One easy way to fine tune my bliss meter is this – Every night before I fall asleep, I mine my day for bliss nuggets. This leaves me a feeling of appreciation for the joys of the day and sharpens my bliss sensors for the following day.

The variety of gems which fall out of this exercise is fascinating:

• Pink panther oboe notes, signaling a call from Bob
• Laying flat on the floor with my arms over my head
• Tami’s happy, smiling “hello”
• My palms against the smooth bark of a beech tree
• Jenny wading barefoot across the icy waters of Robeson Creek
• A warm smile on a stranger’s face at the post office
• Bright red cardinals against the background of a gray day
• Haruka’s easy, musical laugh
• Running into family at the Marketplace
• One of Link’s soul-enriching hugs
• NPR sound byte: “In capitalism there are some winners and some losers. And it’s unfortunate, but that’s how our system works.”
• Walking around town, car less and carefree
• Sitting on Hailey, taking in the view from Round Top Mountain
• Playing Beck’s “Loser”
• Vegan Tettrazini and Rise of the Planet of the Apes

If you’ve ever seen me dance, you’ve seen these moves before. Laurel and Hardy, yup. That’s what I was bottle fed on. Invite me to your wedding and you’ll see.

To support my transformation I’ve started riding again. I’ve got my new friend Peg to thank for this. We had never met but her husband gave me her number and we set up a date over the phone. Before I knew it, Peg was helping me tack up her beautiful Mustang mare, Hailey and we began riding on a regular basis.

Riding is one of those things you don’t realize you need until you do it again. Akin to how good it feels when you stop banging your head against the wall. Sure, my life seemed healthy and balanced, but it was lacking some of the luster. It was only after I joined up with Peg that I knew I had been suffering low level disgruntlement for some time.

It isn’t just the riding. It’s the horses, the camaraderie, being out in the woods noticing new plants and animals, telling stories and jokes and sharing tick attacks. It’s about taking time for myself. That smell of dried horse poo on my shoes is proof positive that sometimes I come first.

A couple of rides ago, Peg and I came across a tiny albino white tailed deer. It was magic and special and I would have missed it had I not gone riding that day. Deer have long been my personal talisman, so I took it as a sign. I declared Albino Bambi the symbol of my new role as sub-optimizer.

On that particular day I had abandoned my To Do list. I was going with the flow in a brave departure from the norm. Bob was hosting an all-day board retreat at our house so I packed the car with anything I thought I might need and began looking for something fun to do. I wandered next door to see if Haruka fancied a walk in the woods. I didn’t find Haruka so I called Janice and found that she was of the same mind so I met her at the college walking path.

Janice and I walked twice around the loop, talking about everything under the sun and enjoying every minute of what was turning into a spectacular day. When I got back to my phone, I had a message from Peg, asking if I was up for a ride. I congratulated myself for packing my riding gear and called to say, “I’m on my way!”

As we rode, I told Peg how I had left my To Do list at home because I was becoming a sub-optimizer and that’s about the time I saw a small blob of white fur on the trail. At first I thought it was a dead white cat but when I got closer I saw the telltale pattern of spots. And as we rode past, the tiny critter stood up and wobbled off into the undergrowth.

The day continued along that way with me taking advantage of every situation. I called Amy and found she was thinking about driving to the craft store so I jumped in. We enjoyed the drive and bought all kinds of fun things, including a couple of cool plastic zebras which I couldn’t resist. When Bob called to say the retreat was over, he said there was enough leftover food for dinner. “All this, and I don’t even have to cook!” I thought, “Wow!”

The image of Albino Bambi will be forever associated with the many precious moments from a special day and a reminder to take time out to play. From now on, when I’m swept up in my To Do list, I’ll picture a white fawn and throttle down. Call it good enough and take time out for myself!

When Bob and I moved to our new home here last December, there were laundry lines strung between the trees down on the shady side of our property. In addition to being in the shade, too far from the house, and underneath the trees where the birds sat and pooped, they were ugly so we took them down. We needed to put a nice line in the sun but didn’t want to give up too much real estate, so we settled on the rotary line to the south of the vegetable garden.

Here are three reasons why I think drying my laundry on an outdoor line is a good idea: It saves electricity, makes the laundry smell good and gives me an excuse to stand around outside.

Last month our electric bill was $30 less than the month before and we didn’t start using our new clothes line until part way through the month. And the smell! We wash our bed sheets every Saturday and when I pulled the sheets up to my nose the other night, the smell of fresh air and sunshine blissed me out. Suddenly I was 6 years old, with my Nana tucking me into bed.

But even better than saving money and smelling good is how the process of hanging the clothes out to dry affects me. The quiet, contemplative act of standing in the yard, pulling one piece of laundry at a time from the basket and pinning it to the line adds to my quality of life. I always think I don’t have time to hang the clothes out, but once I get out there my whole world slows down and becomes meaningful.

I hear the birds and the cicadas while the clouds play with the lighting and the breeze catches the clothes and spins the clothes line in a lazy circle. I am humbled by nature and its power to take care of me by drying my clothes and nurturing my soul. This simple chore makes me feel connected to all the other people who are hanging their clothes in the sun. It feels good in a way that stuffing the laundry into the clothes dryer never did!

Bob and I have been on the move all our lives and went into hyper-mobilization after we got together.  We’ve moved every fifteen months on average over the eighteen years since we threw in together. Like they sing in that song, wherever we hung our hats was our home.  Or rather, wherever we lay down together was home.

My roots go back to New Jersey, specifically the two neighborhoods of my childhood, one in Atlantic Highlands and the other in West Long Branch.  Bob’s roots go back to New Orleans and Ghana, Africa.  Lucky for me I can still drive up to Aunt Kathy’s house, give her a hug and scamper next door to my cousin Mark’s house which used to be our Nana’s house.

Now that we’ve settled into an established neighborhood in North Carolina, we’re putting energy into establishing roots.  We joined the potluck circuit, taking turns hosting a space for a leisurely dinner with our friends in the neighborhood.  We began stewarding the grounds and trails.  And we met our neighbors to the east over the fence.

Fred and Reda have lived in the house next door for a long time.  Their yard is so pretty we consider it the gold standard for grounds keeping at the bend.  More importantly, they have solid roots in the area, so I feel a little more rooted just knowing them.  When Reda described where she grew up, she gestured over her shoulder to a property less than a mile away.

The “Home Place” is what she called it.  Unbeknownst to her, Reda had just given me a new phrase to describe the roots of my childhood.  “I guess my home place is Nana’s house,” I mused and went back to my mowing.

A few weeks later, Bob and I made our annual trek north, and this year we started off in the Shenandoah Valley with the Armentrouts.  Sitting in Mark and Catherine’s living room, we heard the term again.

“That was their home place,” Catherine was saying about another relative, pointing to a place not so far away.  It’s funny how you can usually tell where something is when someone points, based on how high they hold their finger, how vigorously they move their arm and where they send their eyes.

On we went to visit family in Shippensburg; Mom, Dad, brothers John and Bob, John’s wife Darla and their children Charity and Brandon and their families.  We slept and ate in the beautiful stone house that Darla’s father helped his father build many years ago and which had later been moved from their Home Place just a few blocks away on a truck to its current site.

Darla’s parents Sonny and Dolora joined us, my brother, their daughter, their children and their children’s children for dinner which reminded me that Dolora’s parents, Darla’s grandparents were also from this Pennsylvania valley.  There are lots of roots for my kin here, but not so much for me.  I moved to Shippensburg with my family in the fall of 1970 and left town the day after my senior graduation on June 5th, 1972.

After four nights in the Cumberland Valley, we made our way to Atlantic Highlands.  We hugged Aunt Kathy, sipped some wine and scampered next door with Mark for a look at his beautifully preserved testament to our heritage.  He has lovingly tended to the gardens and house, keeping it pretty much just as it was when our grandmother lived in it and also added many framed photos of our ancestors.  Mark is the historian in the family.

Talk turned to worthy topics such as Nana’s potato leek soup and poppy seed bread.  We vowed to re-create these legendary dishes next year in the same kitchen they were born in before trundling off to dinner at cousin Frank’s in nearby Rumson.

Frank’s beautiful wife Shawn and their lovely daughter Houston showed off the grounds and gardens as we walked down to the dock across their manicured lawn.  “Gold Standard!” I thought and then I asked Shawn how long they had lived in their house.  “At least twenty years” was the reply.  I wondered what that might feel like.  Having just signed a thirty year note, I might get the chance.  That is, if I live to be seventy-five!

The longest I have ever lived in any one house was seven years between 1963 and 1970 at 64 Hollywood Avenue in West Long Branch, a mere twelve miles south of the old neighborhood in Atlantic Highlands.  This was the house I lived in with my five younger brothers.  Most of my dreams take place either in this house or in the house in Atlantic Highlands.

64 Hollywood Avenue was where we climbed trees, watched Disney, Daktari and the Honeymooners on TV with the whole family, painted with oils in one of the three sun porches and stood back to watch my Dad ignite gun powder in the birdbath.  We ate all our meals together in this house with the exception of Sunday Dinner at Nana’s in Atlantic Highlands.

The old Victorian was enormous, more than 4,000 square feet with eleven rooms, multiple staircases, fireplaces, glassed-paned sun rooms, and balconies, a basement and a wrap-around porch.  It was a later, larger addition to the Norwood Park Cottage Colony built in which was developed in the latter part of the 1880’s.

“The Victorian styled cottages constructed at Norwood Park were built as summer rental homes at a popular summer resort for wealthy summer vacationers” according to Norwood Park – An Exclusive Summer Cottage Colony by Robert J. Fischer

“Later larger cottages were built on Hollywood Avenue west of Pinewood Avenue the one remaining home of this type lost its third floor to fire and is now refinished as s two story dwelling.”

The remaining larger cottage referred to above is assuredly the same the house I lived in with my brothers.  The other, older cottages housed our neighbors and childhood friends. The doctor who delivered my youngest brother lived across the street and we often played with two of his sons.

The other families were all large and mostly Catholic like ours.  Most of us walked, rode the bus or our bikes to the same school, St. Jerome School less than a mile away.  Each home boasted between four and fourteen kids for us to play with. We ran through the neighborhood or rode our bikes and played baseball, football, hide and seek, combat, cowboys and indians and my favorite, “who dies the best.”

There was a riding stable next door which drew me like a magnet.  Whenever I could slip away from my responsibilities as the oldest daughter, I’d slip through one of the thin spots in the hedge and cross the riding arena into the barn and courtyard area.  There I learned to clean stalls, feed, water and groom horses, rake the yard and recondition leather tack.

This is where the sounds, smells and rhythms of the horse world left their imprint on my psyche.  I strove to impress my friends by whinnying just like a horse as we walked home together from the bus stop.  Their eyes always gleamed when we heard one of the horses call back from the other side of the hedge.

This year, the morning after a fabulous meal at Frank and Shawn’s, Bob and I drove over to West Long Branch and parked beside the old house.  As I gazed up at the balcony outside what was once John and Bob’s bedroom, Bob noticed that the house was for sale.  A huge lump rose in my throat. With the simple addition of a realtor’s sign, I realized that this house was much more than a place where I once lived.  I stood there for awhile, basking in the happy feeling that I too had a Home Place.

When I got tired of writing and surfing the web, I walked the long way around to the mailbox. Lucy, Jessi and Ian’s dog, came along for company. I’d never gone this route, so I watched Lucy and sure enough, she showed me the way.

But when the sun started going down, the predictable happened. Without Bob in the house, it suddenly seemed like a barren, lonely place. And then my mother called to while away a half hour with idle talk and that helped. I got to cooking and that helped pass the time as well.

Bob just called to say he’s on his way. There’s hot food on the stove and he’s hungry. What a perfect way to end a perfect day!

This morning, Bob and I got out of bed when the first rays of sun began trickling across the tops of the trees. We took our cameras and walked to the high point of the property. Along the way, we saw a hawk on the power lines, deer leaping away into the trees and heard the croak of a blue heron as it winged its way east. We watched the steam rise off the pond waters and marveled at the beauty of tiny, perfect spiders webs, strung with dew drops in the long grass.

And of course, we took pictures of bales from every angle, with every kind of background. Our feet got wet and we were a little chilled by the cool morning air, but the pleasure of sharing this unhurried look at our beautiful world stayed with us all day.

The high was supposed to reach 99 degrees, just like it has been all week and they had decided to get an early start to avoid some of the heat. So we found ourselves up an hour early after getting to bed an hour late, packing a lunch and some dry tee shirts.

They drove off and I went and lay down on the bed. I was looking forward to going for a walk with Dana and Jessi in three hours and had plenty of time for a nap.

Thirty seconds later, I got up to bring my phone into the bedroom. On my return, I looked down at the unmade bed, remembered today was laundry day and decided to strip the bed. I figured I could lay down on the comforter while the washer did its thing. And then I thought I’d take out the compost.

When I got outside, I decided to water the garden while it was still cool. By the time I finished the outdoor chores, the washing machine was ready for a second load. And so it went, right up until I found myself hanging clothes on the line.

That’s when I had one of those “Ahhhhhhh” moments. I had crossed over into the timelessness of an age old activity. I felt Amish. I was so absorbed in the process of picking up each pair of shorts, each tee shirt and pinning it to the clothesline that I felt like an artist.

The sun was warm on my shoulders, the sound of the birds chatting in the trees made me feel a part of nature and I was thankful that the sun was going to dry these clothes for me on this day. I live for the Ahhhhh moments and sometimes they are as simple as drying clothes in the sun on a hot day.

The sea foam is tinted pink as is the gull flying by with something big in its beak. I wonder if I will see a deer or a coyote in the long amber grass. The breaking waves remind me of a herd of galloping horses. Surging, jumping in arcs, landing with spray flying and somehow never reaching me.

Bob and I fly home tonight to begin moving into our own space at Oilseed. It will be fun to unpack our books, art and travel memories and place them around our new home. We will enjoy setting up areas for Tempeh and beer production, writing, relaxing and sharing meals with our friends.

I’m looking forward to starting work at Quiet Meadow Farms this weekend. The smell of horses, hay and grain; the sound of them grinding breakfast between their molars, watching their misty breath puff into the sky, feeling the warmth under their winter coats with my hands.

I’m also thinking about all the wonderful people in our lives – our family and friends, new and old, near and far; all of them so generous with their hearts, homes, time, food and ideas. But most of all, I’m thinking how lucky I am to have found a true and enduring love to share all of these wonderful things with.