Today was one of those funny days, that you think might turn out awful, but then is quite lovely.  Sometime in the night, between the baby constantly waking up wailing (congested) and trying to help him sleep, I decided to take the day off.  I say this to myself sometimes, when I am feeling overwhelmed – Today, you will take the day off.  Which only means so much – I still have children to take care of and feed, farm animals to feed, etc . . . But I take off the pressure of doing anything beyond the most basic essentials.  I didn’t go out to get firewood for our woodstove, I just turned on the (evil) forced hot air.  I kept our meals very simple.

Most importantly, I didn’t spend all of my time obsessing internally about what else I could be doing right now, or all the things on my to-do list.  Which is, I must admit, what my internal monologue mostly sounds like: You have to, you need to, you still haven’t, don’t forget about . . .  It’s not a very pleasant way to spend the day, and usually, I don’t even realize that’s what I’m doing.  Perhaps you do this, too.

So today, I took the day off from my own obsessive, perfectionist, striving mind.  It was a nice little break.  The funniest thing about taking off the pressure is that often I actually end up “doing” a lot on those days.  I tried to fix the sink upstairs (unsucessful, but hey, I did try).  I started sewing a felt ball with Ella, and told her a story about a princess in a cold castle who went to the old wise woman to learn about wool.  I ended up giving us all a shower after the baby threw up over all of us – not planned, but a nice bonus.  We were going to go to the library this afternoon, and I spent a good 10 minutes wrestling our new (used) stroller, could not open it, and finally put it back in the garage and decided we would walk, but that we wouldn’t be able to bring home more than one or two books.  And then, because we took so long struggling with that darn stroller, we happened to see our neighbors getting off the school bus, and now Ella is playing in the snow with them.

Sometimes, I feel that I can see in glimpses how one things doesn’t work out so that another, more beautiful moment can be created.  Probably, this is happening all the time, but we are too small-minded to see it, or to notice.  Today, I noticed, and for that, I’m grateful.