Day Off

It's Monday and this morning was the first time this season that I have woken up chilly. Summer never lasts long enough for me, I could have it all year round if it weren't for my tremendous love of the changing seasons. Fall is pretty good too, especially here in Western Mass. No one knows their way around a fall festival like the good people of the Pioneer Valley. So this year I am kind of excited to dig out my socks, carve pumpkins, and smell the falling leaves. Plus it's baking season, a dangerously delicious time for me, and I feel a good stretch of pumpkin flavored treats and fresh bread coming on. My kids will not be disappointed.

Today is one of those blissful days where I have no concrete plans or obligations. I went for a run (the fastest I've run in a long time, I'm thinking the happiness from the previous post is giving me more energy, nothing wrong with that), and made the lasagna that Sofie has been bugging me to make for the past week. It's funny how easy it is to get so busy with life that you forget to take a morning off to just putter around the house and chill out. It almost feels like I'm doing something wrong, but I know it's just what I need, and in fact my kids will actually get a decent dinner tonight as a result of me not being busy today. Days off are the best.

Happiness

Happiness.

That's where I'm at today. Pure, unadulterated happiness has found me after six months of digging out from the underground cave that was my life. 

I spent the weekend camping with two of my best friends and two of my children's best friends. Long days on the beach, giggling around the campfire, waking up outside, grappling with the neighborhood skunk, all of it was glorious. A perfect way to salute the quickly waning summer.

Ending my marriage and breaking up our family unit was the most emotionally challenging, and overwhelmingly liberating thing I've ever done. Now it's done and the dust has settled, and I am delighted to announce that the emotion that has been left behind is joy. Joy at life and all of its various beautiful possibilities. Joy at the calmness of our house and the calmness that I feel blossoming inside my children. Joy at my own ability to live my life as I want to live it, and total freedom to be who I really am with everyone that surrounds me. What a fantastic place to be, I wouldn't change a thing.