Survival Mode

If it has been quiet here on the blog over the past two months, it is due to the reality of living in survival mode around here. For someone who does not glide through transitions and big events gracefully, it has been a rough road. Dishes have overflowed the sink -for days- and laundry the baskets, chairs and dryer. The table has been glimpsed only rarely and I am convinced this chaos has created the exact conditions needed by Drew and Garrett's toys to multiply unchecked. That is the only explanation for the amount of floor space covered by them.

I find that I just, literally, can't think straight when in the midst of such chaos, and all but the most basic functions cease, while ice cream consumption and amount of time spent curled up on the couch increase. Curled up hoarding comfort where it can be found.

We are coming out the other side now, hoping for a bit of a pause, a bit of breathing room before we move into the holiday season. And it is good. Yet at the same time as we are collecting ourselves, and beginning to put things back in order and prepare for the winter, we are still living in the unknown. Work continues to be a struggle and this schedule and way of living unsustainable. And so we are living in the reality of knowing a change is necessary but not knowing quite what that change will look like or when. Living in survival mode, in the meantime.

This month we are taking an exciting, testing-the-waters step toward learning more about one possibility, something that is a dearly held dream in our home. We were able to enroll in a workshop given through the Countryside Conservancy (a great organization!) to explore what it would take to start a small farm enterprise on our little homestead. It is a beginning, a hope, and maybe even a viable path to tread. And if nothing else, once we complete the workshop, by request from Drew, we all get farmer hats. That's got to count for something...