August 29, 2021 – Whirlwind

Today started off with a bang, albeit from a slightly different perspective. I’m accustomed to waking up several feet off the floor. However, with the belief that a buyer would be enticed by the recent markdown of our master bedroom set, in preparation, my husband disassembled our bed. It was quite a strange sensation waking up eye level with the dog because even though I still slept upon a mattress, rather than climbing up onto it as I was accustomed to, I lowered myself instead (to within a foot off the floor). The ‘bang’ part happened after my husband woke up and retreated to the kitchen (for his daily caffeine ‘fix’). While he was adding honey and creamer to his morning ‘cup of Joe’, my phone started ringing and beeping and dinging (essentially ‘blowing up’). After picking it up to check and see what all the ‘fuss’ was about, he hightailed it up the stairs to our bedroom, and placed it solidly in my right hand. “It’s blowing up!” he informed me. I was still half asleep at that point, and couldn’t tell whether he had handed me a phone or a grenade. Once my eyes adjusted, I was relieved to know it was only my phone.

August 28, 2021 – Photo

Since life has been rather chaotic lately and I haven’t had much time to snap photos, I pulled another one out of ‘the vault’. I felt it appropriate because we’ve been blowing through our money like nobody’s business. The ‘dollar’ amount in the photo only represents seven measly cents and I can assure you that we’ve spent a good deal more on our upcoming move. On top of that, we’ve been giving things away left and right because we don’t have time to post every single thing on FB Marketplace or Craigslist (or in the local paper). Each time I give something away, I think about how much I could have sold it for had I had more time, however, knowing we’re down to a week (before our crates get picked up), I’ve learned to push past that thought process but it hasn’t been easy! No, Sir, it has not!

August 27, 2021 – Fried

I was trying to come up with a word that meant ‘beyond tired’ and after a number of ‘close but no cigar’ words came to mind, I finally settled on ‘fried’. It has to be the word that best describes how my brain and body feel at this moment in time. I love a lot of things that are fried; I love fish and french fries and egg rolls and donuts and chimichangas and potato chips and fried chicken. In short, I love most foods that are coated in batter and cooked in a deep fat fryer. But when it comes to utilizing that particular word to describe my overall well-being, I’d prefer not to because it means I’m functioning at the level of ‘two cards short of a full deck’ or ‘a few sandwiches shy of a picnic’ or ‘a few bananas short of a bunch’. I don’t like operating at a reduced capacity because it takes a great deal longer to make things happen as opposed to when I’m ‘on my toes’. Because I was fried today, I managed to get very little accomplished aside from shuffling things around from one room to another. That’s not a good strategy to use if I plan on having everything completed within a week .

August 26, 2021 – Photo

Finally! After spotting this little guy drinking from my backyard feeder on multiple occasions, I decided to pull up a chair and see if I could snap a photo. I think I must have sat there for at least 20 minutes before he got the nerve to come back. It was extremely difficult to contain my excitement once he did! He definitely needs to keep drinking the sugar water to sustain his energy since another hummingbird keeps trying to scare him off. I don’t know how many times I saw them (one in pursuit of the other) fly by my kitchen window today. I have plenty of feeders so I don’t understand why they cannot just ‘live and let live’. Oh well, at least the ‘air show’ was entertaining!

August 25, 2021 – Under my skin.

Why is it that certain people get ‘under my skin’. It’s much like the splinter that became lodged in the nailbed of my right thumb a couple of weeks ago. They both involve ‘pain’, but with the splinter it’s physical, and with people it’s emotional. It doesn’t matter where I go, there’s always ‘one’. The fact that I’m an overly sensitive and admittedly ‘thin skinned’ person probably doesn’t help matters. I am fully aware that things or comments that others might be able to take ‘with a grain of salt’, I carry around like a 50 pound bag of barley. I often wonder why I turned out this way and whether it’s possible to change. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember and am not even sure if change is possible. The incident that occurred yesterday, running into a former co-worker who I was not on good terms with, really got me rattled. During dinner yesterday, my husband noticed the far off look in my eyes and how withdrawn I had become and kept asking me, “Where are you at?” “You know,” I’d remind him, “I’m still thinking about ‘her’.” “Still?!” he’d reply, completely exasperated, “Don’t give her another minute of your time. She isn’t worth it!”

August 24, 2021 – Photo/Art

I took a photo of the sky several years ago and thought it might be ‘fun’ to superimpose my little poseable art ‘guy’ over the top of it, for no other reason than to do something a bit different. I didn’t and don’t have any fancy software, so this is the best I could do with what I had to work with. I call it ‘Free Fall’ although ‘Help?!’ or ‘Stop!” would probably be more appropriate. Because I ran into one of my former co-workers (who I didn’t get along with) when I stopped by the thrift store earlier today to drop off donations, I wound up going into a pretty dark place emotionally. Things were never harmonious between us and it was clear by her behavior today that nothing’s changed. I left with a stomachache and now I’m ruminating. Gotta love it (NOT).

August 23, 2021 – Letting Go

As I look at all the newly emptied spaces in my home, and think about what formerly occupied them, I recognize how much I’ve ‘let go’ of. It hasn’t been easy, mind you, there are a lot of things I would have preferred to keep. I have spent a great deal of time ‘accumulating’ things over the years, things that had a certain appeal and ‘spoke to me’ to a degree, their mere presence making my house feel more like a home. From large livingroom sets down to tiny stained glass flowers, each one was selected with the utmost care. But as I begin this new journey in my life, I’ve had to shift my focus to what is truly practical and necessary, and much of what I have in my possession is not. In my kitchen alone, I have come across so many things I can live without. Many of them were gifts and it’s difficult to part with them, mainly because I don’t want to cause offense to the gift giver (should they ever discover I gave away something they hand selected for me and paid a great deal of money for). However, after I pull the dimsum steamer, and the homemade pasta machine, and the rice cooker off the shelves, I know in my heart that I’ll never put them to good use.

August 22, 2021 – Photo

At some point last year or the year prior, I honestly cannot remember which any longer, ‘we’ removed all but one of our abusive rose bushes. I didn’t like spending much time around them because although they smelled heavenly, they left me with significant scars after I’d make careful attempts at pruning them back and severing their thorny limbs. In place of the rose bushes ‘we’ removed, I planted a number of plants typically found in a xeriscape garden. The lone survivor of the rose bush massacre, the white rose bush, seemed so out of place amongst all of the newly planted, drought tolerant ground cover and shrubs, that I couldn’t help but pick up another (miniature) rose bush to keep it company. It was pretty puny and sick at first (since I bought it off the clearance rack at Lowe’s), but now it’s as healthy as ever, nearly two feet tall in height, and covered with the most beautifully scented, tiny, delicate roses.

*When I say ‘we’, I’m referring to my husband. 🙂

August 21, 2021 – Overwhelmed

My friends, despite a concerted effort to go to sleep and postpone writing my blog until the morning, I have failed. I went to bed for a time, and while I was laying there, did nothing more than toss and turn (left to right and back again). As a result, I decided it best to just get up and try again later. This move is really doing a number on me. I keep whittling down my possessions, and I thought I had everything pretty well whittled down, until the U-Boxes arrived this afternoon. Once they arrived, I went into a full-blown panic. Each of the U-Boxes is the size of a small walk-in closet (8 x 5 x 7). I ordered four of them to accommodate our ‘stuff’ and had hoped I could keep a couple of furniture items. At the very least, I wanted to hang on to a loveseat, a bed, and a couple of dressers. From the illustration provided on the U-Haul website, I thought for sure that what we had left would easily fit into the boxes/crates; however, there’s no way on God’s green earth that’s going to happen! Just one loveseat easily takes up two-thirds of one crate! With this newfound knowledge, I had no choice but to get busy taking a bunch of pictures and posting more ads.

August 20, 2021 – Photo

While out and about (walking my dog) today, I noticed these beautiful flowers (with the mountainside in the background) and couldn’t help but snap a few photos. I rarely bring anything along when I walk my dog, aside from a hanky and a roll of poop bags, but I actually brought my phone today (just in case someone from U-Haul called to provide the time when the U-Boxes are to be dropped off). The phone never did ring; however, it sure came in handy as I was able to use the camera option to capture some of the lovely images I spotted along the way.