I can’t say enough about the fall festival held annually in my hometown.  I anticipated it every year as a kid and continue to do so.  The cool nights.  The slurry of conversation.  Faces of all sorts, eyes connecting with yours and some not.  The carnival and the multi-colored lights on the rides.  The carnival operators with their strange American dialects and accents.  The aroma of traditional foods in both senses of the word – old-timey recipes and usual southern American fare.  The craft booths with work from mountain artisans.  Gliding through them because you can’t move quickly through the crowd, listening to the Mountain Idol contest on the main stage.  It’s plain fun.  I am taking the girls this weekend coming.  We’ll ride rides, hear the music, and taste the air. 🙂

I can’t say enough about the two costumes hanging in the hallway waiting for the girls and Halloween.  I’m looking forward to it so much.  They are going to have a great time.  Next month is also  my birthday month, and I always am grateful to have been born in October.  It couldn’t have been more perfect to have come to life in that month, and I continue to come to life in this season every year.

I can’t say enough about what I have learned in this last week and my little 40 days commitment.  The rules are reforming, adapting, and falling away, but the goals remain the same.  Commitment is seeing something through to the end.  It doesn’t mean perfection, or bullying your way to the end result.  It means knowing where a road lets out and being confident enough to see that there are different paces with which to travel and seeing that their are different means through which you are guided to the end.

I can’t say enough about modification.  To realize that committing to too much is a bad thing when you know you can’t be successful, but understanding the commitments you have already made are wonderful and redefining the new ones to work with the old.  I know as a mother to two little ones I can’t expect myself to practice yoga every day, every week.  I have already committed to five days a week and that is a huge accomplishment – it really is – I will admit that to myself.  What I can do is a 40 day consecutive meditation.  I can do that anywhere I am.  In the place I am now, it might be exactly what I need.

I can’t say enough about what simple awareness can do.  To actually be able to catch myself becoming reactive to stressors.  To see triggers.  To anticipate the needs of my girls, and attempt to be prepared.  To have a plan for the “next time.”  It allows me not to have solutions now, but to still see that I have made a huge step.  I’m not walking through the day blindfolded feeling helplessly tied to chaos, and not understanding where it comes from.  I can actually see why!!  I’m getting better at it as the days go on too.  It’s not the kind of stopping awareness that I anticipated.  It is an awareness that says in the moment, this is what is happening and it can stop now, or this would be a great time to…