Reminder To Self

 This is a really busy season.  I have a tendency to overwork myself in busy seasons; just put my shoulder to the grindstone (or is it my nose?), keep pushing, and don't look up until I collapse.  I'm trying to learn better self-care, because collapse isn't exactly enjoyable, and historically it's times like this that I totally neglect myself (with exception of feeding myself somewhat nutritionally--the diabetes requires it, brushing my hair and teeth daily and showering at least every third day).

Recently, when I was at Hobby Lobby shopping for a specific fabric for grandbaby #8's quilt, and a few teen-bedroom type decor things for K3's 13th birthday present, I bought a little something for myself.  I know that when I'm going all balls (because that's how I've operated for decades during busy seasons--even if those seasons are years long) I tend to get a little less than happy.  And when I'm less than happy, that's when the complete and total overwhelm (and thoughts of trashing it all and running away) kicks in.

So, when I saw this little block, I bought it.  And put it on the windowsill behind the kitchen sink where I'll see it daily, especially when doing the dishes (my most hated chore; I'd rather scrub toilets than put my hands in dishwater).

Because I do.  I do love the life DH and I have built.  Sometimes it's crazy.  Sometimes it's overwhelming.  And the work of building is definitely not totally completed yet.  But it's what we wanted: the land, the horses (well, I wanted horses, DH not so much), the garden, the large (and getting larger!) family.

I just need to remember that when I find myself focusing on all the undone tasks, or the (not so) emergency help my kids call on me for with the grandkids at the last minute.  I love the life we've built.

Plot Twist!--Horse Update

 It's been a wild, wild ride since my May horse update.  In fact, I posted that update, and then BAM!! Problems.  Camaro didn't greet me when I went to get him from turnout.  He seemed slow, reluctant to come in.  I figured maybe he was wanting to eat grass (which was rapidly dwindling as we entered a time of early drought) rather than work.  Typically, he comes eagerly and enjoys his work (and post-work sugar cube and peppermint).

He walked slowly, but other than that seemed fine.  He stood fine to be groomed and tacked.  But when I went to lead him to the arena, he resisted.  He didn't want to take that first step, but he eventually (after a few seconds) did anyway, because he does like to please his person.  

I began our typical walk in hand around the arena in each direction so he can see things--especially anything that's changed since our last ride--and he just didn't look right.  I tried trotting him in hand.  Uh-oh, do I see signs of lameness?

Even though we were still in the "no tight circles/no longeing" stage of his knee rehab, I put him on the longe line for a better look see of how he was moving.  And it wasn't right.  Nothing huge, but there was definitely something there.  

So I didn't ride.  I asked the barn owner how he'd come in from turnout the night before, and she said "a little off, not his normal self" and then proceeded to say that the two nights previous to that she'd had an intern bring horses in at night and the intern had remarked that he was 'slow to come to the gate, not like he usually is at dinner time'.

Oh no!  Oh no, no, no!  Immediate vet call, as this was exactly the time of year and exactly the vague way his laminitis episode in 2020 had begun.  That had taken several months for him to recover from, thankfully without permanent lameness, and hadn't been cheap or enjoyable (he'd hated being on stall rest).

The vet came (not the one I normally use, she was on vacation that week, but another one from the same practice) and confirmed that yes, most likely Camaro was in the beginning of a laminitic episode.  He was prescribed a three day course of Banamine, but not necessarily stall rest since that hadn't been quiet in 2020--and we wanted to avoid redamaging his knee if he paced and circled all day and night confined to a stall 24/7--so we put him in the least vegetated turnout (since there is not drylot paddock) with his grazing muzzle on.

And he got worse.  The Banamine did hold him comfortably until the tube was used up and he'd been off it about 12 hours.  But once it left his system, oh boy, did he look worse than before.  So, call the vet office, and they recommend putting him on 1 gram Bute twice daily.  After two full days of that, he was looking still worse, so another call to the vet office and they said up the Bute to 2 grams twice a day.

Which made him look a little better, but man, that's a lot of Bute and not good for his gut long term.  So, another vet call, and this time his normal vet came out.  She was not happy to see the condition he was in (indicative of a large amount of discomfort).

She gave him an IV round of DMSO.  She made him some 'bumpers' for the heels of his front feet to change the pressure on his coffin bones.  She took radiographs of both front feet (none of the hind although she suspected they were also inflamed this time around).  She ran a test for Cushings/PPID.  She put him on stall rest with strict instructions not to even take him out to clean his stall if we could clean around him safely.  She prescribed twice daily Bute but only at the 1 gram dosage level. She recommended we contact Camaro's normal farrier (who is the farrier for the entire barn where Camaro is boarded) and get him out ASAP to change the type of shoes he had on to ones more therapeutic for laminitis.  Specifically glue on shoes.

Amazingly not protesting his stall rest this time around.

We waited for the test results.  We followed her instructions to a T in regards to stall rest, and medication, and contacting the farrier with the shoeing change info.  The farrier couldn't come for at least 5 days, and said he would order the special shoes and would confirm with us the date he was coming to work on Camaro.

The test results came in after about six days.  Positive for Cushings/PPID.  Well crap.  That explained alot though, about the laminitis in 2020 and again now when none of the other horses on the farm had had issues with their feet.  Camaro was put on a starter dose of Prascend.  Vet bills are racking up.

The farrier came, without confirming his imminent arrival, and I didn't know until after he'd finished with Camaro, that he'd even been there.  I'm not going to sugar coat it; I wasn't happy with the situation. I had wanted to be there to talk to him in person, but had left a check for him with the barn owner in case the day he came was one of the two days I was going to be out of town that week. But it wasn't either of those days.  It was the afternoon before the day I was going to be gone; literally less than three hours after I had left the barn when I finished cleaning stalls..  I totally could have been there and had requested that I be there if the farrier was coming.  

But I wasn't notified he was on his way, or even after he arrived.  Instead, I got a text with a picture of a special shoe on the right front foot, many hours after the fact.  It wasn't what the vet had prescribed, but I was told "that was going to take too long to come in and he (farrier) didn't want to make Camaro wait longer so he'd made a special shoe that was similar."  Well, I wasn't sure, based on the picture and the fact that the shoe was nailed on, not a glue-on, that it was the right thing to do.  But, the text had told me how much relief Camaro seemed to feel after the shoe change, and that he'd 'walked out sound'.

When I saw it in person, about 68 hours post-farrier, after getting back from out of town, and after texts from the barn owner as I was driving back into town that Camaro seemed "a lot more uncomfortable than he had been right after the farrier put on his shoe", I was so shocked.  His toe looked chopped off, and only one front foot had been done (the vet had wanted both fronts in the special shoes) because the farrier had 'put hoof testers on the other front and didn't get any reaction, so didn't feel that one needed changing; he'd be back in a week for the normal six-week appointment anyway and do the rest then'.  Camaro looked flat out miserable.  Through this whole stall rest situation, he'd been quiet, not like his unhappiness on stall rest in 2020, but at least his demeanor had been perky.  Now his eye had a very very stoic look to it, and he didn't greet me when I walked up the barn aisle like he'd always had.  He wasn't even looking out the door of his stall; he was standing in the back with his head down.

I called and scheduled the vet for a recheck in a couple days, when she had availability in her schedule, because I wanted her (not the first vet from this episode) to be the one to come assess him post shoeing.  And I had a bad, bad feeling as to Camaro's potential to pull through this laminitis flare up as successfully as he'd pulled through the one in 2020.  

Well, given that those radiographs had shown some rotation of the coffin bone in the right front (the now chopped and mangled hoof with the custom shoe) when compared to the radiographs taken back in early February at the time of Camaro's knee injury, and seeing the new shoeing job which in her words "wasn't the same effect as the shoe she'd prescribed and sure didn't do Camaro any favors", and now knowing that Camaro has Cushings (which makes horses very prone to laminitis) the vet and I had a very in-depth conversation as to the prognosis.  I brought him out of the stall and she watched him walk (this was about the middle of the day, so peak time between doses of Bute, when he was pretty comfortable) and also showed her a video the barn owner had taken and sent me the night before, shortly before the dinner time Bute dose, of him being walked a short distance (why was he out of his stall?!?) and obviously incredibly painful and reluctant to move.

We talked about where in the recovery process he was, how it differed from 2020's laminitis, what additional treatments we could do, what medications he could be given to make him comfortable (and what the dangers/side effects were of those meds), how many months it likely would take for him to reach comfortable without being on meds, the special shoeing he would require forever more, and the likelihood he would ever be sound again.

In her professional opinion (which matched my gut feeling having seen him myself), because of the rotation of the coffin bone and the severity of the laminitis this time, the likelihood of him ever being rideably sound again was very low.  He could, possibly, recover to be what is known as 'pasture sound', which means a horse can hobble around fairly comfortable in turnout, but never comfortable with weight on it's back (as in riding).  However, with the Cushings, he should not be on grass turnout, only on dirt lot turnout.  And he would hate being able to see grass, but never allowed to eat it.  

In order to reach that 'pasture sound' level, though, he was going to have to endure many more months of pain as the inflammation in his feet slowly subsided, and then would come hoof abcesses, which are a typical part of the healing process in laminitis (he'd had a big abcess in 2020 once he'd started getting better), and in themselves cause a great deal of pain as they build.  We could keep him on high doses of pain meds, all of which are known with long term use to cause ulcers and kidney damage.  All of this in the hope that he'd be able to kind of shuffle around outside of his stall for the rest of his natural life.

I decided, and the vet concurred, that it was not fair to put him through so much agony.  And so I made plans for how/who/when to have his body hauled away and set a vet appointment to have him euthanized early in the morning less than three days later.  

The vet and I both cried as we put Camaro to sleep.  But, we first took him outside and let him graze the grass for about 15 minutes, then administered the drugs to stop his heart, and he died happy, with a mouthful of grass.  It was a somewhat comforting, and fitting, end to a bad situation for him.

Chewing away happily

Now that I'm crying again, and maybe you are too, reading this, let me say

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!  Yes, the plot twist isn't over. . . 

(to be continued)

K2

 It's a long, long story, and maybe some day I'll write more parts of it.  But for now, there's this.

Maybe it was a subconscious thing, a Freudian slip, when I named DS1's wife as K2 on my blog.  I'd meant it as Kris #2, since my name is Kris and hers also was spelled with a K and our legal names contained almost the exact same letters.  What I didn't know at that time, or until years later, was that K2 was the street name of a drug that is fake marijuana.  

Maybe it was foreshadowing, then, to give her that name at this little place here.  As time went by, after we'd moved her and DS1 and kids up to MI from SC, after they'd lived with us for nearly a year and a half, after they'd moved to their own place about 8 miles away, I learned that K2 used drugs.  Apparently it had been an off and on thing for years, stretching back into her teen years.  She'd use, she'd clean up for a while, then something would send her back into it again.

She had anxiety, she'd get prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs, she'd start over using them.  She'd then also use other types of drugs, some prescription that she'd get from a different doctor and a different pharmacy than the anti-anxiety prescription had been provided by, some that were just openly available if you knew the right person.  The first few years she lived in MI, she worked at a local bar where she met some of those 'right' people.

Like I said, it's a long story.  Years went by, and she had what our family would call 'episodes' where she'd either be combative and convinced that DH and I and most members of our family were against her, or she'd take to her bed, claiming a headache, and stay there in a stupor for days.  There was a suicide threat, which CPS got involved in and took the children from the home in 2017 and they lived with DH and I for several weeks while DS1 worked and K2 was in a treatment facility.  That's when DH and I learned about her history with substance abuse. 

A month or so later, there was what we thought (and she denied) was a suicide attempt that DS1 caught her in and took her to the emergency room--and DH and I again had the children for a week. She went home, seemingly okay.  Things were calm.

Until about six months later, when DS1 and the kids came home from church on a Sunday noon (she hadn't wanted to go with them) and found her passed out, blue in the lips.  DS1 sent the kids to the neighbor's house and called 911, then called me to come get the kids.  K2 was in ICU for days and days.  She had been given Narcan in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but remained unconscious for at least 24 hours.  Tests were run to determine if there had been any brain or organ damage.  After stabilizing, and being on round the clock watch in the hospital, she was released to a treatment facility for a week's stay.  Again, the grandchildren lived with DH and I during that time period.

That was in 2018.  Over the next four years, her mood and behavior would swing unpredictably.  Sometimes she was happy and outgoing and willing to do family gathering type activities.  Sometimes she stayed in bed, not even getting the kids to school (DS1 works first shift and has to leave home at 5:30 a.m.) or taking care of them.  Our attempts, in those darker times, to help out were met with aggression and even cutting us off from the grandkids for weeks at a time. DS1 took to locking her medications up, and only giving her one pill at a time, in the spacing the prescribing doctor dictated.  Even so, she found ways to get her hands on drugs. There were a couple more instances of overdoses, most not as severe, but one last Fall that did have her in the hospital again for a handful of days as tests were run.

We all hoped she would get better.  We all hoped she would go to and stay in the assigned therapy programs after each release from her medical facility stays.  We all, in the good spells, found ourselves waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This month, that shoe dropped.  I can't say it's over, because we are still hot in the aftermath.  But K2 isn't here anymore.  No one can say if she was higher than a kite, or deep in a depressive pit at the time, but she took her own life. DS1 came home from his shift at work, found Rascal left alone in the house (K3 and Toad were still at school), and K2 deceased in the shed.

My heart is broken.  Not just for DS1 and his children.  Not just for K2's parents and brother.  Not just for my own family.  But for K2.  I feel such pain that she had a hole in her so big that it lead her to struggling with mental health and drugs.  I feel such immense sadness that she felt there was no joy, no hope, in living.

Reader, if you struggle with your thoughts, please seek out help.  Please stay in therapy if your doctor advises it.  If you struggle with substance use, please, please, know that there are people who love you anyway, and please let them help you find a program to assist you in your desire to overcome that dependency.

Grateful, November first Sunday

 Gratitude is actually something I've been trying to focus on for several months.  Seeing several blogs where the author is trying to post each day in the month of November about something they are grateful for got me to thinking more about what I am grateful for.  I know, realistically, there is no way I'm going to manage a post a day for the rest of this month.  But, perhaps, I can do a post each Sunday.  

Here is this week's attempt at that.  Maybe, if I can get through November, I'll try continuing it in December.  Because gratitude isn't something that's restricted to only the month in which we Americans celebrate Thanksgiving.  

This summer, DH finally helped me to get our porch swing from the basement--where it had been stored since our kids gave it to us for Christmas in 2019--up to the garage where I could stain and seal it.  

I had always wanted a swing on our wrap around porch, in fact, that was the main reason I wanted a wrap-around porch in the first place back when we were designing this house in 2001 before we started building it.  Took quite a bit longer than I'd thought to actually acquire that swing, but here it was, in July 2021 sitting  on sawhorses in the garage awaiting my perfectionistic DIY touch.

swing half stained

tilted backwards so I could stain the underside too

Once it had cured and was weather-proof, DH hung it on the south end of the front porch one day while I was away from home.  It was such a great thing to walk around the corner and discover.  The perfect little shady nook that catches a good breeze more days than not.  Exactly what I had always envisioned for spending a relaxing hour or two with a good book.

Relaxation is not a skill that I come by naturally.  It's one that I have to consciously pursue, otherwise I'm constantly chasing after this task and that that need to be done, or helping other people until I'm so tightly wound I can't think straight. Having my swing finally is helping me learn to take a little me time now and then. Even better if I can convince DH to sit with me on the swing, although it's not really his kind of thing.

I'm grateful for this swing, my outdoor relaxation spot.  I'm grateful for DH, who carried it up from the basement so I could finish it, who also put the supports in the porch rafters so it could be hung, and then hung it for me.  I'm grateful for my four kids, who orchestrated the purchasing of this swing (and bought it as unfinished bare wood so I could stain it the exact way I wanted it to look) because they figured that after this many years DH wasn't going to prioritize this particular want of mine.

Horse Update, September

 Unfortunately, I don't have much to talk about when it comes to progress in my riding goals.  I did ride Camaro a lot in July, and we cantered just about every single ride.  That there is progress.

On the other hand, I hardly rode at all in August it was so blasted hot and humid the majority of the month and I just didn't have the strength (or the stomach, high humidity coupled with heat seems to just liquefy my guts and/or make me nauseous, sorry to be graphic) to do barn chores and ride, plus do garden work and canning at home most days.  So, the riding, as the only activity on my plate that wasn't about saving money for the household, had to be lowest priority.  I did longe him at least twice most weeks that I didn't get in the saddle, and I have to say his trot to canter transitions on the longe line are pretty much instantaneous and balanced now.

So far in September, I've been in the saddle once.  We cantered that ride too, in fact, Camaro very calmly and willingly offered it (when I was actually wanting him to collect his trot more), so I asked him a few more times for canter during that ride.

Overall, though, I'm not very happy with the last two months.  So many lost riding opportunities I could/should/normally would have just pushed through.  

And then there's my knee.  My left knee has been acting up the majority of the summer.  Don't know what caused it to start, still don't know exactly what aggravates it, and finally I've been prescribed physical therapy by my primary care doctor (2x weekly for 4 weeks) to try to rebuild the muscles in and around it because for many weeks I couldn't even bend it at the walk, so of course certain muscles went unused or were torqued by an abnormal gait.  It mostly bends now, but not 100%, and I can't jog or run or hop or pivot on it. Stairs range from slightly slower than normal to "this hurts like hell and I hope I don't fall on my face" depending on the day.  So, sometimes just getting into the saddle even from the mounting block is painful and risky.

The show I wanted to go to this month has come and gone, without me.  There's no way I could have taken care of Camaro at the show, or ridden tests well (damn knee).  Honestly, I'm rather bummed out over that.

Well, that's my downer of a horse-related update for this month.  Not even a single picture to share.

Well, Here We Are

It's another new year.  The internet abounds with enthusiasm, and optimism, and goals for 2020.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling like I barely made it through the challenges of last year (literally), and I fear they might still be stalking me, going to jump out and grab me by the throat any minute now.

Did I make any resolutions?  No.
Did I make any goals? No.
Am I filled with enthusiasm and optimism?  No. 

In fact, I've asked DH several times "This year is going to be better, right?"  I quickly hush him when he says "Well, it can't get any worse than last year," because that is what he said at the beginning of 2019 about 2018. And guess what--2019 apparently took that as a personal challenge, because it was hands down the most difficult year I've been through.  Honestly it was like the challenges of 2018 (and carryover of 2017's challenges) just kept rolling and snowballing and picking up new weird offshoots to trip us up.

So, this January, I'm desperately wishing for good in 2020.  But, at the same time, I'm also contemplating things like:

• Is it possible to go for a mental health stay (and have your health insurance cover it) and not be required to take meds or attend group therapy?  How about talking to a doctor/therapist, and having them require your family to make changes that will stop making your life so flipping difficult before they allow you to return home?
• Can you get admitted immediately if you're not suicidal or threatening to harm anyone else?  (Seriously, this is how overwhelmed 2019 has made me--I would never kill myself or someone else but I do wish to just run away, disappear from all of this and these people)
• How to adopt the attitude of "I'm not helping anyone else make their life easier if it makes mine harder" and get away with it.  People are good at heaping guilt on me for being unwilling to 'do this little thing' and so I take on ten thousand little things, plus some big things, all of which really belong to other adults and it's breaking me into bits.
• How to find a part time job in addition to the job I all ready have so that some of the financial stress is eased, and how to fit that new job in on top of the existing job plus home-life stuff (you know, housekeeping, cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, taking on the stuff DH's job no longer allows him time to do, etc, etc). without pushing myself over the edge that I'm teetering by my toenails on.

Rather than goals or resolutions, I really have some wishes for 2020.  I wish

1. DH's job would get back to the point where he only works 40 (or even occasionally 50) hours per week.  And when he's home for the night (and weekend), there's no texting, emails, phone calls or overseas conference calls allowed that are related to his job.  That when we make plans, they are written in stone and uninterruptible.  That includes what time dinner is each night, and that we can eat it together.
2. DD1 would finally, now that she and Honorary Son have purchased a house of their own, get all her stuff out of my house.  It would be great to have that 1/3 of my basement back, not to mention the miscellaneous stuff of hers still in her childhood bedroom.
3. DD2 will get a full time job SOON (Alaska didn't work out for her; we got a very panicked phone call back in November and flew her home/shipped her car and belongings after a hectic 3 days of research and price comparisons; not to mention putting several thousand dollars in charges on our Visa card).  She has been unemployed and living at home for about seven weeks now.  DH co-signed her student loans, so guess who will be expected to make the payments on those when the money in her checking account runs out this month. . .  He and I didn't work so hard to get our great credit rating just to have it ruined by being associated with delinquent student loans.
4. K2 will finally be mentally stable and not abuse any drugs (prescription or otherwise) so that DH and I can finally stop worrying about her, our son and grandchildren.  She seems to have made some progress in that area in recent months, but slides just enough often enough that I'm still holding my breath constantly.
5. Some of the put-off projects/household maintenance of the last several years will finally get done (requiring DH to have time, and us to have $$ to do them).
6. That this year, DH and I can go on a vacation together than has nothing to do with family members or his job. It's been two years since that happened.  Way too long, in light of all the crap we've had to live through in that time without a break from it all.
7. That I can get back to posting on this blog regularly about good and interesting things.  Or at least, things that might be helpful to others.  I have a few ideas of new topics (like "Life as a Engineer's Wife", "Dressaging an Arabian", "Guiding Adult Offspring". . . ) as well as getting back to posting about the gardening, cooking/baking, sewing, knitting, homesteading like I used to half a decade ago.
8. That we finally replace our laptop computer, (the only one I have access to), the one that has intermittently had nonworking keys for two years now, and whose screen has been blank for almost four months, requiring it to be attached to the TV (we own just one television) with an HDMI cable in order to be used at all (soooo convenient for paying bills online or doing any sort of computer related thing you want some privacy in--writing blog posts maybe?  Or researching surprise birthday or Christmas gifts?)

Please, 2020, be good to me.

Unfinished No More

Something that really bothers me is when I don't get to finish things that I start (or that other people don't finish what they start).  Having incomplete projects or tasks just slowly eats away at me in the back of my mind.  One of my main goals for 2019 is to try to complete at least those projects that rely on just me to get done.  In other words, if it's something I need DH's expertise or muscles for, those projects are not up to me alone, and so are ranked differently (those are on the "Wishful Thinking" list).

This weekend, I knocked one item off my Personal Projects list.  It was a mystery quilt that I participated one winter. It has been languishing, incomplete, first in a closet, then in a drawer, then promoted to sitting on the cedar chest in my bedroom--where I can see it daily--for a long time.  Like, I pieced this thing in January and February of 2013. 

Yep, an almost 6 year old UFO. 

Looking back, 2013 seems to be the year I started to lose it.  Organization, control of my house, etc. December 2012 is when we moved DD1 back home after only one semester of college out in Minnesota.  She'd been incredibly homesick, and the college out there wasn't as good of a fit as she'd thought it would be. But coming back home didn't mean going back to the old arrangement of sharing a room with her younger sister.  Nope, they had so many screaming fights that we ended up shuffling things around and giving DD1 her own space in the basement.

Moving back home meant bringing all her dorm stuff with her (cram that into my house).  And when she moved out again in August 2014, we had about one month reprieve before moving DS1, K2, K3, and Toad up from South Carolina to living with us.  Cram four people and about 1/2 their house into my house.  They were here for 18 months.  When they'd been on their own again for about a year (and I still hadn't gotten my house back to pre-2013 status in terms of cleaning, schedules, and organization--plus still had some of DD1's stuff and a few stray items of DS1's family), DD1 started moving her apartment into my house in preparation for living with us while she student taught at a nearby school district.  She stayed until after her wedding in May 2018, and while she now lives several hours away where she and Honorary Son are permanently employed, because they are renting a lot of her stuff still remains at this little place here.

Sigh.  And that, my friends, is how this relatively small project sat for six years before I got around to finishing it.

All it needed was a border, batting (which I've had for years), and backing fabric. I admit that it was probably the border fabric that delayed the project the longest.  The few times  over the years that I took my pieced top out and looked at it, I just couldn't find any fabric in my stash that I thought went well enough to be the border.  And then this summer, I found the most fabulously perfect backing fabric, and that gave me new insight into what a good border would be.  It just so happened that in the previous year, I'd picked up a small cut of fabric somewhere (garage sale?  thrift shop?  end of bolt bin at Walmart?) that was a good match with the backing and while not typically what I would of considered to coordinate with the front, it did go very well.  I think of the 'pattern' on that particular red piece of fabric as lava.  Hot, spewing lava. 

Anyway,  I got that small--45"x 45"--project completed in the last few days.  It is no longer a UFO.  Now it's a small quilt/accent piece/throw/something the grandkids are going to want.

Top

Loud lizard backing

Backing close up

That's a little bit of weight off my shoulders.  One less undone thing nagging at me.  And it's something bright to display in my house during these fairly dull gray winter months.

The Elusion of Time

I was thinking this week how now that the grass is green (and tall!! DH had forgotten that the battery on the mower died last fall and that he needed to buy a new one before he could mow once the grass started growing again), and the trees also are green with unfurling leaves, and it stays light until after 9 p.m., that I don't wake up in the morning feeling this overwhelming need to rush rush rush in order to get my daily to-do list accomplished.  Not that I'm moving in slo-mo, but almost like the day is.  It feels like my day is so much longer, so much less harried. Almost like I have all the time in the world.

It is amazing what long hours of day light can do.  In the winter months, I feel so confined, so pressured, and in retrospect I think it has a lot to do with what I need to pack into the few hours of daylight each day.  We have electricity and lights, of course, but it isn't the same for me as working in natural light.  When it's dusky, I'm tired.  When the sun is up (even if it's obscured by clouds, like it is the majority of the winter months), I'm trying to not only do barn work as my job, but also the housework and outdoor work at home. And then, before DH is even home from work so we can have dinner, it's dusky and I'm tired again.  There stretches a long evening, several hours between dinner and bed time, that I try to accomplish things, but with lamps on and darkness out every window and in the corners, it always feels like there is just too much to do and not enough time.

Now, though, that we're well past the spring equinox, and daylight hours seriously outnumber the hours of darkness in each twenty-four we get, I have to remind myself that it's 9 p.m., time to quit working and relax a little before crawling into bed.  I'm not yawning at 5 p.m.  and longing for my bed by 8:00; no, I'm still bustling around at 8:00 happy as a clam in my endeavors.  It's almost like I elude time; like it can't find me, can't tie me down the way it does in the darker months.

It's a wonderful, freeing sense of being.

Recurring Dreams

For a while now, actually several years, I've been having weird dreams roughly once every month or two that, when I look at them as a group, all have the same or very similar theme.  They aren't happy dreams, which in itself is troubling (who likes to have disturbing dreams?  Especially regularly.)  I typically wake up from dreams like this feeling stressed, emotionally spent and unsettled for many hours afterward.

I don't get into a whole lot of superstitious stuff, or delve much into Tao, energy, aura, etc kinds of things.  However, I do believe our dreams are somewhat indicative of what our subconscious mind is concerned with.  So, to have recurring dreams on a theme is causing me to take a look at my life in general.

According to my dreams, I seem to be feeling:

--confined by family (typically in any one dream there are many members of my immediate or extended family overwhelming me with either their presence or their demands/needed care)

--hunted??? (often a feeling of being followed or having to stay one step ahead of someone trying to get to me)

--deserted by my husband (he often is in the beginning of one of these dreams, but somehow disappears leaving me to fend for myself or otherwise get myself out of a situation I don't want to be in.)

--dropped into situations without my consent (hosting large gatherings where people just start showing up unexpectedly, moving to/buying a new house I had never seen or even known we were about to move, having to share my house with one of DH's sisters and her husband and offspring because they couldn't afford their own home any longer, etc)

--having to fix things I know very little about while people around me pass by, or make demands on my time and attention, without offering me any assistance in my very vital and on a deadline repair efforts


I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of this is wrapped up in DH's ongoing long work hours and demands of his job that take him mentally away even when he is physically with me.  Also the revolving door we seem to have with our kids moving out, moving back in, moving out, maybe moving back in again for a while, or another kid moving back in simultaneously or immediately after one of their siblings moves out. . . or having the care and raising of the grandkids unexpectedly for weeks/a month+ at a time.  Add to that the fact that these moving back ins are more like having roommates than being one nuclear family again with the parents determining the rules, division of labor, what goes where, and schedule.  (I've never had a roommate--I went from my parents' house to having my own house and power, so this is really difficult for me.)  Plus the fact that we are still financially supporting several of our offspring in one way or another. . . cell phones, car insurance (and repairs), money towards unexpected expenses while still in college. 

And most of all my increasing need for my own space/empty nest/life.  I know that the longer this goes on, the more my children get into their twenties and seem to be less self- and financially sufficient than I was at the same age, the more often these dreams come.  I wonder if this is the way the rest of my life is going to go; if they will never actually grow up and leave me to my own pursuits (and monetary plans).  Because if so, honestly, this isn't what I want.  It isn't the way I raised them; it isn't the the plans DH and I had for the second half of our lives.

That's just our own descendants.  I can't even start on our own brothers and sisters and how their life choices affect us now and again. . .

It Began With Twenty Pounds of Alfredo Noodles

Twenty pounds.  Twenty freaking pounds!  Of 1.5" long noodles.  In plastic bags that had been closed with those sticky tie things and a sticker that said "repack date 12/09/2017".  Short, pre-broken into the size that (I think, because I rarely buy those things) the noodles in the packages of seasoned noodle side dishes come in. With some green--I assume spinach?--noodles randomly mixed throughout the normal colored noodles.

You see, DH was up north last weekend, assisting in the cutting down of a very old, very tall, very leaning over a building oak tree at his mother's place.  And when he left to come home, she sent home a box--a grocery store banana box--of 'stuff I ordered through the food bank'.  Being such a large box, he threw it in the truck without looking at it, assuming it held a variety of edible items.

*For reasons DH and I haven't been able to figure out, and have never found offered around us no matter how we search, up where Mother-in-Law lives, she apparently can order items from the local food bank.  The offerings vary widely month to month, and are typically close dated, but are very very cheap.  Like the time she got a case of Betty Crocker cookie mixes for something like $3.  Now, sometimes she actually gets stuff we are willing to eat and appreciate her generosity in purchasing and sharing with us (she rarely eats any of it herself, but buys it with the intent to give it to her kids and grandkids). But more often than not, its not something we really use often--or at all, like the gallon jug of buffalo wing sauce. . .the institutional sized cans of fruit cocktail. . . the Suddenly Salad packets. . . we did use the restaurant portioned packages of 2 saltines per package--all 200 some--but it was annoying to unwrap enough to put into a soup bowl, not to mention having all those stupid plastic wrappers to throw away. . .*

Anyway, to continue my story here, DS2 and Surprise had also gone up north, meeting DH at a spot along the way that was equidistant from both our houses and riding together the remaining distance to Mother-in-Law's.  When they split up again on the way home, DS2 grabbed four bags of the Alfredo noodles from the opening in the top of the box to take home for him and Surprise to eat.  Upon his arrival at this little place here, DH plopped the box on the island in my kitchen, and said "Mom sent some noodles and stuff".

Oh great.  "Mom sent" is a phrase that anymore sends chills down my spine.  She means well, she really does, but what she sends typically ends up being my problem to store, use up, or find a means of disposing of (ironically, the stuff she buys at such a bargain from her food bank is not acceptable for donation at any food bank I've talked to down here; typically because of the expiration date or method of packaging.)

Trying to mask the heavy sigh that involuntarily escaped my body, I started pulling baggies of noodles out of the box.  And kept pulling baggies of noodles out of the box.  All that was in the box was baggies of noodles.  One pound of noodles in each bag, twenty bags in all.  Of little flippin' noodles!  What in the h@*! am I going to do with all these stupid short noodles?  It's not like we go through a ton of pasta now that it's usually just DH and I eating at home.  And this size and shape of noodle isn't exactly a commonly called for ingredient in recipes. 

Twenty pounds!  How long is it going to take me to use up 20 pounds of these things?  And where am I going to store them?  What bug-proof, mouse-proof container am I going to store them in for the eons (noodles do stay good a number of years) it is going to take to eat them up.  Because DS2 was only willing to take 4 bags, and that was before I counted them.  DS1 politely but firmly declined when I offered to send some home with him (I've been taking the grandkids to school this week, as well as having Toad after school on the mornings he has preschool as well as all day on the days he doesn't have preschool).  It would cost too much to mail some to DD2 at college, plus her semester ends in a little over a month.  And DD1 currently lives here, so I can't foist any off on her.  And, guess what, my local food bank isn't interested in them, thank you!

So, my house is now cluttered with twenty pounds of noodles I have little use for.  That was just the beginning of this week which has increasingly tried to bury me.  Noodles.  Then there was the phone call "Hey, our babysitter is gone on vacation this week; can you take the kids to school in the mornings, pick up Toad from preschool, and keep him with you when he's not in school?".  So I've had extra duties there as well as rearranging my schedule at work to line up with having the grandkids daily all week.  I have given up any hope of riding my horse until April.

Add to that taking DD1 and her wedding gown to a tailor to have the bustle put in her wedding dress (the wedding is seven weeks from this weekend!!).  Because she is teaching full time, the only times she is available for appointments is four o'clock in the afternoon or later.  Wednesday was our appointment with the tailor, and since I needed gas for the suburban, and according to Gas Buddy it was nearly a full 30 cents a gallon cheaper in the town the tailor is located than it is near me, I said "hey, let's just take my suburban," planning to fill it up over by the tailor (because a 27 gallon tank fill at 30 cents less per gallon adds up to a handful of cash saved).  I didn't count on, roughly 1/4 mile before the tailor, getting a puncture in one of my tires that had me pulling into the parking lot with a rapidly (and loudly) deflating tire.  Add one phone call to the insurance company for roadside assistance to my all ready packed schedule.  Then wait for their service truck to come and help me put on the spare (which was pretty much rusted into it's little holding bracket under the suburban. . . )

Oh!  And I almost forgot about getting a few propane tanks refilled so I can keep boiling sap (because it ran really good over the weekend and by Monday night I had 45 gallons of sap piled up in my garage) and apparently one tank got overfilled somehow and had liquid propane getting in the line, which nearly completely froze the regulator and at one point I had two foot high flames shooting out around my boil pot whenever the gas line sputtered.

I am the god of hellfire. . .

I think I need a vacation.  No noodles.  No kids. No driving. No sap boiling.  Alone.  Somewhere warm and sunny.  With a book, or knitting, or hey, what about time to actually ride my horse?!?

Overworked Husband

When your husband is being eaten by his job. . .  It begins slowly, usually so vaguely that you can't tell the symptoms for what they are.

He's forgetful, and you wonder if perhaps he has early onset Alzheimers.  He forgets that you told him the brakes are squeaking on your vehicle (because brakes are so easy they are not something we pay someone else to fix) and when you finally say "The brakes started grinding today, can you please look at them?" he admonishes you for 'not telling him sooner'.  He forgets that he was going to look at the door that won't stay latched and gets irritated when it becomes impossible to even wiggle/lift/shove into a closed state.  He forgets you both had agreed to put this or that outing or event on the calendar as something fun you were going to do together and doesn't understand why you are so upset about something that he swears he never even discussed didn't come to pass.  He forgets that he said this winter, or this spring, or this summer, was finally the time you were going to purchase this thing, or do that home improvement project and tells you that it hasn't actually been two/three/six years since that thing/project was scheduled to be achieved when you bring up the subject.

He's short tempered, even after he's had his morning coffee.  He's grouchy in the morning, touchy after work, and doesn't even become fully human on the weekends any more.

He's hard to wake up in the mornings.  His alarm clock, sitting a foot from his ear, wakes up everyone in the house before he actually hears it enough to wake up rather than slam his hand down on the snooze button and continue sleeping.  When you try to wake him up, he mumbles work related questions at you. You can carry on an entire conversation with him if you can come up with enough technical work terms and he's still asleep during all this. And when he finally does wake up, he demands to know WHY??? his alarm clock didn't go off, or WHY??? you didn't wake him up sooner, and now he's late.

Nothing can please him.  Any attempt at cooking his favorite meal, or doing a spectacular cleaning job on the house goes unnoticed.  Instead of seeing the extra effort to cheer him up when he's down (and being cheered up in the slightest), he finds the next negative thing in sight to complain about.  It's classic come home from work to yell at the wife and kick the dog. Except the longer it goes on, and the fact that you don't have a dog makes it feel more like yell at the wife then kick the wife, and soon you are struggling with your own overwhelm and insecurities.

Eventually, you see the pattern, remember the symptoms from the last time his job became more than one man should have to handle on an ongoing basis.  And you begin to understand it's not you that he's unhappy with, it's his job.  Nevertheless, it still feels like its you who isn't making the grade.  A grumpy and overwhelmed man who doesn't recognize that he's overwhelmed and therefore grumpy is a very difficult person to live with.  To want to live with.

You love him so much, yet at times like this you just want him to go away because he's stressing you out with his stress (the stress he denies he is having), and you need a break more than you need his help or companionship.  Not that he's around enough physically, and certainly not mentally, to help much and he's not in a companionable mood more often than not.  Time spent talking with him should not feel like you are at some business meeting checking action items off of an agenda and making lists of what the next steps are.  Especially when he's in manager/boss mode and it feels like he's giving you an armload of work to accomplish and report back to him on.

What do you do?  Well, you hang in there, knowing this too shall pass.  Hoping that it shall pass SOON, and remembering that you really do love this man, that he really is a good person, and once the job stress subsides, you will have your companion back.

Fitting it in

I was running through my list of unfinished blog post drafts, and came across this one.  It had the above title, and then, here, in the body of the text was this and just this:

(Canning)

My intent, back whatever day probably five or six months ago that I jotted down the quick little bit, was to write a helpful post on how I fit everything into my busy days when the garden is pumping out produce and there is all this amazing, wonderful fresh food that needs to be canned or otherwise preserved. But, I obviously never got around to writing more than that one word.

Now, sitting indoors on a real Winter day; a cold, gray, gloomy Winter day, I see that while my intention was to be upbeat and full of inspiring advice, the plain truth of it is that I, and most likely you too, just can't fit it all in.

Good intentions don't always come to fruition. Some of that awesome fresh garden bounty goes to waste before we can get it properly taken care of.  Things come up that interrupt our plans.

I don't know about you, but I'm guessing that, like me, you get a little depressed, a little disappointed, a little hard on yourself when that happens.  No one likes to throw out food that was once perfectly good, but now is spoiled because you just didn't get it used up in time.  No one likes missed opportunities.

There is always so much to do, so much that can be done, so much that probably should be done, so much that we want to do, that we are not humanly capable of doing it all. We have to prioritize, shuffle schedules, and do what we can.

As I sit here, at the cusp of another gardening season, I make notes, make lists:

• how to keep the garden weeded better (MULCH!!), 
• average annual date of ripeness for each crop (why I put the actual month and day canned on the lid of each home processed jar or freezer bag rather than just the year--I can look at the jars/bags and see the date range that crop came in the previous year), 
• better watering strategies for the areas of the garden that don't always get enough moisture throughout the growing season (again, MULCH!, as well as maybe a different type of sprinkler, or at the least a different sprinkler arrangement.)

Weeding takes TIME, so if I can cut down on the amount of weeding needing to be done, I can fit in more.  Watering also takes TIME, whether it be moving hoses and sprinklers to different parts of the garden, or just being around to turn the water on and off at the right times of the day, if I can water more effectively I can gain a bit of time for fitting in more.

Armed with my approximation of what will need picking and processing when, I can then go to my calendar and see what non-food related events are going on at the same time.  I can try to keep my schedule as loose as possible during the expected heavy food processing dates.  Work is a must, but other than that, I can attempt to keep my daily allotment of 24 hours as open as I can to accommodate putting up food to last us until the next years harvest of each crop.

Will there be unexpected events that cause me to stray from my good intentions?  You bet there will.  Maybe its unfavorable weather, maybe its unpredictable family issues, maybe its a too good to resist invitation to spend a weekend or several weekdays camping or kayaking.  Life is never perfect.  I just have to fit in what I can, and hopefully not waste too much.

I also need to remember that I can combat garden waste in a number of ways when my life just doesn't coordinate with keeping a perfect garden and being on top of harvesting and canning or freezing things.

• If I am going to be out of town for some can't miss event, I can ask neighbors or friends if they would like to come harvest and keep for themselves the ripe fruit or veggies while I'm gone.
• If things get overripe, I can see if the chickens (or deer, if I take it to the woods) will eat it.  This way it get turns into protein that I can eat at a later time.
• I can compost it, and once that compost is finished aging, I can spread it over the garden to feed future crops.

Killing Me

I haven't posted much at all about DS1 and K2's situation.  Mostly, when I actually do find some time to post, I just post about the grandkids being here with DH and I.  I haven't said much because, well, it's their personal business not open for public discussion. Especially when CPS is involved.

However, all this stress is really taking its toll on me.  In light of K2's mental struggles, my own depression is a walk in the park.  And yet, I feel that depression, and its affects on my daily life, getting stronger and stronger.  I'm battling my own dark hole, a yawning chasm that seems to be stalking me, lurking just out of sight around every corner.  I cannot fall in that pit.  How will I be there for the grandkids, and an acceptable caretaker in the sight of CPS, if I am in that pit?

And yet, often talking about depression is a very effective way of fighting it, of clawing my way up the walls of the pit, of gaining ground until the top is reached and firm footing once again achieved.  What a catch 22. To talk is taboo (they can't know I'm less than perfect, flawed), yet to talk is often a solution.

On the assumption that I'm not alone in this frustrating vicious cycle of stress and depression, I'm going to choose to talk, albeit somewhat vague on details for the sake of privacy.  Also, because it feels like I'm getting to the point where mental stress is piling up into physical breaking down of my body.  Weight gain, digestive troubles, unsatisfactory sleep, lethargy. . . I bet you know the list.  The symptoms.  The feeling.  The point at which it feels like dealing with other people is literally killing me.

When DH and I went away for a week in January, he made some startling and somewhat unsettling observations.  I've been thinking a lot about them, which has led to some conclusions.  

First observation, I rarely laugh.  I did, more than once, spontaneously bust out in laughter while on vacation.  Something I just don't do at home.  That, in itself, is sad.  Sad that on a day to day basis, I find few things to smile about, and even fewer things that create such joy in me as to generate a laughing response.

Second observation, I never want to try new things.  I may very well be tired of my rut, but I am in no way open to the suggestion of something different. Truth be told, I'm afraid of wasting my precious time on what may likely be another unlikable/unhappy experience.  On this past vacation, I actually relaxed enough that not only was I open to attempting what could possibly be an overwhelming social situation (actually walking on the chaotic Las Vegas Strip to see things like the Bellagio's fountain and the statues at Caesar's Palace) I even willingly tried new to me cuisine: we ate Indian and I loved it (although I confess we only ordered the least spicy sounding things on the menu).  As soon we boarded the plane to come home, though, the funk enveloped me and I was back to shut-down mode.

A few things I wrote in my notebook about these feelings:

• frozen with fear of unpleasantness
• bundle of nerves, always anxious, no control over schedule  
• If I do get 'a break' I feel like I must either catch up on all that I haven't been able to maintain in terms of housework, or I feel like I must do a "fun" task now, before the opportunity gets taken away from me.  Yet, I never enjoy that "fun" task because of the 'do it now' aspect.
• a desperate need for creativity and physical outlets

Third observation, I don't have the stamina I had 5 years ago.  Or even 2-3 years ago.  I get out of breath so much easier. My body hurts. My head does too, more often than it should, and now my eyes seem to be joining the rebellion.  Yes, my weight has increased quite a bit from what it was 5 years ago (when I was working out pretty much daily and even ran a 5k).  It's not just the weight, though, because my weight has held pretty steady for the past 2 years while my breathing has gotten worse.  Bad enough that I'm contemplating requesting an allergy test, because I suspect I've either developed allergies or asthma (both of which more than one of my offspring have, but I never did before).  And if it's not allergies or asthma, then I have a lung problem, which is a scary prospect. 

It was a rude awakening when, while hiking, DH commented that in another 5-10 years he and I probably wouldn't be able to get out and hike in places like we gravitate toward (the unpaved, steeper, more challenging trails).  His point; we aren't in shape for it now, and we're only going to get older and more decrepit in the years to come.

Whoa.  Old, I can't do anything about.  But decrepit has never been on my itinerary. Especially not if we're talking somewhere between 2023 and 2028! I've said, more than once, that I don't want to die from some debilitating disease or waste away for years before my death.  My preference has always been for a 'sudden and tragic' death.  (Apparently when I went off that horse in December, DH feared my wish was about to come true.)  A heart attack in my 80's, while riding my then favorite horse, is totally okay with me, as long as I'm gone before I fall off and hit the ground (because hitting the ground hurts, and the whole idea behind a sudden death is that it doesn't hurt. Fine one minute, gone--and blissfully unaware--the next).  A heart attack at 46 (or 51 or 56) because I'm dealing with too much stress is absolutely not okay.  Something's gotta change.

The weight is going to have to come off.  Some of my go-to stress eating favorites are going to have to just not be made or otherwise brought into my house. I've never been a drinker, never understood the allure that it seems a lot of people find in alcohol, in daily drinks after work to help them relax.  I do, however, find my fix in chocolate and other sweets.  *sigh*  In fact, I rarely will just drink a beer, glass of wine, or mixed drink by itself.  No, I need food with it to find the alcohol desirable.

Finding time for regular exercise is going to have to happen somehow (although, during the times the grandkids stay with us nearly round the clock, I just don't know how feasible that will be; I can barely fit in time to go to work and next to no time for riding). Riding 4-5 times a week helps, but after a while, that becomes a set point and I need to add different types of exercise to it in order to continue  weight loss.  How to carve out 1-2 hours a day, every day,  for sweat-inducing, heart-pounding exercise?  Especially if the grandkids need to return to my care on short notice and for an unknown length of time?

So, I guess, if talking about my stress, my depression, is the only change I can make right now, because a lot of the sources of the stress and depression are out of my control (ahem, how other adult members of my family choose to behave), I'll have to work with what outlets I have.

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.

Why It's Dangerous For Me To Be Home Alone (for an extended period of time)

DH has been out of town for two days.  He went up north to help his mom with a project, and I (not having paid vacation days or anyone to do my work at this little place here in my absence) stayed home.  Alone.

That tends to be a bit dangerous.  Not because I am in any physical danger without DH.  Our neighborhood is so safe I've never been worried about being 'just a woman alone' no matter if its day or night.  This is a sleep-with-your-windows-open kind of place.  Anyone out wandering the neighborhood at night is either shining deer or hunting raccoons.

Me being home alone is dangerous because I have time to think!  No one else's schedule to work around, no one else dirtying the house or dishes (yay, less time spent cleaning!!), no one else interrupting my train of thought.

Of course, this also means there's no one around to split the heavy chores with, like getting the entire garden planted this week (since it stopped raining and the weather warmed up enough to safely put out delicate plants like tomatoes and peppers).  And that's where the dangerous part starts to happen.

Because, while I was digging shallow trenches to (finally) plant the potatoes in at 3" below the surface of the garden, I realized there has got to be a better way of doing this.  Back when the kids were younger and living at home, I had slave child laborers to assist in the planting.  I wasn't digging over 500 row feet of trench--and then putting the potatoes in every 12" and shoveling the dirt back over them--all by myself.  Surely there is a better way to do this next year, and avoid the aching back I am now experiencing (with still about 100' of potatoes to plant tomorrow).

Some of the ideas I came up with:

• declare a garden planting weekend and require my kids to come home to help (surely I'm old enough for them to come help with big projects, right?  DH and his siblings were going back to their childhood home to help their mom with stuff as far back as when he and I were in our mid-20s).
• get DH to do the trench digging.
• rent or otherwise get a hold of a trencher when it's time to plant potatoes.  I'll be checking in to how much it costs to rent a Ditch Witch from the local rental place.  A couple hours with that baby and I could have trenches galore!

I'm betting that DH isn't going to go for any of those ideas.  But they're out there.  And now they are recorded, so I'll remember and come back to them.

Other dangerous thoughts I've had the past two days:

• We've lived in this house nearly 14 years and DH still hasn't finished putting up the trim work.  Even though he cut all the wood (oak!!) for the window trim nearly 10 years ago. . .  Obviously we need to schedule staining and installing the trim work this summer and Just Get It Done.
• I still want a hanging porch swing for the wraparound portion of our front porch (porch swing being one of the reasons I insisted on having a covered wraparound porch when we built the house at this little place here).  We have a wedding anniversary coming up.  A porch swing would make a great anniversary present.
• I really, really hate the piece of old vinyl flooring DH put at the landing of the basement stairs/in front of the cellar door eons ago.  A largish rug or mat would look much nicer there and make me happier (instead of seeing that curling-edged asymmetrical flooring scrap every time I step off the basement stairs or go in or out of the cellar).
• If DH doesn't realize that he's gained enough weight that a decent portion of his shirts make him look like a stuffed sausage and that he shouldn't wear them to work anymore, I'll just remove those shirts from his closet and his clothing options will be things that fit better and therefore make him look a little less slobby.  (This is a good thing for his career, right?)
• Does DH (or, to be honest, I) need 15 shirt options that are low-end and kind of cheaply made (and not that great fitting)?  Wouldn't 5-7 high quality shirts be a better investment?  It's not like doing laundry more than once a week is a change in our lifestyle; the washer is right there in the basement and I regularly wash clothes twice a week anyway.  It's just that I don't iron nearly as often, which is how he ended up with so darn many shirts in the first place.
• If he's going to continue to work 50-60 hours a week, I really need to hire someone to help keep up with the outdoor work.  Or, conversely, I need to quit my job so that I have 15-20 more hours a week in the summer/growing season to keep up with weeding, watering, mowing, weed whipping. . .  The problem with that is my job pays the horse expenses, and I'm not ready to give up horses; plus just because he's working more hours doesn't mean he gets more pay.  Being salaried, he hasn't gotten paid overtime in nearly two decades.  Supposedly he's allowed to take paid personal days to equal his hours over 40, but it never quite works out like that.  If his programs were slow enough he could take time off regularly, he wouldn't be putting in 10-12 (or more!)  hour days to begin with.
• On a similar note, if he's too busy to have time to finish some of the indoor stuff we've had on hold for years, I'd like to hire someone to get those projects done. It really wears on me to live in/deal with a house that is still in flux.  I've had plans and even materials for window treatments (roman shades, curtains, etc) since as long ago as 2003, but have been waiting for the trim work to be put on so I had actual and precise window dimensions to work with when creating the window treatments. Not to mention how difficult it is to have the home function optimally while still in development as it were.  The study, for instance, was to have floor to ceiling built-in bookshelves on one entire wall.  That's whole lot of vertical storage space that three random sized bookshelves crammed into the room (along with the file cabinet and DH's late father's humongous steel desk) just doesn't equal.
• My barn was built 10 years ago.  At least, the shell was.  Then the recession started to impact the auto industry, and we decided to hold off on finishing it so that I could use it for horse boarding.  In the ensuing 10 years, DH has gotten less interested in me having a horse business at home, and rather likes having my barn to store a bunch of crap in.  (Ok, not crap, but stuff that really is totally unrelated to horses.  Like tree stands when it's not hunting season.  And the tractor, implements, and log splitter.)  I'm getting tired of working at other people's barns and would just like to be able to open my own, even if it's not quite as impressive as what DH and I had envisioned 10 years ago.  Water, electricity, and stalls would be nice.  Doesn't have to have a cement aisle way, matted floors in the stalls, and heated tack room with a tack cleaning area and a couch/couple of chairs to sit on).  Electric fence will do, I guess I can get along without the 5 foot high no-climb mesh fencing.
• I'm getting grumpy in my old age and less willing to wait for stuff than I was 10 years ago!

The Clutter Has Eaten My Brain

(and because it's great and very relevant theme music for this post, I provide this link for your listening pleasure.  "And the worms ate into his brain.")

DD2 has come home from college.  Her dorm room is now spread between the basement, the upstairs hallway (hopefully cleaned up by this weekend), and the bedroom both daughters shared while growing up.  The same bedroom where K3 and Toad now sleep when they spend Friday nights with us, since it is the only room with two beds.

Meanwhile, DD1's lease on her apartment where she's lived for the past two school years is up.  She is staying in Grand Rapids this summer to work,  and also take a couple final classes so she will be qualified to do her student teaching this Fall and graduate in December.  She found a sub-lease for May through the beginning of August, and rather than move her belongings twice in four months she decided to live rather minimalist over the summer, and brought most of her apartment home to me and DH. (She will most likely be living at this little place here while doing her student teaching as it is unpaid as well as more than full time work, and she will not have any income to pay a lease with, let alone buy groceries or put gas into her car to get to school/teaching and back daily).  Her love seat takes up most of the area in my living room where the toy box and buckets of Duplos for the grandkids to play with have been located since last fall.  The rest of the contents of her former apartment are in the basement (with DD2's stuff) and in their former bedroom (with DD2's stuff, and where the grandkids bunk on Fridays).

I've been trying to reorganize the necessities (a large portion of the grandkid entertainment items have moved into the dining room) so that we can all operate somewhat enjoyably on a day to day basis with all this stuff packed into my house.  But I don't think I can make it work.  Everywhere I look is stuff!  Stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff. . . Even in a tidy arrangement, it's just too much in this living space.  Everywhere I look, everywhere I turn, there's more stuff!  I can't even enjoy my own stuff (books, sewing, knitting, the computer)! My ability to operate, to think clearly, to remain sane, has gone out the window. I have no brain cells left to function.

The clutter has eaten my brain.  (Envision me singing that line like Pink Floyd.  Because yes, that's exactly what it sounded like when I said it out loud).

April Goals

April has lived up to it's reputation (April showers. . .) so far.  I think we've had rain at least half the day 4 days of the six April has given at this point.  At least the weekend was beautiful (and full of outdoor work), and this coming weekend looks promising as well.

With the wet weather, I've had lots of indoor time for thinking and planning.  Some of which has resulted in my list of goals for the month.

1. ride 12 times (barring any more lost shoes or lame horses)
2. lose 2 pounds
3. lose 1" of waist
4. walk 1/2 hr 3-4x week (wonder if walking in the woods with the grandkids on Saturday mornings counts?  I haven't so far because it's been a less than vigorous pace, but then again it is usually an hour or more, so maybe could count as 1 half-hour vigorous walk session?)
5. try 4 new recipes
6. do 1 jigsaw puzzle
7. read 2 books -- 1 non- & 1 fiction
8. 1 hr declutter/organizing per week
9. reduce anxiety
10. finish Peru socks & K3 sweater
11. plant peas, lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots & potatoes in garden
12. put the Quarter Horse up for sale

All of these goals are totally obtainable.  Not one of them is out of the question. (Well, maybe #11 is, since it is more dependent on the weather than the rest of them.  I can't plant seeds into cold,waterlogged soil. . . )

Number 9 seems a little nebulous, but if I said that it could also be listed as "be kinder to myself" or "take a nap when I need to" or "just because I did it when I was 20, 30, 40 doesn't mean I have to do it now at 45" or "just say 'not my issue'" maybe that gives you an idea of what the objective is with this one.  I, more often than not, find myself feeling over faced, exhausted, or with people trying to put more responsibility on my shoulders than necessary. 

DH and I have had a few conversations lately on where the line is between helping and enabling.  Which is sort of ironic since some of the things he would prefer me to be responsible for (versus him being responsible) could fall on the enabling side. I understand that he's kind of overwhelmed at work, but does that mean it's okay to expect me to pick up more of the tasks at home if doing so is overwhelming me? Does he really require 2-3 hours "relaxing" on the couch in front of the TV with the computer on his lap everyday after work?  Or could he, perhaps, do a few chores instead?

I won't even get into the whole when/if/how long each week we should have the grandkids over. . . that is definitely a balancing act between 'for the good of the child' and 'enabling a parent to not change their ways'.  That topic, though, is probably the biggest source of my anxiety this year.  And the impetus for the helping vs enabling conversations between DH & I. There are so many other things I'd rather spend my time with him doing than rehashing the 'what to do about the kids' topic every few days.

Another source of my anxiety is that the population of this little place here will be changing again at the end of April.  And it will be in flux for no one really knows how many months after that.  DD2 will be coming home from college when the semester ends, but then leaving for her study abroad trip a couple of weeks later.  She'll be gone for six weeks, then home for about a month before leaving to go back to college.  Right about the time DD2 heads back to the U.P., DD1 very likely will be moving home again in order to do her student teaching.  Apparently, even though student teaching is an unpaid semester of full time work, those education students doing the teaching are not allowed to work elsewhere (the premise being they are teaching all day, plus doing lesson planning and grading papers in the evenings and on weekends and so have no time for outside employment). As such, with no income, DD1 has requested to move back home for her final semester of college and has asked to be assigned to a school within a reasonable commute of this little place here.  We aren't really expecting her to move out immediately after her graduation in December, so I have no idea, once April ends, when DH & I will return to empty nest status.  There is a strong possibility that there will be a wedding for DD1 and Honorary Son before the nest is emptied again.

So, yeah, I feel that it's important for me to get a grip on my anxiety level before this month is over.  Coping mechanisms will be needed in the future for sure.

Falling Short Again

These were my official March goals:

1. Ride at least 12 times (preferably three rides a week).
2. Walk 1/2 hour 3-4x a week (actually, this was a directive from my Dr. in late February and is in effect until mid-April) plus workout at least once a week.
3. Lose 2 pounds (a February do-over).
4. Lose at least 1" from my waist (also February do-over).
5. Try one new recipe a week (need to eat more meat and veggies and less starch/pasta/potato/rice).
6. Do one jigsaw puzzle.
7. Read one novel and one horse related non-fiction from my book collection.
8. Spend at least 1 hour a week on decluttering/organizing.
9. Put the Quarter Horse up for sale (need to get current nice photos and a video of him being ridden would be helpful to speed up the sale).
10. Knit a sweater for Toad (to be an Easter gift) and at least start a sweater for K3 (hopefully also for Easter, although her end of April birthday will be a backup date).
11. Start my tomato, pepper, broccoli and cabbage seeds.

Now that March has come to an end I see that, like February, I fell a bit short of accomplishing those goals. Honestly, March was a struggle, and so far April has been fairly anxious too.  Not to blame the days I spend with Toad and K3, but a whole bunch of my (previous project/relaxation) time has gone there.  In addition to the hours they are actually here each week--typically close to 24 continuous-- at least another hour or two weekly is spent in discussion with DH that relates to them (or, rather, the parenting they are getting or not getting at home).  It's a tough time.  That's a topic for another post, one of these days, when I feel like I have an answer.  Or, at least, can write about it objectively and not sound like I am bashing anyone. Like I said, it's a tough time.

To update where I am with the goals I set for March is the topic of this particular post, so let's get on with it.

Goal #1, well, I came pretty close.  I had 9 or 10 rides out of the 12 I had set as target.  Could have made all twelve except that the Quarter Horse again lost a shoe, which resulted in three lost days that could have been (and two of them had been reserved as) riding time.  Darn all this rain and mud we've had and continue to have!!

Goal #2.  Nope, nope, big NOPE.  I have failed so bad at this.  My only hope is that the exhaustion and strong heart-pounding I feel after slogging through ankle deep mud to feed a few of the horses (who live in round the clock turnout) at the eventing barn has made up for some of those walks that didn't happen.  Honestly, just getting the morning feed done at the eventing barn and then 6-10 stalls (depending on the day) cleaned at the dressage barn have been leaving me pretty much wiped out on physical activity for the remainder of the day Monday through Friday.  And I can't wait to go back to my Dr. later this month and ask him WHY?!? I am feeling worse in terms of energy level even though I am taking both the D3 and Iron supplements he put me on back in mid-February.  Six weeks should be at least starting to make a difference, shouldn't they?  If those 'lacks' are the real problems (which I'm skeptical they are; I asked for a referral to an endocrinologist and this was the answer I was given).

Goals 3 & 4:  Depends on how you look at it.  On my official weigh and measure day (March 31st) I was up 2.5 pounds from the beginning of the month, and down slightly in measurement of various body parts (ribcage, waist, hips, thigh, upper arm. . .) and I was also on my period.  Normally I wouldn't jump on the scale again until the end of April, but that 2.5 pounds really bugged me, so on April 2nd (the end of my period) I reweighed myself and found that I weighed 3.5 pounds less than I had on the 31st, which meant a loss of one pound in the month of March--and a pretty clear indication of how menstruation can affect your weight/shape.  I didn't remeasure, so not sure what the real loss in inches for the month was.

Goal #5, met.  YAY, I got one!  New recipes were an Amish style chicken and noodles dish, a doctored up corn--who would have thought corn with onion, garlic and chives would be delicious?!? (it was awesome, definitely a keeper recipe and one I will put on the blog), a seasoned green bean recipe, and a dinner (pork chops) recipe I can't remember at the moment.

Goal #6 also met.  Doing a jigsaw puzzle has been a nice mental break. Plus, the drawers of puzzles I have in an old dresser are slowly getting emptied.

Goal #7, sort of.  I did read the novel; enjoyed it immensely.  The non-fiction book got set aside and I will have to decide if I want to keep and finish it, keep it for reference (using the index when seeking the info within) without finishing, or just get rid of it.

Goal #8 I didn't keep close track of the time, but I think I managed to pull this one off.  At least, the "Goodwill Box" in the basement has gotten a little fuller (and should be taken in for donation in April) as well as several non-usable items being disposed of.

Goal #9 has not officially happened.  I guess I did some 'research' on best place/way to market him but I haven't pulled the plug and put up a listing yet.  Partly due to that lost shoe (and resultant lameness) in the latter part of March.

Goal #10 Got this one done!  With the exception of the buttons, Toad's sweater is finished.  K3's is started.  One adjustment to the goal has been made: they will not be Easter gifts (due to how many things seem to get lost and never used at their home) but will stay at this little place here for use when the grandkids need a sweater or jacket here (weather appropriate clothing, or the lack of, is an ongoing issue when they come to visit).

Goal #11  This one also got accomplished as intended!  There are dozens of little green sprouts soaking up the sun in front of the sliding glass door in my living room.