Just Breathe

That's kind of been my mantra for most of November.  Just breathe.  Inhale.  Exhale.  One foot in front of the other. 

November has been an incredibly challenging month.  Its always a little tough, trying to deal with firearm deer season (and DHs resultant live-in company), doing all my normal daily work plus trying to fit in time of my own out in the tree stands.  This year, however, even more shit  other peoples bad decisions craptastic challenges have made November a month that was predominantly depressing, suffocating, overwhelming, and very busy overall.  I cant really go into detail on the major cause of such a titanically difficult month, but suffice it to say that for approximately one third of November K3 and Toad were with me day and night.  They are back in their own home now, but our lives aren't quite back to normal and probably wont be for months to come.  When a train wreck happens, the recovery period is long, and the time it takes to rebuild trust can be indefinite.

Anyway,  I have really missed posting on this blog.  Kind of ironic that my last post, so early in the month, was about five good things that had happened.  Quickly after that post, so many many bad things occurred, or came to light, and as much as I wanted to just get on the computer and blog another five nice things, I couldn't. 

No time.  No nice things.  No breathing space.  No creative brain.  Anger, quite a bit of anger, actually.  A blog isn't the place to get out anger. At least, not this blog.  I want this little place here to be a refreshing place, a relaxing and inspiring place.  For me and for my readers.

On top of all the time, mental, and emotional challenges of November, our laptop seems to be sending DH and I increasing signals that it would like to be replaced with a newer model.  primarily the letter p hardly ever works any more. Every p you see in this post I put in using copy and paste from a spell checked word that had the p automatically added in! Which is also why none are capitalized.  The grammar nazi in me is having fits over that and the missing apostrophes on certain words. 

As the days go by, additional letter keys seem to be joining in the strike.  There are other issues too, but when the computer is actually on, its the lack of certain keys/letters that are the biggest challenge to typing anything.  Just try logging into an account where the name or password contains a p.  So hard to make an online payment on time in that case!

perhaps its time for me to breakdown and put the blogger app on my phone so I can finally write posts and blog from there.  I've been resistant to that for a few reasons, mostly because I hate using the itty bitty touchpad keyboard on the phone.  I can type super fast in person, on a normal size keyboard.  plus I haven't figured out how to watermark my photos on my phone before adding them to the blog.

Hopefully soon I can get back to all the long list of posts I wanted to write, and actually get some new content put on here on a regular basis.

Friday Five

I am going to implement a new weekly themed post at this little place here.  Might just be for the month of November, or I might (if I'm successful at regular posting) keep it going for an undetermined length of time.

It will be the Friday Five, in which I will give five highlights for the past seven days in my life around this little place here.

For this week, here's my five:

1. Finding out about, and meeting DS2's girlfriend!  He is such a private person, and doesn't feel the need for a lot of social interaction, that DH and I have long joked that we will only find out if he's dating someone when we receive an invitation to their wedding.  So it was kind of a surprise to have him come home for dinner last weekend and bring a young woman we've never seen (nor heard of) before!  Even more of a surprise to learn that they met nearly three years ago, and have been carrying on a long distance relationship (she lives on the East Coast).  And yet more of a surprise to hear that he will be bringing her with him for Thanksgiving, and that she plans to move to Michigan next year and transferring to college here!  So many surprises that I'm leaning toward making her official blog name Surprise, as it seems like she will most likely be joining the family and becoming a regular here.

2. Carving pumpkins with K3 and Toad.  Not just carving the pumpkins, but walking through our garden and letting them each choose exactly the perfect pumpkin for themself.  Also being visited by them on Halloween before they made their trick-or-treating rounds in the nearby village.

3. Our first snow of the season.  Nothing that actually stuck, but it was a real snow, nonetheless.  And Mayhem's first snow; it was quite entertaining to watch her try to figure out what the white fuzzy things flying around were, and try to leap and catch them.

4. Good rides on the California Horse this week.  Definitely a week where I feel like we are making progress.  Lateral work is getting more natural for me; we even managed 3-5 consecutive strides of good leg yield at trot in both directions.

5. DH got a decent six-point (4 on one side, two on the other) buck with his crossbow, so now we have red meat for the freezer!