I think I'm glad I had a day off, so to speak, on Thursday. Not pushing too hard to make something out of nothing gave me a chance to reset, so that when I had days like today, I was fresh and ready to notice all of the really cool things that I was a part of. I had crazy amounts of energy today, both physical and creative. I accomplished so much in a very short time, and rather than feeling tired or stressed, when I took time out to have late lunch with one of my fellow board members, I really felt like myself. I was able to be the person I want to be, funny and positive and more interested in listening than in complaining. I didn't get to be that person for several months, and I think finding her again is helping mend a lot of broken relationships. What a relief!
The one downside to rediscovering all this positive, creative energy is that I sometimes end up in garden centers with no one to tell me no when I start having grand ideas. I put a new twist on our traditional red, white, and blue arrangement (but that's for another post). I was in ecstasy over the smell of a gallon pot of lavender, and now I have to find a place for it. (Right next to the reblooming lilac I bought last week and haven't yet placed, at the rate I'm going.) And I found a set of little white silk lantern lights, that are solar powered LED. I saw craft project written all over that, and sure enough, once I settled down on the deck with an enormous mudslide and a little music playing, I discovered that they take colored permanent marker very well. I spent the evening coloring like a happy kindergartener, until I started hearing noises in the park that didn't sound right.
I had lit all the tiki torches, both to drive away bugs and to bring back the feeling of fairy magic that my Park has when it is lit by all the smoky flames. The stillness was only broken occasionally by the sounds of the cats chasing each other, and the sound of my professional eater dog's tail, flagellating everything in its reach, while she made a spectacle of herself, begging for attention. I was enjoying being crafty, and being less precise than I might have been sober. In the dark, I heard what sounded like a cat climbing a tree in the thicket by the tool shed. That was the sign that trust was broken, and everyone had to go inside, or so I reasoned. My white cat had already turned in, and the old man walked inside right about then. I went out to the shed with a flashlight, to see who was naughty. Both of my minions of chaos, the rabble-rouser boy and his deceptively sweet sister, were sitting on the ground by the shed, looking into the trees. With effort, I collected both of them and closed the back door. I hadn't seen the calico since the old man bit her on the butt and chased her under a table inside. I decided to stay outside a little longer to verify. I heard a noise, and shone my flashlight at the thicket by the shed. Two little green eyes flashed back at me, and then vanished. I know the calico is the one who needs a stepstool to get to the food bowls on the counter, but maybe today was the day she learned to climb. I got up close and called her, and got no answer. I circled the block rather than crawl through the thicket out the back gate, and I hunted some more from outside the fence. Nothing. It was as I was walking back around to my house in the dark that I occurred to me that I live across the road from a very large, very swampy woods, and maybe I didn't really want to come face to face with whoever had been peeking over my fence. But still I stayed outside, wanting to finish writing. More noises. Noises made by things with claws. Maybe I'm not ready to be that much of a badass. Lucky for me, the calico eventually came out of hiding so I didn't have to stay outside, pretending I wasn't a little worried about the noises that sounded like they were getting a lot closer in the dark.
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