Last night Seth and I sat down to watch a movie. I cruised Netflix while he answered a few phone calls. Opting not to watch something violent or in the “click, click, ding, ding” category that Seth loves where everything is subtext, there are few words actually spoken and the action, well action is a strong word, is caught in glances and whispers, clicks and dings, we settled on a documentary. If you have yet to discover that we are dorks of the first order let there be no doubt with this next statement. We watched a National Geographic documentary. On stress. Seriously. Dorky.

There were lots of baboons and one very hairy Stanford professor who has studied these baboons for, like, 20 years in Kenya. I have to admit I drifted in and out a bit but what I came away with was stress is bad for the body. We’ve known this, right? But I mean really bad. Like send-you-straight-for-a-heart-attack, brain-cell-killing bad. And it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about.

As dorky as it was, the documentary resonated. The fight or flight talk, the adrenalin surges, the feelings that we are being chased on the African savanna by a wild cheetah looking for lunch because I’ve been feeling a little like this lately, only the cheetah is J.P. Morgan Chase or Bank of America, lunches to be packed or a car to be unloaded, again. I feel stretched, worn thin and the thing that bothers me most is that I seem to get to this place a lot, head in hands wondering what is wrong with me.

Last night’s baboons confirmed something I’ve been tinkering with for a while now. There’s actually nothing wrong me. It’s all just life and I’m living it.

Everyone spills their coffee, forgets their wallet, locks their keys in the car and has to call their spouse to come get them from the farm store! Lots of people with small children feel as though they’ve done an Ironman by the time they get to work and, at a little after 9 a.m. they have probably been up, moving, packing and shuttling for close to three hours! They, too, step over miles of kid toys strewn across their collective houses and they are also spending way too much time searching for the lid to their five-year-old’s favorite water bottle!

This may seem simple but for me it’s exciting and enlightening.

So tonight I’m going to go home, drink a Costco beer (because it’s all I can afford) and spend a little time on the trampoline with my little ladies. I might bust out a few old cheerleading moves and make them laugh. Later I might sit, again, with my man who’s been running carpool all week and doing more than his fair share of canning the mountains of peaches we have in our kitchen. We might watch another dorky documentary. And when I fall asleep half-way through it, as I always do, I’ll cozy up with a thought that’s been bringing me lots of comfort. I’m actually not that special. But I’m also not alone.

About the Author

Jennifer Savage

Jennifer Savage is a writer and mama of Eliza and Lucille. Lately, she's learning to be a farm girl, again. She writes from her home at the base of the Mission Mountains in Arlee, Montana. She is also one of Mamalode's favorite writers and you can fall in love with her too at .