{snip}

little snippets from life that don't necessarily add up to a full post but are interesting nonetheless. things like eva is outside right now dancing with a stick of incense. showing the ants. and how earlier she and i had a conversation about just how busy ants are. how they always seem to be moving. how the only time they seem to be still is when they are eating. how, according to eva, that doesn't really count. if you are eating, you are busy. moving. how ants are infinitely busier than guinea pigs, for instance. how guinea pigs take it easy most of the day. eva corrected me here too and reminded me about how busy guinea pigs are when they are together, what with all of the rumblestrutting and all. how i didn't even know about the word rumblestrut until i had guinea pigs and how that alone has enriched my life beyond what i would have imagined. who doesn't like the word rumblestrut when they first hear it? or even second hear it?

and how samuel is sick and snuggling with albert and doesn't like the smell of incense at all and how i have to keep getting up to close the patio door so that the pungent yet relaxing smell of incense does not continue to waft inside the house causing him to make that gagging noise that triggers increased frustration in me. will it be the door or the gagging that eventually gets me to leave the room... but i digress. apparently there is a story in there somewhere, inside this little slice of life that is happening right now. or then, before i came back through to spell check and make sure it sounded as smooth on the second reading as it did on the first. and i think thoughts like, if this were the last time my child were ever sick or if this were the last time i were ever frustrated, would that change my experience of it, would i be able to step back enough to see that this *is* life. for all that it's worth.

i come back again and again to making sense of this life and i wonder if on my own death bed i will wonder things like, what on earth was i trying so hard to figure out and why did i not spend more time on things like the sad sad cry of a guinea pig about to have his nails trimmed. and the fact that strawberry shortcake is indeed improved upon by adding chocolate chips. and watching the juniper trees dance in the wind. and marveling at the irony that of all the trees that i can watch, the trees that i am allergic to entertain me the most. and so i do. i do notice these things. and revel in them. and write about them. and i also think about them. and figure. and examine. because that, after all, is who i am. sometimes.

and i think that mostly, on my death bed, i hope that i will notice that i am me. that i have been me. that i have allowed it. embraced it. recognized it. rejoiced in it, even. that i will reflect on how i have spent this life learning to honor myself. most of all. if i can get that far, it will have been a good life no matter how much strawberry shortcake or how many guinea pigs i will have loved in the process. getting there. working on that. entails both the examining and the noticing. at least for me. but for who else would it be for, if not for myself? whose life is this, anyway? i remind myself over and over again. if this were the last time that i could appreciate myself, how would that change my experience of it... and then i stop and do it. and i notice how it feels to appreciate myself. and this life.

and so it turns out that snippets of this life can indeed be good fodder for blog posting after all. as usual. the trick is in the noticing. the writing. the flowing. and in the letting it all be as much as it really is.