Dear Reader:

Clearly, the universe heeded my call and decided to send me two beautiful, sunny days with low humidity and cool breezes at the end of June to lift me out of my doldrums.    Spectacular.    Perfect.    Here was the scene outside my kitchen window earlier this evening:

Try to ignore the fact that those windows need to be cleaned, dear reader.   Focus on the green and the sun.   I love looking out this window several times every day and seeing the same scene with tiny changes as the seasons progress.   If I ever move, I hope the view out my kitchen window is equally gratifying.
And now, it appears as though there is a summer storm brewing up outside.   Again, perfect.   Sunny days and summer rains in the evening.  

I went to restorative yoga this evening and, as a result, feel at ease in my body.   My mind is calmed, for the moment.   The mute button on my mental chatter has been pushed.   I just had my evening kale smoothie.    The kids and I went through a bunch of books and toys in the living room and made a considerable give away pile and a large garbage bag of throw away stuff this afternoon.

I am a zealot on the purging front this week.   I have decided that all of the kid games/books/detritrus needs to move to the second floor of this house.  That's their domain.    I plan to purchase some desks for their rooms, paint them the colors of their choices, and start the grand, dramatic splitting up of toys and books.    We are getting rid of the loft bed.    We are putting some curtains up in my boy's room-to-be.    I am handing down all of the outgrown clothes.   A couple of large chairs that are never used are going to Goodwill.

The upstairs is kid zone.   The downstairs is family zone at specified times and mama zone - WHENEVER SHE WANTS IT TO BE.    In the words of the Supreme Court recently - IT IS SO ORDERED.  

I feel like using that phrase, by the way, in many daily situations.   IT IS SO ORDERED.   What can anybody say after that?   Nothing, I tell you.   It is the perfect way to end any situation which is causing you stress or anxiety or anger.   Just state what you want to happen or how you want someone to behave and then add - IT IS SO ORDERED - and walk away abruptly and confidently.   Seriously, this is a fantastic tool, dear reader.   Let's do this.   IT IS SO ORDERED.    Damn, I feel good just writing it down.

Ha.   If only it were that easy.  I would say it to myself daily upon some action that I want myself to take on one or another of my neurotic, obsessive worries.    I could really kick my butt into gear, dear reader.    Remember how I decided to personify my anxieties and worries as Billy Eichner?   What if my sensible/rational thought processes were Ruth Bader Ginsburg?    Is this too weird or extremely awesome?   I'm going with awesome.    :)      It might be a little disturbing how much fun the thought of this is for me.   It's actually totally making my day.   Well, along with the perfect weather and the incredible audition by an incoming piano student and a very easy day with the kids and a conflict-free bedtime and the restorative yoga.    I feel my sense of possibility coming back after last week's dip.   I feel almost like I do at the beginning of spring.   Which brings me to another amazingly uplifting and calming and full-of-good-feelings thing that I have recently discovered.   I love James Taylor.   I make no bones about it.   Whenever I need to feel like life is going to be OK, I put on "Something in the Way She Moves" or "Shower the People You Love with Love" or "Carolina on My Mind."   I know that this makes me, quite possibly, the most unhip person by current standards, but there it is.   Well, his new album (first one with original songs in 13 years!!!) makes my heart glad.   I love his love song to his current wife - "You and I Again"-  BEAUTIFUL.    And, then there's this which, even with it's odd transitional section into a new meter between the two parts of the song, is every kind of wonderful.   Plus Yo-Yo Ma.   And, Sting (whose voice I have always loved - yep - I am old).

Here you go, dear reader:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6bZtAYBgZk

"Who can suppose he knows the way this goes?"   RIGHT?   Everyone one is so convinced they know how the world works and who created it and where it's all going.   Such hubris.   It's a grand, beautiful mystery that we can only touch a portion of here and again.   A beautiful mystery.   At least that's what I think.   Me and, apparently, James Taylor.   Rock on.

"Let go the weight of all that holds you here."   Sniff.  Yeah.

"Thin, thin -  the moment is thin.  Ever so narrow the now."   Poetry.

"Everybody say 'Got to live in today'/ Don't nobody know how."   RIGHT?

Anyway, go get the album.   It is full of goodness, I'm telling you.   IT IS SO ORDERED.

Thanks for reading.  :)