At seven this morning, I opened the doors to the kitchen where I was promptly pounced upon by Attila in his high-energy puppy way of greeting. I filled up his dogfood bowl and then we walked over to the ad hoc chicken coop to let the chickens out.

I like chickens. They don’t require the attention that dogs demand, and if you want to quiet them down, you just enclose them in a dark room and they go to sleep immediately and they don’t insist that you let them out.

When I was walking back to the house, I felt this overwhelming sense of “perfection.” That everything was exactly as I desired. I wanted for nothing else. My weedy lawn. The sheep peacefully grazing in their pasture. The dog feces decorating the driveway. The moist air of the warm front before the rain shower. The hovel that is our house. The birds singing in the trees. My wrinkled face. The brilliant red of the geraniums. My sick rose bushes. The cat running in front of me trying to trip me. Our IRS audit.

I don’t think that I’ve ever experienced this sensation . . .that there was nothing missing . . .that there was nothing that I yearned for . . .that I didn’t fret for the future . . .that all was right in my little world.

My husband, enlightened intellectual that he is, is a bit superstitious. It comes from years of trading on the options floor. I know he’s reading this, freaking out, thinking I’ve put a jinx on our lives.

I believe that I've finally reached the point where I have jettisoned the real and imagined demands that family, society, religion, the media, et al have heaped upon me; leaving me perfectly happy and content to be myself.

I live in love and peace and joy on a little rundown farm. I didn't write that down as my objective in my high school year book!