"In Everything, Celebrate Goodness"

You may well wonder what Jan Karon's book, In This Mountain, has to do with llamas, especially since I have mentioned this text before, and used the book jacket image as well. Actually, quite a lot, especially after this last week. Quite unexpectedly, I managed to spend four days in a hospital, experience a bit of a scare, have surgery, and return to the farm. One of the mainstays in my time out was that I check back in with my real life. That happened because I remembered something from Karon's book. It was a quotation from St. Paul's second epistle to the Thessalonians. Four short words to live by: "In everything celebrate goodness." That's what I did, and it altered my lifestyle. No longer am I trying to catch up. Now I am living in the moment more, and liking it so much. Less stress to look at a to-do list; even more less stress to complete things on it (makes sense if you ponder it, really).

As I look back over a few short weeks, one of my favorite days was spent with Carol Reigh at her llama farm, Buck Hollow. She wears a halo for many reasons, but one of them was picking up the girls to llama sit them while I scurried off to Discovery Headquarters in Silver Spring, MD, for four days at a Leadership Council Symposium and Discovery Birthday Pre-NECC Celebration. Since we decided to breed the girls, Carol would keep them for the summer. But the breeding didn't take, so we deferred the idea, letting the girls have more girlhood. Nonetheless, I wanted to learn how to groom (the girls were a mess because I had let them go--not too spoiled, right). What a beautiful day we had.

Although Carol had warned me that they did not take to grooming either (how could they when I hadn't done any), they surprised us with perfect behavior. I was impressed with how large they look when dry, and how small when wet.

One of the best things about Carol's farm, and there are so many--the vistas, the homesteads, the warmth that emanates from Doug and Carol--but on this day, seeing four crias held my heart. I think I am falling in love with all of them, but two at least that day I could have put in the van and absconded. Truly, there are so many from which to choose, even when getting the list down to five, it's still an unwieldy task. Time I hope is on my side, and just in case you are wondering, it's the one I am petting aht has my heart's @1 spot, and the third (is this one Bodacious, Carol?) that I really would love to take home with me. But time can change things. Last time I was looking at A Treat to Meet and bought Rev. It all comes down to the day, the moment in which you live and decide where you will place your love.