Processing

What I love about living on the Eastern Shore are the same things that are difficult about living here.  I love the calm of my soul that comes from living on the Bay, in almost isolation.  We have neighbors, but we are at least a fifteen minute drive from the nearest store.  I love living without internet. I can squeeze a signal out of my phone every now and then, but when my Facebook app feed can’t refresh, I’m a bit relieved.  I love time.  It seems like our time has multiplied since moving out here.  Time for gardening and chores around the house, and then time to spare.

But…don’t let me paint the rosiest of pictures.  It gets boring in the middle of so much peace.  A good portion of our neighbors are retirees.  Do you grow into needing more peace and quiet?  Maybe its a generational thing.  We are not retirees, but I feel we are living like them.  I was watching tv the other the night, and I accidentally switched the channel to a Coldplay concert at Austin City Limits.  Hundreds of twentysomethings were shouting and fist-pumping, cheering on Coldplay.  I want that.  I already did that though.  That’s what almost three years in San Francisco was.  And, honestly, it felt like chasing.  Chasing what I’m not sure, but more of something.  More fun, more excitement, more life.  I think that some people have learned to live well in a city without the chasing.  But, I don’t think I ever learned how to do that. There’s just so much, you can never get enough.  So, I guess I don’t want to go back to that kind of living, but I do miss it more than I realize.  Maybe I just miss Chris Martin.  I.  Love.  Coldplay.  Remember “I feel God with water?”  Ditto for Coldplay.

I miss people my age, too.  I went to a thirtyone party over the weekend.  Mostly middle-aged women attended.  I got a super awesome lunch-tote by the way.  When Wimbo, Caroline, and I moved to San Francisco, we said that we wanted to love people that were different than us.  I’m sure that we did, but most of our friends were people our exact same age and background.  Here, on the Eastern Shore, loving and being friends with different kinds of people may be less of an option.  It may be mandatory if we want to have any sort of community here.

Maybe the things that are that are difficult about living here have less to do with the place and more to do with the amount of time that we have been here.

So, today, my mother of 8 friend and I are going to head over to the master gardener’s home for a learning lab.  I’m not sure if she is a master gardener, and I’m not sure if she knows how much we need to learn from her, but I’m looking forward to it just the same.  Mildred.  Confession: I think I might end up being a diet gardener, because I don’t like weeding (thanks mom & dad for making me weed for punishment when I was growing up (just kidding, there are worse punishments)), I’m not going to like being outside when its over say, 90 degrees, even that might be pushing it, and I don’t really like getting dirty.  That’s embarrassing.  I think I can learn to handle getting dirty, but I’m just not used to it.  When, as an adult, does anybody actually get dirty?

This was the most that I’ve processed in a while.  What’s good about living here?  What’s hard?  Why are the hard things hard?