Just the crap I've been up to - LOL

[Hopalong]

I'd love to hear all about Hol's party, Amber...did she LOVE it?

Did you manage to yourself, despite all the work?

How many people, and how many nights did they stay?

What was your favorite part?

 
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

We started prepping toppings for pizzas on Friday. I made dark chocolate rum cupcakes with salted caramel (w/rum) buttercream frosting with sugared pecan topping... on Thursday. Friday late afternoon, Autumn & the littles arrived for our Christmas. We had a real simple supper and went to the studio and played for a bit... before it was shower & pj time for the kids... and we started watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. They lost me around 10... and from what I heard everyone else called it a night shortly thereafter.

Sat, people started rolling in around 3 pm. I already had a fire going downstairs... Holly inflated an air mattress and shifted things in the bathroom, to open up facilities for another couple people to sleep downstairs. Had 4 in the bunkroom, Holly & Matt in the guest suite, the 2 downstairs... and one passed out in the chair in the studio before everyone else trooped down there. Just like summer camp... I'm sure there are incriminating photos...

We decided getting food in people before 5 pm would be a very wise decision. Matt made 2 kinds of filled soft pretzels that were excellent, even if the baking soda did explode all over the range top... LOL. Bill & Melina brought pizza dough...... and honest to god, professional fireworks. I think we went through 8 pizzas. Several people took turns as dishwasher. I gave a quick tour outside while it was daylight so people could see the environment before a very long night. About 9 pm, Bill and Holly started setting up for the boom-booms. It was -13 and windy that night; the pond was frozen so Bill thought using the dock to launch over the pond would be the safest. Silly me... I thought he was talking about the kind of fireworks you can buy at stands around here on the 4th of July.

Bill is the head of the Special Effects dept that Holly's with. Freddie was inside that night; Holly's dogs too. I didn't see the other outside cats for a couple days after those fireworks. We were outside about an hour or so playing & oohing and aahing over the big booms. We shot off some mortars with a Navy-style flare gun from the porch... bottle rockets... sparklers. I still have sparklers left over.

It wasn't long after we migrated to the studio that Matt - who had to prep breakfast and was playing "sheriff" for the party - decided I was ready to sleep... which was after about 8 hrs of straight partying. I'm not cut out for that. They were up till about 4:30 am. Breakfast turned into brunch since Matt & I started multiple pots of coffee around 7:30 - 8 am. Mimosas followed along with a nice strudel and breakfast burritos. People started wandering away around 3 pm.

[Hopalong]

Sounds like a blast.
You will be crawling with company clamoring to come for parties,
or weekends, or whatevers.

I'm beginning to really see how much the isolated mountain home
still has to do with family -- giving them all a space to get to nature,
get out of cities, and just relax.

Bravo, what a great thing to do!

And I bet the locals loved your fireworks, too. You'll soon be
the fascinating female in the area...everyone will want to get to
know you.

Hugs
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Ha. If they think I'm that fascinating, I hope they bring their tools and younger backs! (Hey, hold my beer Tom Sawyer.... and watch THIS... LOL...)

We're expecting snow, so I gotta move my butt this morning. But I'll be back. I'm in dream/plan/reassess mode... along with LOTS of sleeping. That always turns over some rocks and all kinds of crap tends to crawl out.

[sKePTiKal]

OK - with the weather - there are a lot of projects on hold for now. But, they also need the "planning" of the major elements - like fence for the garden and the yard - and then, how I plan to lay out my garden. Because of the slope, I think terracing/levelling beds is going to be a major feature. In between the levels... on the sloping sections... I think I'll plant more "permaculture" things; berries and such. Where the slope ends... it makes a really sharp triangle with the stream/driveway and is awful to mow with my bigger rig. So... I think this is going to be a small orchard. It's the most protected area from the west winds; north wind will go over top and the stream - while it's just wet weather, will still be keeping the moisture in, in that area.

I don't have bunnies, so far. At least I haven't seen any. But there are lots of voles, chipmunks, raccoons, possums, groundhogs, the turkeys and deer. So that whole area will need to be fenced against them, and the stray bear (which I also haven't seen). There will be compost bins in that area for the usual garden stuff... and one or two bins closer to the house for kitchen waste, too.

There's wood storage to design/build to pre-season wood... a splitter and better chipper to buy/store... working out an agreement with Ronnie & his "crew" about cutting wood for themselves/and me... and lot of stuff to move to the "barn". It's supposed to be in the 50s next week..... so until then.......

I have all the stuff I brought back from the little cabin to figure out where it's going to go. An office to clean up, and try to find furniture for... flooring to replace down there. Two new hanging lights for the foyer/living room that a sane person will be able to reach & change bulbs in (and they'll still get LEDs). More movies/music to sort through and purge. And in Feb, I'm supposed to be taking delivery of a huge storage/entertainment center in the living room. Finally found something that will look right. And I need to get some new stain and try to darken the new wood behind it before it gets here.

I'm going to change the furniture in the bunkroom too. The set I have now is simply too big and I don't have people staying there that often. The garage stuff needs sorted and made ready for pickup by the auction folks.

And today... I can finally sit and think about that.

[Hopalong]

Whew.
The only (remote) way I can relate is the three-month period when I was renovating my new house with a contractor who had worse ADD than me, so the total job required about 30 separate contracts. Here you go, Dave.

This is our contract for the windows. I pay you half now and half when the last one's in.
This is ..... for the roof.
This is.... for the collapsed outside stairway
This is.... for the iron poles unaccountably stuck in the ground
This is... for the new (Habitat) extra window
This is .... for the bathroom
This is.... for the cork
This is...for the marmoleum (hah those were actually on the same one)

And then separate ones for drywall, paint, electrical, basement crawl space, guttering, drains, on and ON.

But my thing went on for three months and yours sounds as though it's going to go on forever! I know that's not so, at some point you've have all systems in place and functional and will be able to paint, read, think, live, relax.

I am rooting for it to come soon. As to the kids worrying about your energy level? Jeez. High bar.

love
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

LOL... well, these are just the post-its on the wall in the "want to" section Hops. Things FUNCTION, right now, so I have time to read, flit about the internet doing my "thang" ... which is pointing out the obvious mostly. And I know from painful experience how I can bite off more than I chew... so we'll SEE.

Oh yeah... then the logical order of things comes into play, too. Like, getting a big tractor/dozer in for the terracing BEFORE I fence it in... yadda yadda...

So all that gets done in this hibernation phase - the planning out - the what I really want to do, when... and just what do I really "need"... as in, really NEED versus, what I think I'm "supposed" to do. Maybe I only get the kitchen beds done this year. And plant those.

All the time I spend doing this... second guessing myself... and looking for inspiration/ideas... saves me a LOT of time when it gets down to the doing.

[lighter]

You have so many projects, Amber.  I'm trying to get out from under projects,and you're embracing new ones.  Good Lord, you are tackling them like a champ

Just shifting my sofa into my dining room,creating a keeping room, is feeling overwhelming right now.  That's what getting snowed in did for me today.....time to problem solve furniture arrangements.

:: Shaking head::..

Not my strong suit.

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

Lighter: right now, they only exist in my imagination and on a list or post-it somewhere. Right now, my OCD is insisting that I finish up some of the things that were made possible by last summer's project FIRST.

I haven't been able to sit and write - letting the stream of consciousness bubble out - to get a sense yet, of what my intuition is directing me to work on next. And instead, I'm kind of stuck in a "responding to events already set in motion" reality... where what I feel drawn to doing today gets interrupted by someone, somewhere else, saying "I need you to do this now". LOL. And even though it's all part of my mental "master plan"... it basically blows up any intention I had for the day. Gone with the wind.

So, as cold as it's been, feeding/cleaning the woodstove downstairs takes a lot of time. What I really NEEDED, was the insulation up under the floor over the garage. Insulation I had delivered before Christmas... but then got too busy to deal with. Which... as fate would have it... turns out to be a GOOD THING, not a BAD thing, this time. Because I've now realized that one of the entry doors downstairs wraps around the west side of the garage and this is where a lot of the draft I feel on the sofa is coming from.

But I have made a lot of progress, even on the Amber-does list and I'm taking a vacation, dammit. Yes, I have all this stuff swirling up in my head I want to do... and it's totally cluttered and chaotic. So....... I'm choosing to take a break, let some things finish up (like the sale of little cabin closes Monday; beach house Friday)... maybe make some more space in my main garage workshop (priority) and since it's going to warm up enough to be ABLE to work in the garage under the house... start with the places I KNOW need to be insulated. Get some of the tasks off the list... before scheduling more upgrade/design/construction projects. I've got some things I want to do for ME, too.

I am still noticing a little down-swing in mood: sadness, regret, guilt... in letting go the things Mike participated in with me. I guess it's always going to be there. But it's now more like a cloud passing overhead... and doesn't last long anymore; doesn't overwhelm me. And I would guess, that this proliferation of "Ideas of Mass Imagination" are all things that have been carefully put aside, tucked away, saved for "someday"........... and this is some day. LOL. It does get a little noisy in my head some days.

[lighter]

Amber:
I think you're managing this transition with amazing resilience and attention.  Walking that edge of dizzying guilt/sadness.....
noticing it.......
stepping off the edge, then paying attention to how that feels to experience what comes next.  That takes letting go, over and over.  In small and large ways.  You're holding on to what comes next, and planning for more.

Part of the sadness might be acknowledging Mike wouldn't have wanted what you're building...... wouldn't have wanted you doing these things at all.  His comfort zone was something else, and you lived in that Zone for a long time. 

You're moving away from the life you shared with Mike, and distancing yourself is sad.  No way around it, and without judging, if possible. It was sweet and there was comfort.

 It's also empowering to dream of your own wheelhouse.  Be the architect of new plans, then build Amber's world.  Of course it is.  Yes, it's very different than Mike's, and touching all his things, choosing to put them away to make room for you.....feels like.... betrayal at times?  It's ok to simply acknowledge, sans judgement..... it's just a story, Amber.

If Mike could see you, he'd be thrilled to see you grow, and stretch.  He'd have tremendous gratitude that you were content to sit by his sleepy side, and love the life you shared before.

I think Mike would be amazed, and eager to see what you're building.  He'd be so proud of you.  He'd be eager to see where your intuition leads next.

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

Aw, gee thanks Lighter! One thing that's helped me oh, so much... is supporting other widows through the fresh stages of this transition, around my other forums on the internet. They all have different experiences and coping mechanisms. Some sink so deeply into grieving, they feel they can't breathe. Others stay busy and cheerfully coping - until that all wears out - and kaboom, now they're grieving. Age doesn't seem to make a difference to what kind of experience they have. I guess it's my age cohort, that there are a lot people going through this, it seems.

Just FYI - since it seems a lot of people don't know what to say - in the long run, it seems it doesn't matter. (I'm the only one I know that took offense at some clumsy people; I'm weird; not the norm.) What seems to be the most helpful, is regular check-ins with them. Listening to their feelings or struggles with the bureaucracy that surrounds death - and there is a LOT of this. Just being there, in other words. Of course, I had the amazons... and we have this down to an art now. LOL.

But the useful big brothers were a big help too. There's a lot of weird thoughts & feelings a person goes through in this transition - and my "brothers" let me get it out of my system (safely) and helped me grab the rails of perspective again... charting a course that seems (at this point) to be fitting me pretty well. And when you have the history of childhood issues many of us have been through that process is even more daunting and fraught with pitfalls. Everyone I opened up to, helped keep me going through and past all that.

Yes, every single thing I let go of that was Mike's or that we acquired together... echoes those feelings. But it's getting easier now, to do what I think makes sense for me. I don't have as much emotional whiplash because of the decisions.

Holly got me an old book: Women Who Run with Wolves. She's reading it - and it seemed significant enough to her, to get me a copy so we can talk about it. (That's the technique I used to get her self-educating.) I've never read it, believe it or not. But at this point - I'm feeling like I can't even get into it; we'll see; I'll persist with it. I'm finding the jungian language, and the overwhelming non-rational dreamy quality of it to be just dreck. Someone spewing words looking for a real concrete thought. So far, at any rate.

I liked the magic realist authors; Isabel Allende was one I read a lot of. So, I don't know if the time just isn't right... if my experiences over the past couple years put me past the "exploring" nature of her exposition and right into a "knowing" phase... or if I just don't want to peel the cover back on too much of that stuff right now. But I think I can approach it as a way to get inside Holly's head and "see" a little of what she thinks she's dealing with.

[Fair Warning: it seems I'm emptying the "hard drive" in my head right now... lots & lots & lots of stuff has been going on in there... and like a crop of sprouts... is starting to grow to the sun right now and popping up everywhere. LOL. Chatty cathy time again, in other words.]

[Twoapenny]

Skep, I know my situation is different to yours but what you said about people regularly checking in is so true.  I've lost about ninety percent of my friends over the years, simply because I haven't been able to get out and the phone's been the only way to keep in touch.  The friends I've still got are the ones that just kept ringing - not necessarily that often, or for very long, or regularly, but every now and again they'd pick the phone up for a chat.  It's so true that there aren't really right words, it's more about contact and making the effort.  And I agree with Lighter, what you're doing is amazing.  I don't think Holly needs to be worrying about your energy levels (which I think you mentioned on another thread somewhere!). xx

[Hopalong]

Amber, I'm late to get going today so only time for one remark (loved your post, btw!):

I always thought of that book as inspirational to pre-woke women awaiting the arrival of courage.

Well, two:

It's very difficult to run with the wolves while you are carrying an axe and shouting back over your shoulder to contractors.

xo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

LOL... you'd be amazed what a lamb I am with contractors. I tend not to show my real "get of out my way and let me do it" attitude around them, until I know I won't scare them off.

[sKePTiKal]

OH MY.... the idea factory and list producer in me, remains busy. But at least I'm getting it into some semblance of categories/organization. Still, technically "on vacation"... so today I'm trying to finish up washing the bedding I brought back from little cabin, swapping better pillows for ones that probably need to get stored for repurposing, or just stored.

I'm going to do a little more online shopping for the living room. Couple things have been on my wishlist for awhile, and it's time to indulge myself. The granddaughter has a birthday in a couple weeks too. So, I need to find her something pretty and spring-y... she is such a funny combination of "princess" and tomboy. I've got till July to worry about her brother's birthday.

The eldest D - the one Holly and I have tried to rescue from herself, for over 20 years - seems intent on self-destructing. Any time either one of us has a twinge of guilt - that somehow we didn't intervene earlier, or pull off a major interhuman miracle - it's offset by the list of things we've done to support her, help her, and the number of times we've shown her "the way". Neither of us is willing to jump in and be "responsible" anymore - A has to learn to be the responsible one.

The situation is escalating right down the toilet. I made up my mind, after the 10 days we spent trying to at least get help for the kids, that since A works overtime to prove me & Hol ineffective... that I had to focus on taking care of the rest of the family. Hol is working on accepting that A is just this side of slowly killing herself and is no longer in control of herself. Legally, there's not a damn thing we can do. A is 41 now. Even if she should find herself in hospital - the new HIPAA laws could possibly prevent us from making decisions about her care. As far as we know, there is no health POA.

Oldest grandson will be 18 this year - and no way no how is he prepared to function as an adult in this world. Physically, and emotionally, he's more mature than his mom. But he can't even pass the written part of his driving test, since he was forced into an education system that did the minimum for special needs kids. Oh, he can actually drive. Whether or not, he understands the rules of the road is another question. Youngest boy, does have a father who is concerned and would be part of the picture to the best of his ability. This one, I fear, has even worse emotional problems and very little resilience. But none of the learning disabilities.

No blessed idea what will happen with them - at this point in time - should A succeed in not existing. I am for all intents & purposes a fiction in her life. It's like trying to influence the wind. And many times, my attempts to reason and show her a way forward, backfires. Hol does a little better - all the time aware that what she thinks she knows about a situation with A could all be lies - and continues to give A solid advice without any hope that A will take it as a lifesaver. So far - she's not.

It completely mystifies me that a person could be so far beyond help. And determined to stay that way, uncognizant and uncaring of how that impacts those who do care about her. She's always saying no one cares. Despite the long years of examples to the contrary. It's like her goal in life is to leave no choice but to abandon her. WTF? My mind can't understand that; my emotional side aches for the tragedy of this... but this world, this country, this system isn't providing me any options either.

All I can do is watch. And be prepared for what anyone with two brain cells could see is coming. And resolve to firmly reject - continuously - all those attempts to make Hol or me guilty as to the result. It is truly not our fault and we have given decades of time, money and actual assistance to try to prevent this. There is nothing that we haven't tried left. It just sucks.

And yet, I've just about exhausted all the emotions surrounding this person. When you've given above & beyond the call of duty... it gets used up. There's just the hole left. And it sucks too. It's even hard to feel grief about this... because of how much effort was put into trying to make sure it didn't have to be this way. Neither of us can BE HER for HER.

And we're tired. There is much to do in our lives - things that do give results for our efforts. Yet this is always there in the background; the knowing; the plain and simple lack of a way to help. Or even to persuade A that she needs help that we can't provide.