Simple pleasures...

Apologies for another cat in the box photo. This was where Mollie spent a large part of today despite the sunshine. I was browsing through my snapshots of Harvey splashing about (he moves so fast they are mostly a black and white blur!) and thought that the cat in the box picture captures how I feel today in a funny kind of way...

I had a bit of an ear problem today (rubbed raw) and had to stay 'switched off' to let it heal. This can sometimes be a problem for those around me but rarely a problem for me. By the middle of the afternoon with M taking E to cricket training and J playing virtual football I realised just what a fabulous silent day I was having. So much more brain space! Without the external hubbub of every day life, which my brain usually has to work overtime to make sense of (kettles boiling sound the same to me as jumbo jets passing overhead) I could actually hear my own thoughts.

All this has probably occurred to me before in some shape or other but today it seemed revolutionary. Life was simple once more, and that is something I constantly strive for in a world of chaos and noise.

Simple pleasures today included;

Line drying the washing
Weeding my herb patch and finding that most of the herbs had survived our nasty winter
Disassembling last years bonfire to check for hedgehogs or mice (I did this last year and found a mouse nest)
Gathering all the wind fall twigs and branches so that they don't go under the lawn mower
Throwing tennis balls into the field for the dog
Dragging out the patio table and treating it with teak oil
Giving the Lloyd Loom chairs a good airing in the sun
Finding a raspberry plant that hadn't been planted and planting it in my herb patch
Having a cup of tea in the sun!
Sewing up a tear in some pyjama trousers
Choosing a left over ball of organic cotton and crocheting a face cloth (more on that later)
Not hearing a single sound all day (oh my goodness, I must be going deaf!)

So how does all that feel like a cat in a box? Well, for all the beds we have bought her; radiator ones, fluffy ones, wicker baskets, you name it... She chose a simple cardboard box. She came out of it to eat, she came out to have a stroll round the garden, she watched Harvey doing idiotic things, she even had five minutes on my lap, but her 'constant' today was her simple box. What a simple but content little life she leads.