Sittin On A Porch

Sittin On A Porch
Our little back porch

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Sweet Tea Olive

I can't believe it is Wednesday and I haven't posted since Saturday.  Maybe because I was still pretty weepy and moodied out.  I hadn't been eating and my weight had gotten down below my bottom safety number of 120.  I was still struggling with sleep and I was pretty darn miserable.  But I have managed to get a few nights of decent, not good, but decent sleep.  I moved back into my bedroom since sleeping in the other room was not helping, and I have to tell you that first night, Bob was so relieved.  He is not a Labrador that deals well with change, and even though he moved with me from my bedroom to the guestroom  and back, I wished I had had a camera to get a picture of that sweet face when we finally laid down in the bed he is more used to.  He slept through the night, no getting up and down.  Which of course helped me to sleep.  Ednarose is doing very well about sleeping through most of the night.  Not bad for less then 4 months, but she is still a baby and needs to go out sometime in the night, and by 7:00 am she is hungry.  Chews on anything she can, preferably a bone, like my arm.  So I get up and feed the kids around 7.  I think my internal clock tells me when it is 7, but I will not know for sure while Bob and Endarose are babies because they are up and ready to go.  Harry, my sweet old man, can sleep right through.  He does not get up until he hears the food bowls getting set on the floor.


Sunday was the first garden circle meeting of the year and we were making things for the upcoming District meeting here in Monticello next month.  I made quiche.  I am getting so many eggs, that anyone who invites me anywhere should be prepared for eggs.  And it is fun watching how some are still so small and others are getting to be huge.  I get a pastel green one that is extra larger and now a pale brown one that is equally huge.  The others are still more of small to medium, especially Ms Brugmansia who lays a pale turquoise blue egg.


So Monday I woke up feeling a bit better, still weepy, but less exhausted, I mowed the pasture and my strip of a back yard.  Ok, that sounds so physical, when reality is I sat on the lawn tractor and just drove it back and forth.  It is not like I am pushing a mower around the yard.  I am just sitting there.  But it was the first positive thing I have done around the place in a while.  And it felt good to feel alive again, out of the stupor of self pity weeping.


Monday was the full moon, so I made another quiche to take to the Full moon mediation.  About half of our group are hindu and do not eat meat.  I now know that many of them do not eat eggs either.  And one, does not eat eggs on Monday.  So, that was not the best choice on my part.  Those who do eat eggs enjoyed the quiche, and the sweet woman who does not eat eggs on Monday took a big piece home to have on Tuesday.  That made me smile.  It was a gorgeous night.  The meditations are so peaceful and relaxing.  The group of people is diverse but all are very kind, intelligent and very nice people.  I am very fond of this monthly event.  As I drove home, full and relaxed the moon was big and golden and was so bright that it actually had rays shooting away from it.  Reflected rays of the sun golden and clear shooting away from the moon making it look like a star.  It danced back and forth across the road and in and out of the trees.  It was solid and round, not like many full moons that look like they are floating up in the sky.  This moon looked strong and determined to follow the sun around the planet reflecting back as much light as it could.


Yesterday of course was the Y, and my trainer was telling me how exercise can help regulate my meds and maybe keep me from being so emotional.  You should have seen me on those machines.  I was like a crazy woman.  And for the first time I can actually say I feel the work out.  It is not that I am in pain, but I finally feel like I have pushed those muscles a bit.  I then went back on the elliptical machine between the chair yoga and the floor yoga because someone said they could see the difference in my behind.  I have never had a behind.  I have always been flat as a board back there, and when I got home and looked, she is right, there is actually a small, but noticeable shape.  Whoo hoo!  I am very happy about all of this, because I do not want to waste my time and money driving to the Y if I am not going to do enough to make it worth while.  But between the work out and then stretching out with the yoga, I am finally seeing a difference.  Small, but I will take it!


This morning I got up and took my walk in the morning.  I did not hurry and worry about my pace this morning.  I just wanted to get out and walk.  It was not as cool as it has been, which for me is good.  The sky was so blue and the air clear and dry.  The dirt road had so many different animal tracks, deer, fox, raccoon, dog, cat, birds of different sizes.  I love looking at tracks.  And I walk past a pasture area where someone has a fenced in area with ducks and geese and turkeys.  I love to walk past, the geese form the opening delegation to greet me and in formation honk their way up to the fence.  The ducks, with none of the pomp and formality run in and out of the geese avoiding the nips of the geese who see themselves as so much more sophisticated then these young ducks.  The noise and commotion will stir the turkeys who sit in pairs and singles strung out along the fence line, with one turkey always on the wrong side of the fence.  Isn't there always one?

Anyway, I have no idea if this is the same turkey or if they take turns getting lost on the other side of the fence, but as the geese call the fowl to order the lone turkey will then run back and forth and back and forth trying to get back in with the other turkeys.  Sometimes it remembers to fly over, other times, it wears itself out with the worry and will just fold itself back up and lay down.  I love to be greeted by these beautiful creatures, who obviously understand that a human means treats, but so far I have not brought any bread or other food to share with them.  I am so afraid something will happen to one of them, and I will be blamed for it.   I would so love to take along a couple slices of bread and throw it over the fence.  Maybe if I ever see the human in charge of these birds I will ask if it is OK.



After my walk, I met my friend Carolyn at the Rosemary Tree for lunch and then went with her to the Wednesday sewing group.  This is quite an active group of woman, most of whom are working away on their quilts.  A few work on other projects.  I finished a scarf on my knitting board and started another one.  I also was able to check out of the library, The warmth of other suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  I had heard her do an interview on NPR several months back and I loved listening to her talk about recreating the cross country trip one of the people in her book took from the deep south out to California.  He became a popular physician in California, something he did not have the chance to do in the south where he had come from.  She took her parents with her on this trip and after several days, they just laid it on the line.  They appreciated that she wanted to experience what he had gone through driving cross country where most restaurants and hotels did not allow African Americans.  They said that because of people like him, they could now eat in the restaurants and sleep in a bed in a hotel, and they were ready, enough of this sleeping in the car and stopping in small stores to pick up food to eat on the road.  I am so excited to get started reading it.


The other special thing about going to the sewing group was Penny Hacket came in to change some of the bulletin boards from summer to fall themes.  She has a chicken board where she has made all kinds of chicken art.  One is made out of a crossword puzzle, another out of comics.  She had a couple of amazing ones made by leaf pressing.  She is an art teacher here in Jefferson County.  Anyway, she took one look at me and said, "I know you."  I looked at her and thought that she did look familiar, but could not place her.  Then the light went on over her head and she just beamed at me.  "You are Christopher Miller's grandmother.  He is the most polite child I have ever met.  He had the nicest manners of any child I have ever known."  I beamed back, and explained, that actually I was his aunt, but that he was one of the nicest children in the world and how nice to have her remember him and tell me that.


I came home with full intention of doing things around the house, but instead I stayed busy, but I am not sure what all I did.  I know I was able to catch up with some friends.  I have so many friends I have not talked to in so long that live within an hour of me, but I have not heard from them, and I am going to have to keep hunting to see if I can find their phone numbers. I had them at work, but those are still packed away from when I left the office.  I know that the phone works both ways, I wish they would call and say hello.  And I have got to go through those boxes and see if I can find their numbers.


I did finally go out to the Airstream yesterday and see what was inside.  I did not stay long.  Larry's shoes are sitting right next to the bed where he left them.  His clothes right were he dropped them.  He had only lived in the trailer a day or two in Weeki Wachee before going to Hospice, and everything was just as he left it.  Just like he was planning on coming back.  I fled the trailer and back into the house.  I had asked Richard and Colleen to leave it as it was because I felt like it would give me more closure, as I go through his things, donating that which could benefit someone else, and discarding that which is well used and worn out.  I need to be able to finally close the door on us once and for all, and it is difficult, but something I long to do, so that I can move on with my life.  Once I can get the Airstream cleaned out, I want to sleep out there one weekend with the dogs.  To see if I can claim back what once was mine and to move past the sad and bad moments and forward into happy memories and new moments.  I love Airstreams and I have 2.  One that took a hard hit from Hurricane Charlie, and this one.  My dream has always been to be able to move out into my airstream when I could no longer live by myself and let whoever is kind enough to come and stay and help me to have the "house".  My house is a single wide, but it is a house of sorts, and I always thought that whoever does come to help could have their life and privacy and I mine, each in our own place.  And even though my Airstream will not follow me to many adventures around this beautiful country like once dreamed of many years ago by a couple that was in love at the time.  I can sit in my airstream and remember the trips that we did take, which were many, and always full of adventure and joy.


Now to sleep and maybe dream of these places.  If not, simple good dreams would be welcome and a night of rest.  I am eating better, in that I am able to actually eat and enjoy it somewhat.  I do notice that at some point in each meal when the plate is about half empty, I sort of focus on getting the food in my mouth and keeping it there.  I am not hungry, and it no longer tastes good, but if I stopped eating when I feel full or when the food quits tasting good, then I will starve away to nothing.  But I am trying.  And tomorrow is another day.  And I will go to the Y, and then tomorrow night to the Opera House for rehearsal and life will give me possibilities.


Ednarose, who is growing up fast and sturdy and strong.  She has legs like a baby mountain goat and climbs on everything.  I caught her the other day trying to get from the kitchen cabinet on top of the refrigerator.  She is amazing how well she climbs.  But she is sweeter then ever and is learning so many things so fast and I need to get some pictures of her.  


Not now, now I need to sleep.
The tea olive scent is drifting in through the windows and it is one of my favorite
scents in the whole world
The cicadas are buzzing and it is time
sweet sleep

1 comment:

  1. And I wish that for you- sweet, sweet sleep. I am looking forward to Friday.

    ReplyDelete