Summer...

 

July has started out most beautifully upon the heels of a hot June.  My hennies are happy in their yard, which is overgrown with daisies that I refuse to mow.

Anza and company are pleased with the clippings of the volunteer ash trees that come up too close to the house foundation.

The flowers are blooming.  The birds are singing.  Breezes stir the aspen trees and afternoons stretch long and pleasant when we are not at work.

Olivia and I made some Felt Wee Folk, with instructions from Salley Mavor's book, and we also constructed a house for them, with no instructions. We used an old cardboard box and torn up egg cartons.  We have much furniture to make.

We have had some tea parties with fancy cups and tiny sandwiches.

We have both made watercolors.  Olivia's is the cottage.  Mine is my chickens.

The cats take comfortable afternoon naps.

And I have been reading Tasha Tudor's writings, both for grownups and children, and admiring her way of life and her philosophy and her watercolor artistry.

I have resumed my Smitten quilt.

And the Fluffy Cat has emerged from her self-imposed solitude to explore the craft room in her summer hairdo, purring all the while.

This is what my life should be always, not just on a rare few days off.  I refuse to concede that, as most Americans do, my life should consist of frantically rushing to work for most of every day, sometimes as much as 60 or more hours a week, rushing back home to prepare a terrible dinner for myself and Olivia which is usually pre-prepared junk if we are lucky or cereal if we are out of everything, falling into bed exhausted, and then getting up the next day to do it again and again.  Life should not be about being so stressed every day that you cannot enjoy your life at all and wish the misery would just end.  Life should not cause the loss of health and vision to the extent that you can see a future where you can no longer even experience those things that you enjoy the most in the world.  I opt out.  I will no longer kill myself with overwork and enslave myself to the wishes of everyone else in the world who happens to come along with a more assertive personality than I have.  I will not watch my child grow up in the blink of an eye with a single parent who can never even have the energy to do anything fun.  I will never go for years again with zero time to enjoy my life.  I will live in poverty before I ever do that again.  This is is my line in the sand.  I will enjoy my life and I will have time to do so.