Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “rest.” Use it any way you like.
Rest. I get lots of rest now: too much rest if I’m not careful. And due to crappy weather, I haven’t been hiking either. Two thaws and quick freezing: sheer ice under a layer of fluffy snow.
I won’t complain about too much rest, though. That would be crazy because its not like there isn’t anything to do. There’s always something to do but I don’t want to organize. Yuck. Doing something I hate doesn’t make me feel better. It sure as hell doesn’t spark joy. I wish it did! I’d be doing it all the time!
I remember the days I longed for rest. It usually hits in your 40’s and 50’s that you need rest. You’ve stretched yourself too thin and its hard to get out of commitments you’ve made. My story is different in that I didn’t have kids and my job was our own business: I helped my beekeeper husband, made products from beeswax and did a Farmer’s market on Saturdays. I also belonged to an organization who ‘volunteered’ me to be in charge of flower gardens and public speaking. There went Sundays.
My mom had MS and lived four hours away. She liked me to cook for her and look after her flower garden. It was far away enough to need to sleep over for a night or two. There was an attic bedroom in their small farmhouse that was so creepy, I hardly slept. There was a old black and white TV but they didn’t hook it up to the big antenna. It had ‘rabbit ears’. I got one or two fuzzy Detroit stations, if I was lucky.
Now I was two days behind on my business and housework. Housework in that house was above and beyond: renovations never completed, plywood floor, composting toilet, greenhouse, gardens, landscaping, . . . yeah it was impressive but a lot of work. there was a honey house for extracting but most of the work was in the house; candle making in the laundry room. I made lip balm and hand cream in the kitchen so that had to be pristine to make my products then cleaned up to make dinner.
And caving! I almost forgot about caving: that was our ‘vacations’. More work. I would come home totally exhausted and have muddy cave gear and dirty cooking utensils to clean. Once I hit menopause I could no longer keep up. I told my husband to go alone, which he was happy to do, and I would clean my house. That was my goal in those days; to get one day of rest in a clean house.
SO. . . I would be crazy to complain about getting too much rest. After years of people making demands on me because “I didn’t have to work”, I earned rest. And the funny thing is; I still have to keep telling myself that!
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