed walls and a white picket fence around the garden. She spent the first six years of her life living in this house, swinging on the swing and lounging in the garden while her mom worked, not realizing the affect this place would have on the rest of her life.

My dad is a photographer. Capturing every photogenic moment of your own children's lives is quite a task to undertake and he has risen to the occasion every day of our lives thus far. This has given me a fairly picturesque view of my childhood. It seems to me that I spent A LOT of time in the gardens with my mom and A LOT of time watching and helping my dad capture photos of nearly everything. These documented moments show a little family (my sister is six and a half years younger than I and wasn't born until we moved out of the state park) spending a majority of time taking pictures of growing our medicines and our food, teaching others about the magic of plants, and spending time traveling together all while learning new things about places and plants and people. (My dad has always been a connections guy, meeting and befriending people hither and yon, taking their photos and then maintaining those relationships for the future.)

My father was always behind his camera. In fact he still is always behind his camera. And it is not a stretch to see why I now spend my adult years growing, harvesting, cooking, feeding others, and photographing every single step along the way.

It has been a surprising journey for me. And I still have a hard time figuring out why it is so surprising to me that I have finally found my stride. Nutrition and herbalism will make fine bedfellows and will no doubt lend themselves to beautifully documented adventures and explorations through health and the creation of my career.

A leap has been taken! I honestly have a hard time verbalizing how thrilled I am to be at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition moving towards my Health Coach Certification. I have always felt like I was happy and having fun doing whatever it was I was doing, but THIS, this path is taking me to a new place, a place where all of my different lives, my two minds can be at work together instead of creating a divisiveness in my life, having to be hidden from one another. I feel empowered and driven and validated and excited. So so so excited.

After twenty something years in the making, I can take my plants, my foods, and my photographs and weave them all together to make myself a beautiful and fulfilling career.

It is not a "New Chapter" it is not even the next chapter. I think it is more that everything is shifting. What was important the last three years is now in the background, taking a supportive and restorative role and what had been pushed to the side as my dirty little secrets are now able to shine and I can explore and play and create and really let through who i am and what I want to do and where I want to go and how i can make a difference in this world. (hey mom, remember when I lamented and cried and was so torn because politics and horses and whatever else i was trying to do was not satisfying my desire to make a change in the world?)

And here is where I say something silly like.... I am going to keep my blog again, I swear. I know its been a year since my last entry, but blah blah blah. However i am not going to say that at all. I am just going to see what happens.

xoxo