Why would anyone want to slow down?

Every Friday night my mother says to me, "Now honey, can't you just slow down and rest for one day this weekend?" This coming from my 80+ year old mother who for the past six years has spent eight hours a day and sometimes more, seven days a week, at the nursing home caring for my dad. When my dad naps she goes to the grocery store, the laundromat, or runs home to vacuum the house.

But, to answer her question, no I can't. If my mind is resting my body is going and if my body is resting my mind is going.

I pretty much fit the mold for a Type A personality. So, I have a pretty hard time thinking about slowing down in my life. While some of my same age friends are counting the days until they can get out of the rat race, I live in fear that I won't accomplish all I want to in life or if I shut my eyes for longer than four hours a night I might miss something really important.

Of course, I know I am not the one who controls how much longer I have on this earth, but I am kind of living each day on fast forward, hoping to get it all in. If I thought I didn't make a difference in someone's life each day, I would consider my day wasted.

Most of the time I only function in two modes, constant motion and crash. This doesn't mean that I don't get tired or complain when I am running on tilt, but I am loving every minute of it. My family and friends know to just shut my whining out, because I'll get over it.

There are a few Type A traits that I don't have, for sure, like above average mental and physical alertness, and I don't think I am ever hostile but I have a terrible quick temper. I like to throw things when I get mad.

At any rate, I have a hard time understanding why other people want to slow down, I want to keep on keeping on. I write about this now, because in a few weeks I will be 63 years old, and already people ask me how much longer I'm going to work. Right now, the answer is, for as long as I can . . . and then I'll think of something else to do.

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Sunday morning

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. Life has been a little hectic. Fall classes started at the university where I work and our enrollment is up over 100 students from where we were this time last fall, so we all have felt a few growing pains the past two weeks, but good pains at that.

The days are getting shorter. Last week when I left early for the office I found it was still dark outside. The plus to that is driving into the city as the sun comes up. I always feel so inspired when I see the horizon with all it's indescribable colors. In the fall, by the time I reach our campus, I have usually spotted a couple of hotair balloons floating against those colors and it's a picture that a camera could never truly catch and one that only a city girl can truly appreciate.

I am the proud owner of a new laptop since I last posted. This morning I am sitting on my deck watching the rabbits run through the grass, the squirrels run across the phone wires, and the cows grazing in a nearby pasture. Aside from a slight breeze, you could hear a pin drop, it is so quiet.

We live on a dead end road on the very edge of our small town (population around 1200) on a hill that we share with only three other families, one of those being my parents. We have about three acres with a lot of beautiful old trees, a creek that you have to cross to get to our house, and everything from the above mentioned animals to wild turkeys that visit us in our front yard from time to time. As much as I love the city, and as run down as I feel our house is getting, I wouldn't trade our place for any choice property anywhere else. We have lived on this hill for almost 34 years.

From this vantage point I watched my youngest son ride down the road on his first tricycle, then first bicycle, and finally back out of the drive-way in his car the day he left for college. It is from this same spot that I now watch my son's children play when they visit. That gives me such a warm feeling, probably a feeling that only a mother and grandmother can appreciate.

Nothing much has changed on this hill in all these years except for the change of neighbors and the trees are taller . . . well, and I might be a few years older. It's still a special place to be, and I am surely enjoying it this Sunday morning.

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