Coming Undone and Coming Home

Good Morning -

I know. I was on that weekly roll for a couple of weeks and then fell off the routine wagon last week. I had myself a little therapeutic break through last week and realized that I've been putting so much energy into trying to do this anticipatory grieving process well (read: perfectly. Yes, actually, I am a recovering over-achiever. Why?) that I've ended up making myself a little batty.

By trying to do well with the certain sibling meanness, with the complicated relationship with my Dad, with the changing relationship with my Mom, with keeping it together enough that I didn't totally lose the plot, I've managed to not do well any one thing (purposely split infinitive there. There's "to do" and then, sometimes, there's "to not do"). True, it's been a fine, fine distraction from the feelings that come with the sibling meanness and the future passing of my Dad, but definitely there's been a price for dodging those feelings.

Had this been a shorter process, I might have been able to pull off this ridiculous balancing act ("But to what end?" is a valid question), but I've been at this since his diagnosis in December and am worn out from the trying to hold it together and not let the meanness get the best of me and continue to come with love to my Dad, regardless of whatever he was bringing to the experience.

So it's a good thing we've got a trip out of town this week. My partner is doing grant review in D.C., so I'm going to connect with her there, spend a couple of days working remotely while exploring that Post-W city, and then we're going to southeastern PA for a long weekend with her brothers and friends.

The time away will give me that space to come undone some and regain some perspective. My Dad is dying as he lived (most do), so it's time I release any hope-hinged expectations for a death-bed epiphany in which he suddenly comes well to our relationship. Those expectations just slow both of us down from the task at hand. And my mean siblings? Time for some perspective on that too. Certainly, certainly their disappearing of me and two of my other sisters during this time is painful and mean, but it's also their (bad) choice to do so. I can have the pain around that without holding any expectations that they'll suddenly remember our shared history together, and stop being such jack-asses.

Okay, let's talk Virgens.

The one above is from Sunday, April 5th and represents the trip my partner and I did up to Windsor Dairy family ranch to get a leg of lamb for Easter. After we picked out our lamb, we spent a few minutes enjoying the baby goats and lambs in their pens. Oh, the newborns are so little - Boris is bigger.

This is from Monday, April 6th, and is a representation of how I felt after dealing with our tech guy at work. I don't want to make the false leap and say that all tech guys are jack-asses with zero emotional intelligence and communication skills, but the dealing with this particular techie that day pushes me right up to that declaration.

I'm quite sure that it must be frustrating to deal with computer-knowledge inferiors all of one's day, but it seems like that's their job. If we all had the skills they did, they wouldn't be needed. Also, it does no good for them to have those skills if they can arbitrarily decide that one is not worthy of their support. Again, it's not enough to just have the knowledge, one also has to be able to impart it to those who don't. They hold a lot of power in their dark little caves full of cables, hard-drives, and mountain dew bottles and, frankly, I think it's time to take some of that back.

Tuesday, April 7th. Not sure, exactly, the "why" of this one, but those neat little agricultural lines bring me peace.

Wednesday, April 8th - long bike ride. No, never during it did I dismount, throw my bike over my shoulder, and scurry up a dirt hill, but as I pedaled up some paved hills, I felt like maybe I was doing something that physically impressive. It's all about perspective.

Thursday, April 9th. Foggy-brain day. I think these clouds represent the storm brewing in my "How to Process a Complicated Passing Perfectly" bad idea.

Friday, April 10th. We had the best date night in Boulder, which started with dinner at Sushi Tora. Mmmm and wow. After dinner, we walked along the creek, up to campus, around the campus for a Let's Remember tour of my undergrad days at CU, and then a stroll back down to the car and home. Such a good night. I love how much I love spending time with my love. Oh, she does me wonders, she does.

Saturday, April 11th. It was an unfettered day, which led to driving around the front range looking at farmettes for sale. We went inside one, but decided that it needed far too much Modern Love to make it worth pursuing. The good news is that we're just checking things out and don't have to buy any time soon, so there's no pressure. I think it's the best way to house hunt - just for fun with no obligations to honor or time-lines to follow. The looking has inspired us to co-create a collage of what it is exactly that we want in our home, which sounds like a great creative outlet.


Sunday, April 12th. Easter and baking and cooking and enjoying the day with my partner and sister.

Monday, April 13th. My partner prefers working with seedlings than seeds, so had started a bunch inside when it was still cool. Sadly, our youngest cat, Squeak, thinks there's no finer delicacy than the tender greens of a freshly sprouted seed, so she's done a fine job of decimating the tender shoots. This disheartened my partner enough that she was just going to give up on them, so I asked if she would mind if I threw them in the ground to see what would happen. She agreed and so I did. We've since had a big snow, so we'll see how much the insulation cloth I tossed over them kept them warm.

Tuesday, April 14th. I spent the day working on future plans, which are still fairly loose and nondescript. This areal shot of a river sums them up well - there's definitely pattern and direction, but it's loose, loose, loose.

Wednesday, April 15th. My partner and I got into a discussion about couples who live separately after reading the Dan Savage for the week. We both decided that we love living together and wish that we had a Hot Mess Yurt in the backyard for those times that we each need a solitary place to completely come undone. We'll add that to the collage.

Thursday, April 16th. This was therapeutic break-through day, which is why we have a roaring lion. I tend to chose expression besides roaring, but this family business is opening me up to the idea of the catharsis in a good freak-out. As with most things, I'll probably end up somewhere in the middle.

Friday, April 17th. Big, wet snow. I went into work because I had to get over to the vet to get some antibiotics for Boris (his vet is still in Denver - once you pay that much to a place, you feel inclined to stick with them to the end, even after you move to a different town). It was a rough day for public transportation, but it beat trying to drive in the slurpee-coated roads.

Saturday, April 18th. Honey. I used to hate this sweetener, but have in the last year come to love it. I haven't totally replaced sugar with it for baking, but otherwise use it for drinks and such. On my to-do list is to learn how one bakes with it (is it a direct substitution?). We'll see.

Easter eggs. I had these great ideas about decorating sans-PAAS this year and this is the result of boiling eggs wrapped in red onion skins and cheesecloth. It's not the hot and heavy magenta I was imaging, but it's also not a chemical bath and not bad for the first natural dye attempt.

Autumn, Boris, and Squeak. The power of a nap won out over any animosity they have for each other.

Boris - my, he's sweet.

Monster (a.k.a. Squeak). I was on the bed this morning getting a shot of the clothesline when she hopped up and started dancing around on me with her tiny paws and sharp claws. Most of the shots didn't happen because she was moving too quickly, but this gets the idea across.

Editor's Note - the image of the clothes strung across the high bedroom ceiling has been removed due to some previously unnoticed adult content in the shot. A good reminder to crop photos post-caffeine. Use your imagination to picture a high pointed ceiling with two clothes lines strung across it, hanging over the bed as you read the caption below.
It was a tenement housing weekend. I keep meaning to investigate that word and make sure that it doesn't have some sort of really bad history that would make it not worth using to describe our inside clothesline, but haven't yet. Someday we'll have a basement with a wood-burning stove and inside clotheslines, but for now we have this.

I get great pleasure from hanging my clothes to dry. Not only is it environmental and frugal, but it creates pause, which I need from time to time.

I was thinking about wood-burning stoves the other day and remembered the phases I went through with the one we had in our kitchen growing up. I moved from being a child and thinking that everyone had a wood-burning stove in their kitchen, to being a teen and feeling like a hick for having one after telling a friend and getting junior high mean girl response to Things That Are Different, to now being an adult and craving multiple wood burning stoves through-out the house (basement, kitchen, living room). Thank goodness for maturity and the freedom that comes with liking what you like, others be damned. It's good to come home and create home.

Here's to that. Here's to liking what you like. Here's to shaking off others' limiting ideas of What's Supposed to Be. Here's to laundry inside and here's to joy in the little things.