My Own Backyard

I am not an outdoorsy person at all.  You won't catch me camping, not ever.  I never go hiking outside and I even dislike eating outside.  Too many bugs, the breeze blows things over, it's basically just one nightmare after another.  The one exception I make is going to the beach:  if I take a trip to the ocean, I am outside all day, everyday.  The rest of the time, I'm an indoor person.  I come by it honestly:  my dad is a lifelong business traveler and, when talking about camping, his go-to line is always "My idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service."  I inherited that love of creature comforts from my father for sure!!

However, this weekend I continued to be on the mend and decided to go for a walk in my own backyard.  I admit, this was due in large part to my desire to try out my new photo editing apps and kill more time using them!  But when I went outside to snap some photos, I felt so genuinely good about everything. 

For one, it was a beautiful fall afternoon.  Just a little chilly.  For two, even though my husband and I have lived in this neighborhood for nine years, I started seeing things in ways I'd never seen them before.  Usually I'm so busy driving to and from work or some errand that I only notice things peripherally.  Or, I run around my neighborhood while listening to my iPod and dying to hear the woman on my Nike + app say "Congratulations!  You have reached your goal of 2 Miles!" (or 5 K, or 5miles, whatever.)  Just to stroll outside and notice nature slowly, it was lovely.

So I made my way on foot with my iPhone yesterday, crunching through leaves and occasionally letting loose with a dry, racking cough. (hot, I know.)  It was so nice to be in my own backyard looking at the fall. 

It also made me excited about where we live.  My husband and I bought our condo years ago, maybe about 7 months after we were engaged.  It was weeks after I graduated college and I remember having to wait for my second paystub at my new job before we could apply for a mortgage jointly!  Truthfully, we never intended to stay in our "starter place" for so long.  But we really love the area, and I was attached to it sentimentally.  This is was our first home:  where we came home to from our wedding reception, where we changed jobs and careers, where we began the plans for many adventures.  And now, with the housing market being as horrible as it is, we've decided to remain a few years longer before selling.  Sometimes I'm bummed about that because I'm ready for the next big adventure.  But we have all the space we need, we live in a quiet community with great schools and a visible police presence, a cute little downtown and a new library going up.  Plus, out my back door I see things like this:  it's almost like living in a park.

I took this last photo of the moon as a tribute to my kids at school.  I can't tell you how often we're on the playground and they'll point up at the sky and say "Look, Miss Sondra...the moon!" and I always look up and am utterly amazed that they found it; that their little eyes seek out something that's always there but yet is somehow shocking to behold right there in the middle of the day.  It's a good reminder for me to continually be on the lookout for the extraordinary in regular, everyday life.

I think we all need to remember to look for the moon in the middle of a gorgeous, sunny day.