By Friday afternoon I was mentally exhausted and running on not enough sleep. I closed my computer, drank some water, and took a walk down our gravel road and back. The chill in the earlier air out hunting in the shadows for the moment.  The sun speckled through the trees like a trout. I let the quiet sink in and bleed to my edges and push out the static. I came back to the porch, gathered my things to move out to the yard to work. Change of scenery, let the dogs find a new sunbeam, watch the wrens explore the hurricane-felled shed in the pasture. I sat out under the pecan trees next to a deep rut, drawn long across the green like a worry line, from the machine that took down one of their brethren.

After a stretch of time of moseying dogs and minimal work, but feeling a stillness that was needed, I quickly became un-still. The small scruffy one, Mavis, suddenly had hurricane fence between her and I, and nothing between her and the cows. And their shit. 

Sometimes we get distracted. Because the grass is greener. Or the shit is fresher. But eventually we’ll be splashed back to reality by the bathtub. Washed clean of the spontaneity that propelled us, quick as the calling of our name in the distance, under the fence in a celebratory army crawl.

But then there’s a fluffy towel held by hands that hold everything together, and a renewed energy from a feeling we’d forgotten. And we tear around the house, full of hope and dopamine, as if daring the dark to catch back up to us.