Quiet Time

Inspirational song: My Melancholy Baby (Gene Austin)

Now that I have found peace in the silence, I no longer want to have the television playing all the time, just for noise. This is a huge sea change for me. There have been remarkably few periods in my life where I didn't need some kind of background noise, some kind of electronic chatter, all of the time. It is so unusual, I don't know how to interpret it when I let the silence stretch for so long. It doesn't feel like depression. Quite the opposite, actually. In the quiet times, I let myself be still as well. Still, but not inactive. I don't quite know how to explain that. I felt more still and peaceful cutting the grass this morning than I ever have sitting on the couch watching tv, playing computer games, and texting all at once. My stress levels have dropped so far in the last few days, and now I don't feel like every action is frantic, that I should be going in fourteen other directions at the same time. I wonder whether the hirsute ones who live here feel my change in attitude. My daughter said her cats and dog are like completely different animals now that the toxic roommate is gone. I think I was my own toxic roommate, and I sure hope she has moved out for good.

I was told today the new rule is I can't buy any more plants until I get all the ones I've already purchased into the ground. At the rate I'm going, I may be done buying for the year. I finally potted the coleus I bought a week or so ago, plus a couple others. I have been on the lookout for a specific variety of coleus since we moved here, a "Big Red Judy." I think I finally got the right one, although big box store garden centers are terrible about labeling things like that. I really should be giving my business to the smaller nurseries, like the one where we got the weeping willow and bald cypress in April. When we lived in New Mexico, I had a summer job at a little mom and pop garden center that had the absolute best plants in town, with all the cool varieties clearly named. I need to apply the lessons I'm learning about quality over quantity in food to the things I put in my yard as well. No more feeding the addiction to the clearance rack in Lowes garden center. Of course, if I don't plant the ones I already have, that point is moot.

I get annoyed when people describe cats as aloof. It shows an utter lack of understanding of the species. It's like deciding a pretty girl is stuck up simply because she didn't accept an insensitive come-on. But for all my crazy cat lady mojo, the youngest seems immune. All the others treat me like a jungle gym, while she holds herself apart. Once I started letting her hunt in our little nature preserve, she started acting much less sullen. But lately it has been too warm to leave the back door open, so the kids can go in and out at will. I need to figure out some other way to entertain my melancholy baby. I am open to suggestions.