July 10, 2025 ~ Thursday morning (midnight/another hot one!)
There is a moth flitting around my fingers as I type … I’m in the dark/at my dining room table and the only light in the room is emanating from my lit computer screen. Hence, the moth. Oh, and here’s another one! Lovely, tickling, little companions in the middle of the night. I should be sleeping but I’m restless … hot … at odds with myself.
A little over a month ago I was eating fish and chips in Windsor, enjoying sticky toffee pudding (for breakfast!) in the Cotswolds, and counting sheep everywhere we went throughtout our wanderings in England. It was lovely. And, since being back home, I am finding myself a little … lost.
I am wistful … that feeling of regretful longing … for not only that countryside but for the slower pace, the time with my kids, and the realization that life is getting shorter. Will I have time for all I would like to do?
Today my first Autumn magazine arrived in my mailbox … yep, right on schedule as the 4th of July fireworks are still echoing in my head. I don’t know how we are sliding into the middle of July … seriously! … it’s definitely summer but I can’t seem to get my head around that I planted my gardens three months ago (already) and that three months from now I’ll be carving a pumpkin for my front porch steps. I even saw Pumpkin Spice items in my grocery store today! It seems impossible but I can feel it, Autumn is just a breath away.
I’m not sure I’m ready … but oddly, the thought of sweaters and pumpkins sounds a bit comforting and cozy. Something that summer is definitely NOT … and all that, too, makes me wistful. Where does the time go?
I’m almost finished with the book (Surviving Grief: Do as I Say ~ NOT as I Did) … a few more read-throughs, edits, tweaks … and it’ll be ready for publication. Yay. The content has been done for a couple of months now but I didn’t format correctly (techie, I am not!) and I just have to do a few things and it’ll be off my plate. It’s only taken me 11 years! And in thinking that – probably longer as Tim’s anniversary date is the end of this month … counting off 19 YEARS since he left this earth. How that is even possible, I don’t know and yet realizing that, too, makes me wistful. Time is short – more so for some.
My friend is in Wales this week … she sent me a photo of the view outside her bedroom window … green fields (I imagine there are cows and sheep there somewhere), hills dotted wtih trees (or were those the cows and sheep?), puffy white clouds danced in the sky … it was beyond bucolic, beyond anything I’d ever see here, beyond Heavenly. I am pretty sure I sighed out loud when I saw her post.
Wistfulness … (according to google) is “a gentle sadness or melancholy associated with thinking about something desired but not presently possessed, or something that was once enjoyed but is now gone.” Yep, that is exactly how I am feeling.
I’m needing a dose of countryside, cows, sheep, and some sticky toffee pudding wouldn’t hurt either!
I don’t want to hurry this season along … don’t want to hurry life along … but I have plans for Autumn (going … somewhere) … and maybe I’ll just find that hometown this heart yearns for … for all these years. I know it’s out there. I know there are hills and green meadows, cows and sheep, a slower pace. I don’t have to go over the pond to find it – and I’m hoping I finally will. I’ll just have to add in my own sticky pudding.
Wistfulness or longing … this lobster needs some sleep to face another surface of the sun temp day here in this not so bucolic, roasting wonderland. Stay cool!