Still here! Just doing what I tell all of you not to do.

I've been so unbalanced with this buying a farmhouse thing. The whole place is decorated inside my head and our yearly project list is detailed till the year 2018. heh.

Can you believe how quickly time races by? How odd that age 17 still feels as close as last week inside my mind and I can hear, feel and see all the details of my hundreds of walks to school. 

What a dream world I strolled around in. With my textbooks in the crook of my arm I'd hum favorite show tunes from musicals like Carousel, Cinderella (remember the Leslie Ann Warren one?) and The Sound of Music. I was headed down sidewalks to school, but I may as well been dancing on a green hillside, for all the dreams coating my brain.

And now on my birthday next year I will turn half a century. Fifty! Good grief.

Yet during these empty nest years? I've felt like a teenager again, only in a better, wiser, more confident way. Gone is the extreme insecurity (what will everyone else think?), the angst, and the moodiness (well, sometimes the premenopausal stuff surges, but usually not for long, especially if I eat right). I awake with a song in my head each morning, though I don't find myself humming during my walks. Well, not yet, but who knows?

And now June may find me feeling more like a teenager than ever. Why? Because ever since I was 14 (or so) I've wanted to live inside an 1800's farmhouse on a few acres. And already I'm anticipating the freedom I will know out there. Finally, in the mornings I can step outside in my robe if I wish without neighbors only feet away peering at me from their windows (or without me imagining they are).

A whole new sense of grace awaits me out there. A new life, even now at this half century mark. Wow.

******

"There is no growth without change." ... copied