Irons in the Fire

I made the mistake of opening my email in front of my father the other day. Now, at least 50 years have gone by since he last told me to straighten my room, but he picked up right where he left off.

"You have too many posts in your inbox," he snapped.

Dregs of defiance from 50 years ago bubbled up into my throat. "Well," I observed, "I don't have to answer to YOU about the state of my email."  Then, as the adolescent stomped back to her place in my gut and slammed the door, I found a more conciliatory tone. "You see, Dad, the posts in my inbox all require some kind of action. People I have to call, purchases I am waiting to receive, links I want to read, things I have to put on my calendar. And when I finally get to it, THEN I file or delete the post."

"Well," he said, "you sure have a lot of irons in the fire."

And that's the start of my explanation for where I've been for the past three months. I started to list my irons here, but honestly, they're no heavier or lighter than your own. What is true for me is that I let them distract me, pull me off course.

What course? Being present in this very moment, with my two feet on the ground or the two halves of my tush in a chair. So I'm back to meditating and I can already feel the results. The irons are still there, but they are clearly in the fire, not inside my brain. Which makes a lot more room for me.

And that me has really missed interacting with you all. So how about we pick up where we left off?

When I look to the last post, I see that we left off with Molly, who is still snoring in the key of E minor. I am happy to report that Billy apparently did not read the memo from October 2015 that gave him three weeks left to live. He has lost lots of weight and in the absence of fat, he sported a handsome apres-ski sweater for most of the winter.

Apparently, this abdominal tumor has a rather large appetite and so in order to maintain Billy's weight, we need to feed them both.  Every day, he eats two meals that he could probably share with a pregnant elephant and that involve lots of dog food cans, brown rice, and many trips to the feed store. No wonder he doesn't die, he already thinks he is in heaven.

Talk to you more tomorrow.