Madeleina's Almost Home

Well, it's Saturday morning and my Madeleina's almost done with Peru. I'm sure by now she never wants to come home but then that's what makes traveling so fantastic. You just learn and learn and walk around wide-eyed whether you're traveling in Paris or North Africa or hitchhiking across the use or hopping riverboats in the Amazon. Everything new and fresh. Madeleina and others used to ask "why do you keep going back to Peru? Why not elsewhere?" And while I do travel elsewhere, for the big trips--aside from being able to make them work trips that produce at least a little income after they pay for themselves--the reason is that I cannot ever remember going to bed in Peru without having learned something new that day. And while she was with me, after about a month, one evening Madeleina said, "I know what you mean now, dad. Everything is new. You learn so much every day your head feels like it's going to explode!"
That's my baby and she's coming back this Tuesday. I can't wait.
And of course, that meant I had to get over to the lovely woman who sold us our goats originally and who was boarding Goatguy while I was gone. I just hadn't managed to get that done in the 10 or 13 days since I've returned from the Amazon. So this morning I got Marco over here and off we went. And wouldn't you know....well, I could see it coming even if nobody else did, I wound up with a new goat to go along with Goatguy. So now we're up to 4 laying chickens, two parakeets, one cat, one dog and two goats. A far cry from the menagerie we had but still, it's a start and gives me something to do with myself in the afternoons when it's time to feed and spend time with them.
Which is something that's been bothering me. I realized fairly recently that while I'm very sharp and very smart, I sometimes miss things right in front of my face, particularly when it pertains to me. For instance, I can't sleep lying down in Peru. I just wind up sleeping sitting up at a table or desk, a pile of pillows or my knapsack to lean on. I think it's not really apnea but more like sinuses clogged with all the jungle vegetation--or in the mountains, dust--that winds up making me feel like I'm drowning when I lie down. So I don't. So I wind up with legs the size of a house in a couple of weeks, and then, what with collecting sins and pain from people who do the ayahuasca, I wind up with this staph infection. But I'm sure the infection is aided and abetted by insect bites and not helped by my use of baygon directly on my skin as I don't put on long pants. So I was thinking, what about if I bought a pair of loose, lightweight sweatpants and wore those instead of just shorts?
See what I mean? For 25 years I've been getting bitten mercilessly out there in the deep green and never once thought to get a pair of sweatpants to solve the problem.
Not looking out for myself, I guess.
And then today I woke with the realization that just because I'm home does not mean I have to sit in front of the computer from 5 AM till 4 PM daily. I mean, today I worked my butt off on the net collecting information for the next few stories I'm working on. And now I've got 3-4 phone calls to make when I finish this. But then that's it. I will have done all I really can for a Saturday, made good progress on several stories, and I should just get the hell off this thing and go ride my bike or start cutting the slats for the new fence around the porch--I've had the wood for months but have not gotten around to that. But whatever I do, I certainly don't need to just sit at the computer like some idiot.
So I'm gonna try to start looking out for myself a little more than I have been. I think that would be a good thing. I mean, I keep talking about having an endless supply of love to give, so endless that the more you give the more you have to give, but it might be time to freely give some of that to me as well. In a positive sense. Like remembering to shave more than once a week. Or remembering to get a new shirt once in a while. Not often, just sometimes. Or buying sweatpants for the jungle. Little things I'd probably like having done.
Now just for the fun of it, do something nice for yourselves today too, okay? There will probably still be plenty of time to do what you need to do for everybody else.