Spring

Happy Sunday to You -

We were all hunkered down here yesterday for the big blizzard that wasn't and even when it was apparent later in the day that there was no blizzard (or even snow), we couldn't shake ourselves from Snowed-In Mode. Pajama-clad and expressing a more European approach to daily hygiene, we lazed about eating, reading, napping, cuddling, and such, and such.

It was grand and just what I needed because I've been carrying a big ol' bucket of sadness since Friday. I don't know why Friday - I worked from home, it was quiet, there wasn't anything exceptional about it, or particularly sad. Doesn't matter - all day I felt like if I wasn't careful I'd slosh this big well of tears all over the place.

I mean, yes, I'm sure the sadness has to do with the anticipatory grieving that I'm doing. Decisions were made Friday not to do another attempt at shooting chemo right at my Dad's liver tumors via the hepatic vein, so I'm sure if I sat still with this sadness for a minute, it would quickly and quietly lead me to that bit of news.

It was through a conversation with my mom that I got this latest bit of news and, in the telling, she made the really good point that it takes a body 9 months to fully develop, so it's going to take a similar amount of time to shut down. She felt like this latest decision put him in his final trimester, so to speak.

I don't know the medical preciseness of that, but don't care much. The cyclical essence makes sense to me. It does, anyway, until I look at my Dad and see how tired and thin he is and wonder how he'll make it another 24 hours, let alone 3 months. Cancer is a comprehensive killer with a voracious appetite. It's no way to exit this world, if you can prevent it.

So, big sadness. Big enough that I'm overriding my normal sense of privacy to write about it here, because to attempt to write about something else would be inauthentic and that's not something I can do anymore. I used to could do a fine, fine version of Let's Pretend and Let Me Distract You While I Distract Myself, but I'm just no good at those games anymore.

Let's do, though, go on to these Virgens. We've talked enough about this for now.

The one above is from Sunday, March 29th and I think was just about beauty and details and looking closely. That's what I've just now decided it was about anyway. Art is nice that way - constantly open to new interpretation.

This is from Monday, March 30th and is an image from a Mother Earth article about a woman whose blog I've been following lately (this is her rental barn from when she lived in ID). She wrote a book my partner read (Made from Scratch) about her adventures homesteading and I've found myself drawn to her story.

What's compelling about her story is that she is young (pre-30) and does all this great homesteading at a rental property while working a 40-hr week web design job in town. And I'm not talking that she knits a hat or two, bakes bread from time to time, and grows some tomatoes and herbs. No - this woman has three sheep for wool, rabbits also for wool (is it wool from a rabbit too, or is that word specific to sheep?), chickens for eggs, bees for honey, a big garden, two dogs she's trained to pull a sled - and she's teaching herself folksy instruments like the banjo in the evening while watching TV after the farm chores. She's not fuckin' around with this homesteading thing.

Her whole approach bats away with one quick Millennial head toss any excuses about not being able to live the way one wants to live until one can own land with a great old house and barn and livestock and all the time one could want to grow and tend and be.

I don't feel old enough at 35 to be reinvigorated (read: shown up) by a plucky youth, but perhaps I am. Happily I am old enough not to let any sort of randomly placed pride get in the way of my excitement about this woman's work and drawing inspiration from her example.

Tuesday, March 31st. Glass. I'm re-in love with glass. I drink water out of a mason jar at home, I store our bulk goods from Vitamin Cottage in mason jars, and I've been drinking smoothies my partner makes and packs in pint jars for the last week as a morning pick-up at work.

I love glass for all of the renewable, sustainable reasons one should love glass, but what pushes me over the edge of adoration with this material is that there are no secrets with it and it's not immune to potential tragedy. I love how you can see exactly what's in the container through the clear walls. I love how, like much in life, it can break. It's not a forever substance. It can break, it can shatter. Glass is not immune to our faults, our errors of judgment that leave it in shards on the floor.

I have a strange kinship with glass right now.

Wednesday, April 1. Seeing random vegetables like this Italian squash always make me think of that first brave soul who wandered across this thing in a field while foraging and thought, "Dinner."

That wasn't always a successful conclusion to make in the early days and I'm sure many a hunched over bi-ped was lost to a poisonous this or that. Makes me grateful for their trial and error and that whole generational wisdom that we pass down.

Thursday, April 2nd. I sat at the bus-stop this morning listening to a woman use her best Bossy Britches tone to bark executive-style orders to whomever was on the other end. It sounded quite important and probably the source of some stress all around.

I don't know if it's as a result of this end-of-life business, or just where I am now as a person, but I found myself wanting to go over, touch her arm gently but firmly and say, "It's not important. Whatever you're all worked up about and feeling charged around doesn't really matter. Not really. I promise."

These pictures are more, for me, what's important. These are the scenes that would backdrop any images of loved ones flashing by in my head if I was hit by a bus or blown up in a plane or any other sudden exit style of death. I am clear that none of the busy-busy from work would stay in my head in that moment, which makes me care all that much less about that busy busy from work in the moments not defined by impending death.


Friday, April 3rd. More of what is more important - to me, anyway.

Saturday, April 4th. Remember that sadness I talked about at the start of this entry? This beautiful swan perfectly expresses how I spent much of the last 48 hours - tucked quietly unto myself as the River of Things Bigger than Me flowed by in gentle current around my legs and over my toes. Soon enough it'll be time to stretch and move again, but this weekend was all about tucked in and pause.

Lamb - it's what's for (Easter) dinner. My partner and I drove up to a family dairy today to get a leg of lamb for next week's dinner and she snapped this shot of the little angels out in the pen -future dinners for future customers. That may be hard, but just because we call it one thing in the pen and another on the plate, doesn't change the fact that this is where our dinner next week comes from. I won't be a vegetarian (for reasons to go into some other day), so I'd rather my food get to run around and be itself before coming to dinner instead of the factory farm situation. That's no good for anyone.

This family farm was about an hour away and the sky is perfectly cold and huddled down over us today, occasionally spitting bits of ice our way, which, oddly enough, made it a nice day for a drive - not a windows-down, wind-in-hair kind of drive, but a heater on, huddled in, moving through the cold sort of drive. Fit the mood.

That same great, intimate and cold sky that made for a good drive made for a crappy day to hang one's clothes on the line. This is the solution my partner came up with when we got back from the farm and the clothes she had hung outside this morning were frozen and damp from the weather that moved in. Someday we'll have a basement where such things can occur, but for now I think this is a great solution.

My partner has a strange batch of skills around quickly being able to string rope without a pulley. She first demonstrated this a month ago when we were trying to move out of our Denver apartment and the cats kept escaping from the room where we had them confined so we could have the outside doors open. Before I could even look for something heavy to block the door without blocking the hall, she had taken some string (from where?) and rigged a fancy trap between two door knobs and some other anchor I'm not remembering right now. Amazing, she is.

Owen remains skeptical, but that's his role in the family anyway.

Boris. He took himself outside this morning before it got cold and found a nice spot along the side of the house for a deep nap. At one point he was so still in his little grass-lined sun spot that I thought he had taken his final leave, but no, he was just in a deep, deep nap. I hope that when he does bid me adieu, it's during a nap on the grass in the sun. He deserves nothing less.

Here's to that. Here's to being able to chose your exit and having it be just right for you. Here's to drives to farms on cold, moody days, and here's to knowing where your dinner came from and supporting the people that brought it that far.