Thoughts from the south side of the hay stack

  They say people with ADHD are good at multi-tasking. I think that's true if you have the ability to organize your thoughts as they race through your head. In my case my thoughts just race around In my head like a rat all caffeinated up. This last week they have been especially bad. Kinda like a cross between the wild mouse and bumper cars. After losing one of my equine family members and my mom having her third surgery in a year. This one today being a knee replacement. I haven't been able to get them to organize at all. I hope that if I let some of them out in writing the other ones will calm down.  I have studied ways to calm down and relieve stress and one thing they always say is to go to your happy place. Well I realized that what I thought was my happy place wasn't really helping. I would imagine myself on a sunny beach(that's where I thought I'd be happy) pretty soon my feet were getting burned by the hot sand because I can't stand sand in my flip flops so I would have to go barefoot.  So I would head out into the water. Ahhh nice, wait I think I see a fin, is that a fin. I think it is. There is definetly a shark and it's going to eat me. Back onto the beach I go but now my feet are wet and the sand is sticking to them and it's getting on my beach blanket..... I hate this happy place!!! See my problem?? Now not only do I have thoughts racing through my head, but I am dehydrated, sunburned, and all sandy. 

      So this last week I have been thinking about my happy place. Where am I at peace the most. This led me to think about who I really am and that started the confusion again. I am a child of the hair band days. I still love to listen to some Poison, Ratt, and White Snake, but at the same time George Strait can melt me. I can put on my boots and chase a cow, help save a calf in the pouring rain and get covered in mud and poop. But I can get dressed up and cleaned up and act like a lady(kinda) I have chased cows in $250.00 blinged out flip flops, because they needed chasin right then. I have a wild streak that does crazy things sometimes and yet I am an old soul who is content to sit on the couch and crochet a pair of boots or a hat for one of my grand babies. I am deeply religious. I believe that God has a plan for all of us and that we will only get the best rewards in a Heaven if we work for them. I believe I will see my loved ones who have passed on someday. I believe that everything I do on this earth affects my future in Heaven. I am a person who feels deeply. I love with all my heart, but I also feel pain deeply when someone hurts me. All these things make me who I am. 

     So then where is my happy place?? In all my 50 years I don't believe I have ever figured it out, not until the other day. I was helping Pete feed the animals and it was clear and sunny. As I rode on the trailer loaded with hay I could feel the warm sun on my face and it felt so good. We fed the hay to the cows and as I watched them eating and content it started to dawn on me. I remembered back when I was a kid and I would see the old farmers sitting on hay bales on the south side of their hay stack in the winter. Just sitting there. Doing nothing. I often wondered what the heck was wrong with them sitting there, outside, in the winter, when they could be in the house. I realize they were probably just soaking up that feeling of warmth on a sunny winter day, that can only be felt on the south side of a haystack. Then I realized that my happy place isn't so much an exact place as a feeling. In the time right after we feed the animals and I know they are all eating and getting full. That they are all happy and healthy. In those minutes sitting in the sun on the south side of the haystack all seems right in my world. When I have the arms of one of my precious grand kids wrapped around my neck that is my happy place. When I am laughing with my family about good memories that is my happy place. 

   I think from now on when it's a sunny day I will take the opportunity to sit on a hay bale on the south side of the haystack and let my thoughts organize themselves while I just soak in the sun. It is my hope that each one of my family and friends can find their happy place. But if you are having a hard time finding yours come over on a sunny day, there is plenty of room on my hay bale for two and maybe we soak up some sun together. Maybe even solve a world problem or two:)