Reflection Time

We are just home, after two weeks of visiting my brothers home, the new great grand, a few assemblies of brethern,  some homes of grandchildren, a pleasant run a way loup through, Texas, Louisiana, a visit to Sister Vi, a pleasure delight stop in Fort Smith Arkansas for the best ribs in a long time and such like.

Knowing the results of natural ageing and loss of opourtunties we were mostly out and about to visit family and sibblings.

It was wonderful. It was great to cross off some of the "to do" bucket list.

But its also great to come home. SO GREAT. Missed my comfort zone, downtime and beautiful space. 

The house feels good. Would like to add some comfy admenments to the house, but in essentials, it works great for us.

I missed views, windows, light, in our short stays. Comfort for me isn't about going inside and shutting out the  natural world.

Its so very good to be home.

Ground check

Another checkmate.
We traveled down to Oregon for our grandson's wedding. It was a good trip. We saw grandkids and children. Did the festivities and headed home.
Have been plagued with health issues that i just didn't understand. Nothing seemed to fit together.
When we arrived home, late and tired all my symptoms came together in my head. Well, my goodness. Was my brain just thick or what?
So all and all three weeks of various misery. Not done yet but have a good handle on it now and it is so-o good to be home.
We have been soaking up the sun in our front windows and just enjoying the sheer beauty of this land that we are so blessed to be able to live in.
I keep going to the windows to check if there is a hint of color in the willows yet.
Are their any green speers or leaves poking out of the snow yet. And then I go clean the refrigerater.
Wallmart has no primroses yet but probably by this weekend they will. After all,its nearly Valentines.
Like the groundhog, I can still see my shadow and the temps range from 20 to 40.
So back to my genealogy and perhaps some more house cleaning. And Iwonder if I would like to cut some fabric into pieces and sew it back together?
In a couple of more days maybe my head will stop hurting and I could walk.  downtown again. Maybe, down by the river there would be fresh green. You think?

Another  test?

Sometimes when you think your all pieced back together, a seam sort of unravels. It really makes me tired and  angry.
It's like this. The garden needs weeding. Yesterday got my tools and headed up the hill. The new irrigation system had the water on in prime weeding time------ if there is such a thing!
So I trudged down the hill. Don't worry, it only comes on every other day. Tomorrow you can weed.
So I went to wenatchee instead.

Today I put my hair on top of my head, put on a long sleeved shirt over my comply weeding clothes and headed up hill.

I have a mind that if I am awake and sometimes when I sleep,it's off and running.
My body knows it is not quite part
 I don't know quite what is off kelter, but the body just isn't perking along with me.
And that is like putting sugar in a gastank and dirt balls in my mind.

Trying to weed,clean and all of that my mind is running 90 miles a minute on old problems, worries and hearaches. I can' ever seem to turn it's direction or turn it off.
I just kept weeping and getting angrier and angrier at stuff that's gone done and buried. Angry at my self.
And then the water nozzles came on and soaked me before I could get my tools and to the dry!!!!!
How convent is that?

Another survival

We had delayed a trip back East because of a death of a close, beloved friend, sort of cousin.
Things were now preppred and ready to pack. We were to leave the next day for our trip,
Comming into the house that early evening, I decided to fill the bird feeders so that I wouldn't have to do it the next day what with packing and leaving for the airport.
I still had on my boots with the yak tracks on them to keep me from falling in the ice and snow.
When I stepped out the back door, I could see the snow and dropped another load of white and ice in my pathway. About the third step out something went wrong and I was sailing feet first into the sky, head down toward the ground. There was a crack like a breaking peice of wood. The back of my head hit the ground. Stunned, I watched my daughter yell for my husband and she came over to me.
That was the start of a 5 month lesson. A journey in patience, endurance, resigning my life to a hold pattern.
Broken legs can and do heal. Our bodies are designed to heal. But its not a process that we would ever chose to partake of on our own.
Here it is mid June. I can walk across the house on my own. I can cook, and get around fairly well. No grace with it, watch for the tricky uneven paths, the tangled weeds etc. There is a new uncertain mode of progression here but there is progression. Helping me has taken a tole on what we can get accomplished past the normal stuff.
I have enjoyed the view in the new house, the sun, the clouds, and our general comfort. But it has mostly been a "from a distance" feeling. This new house is home. My feet are back under me though one is not so smooth. There is still not much done outside. And I am 2 years older, and somehow in a completely different generation than before the Firestorm.
Life keeps on rolling. We have lost some very special people in our life. Things we have taken for granted before are still on the " must do list", but without the urgency we had last year.
More lessons. More losses. But I think if I really think about it there have been some personal gains-- but also some personal challenges that I am not so certain that I am up too.
I guess, its more of just "take a deep breath, put on patience, lean on that spiritual strength and keep trucking.

Firestorm in Review

I always thought that I was born in the wrong age. I should have been a pioneer, facing the new world,  the wagon road, the trail to the west. Something. Not just mundane and get through life things.
That kind of thinking tells you when the  road is rough, put on the iron suit and keep trudging. It can't kill off the real deep inside "you" Well, I guess we all have lessons to learn.

That policy worked - mostly. But while we were living in our single wide rental  counting the days till we could move back to our spot on the hill and a new house, there were days when I would find myself going back to bed during the day, pulling the covers up and just laying as still as I possibly could.

I haven't cut my hair since about 1974. Just going to be as the Lord made me.
Well, after we actually moved into the house, I found my hair was just getting shorter. I tried no sulfate shampoos. I was gentle with it. But it just kept getting shorter, and its not "even" all the way around. There are places on the sides of my head that are only 5 inches long. Little frizzles and breaks everyday. It doesn't feel like straw or anything, it is just falling off and out. I have read somewhere that that is from trauma. ????

I can see that the whole experiance of the fire taking away alot of your life work in a few minutes of time has changed my husband, my daughter and I. You can't quite put your finger on why we are just, kind of different, do not react the same, have a little trouble getting things to fall together right in our head-- but its there.
Some days I have glimpses of the "old me". But its not quite there. Will it ever be? After all we are adjusting and moving on. Our bodies have gotten olders. Our goals are different. Our humor is different. It just all adds up.

In some ways I am more patient. I know that realistically things have happened really well for us, and that you have to put the things in order by importance, adjust to change in plans, by who offers to help do what and wait for the comfortable and ease of  a new chickenhouse and make do with the  surviving  goathouse. The chickens are alive and doing, they just don't have a roost yet, or laying boxes or screens to keep the birds away from their food.

There are things we need to do before we plant shrubs and stuff, but it will have to wait abit longer. The siding took so long to get on, but its almost completely on now-- so, what if it has to wait till spring for paint now?

We have got so very much done-- be happy.

I feel very old now and am testing what few skills I seem to have left. There is so much that I could do before the fire, that now I can't. It took a toll on the very quality of my health and lfie. It would have happened anyway, right? Well, maybe not just how it has.

Its an adjustment.

Still alive and hopefully well here

Things are going fast and furious here. There seems to be no way to meet every commitment on time.
But it is comming together.

We had a friend drive up from Oregon just to work on some tile. No time to do it all and too busy and harried himself to try. But he did the the "different new" tile job on the upper bath floor and started the master bath and  gave some ideas for the stove backsplash or whatever you call it for the range in the kitchen.

It gave us heart again, I think.

So many things that I never thought about, visulized or was consulted about, but thats ok, I guess. This home will be part ours and part some of the kids. And thats ok. When I start to leave it each day, I slow down and stop in the drive and try to imagine it covered with greenry and stuff. I have a few notes laying about-- must replant roses, Gertrude Jeckyl, Midas Touch, Sally Holmes, Dortmund and on and on. Small trees with bark interest. Bird feeders and how to plan them. And I like to stand at the new back doorway and think of paths for grandkids and hidden turns and cover for mystery exploring and the mind games that kids play, if you can get them away from the screens.

The cabinets are mostly in. Tomorrow, we go select cuts for countertops and granite. Today I walked through the kitchen and tried to imagine using it.

The next day, the carpet comes. All but two rooms we will have to ask them to wait on. Our budget is shrinking and each delay, each not ready, each decision unmade keeps hacking away at it.

Oh, well.

The March winds have arrived. Funny, I worried about deep cold, I worried about heavy rains, which will still be a danger for long time to come. But today, driving into Brewster, I watched  part of a field blow by overhead, a huge brown cloud of dust, and I wondered what indent it made on the river and where it would wind up, this migrating dirt. I had forgotten the  March winds. If we are lucky, two weeks of it and then nice weather with an occasional storm. I do not like the wind. It comes from having bad ears and a bad chest. But this too will pass.

Its nice to have blue skys sometimes and the most of the grey gone. I still watch to see if its clouds up on the hills or fire though.
There are all sorts of ashes from the fire and its not all on the ground. Some of it is in my head.

Post Trauma Depression from the firestormII

All I have to do is talk to the locals. We are all doing it. Its called doing meltdowns, trembling, and sitting alot doing as little as possibles.

No, I have nothing to complain about. well, I do, but it isn't going to change the course of my life, or anything like that!

Mostly I am one of the very blest. We have a warm. comfortable place. We have a lovely house going up on the hill. My kids are alive and well and doing their own lives and being productive.
So why is it sometimes during the day, I just crawl back in bed and pull the covers over my head and lay just as very still as I can. I can do that much longer than I used to be able to. And don't I just despise slugs!!

Its helps a lot that we are having some sunshine. That the Willow branches are turning golden, that my tulip bulbs along our drive are growing like nothing every happened. We have even had tulips come up where the aspen trees burned and their roots have been prised out and the tractor has moved dirt around and rearrange the topography of  our lot. Thats a good word. Topography! Don't know what some words appeal.  But those tulips, they just somehow endured and managed to land near where they were, put down roots and grow. And hopefully they will flower too. I would like to do that too.

Some people say, you are going to be better off than you were. A brand new house that you designed and built, something you could never have done with out the fire!! Too true--- if it even matters. Sticks and Stones may hurt my bones but truthful words do not hurt me. Neither do they make it all better.

I am "thinking" about working a little in the garden. I am thinking. But I am not doing much. My husband has done until he is about done in. He is driven. I am hiding under the covers. I do despise slugs. They have no back bone.

This too will pass.  I hope. I would like to respect myself again.