I stayed up until midnight last night. I could only watch the broadcast for short bits. I was rather certain Harris lost early on and as the night progressed it looked more and more certain. I woke up at 5:30 and checked and found out my intuition was correct
I meditated for a bit and asked myself what did I need to help me regulate. I got up and sent an invitation to 10 friends to come over for soup and a meditation tonight at my house. Nine of us gathered and enjoyed conversation and two different kinds of soup and a dessert. We ended the evening with a meditation. It helped calm my soul. My house was blessed to host them. I needed connection today to my tribe and they came through for me.
The good news is I can comfortably sit at least 12 people for a meal in this house. If I used a long table I could push that up to 16. Yay! Now I know how many I can invite for Thanksgiving dinner. The bad news is I was reminded how small my kitchen is and how little counter space I have. It will be a challenge to prepare lots of dishes. I have to fix one thing, wash up the dishes and put them away and then move on to the next thing. It takes longer that way but it is the only way I can manage in this small space. I will give myself lots of extra time to get things made and it will be possible.
My next problem is I don’t have a double oven any more. I used to be able to put eight containers of food in the oven to warm up or to keep them warm. Now I can only do four. That one will take me a bit to figure out a solution to. I think I can! I think I can!
All day my mantra has been “Right here, right now, all is well!” I keep pulling myself back from going into anticipation of what might happen. It has been a bit of a roller coaster today of emotion. I am allowing myself to grieve and process the results of the election. When I can zoom out I understand what and why things happened the way they did. I had held out hope we collectively would choose the easier path but that is not the way it went down. My job now is to accept the world as it is and not as the way I wanted it to be. Once I move into acceptance I can then plan action for myself.
I took a short nap this afternoon. I didn’t get lots of good sleep last night and needed to rest for a bit. Luckily I only slept for about 15 – 20 minutes so I should be able to sleep tonight.
Tomorrow I have a meeting at 12:30 and then Friday I am going to Topeka. The weekend is free to get some painting done in town.
Phil came over this afternoon and painted the upper part of the porch. He still needs to spray the bottom lattice and then the porch project will be complete. Yay! Phil is going to the rental house tomorrow to install the ceiling fans and the vanity. I wanted him to put the new door lock on but it didn’t come in today. We will get that done another day.
I did run to Emporia this morning to pick up some groceries so I could make soup for dinner tonight. It still felt like a stay at home day though as I got up so early. I was home from town by 8:30 and had the rest of the day at home. I needed a quiet day at home today and having dear friends over for dinner made it a perfect day for me.
Now that the election is over it is time to start planning Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I had it my way, we would do Thanksgiving and skip December and Christmas all together. I do enjoy our Winter Solstice gathering and knowing the light is more each day. Christmas is my least favorite holiday.
Sitting in a better head space tonight thanks to my friends. I needed the reminder that all is well – right here – right now – all is well.
Grateful for friends who come for a last minute dinner invitation, grateful the soups turned out OK and grateful the more progress made on the front porch.