{"id":1771,"date":"2016-06-05T04:49:02","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T11:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2016-06-05T04:49:02","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T11:49:02","slug":"my-front-porch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=1771","title":{"rendered":"My Front Porch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Have spent the last several evenings sitting on the front porch of our unfinished home. We look out on a small canyon, which in the evenings is visited by occasional mule deer and wild turkey. It\u2019s much quieter than town, but one can hear train whistles in the distance (always a comforting sound to me) and there\u2019s the ubiquitous chorus of song birds coming from a grove of elms to our south.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve been relaxing times that I sorely needed\u2014not because getting ready to retire, getting a house ready to sell and getting us ready to move have been so exhausting. It\u2019s almost the opposite. The busyness of the last months has left me hyper. I can\u2019t seem to shut off the engine.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a new sensation. I\u2019ve felt it every summer when we get away to the mountains. Relaxation does not come quickly. In fact, just about the time I finally hit the pause button, it\u2019s time to go home and get ready for a new semester.<\/p>\n

Not a good thing. Even God took a break after six days of creating. I\u2019m thinking that the ability to chill (really chill, without a sideward glance at my Day-Timer or Facebook) is a godly thing to do.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I intend to work on it in retirement.<\/p>\n

And this front porch is going to help. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have spent the last several evenings sitting on the front porch of our unfinished home. We look out on a small canyon, which in the evenings is visited by occasional mule deer and wild turkey. It\u2019s much quieter than town, but one can hear train whistles in the distance (always a comforting sound to me) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1773,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/1773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}