Fourth of July

Not much to post today. No one's fault but my own - I spent a totally unenergetic, unproductive day, I guess by choice. It didn't feel like choice - I just felt blah, and a bit lonely, and uninspired today, but that irritates me, because generally I really enjoy being alone. I had tons of things I could have done - sewing, crafting, folding 20 loads of clean laundry, dishes. I even got out two cans of cherries with the intention of making a cherry pie today, and thought about baking granola bars, and maybe even a loaf of bread, but every time I thought about doing something, I'd go lay down, read a chapter or two of a really bad book, and fall asleep for 30 minutes or so. Finally, I gave up and decided that sometimes maybe we just need a day to rest, and read, and NOT accomplish anything, without feeling guilty. That's the key - because I felt guilty and bad today for not having something to show at the end of the day. But, it's summer, and there's always tomorrow. My goals for tomorrow? Fold all the laundry, bake a loaf of bread with dinner, make a cherry AND a berry pie, bake some granola bars, and make Keenan do the dishes. Oh, and I should probably make an appearance up the street at Wayde's graduation party. So, off to bed to finish the lousy book, and perhaps tomorrow will be the very productive day today was not!
Things to be grateful for today:

• a day with NO rain, and lots of sunshine, even if it was on the cool side
• missing my children when they are gone more than they are home, and being glad to see them and talk to them when they DO come home
• the luxury of napping
• friends from far away
• memories of last summer in Alaska
  
• the times that Bramble pees outside, and the knowledge that SOMEDAY she, too, will be housebroken like the rest of the big dogs
  

And today, I'm grateful for:

• Border Collies
• waiting for books I've ordered to come in the mail
• fresh spaghetti sauce filled with fresh tomatoes, peppers and mushrooms
• hearing the rain outside my window when I'm sleepy
• ice cream in a bowl
• and...puppy kisses from a puppy mouth that smells like a skunk!!!
  

Welcome home, Bramble

So I have FINALLY gotten my act together. Well, ok, a part of my act. I now have taken the time to get a new camera cord, a new battery charger cord, AND I figured out how to upload a photo. So, my slowwwww bloggy start should now improve?
This gorgeous little baby's name is Brambleberry, or Bramble for short. She came from about 3 hours away, in Berkshire, NY, and is the answer to a 22 year old prayer. I have always wanted a Border Collie, but it has just never been the right time. Now, for lots of reasons, it is. And here she is. My heart has already welcomed her home.

A New Beginning ....I hope!

I hope it is a new beginning. I really enjoy writing, but have neglected this blog so long it is almost embarrassing to start again. And it really didn't get very far on it's first try, but, why not, I guess. I'm a little more motivated, and summer is coming, so a little more time is a given, and I have lots of projects and ideas in the works, and lots of issues and frustrations that it would probably do me good to put down in words (if only so that I can look back and see how they all worked out, because things always do... when you can see the big picture, which I can't right now - Faith?!) I also really like the idea of keeping track of things I am grateful for, on a daily basis. I think that is such a good exercise. There are some days when things seem so bleak that I really have to THINK about what's good - but that's exactly the point. And so, since I really need to go get a few things done today, I'll end with that for right now:

I'm grateful today for:

• the chance to get away with a friend this weekend and leave all my cares behind for a fun and awesome two days;
• my chickens in my coop, which are turning out to be a little bit of a pain, but are really a "dream come true" (I have ALWAYS wanted to own chickens, and finally, I do. That really does make me happy);
  
• looking forward to getting the Border Collie I have always wanted, also, in a few more weeks.

Rather random, but they work for today!

Maybe it's the Season

The past few days I have been feeling like one of those "winter wonderland" snow globes, where it sits for long periods of time on top of your piano, or mantel, with little figures, still, unmoving. There is a stasis to it that nothing short of intended, purposeful motion can shift. But then, someone comes along, and has to shake it up, because that is its purpose. Once shaken, the snow flutters and falls down on top of the snowman, or santa, or whatever life-life little statues are inside it. The world, for those figures, for those few moments, is a madness of uninvited activity. I used to think, as a child, that the snow was welcome. After all, what is a snowman without the swirling madness of white surrounding it. Children LIKE snow. I like snow, too. But I prefer the gentleness of a few flakes now and then, pretty, soft, simple, not the confusion of a whirlwind winter storm unless I'm prepared for it, see it coming, hear the forecast a week ahead of time. Lately, for a week or so, I've felt like the statue in the storm, and some persistently annoying person has felt the need to stand nearby and give the globe a constant, unremitting, shaking. My head is going to explode. There is the storm of feelings regarding C and her Senior year "issues" over college, basketball, school administration, friends, work, gender and life itself. I am far too intertwined in those, not only as the protective, worrying parent, but also as the mirror image and too close for comfort self that I was almost exactly at that age. It's frightening to have to see myself, at an age and time I hated in my life, mirrored daily in my daughter. I cannot separate most days the me that I was, with all those negative, impossible to deal with feelings, and her. I seem to struggle so much to be the parent she needs. I dont' know how to be, because, through her, I'm still struggling with the troubled 17 year old that I was. Then there is the storm of change at work that, although I try to stay out of the worst of those winds, there is no denying that it is going to affect me again, beginning Monday, and lasting ...forever? Through next summer? Who knows. It hasn't been stable for three years, and I do begin to doubt that it ever will be, because I cannot control the lack of stability that other people contribute to my world. Not a huge big deal, but a few of the flakes that have fallen carry that tag. Then there is the homefront, and all it's important emotional issues that have been there for many years now, give or take. I deal, and then I don't deal. I think, and then I ignore. I try, and then I don't. I never quite give up, and I never quite succeed. No homeostasis there. That has become forefront again this week because of other past issues. Those I do a pretty good job, most of the time, of letting go. They are, but they aren't, because they can't and shouldn't be. Should never have been, under my life's circumstances. In another lifetime, maybe. In this one, nope. I know that. OK. Done. Gone. But, then, things happen that can't be helped, things that I have no control over and only fate deals out, and so it probably would have come back to sit on my shoulder and whisper shadowy things in my ear anyway this week, but unfortunately for my psyche, something else connected to my heart, too, and opened that closed dark and lonely chasm back up. It will close again, and it's not a big deal to be examined, and thought about and picked at, but, like a sore tooth in your mouth that you KNOW you should leave alone, but can't, well, that's the most of the swirling storm of emotions sitting upon my shoulders right now. There's just too much to deal with. I can't see through the storm right now. I was given a light in the darkness this morning for an hour. I knew it was there, and I knew this morning I could reach out and ask for it, and I did. It didn't shovel the path in front of me - only I can do that. But it did hand me a light and say, "I'll walk with you until the storm clears, and you can see the path clearly again yourself. And, I will not be far behind, if some idiot decides to shake the globe again." And then he said, "That will be the usual $100 dollars for being your friend for an hour, please." I love that man. Truly I do.

I'm Sick of being Sick

Deathly ill. AGAIN. I'm sick so often people at school hear my voice and say "Are you STILL sick?" and the answer really is, "No, not still. Just again." It's always the same thing. A head cold turns into a chest cold turns into bronchitis, almost immediately, and then, if I'm really lucky, like last month, it even turns into pneumonia. This one came on fast and hard. So, do I go to Urgent Care tonight, and check it out since I feel REALLY bad already (no letting THIS one drag out 6 weeks I guess) - my lungs feel like they're on fire, my side already hurts from coughing so much for two days, my ear is so full of pressure it feels like it is going to burst, and my throat hurts from trying to talk and teach. All I want to do is lay my body down in bed and sleep for the next 24 hours. I ache. But, it's probably too soon, and they will just tell me I have a cold, or the "flu" or whatever. I guess I will do what I always do - just suck it up and tough it out. The only difference is this time I feel really bad, already. Maybe it's lack of resistance. Maybe, because I have been sick since the beginning of school with only a week of two of wellness following that nasty antibiotic last time, maybe I start out where I left off. Maybe I don't get to build back up to it this time. Someone once told me that in teaching your health cycles every seven years - that once every seven years you catch simply EVERYTHING going around. I don't know if that's true, because I can't remember seven years ago. I do wonder why my weakness is always respiratory and why it seems like I am almost always sick. Why do I have such a weak immune system? Is there anything I can do for it? Would taking a daily vitamin and eating Vitamin C on a daily basis really make a difference? If I thought it would help, I would. If it's a "it can't hurt" sort of thing, forget it. I already take too much medicine, and don't want more unless it's DEFINITELY going to help. Kinda like exercise. People say if you exercise, your overall health will be better, and "it can't hurt, right?" Wrong. Exercise DOES hurt. I HATE exercising. If you promised me that walking two miles a day would prevent this illness, both in severity and frequency, then I would consider it. If it's a wing and a prayer, never mind. I'll stay warm, fat, sick, and relatively happy, thanks. I would like some Vicks Vapor Rub for my chest tonight, though.

"Some days are diamonds...

some days are stone. " John Denver song title from long, long ago that has stayed with me. To be sure, I do have many more days that are of the shiny type, than the dull, sloggy stone type, but if I had to pick, today, it doesn't take much thinking to decide. The weight of the stone in my stomach is proof enough. General blahness and getting critically close to the "I just can't deal with this - and yet, I know life goes on and I will, too." Not stoicism so much as that's just the way I am. I'm not the sit down and weep type, though that IS what I feel like doing. I just don't cry much, because, really, what's the point.
Brought on by the family fiasco that I created, or let happen, over Thanksgiving, exacerbated by the HUGE purchase of 6 new phones and new accounts on Friday, compounded by the stupidity of picking up my ring from the jewelers also on Friday, not knowing how much THAT was going to cost me (when it could have waited until January or February, had I known the price, and I'm too ridiculously insecure to have said "oh - it cost THAT much? No, I don't want it today.") Money issues. Always money issues to make me sick to my stomach. T tells me "I won't have any money to give you out of THIS check now." Really? No kidding. I thought we could all buy new phones, get groceries, pay bills and you'd STILL have a thousand left over to throw my way for Christmas. Yeah, I know. And since I got a new phone, too, an expensive one, I was part of letting that happen. Why didn't we just get them new phones for CHRISTMAS? That was SO stupid and dumb of us. They would have been thrilled. I get so down when I do such dumb things. It just seems I am ALWAYS doing dumb things. When will I ever gain the maturity of the middle aged adult that I actually am? And then, to top things off, K left to go back to college a little while ago. That always sinks my mood. I never get used to having him home and letting him go again. It does get easier, but not a lot. And to make it worse, his van wouldn't start, so he had to take my Jeep, AND all our cash. I just gave him 27.00 last night to go to the movies, and was slightly annoyed at that, because I didn't have it to give to him, not really. Then I gave him the only other money I had, 60.00, for gas to put in the Jeep because it is empty (BECAUSE HE DROVE IT TO THE MOVIES LAST NIGHT), and T had already given him the 50.00 HE had, THEN he asked if he could take the 15.oo that was sitting on the counter that I had planned to use for lunch money for the others this week. Shit. Sure. Why not. Take everything, every last dime I have. And you can, too, because I love you, and wouldn't deny you anything. You know that. I would GIVE you my last dime because you are my son and I love you. But it doesn't do anything for the rock in my stomach today. Well, pay day is Friday, so there is that. But, oh, wait - tomorrow is Monday. Monday is back-to-work day after a full week+ off. Oh yeah, that might have something to do with my less than stellar mood today too. Shit, shit, shit. OK, well, I'll go do something constructive. If I can accomplish something, maybe I can salvage some of this day still, and not go to bed feeling as badly as I do now. Life is just like that sometimes, right? Yep. It is.