Monday, September 18, 2017

Monday Journal Entries




September 13, 2017

I missed two days with the journal because I have been so busy I haven’t had time to write.  We got back to Staunton just in time to unload the car and head for church with Alissa and the girls.  It was the first time I had seen Analia in her new glasses and she was so precious she about took my breath away.  I don’t know what it is about those thick, big, glasses on that little girl that makes her seem so sweet and vulnerable.  Rory was all smiles when she saw us.  Mike held Rory for a while but when she got fussy, I took her and stood at the back of the church with her so that I could keep her quiet during the service.  She almost went to sleep, but she is too nosy to give up willingly.  She was desperate to see everything. 

After the service, I made lunch by throwing together a bunch of leftovers, some of which I had brought with me from our Mountain Retreat and the rest I scavenged out of the frig and freezer.  We ended up with a decent meal and Alissa, Gab and the girls were there with us.  I needed to work but was so tired having been going full speed since 4 am, that I took a nap instead and when I awoke, it was time to get ready for Kenny’s 60th birthday party.  Kenny is Mike’s older brother and the one who was recently diagnosed with the tumor.  I am never one for parties, especially when I know I can’t just disappear on the sidelines somewhere but I felt it was important and wanted to be there to celebrate Kenny’s day.  I survived although I was very uncomfortable. I know I make reference to my being an introvert often, but it affects my life so much.  I am so extremely uncomfortable in a crowd of people.   Mostly, the folks there were farmers and that gave us common ground to talk about, so it wasn’t too bad.   

The twins didn’t come on Monday but Analia and Rory were there. The twins are getting busier and busier with their scheduled lives and come to stay less and less.  They are scheduled to stay with us every Monday but often have other things going on that keep them away.  Kristin said they were starting soccer and they go to preschool three days a week.  I always regret that we don’t get to spend as much time with them and I appreciate the time we do have.  I am thankful that we have been able to be a part of their baby, toddler and preschool years.  Hard to believe they, along with Analia will start kindergarten next fall. 

 Rory is so busy, always thinking of new ways to stretch her wings.  She crawls well and pulls herself up and stands holding on to things now.  However, when she grabs on to something unstable, she ends up taking a tumble.  I probably am an overprotective grandma but I hate for her to bump her head and cry, so I try to stay right with her and keep her from falling.  The good news is she actually slept an hour and a half for me, which she does at home but never does at Tita’s house.  Analia also laid down and took a nap.  She took her glasses off before she laid down and when she woke up, I wondered if I would have to tell her to put them back on.  She looked at them several times after she woke up and then picked them up and put them on.  Poor baby just can’t see without them and when she has them on she is always exclaiming in amazement at things she hasn’t seen before.  When the girls left Monday evening, I wanted to walk but felt like I had too much work to do, so I didn’t.  I got supper made and a few things done around the house and the animals tended to before heading off to bed.  Walking and writing have both taken a back seat to more pressing things this week. 

Tuesday I awoke bright and early and started going through things, packing, and getting space ready for Alissa and Gab to start moving their personal belongings in.  I finished cleaning out the room that Analia will use.  The only thing left to do is remove the furniture, give it a thorough cleaning and move her bedroom suit in.  That room had held all my sewing supplies, machines and material.  All of that has now been moved to our Mountain home. Mike voiced his disapproval that the contents of my sewing room took precedence over other things that need to be moved but I told him there was a method to my madness.  Really, I just wanted to get one room completely cleaned out and that room was the most logical one to work on first since we are still currently living out of the master bedroom.  Mike and I had talked about moving into the downstairs bedroom but decided to leave that room as a playroom for the kids (as it is currently set up) and we will transform a portion of it into Rory’s room.  When I do have all four kids, I keep them all downstairs where they have a lot of area to romp and where it doesn’t matter how many toys they pull out.  I think this will be a better arrangement as far as the kids are concerned because it really won’t change things for them.  Fortunately, the upstairs guestroom that Mike and I will move into didn’t need to much in way of preparation.  There were some boys clothes I had held onto that had been given to us when the twins were born but Hudson never needed them.  They are kept well supplied with more clothes than they can wear and it seemed a shame to hold on to them when someone else might be able to use them, so I simply donated them.  My Christmas wrapping paper and some old pictures are in that room but won’t be in the way for now and I started moving some of our personal belongings that we will need in Staunton over to that room.  Hopefully I will get the remainder of our things moved out of the master this coming week. 

 I also got the linen closet cleaned out  in the bathroom. It was emotional going through and finding a pillow case that my friend Liz had made for Josh when he was young.  It is a tree frog print.  He loved frogs.  I held the pillow case for a few moments and thought of how he liked to sleep with that on his pillow on his bed and how his head had laid on that pillow case many times.  I thought about giving the pillow case to Analia but decided to wait until she is just a little bit older.  I also got some items priced and over to the antique mall.  While I was there, I rearranged the displays in our booth to make things look a little different.  Tuesday afternoon and evening I had the girls again while Alissa went to class.  Mike separated the cows for me which left them bawling all night for their calves and the calves returning their call.  They only get separated once a week so that I can get milk for our personal use. 

Mike has been busy this week farming.  He planted orchard grass in one of our hay fields and he also planted orchard grass for a neighboring farmer while he had the drill on the tractor.  He had hay to deliver to a new customer and he found out that the customer was a world renown violinist.  He said the man was very nice and told Mike that he would love to give our grandchildren lessons and he invited us to come to a concert sometime. The night Mike delivered the hay, he had a flat on the trailer and had to leave it and go back for it the next day.   

This morning, Wednesday, I got up and milked the noisy cows who were happy to be reunited with their calves afterwards.  We had moved the herd to a field across from the fields where they usually are kept.  They have to walk across an area that is not fenced to get from one pasture to the other.  With the ornery bull in the mix, I try to give them a wide berth, and especially when a cow is in heat, like today.  Typically, I would wait for Mike to help me, but I wanted to get the cows back with their calves and decided to do it by myself.  Of course, everyone did exactly what I wanted them to do EXCEPT FOR ONE!  That’s usually the way.  One little heifer decided to go walk about and it took me a good twenty minutes and a trip around the house before I finally got her reunited with momma. 

I didn’t get the floors swept and mopped last week in Staunton and with all the moving in and out we have been doing lately, things were pretty tracked up and dusty.  I managed to get the downstairs swept and mopped well and the kitchen done.  The rest is going to have to wait for another day.  We had intended to get away from Staunton around noon but once again, it was around 4 pm before we headed out.  Traffic was bad on 81.  It usually is no matter what day or what time of the day we leave.  I thought for sure there was going to be a wreck in front of us when twice a big semi cut a car off really short.  I have a friend who tells me that she prays for us to have safety as we travel.  I’m feeling pretty certain that an angel must have been on a mission today to answer my friend Dianne’s prayers. 

When we finally arrived at our Southern Virginia home, we saw tracks where the ground had been cut into by a big piece of equipment and about the same time Mike and I said, “I bet the lumber is here!”  We both jumped out of the car and ran to the barn to see.  There it was our beautiful, aromatic, freshly cut lumber for the board and batting on our barn.  After taking a picture to document the progress, I sat down on the lumber and made my nightly call to my grandma.  It got dark as I sat there and all the stress of the beginning of the week started to melt away.  That’s what this mountain home does for me and just one of the reasons I love it so. 

September 14, 2017

I’m up early with cup of coffee in hand sitting in my favorite spot to journal where I can eventually watch the sun finally make its way over the ridge.  I jokingly told a friend that the sun is up for an hour before we see it in this hollow but there wasn’t a lot of exaggeration in that statement. 

As we made our way south yesterday and got into the more mountainous regions, I began to see color in the trees.  It took me off guard.  Of course, it’s almost October and the trees change sooner along the Blue Ridge.  The pop of color was beautiful and I am looking forward to experiencing our first fall as home owners in the Blue Ridge.  For the last four years we have taken a day or two and made our way to this area to enjoy the fall colors.  Four years ago I never would have dreamed that we would now enjoy the views driving to our own mountain home. 

With the cooler temperatures at night, we have not been sleeping with the windows open.  I sure do miss hearing the sounds of the creek at night.  It always helps me sleep better to hear the water moving.  The springs on our property create the stream that runs down one side of our house and empties into another stream running which forks just beyond our bedroom window as it is met by a stream that runs through the neighbor’s property and flows from there under the road into “our” stream.  We are told where the two streams meet and widen that there are trout and good fishing.  Everything is so grown up there and snaky that we have not been able to go down although there is a gate there where at one-time folks could walk through.  I don’t know that we will ever get everything done we would like to accomplish with this place, but one of the things we would like to do is clean out all that brush so that we can walk down to the fishing hole. 

September 15, 2017

Yesterday evening I got the sickest I have been since I had my gall bladder issues a year ago.  Gall bladder surgery was a life changer for me.  I know it’s a simple surgery, but I had suffered on and off for over twenty years with flare up and couldn’t get any doctors to take me seriously because my symptoms weren’t typical and they wouldn’t run any tests.  Part of the problem is that I am pretty tolerant to pain and avoid doctors.  Every time I go to see a doctor, I act tough and downplay the symptoms or when I get really desperate and explain how bad I feel, they have always looked at me and exclaimed how healthy I look and dismiss me as a hypochondriac.  At any rate, other than feeling more fatigued, having less energy, and aching more than I did before I hit menopause, I have had a really good year.  I have not even had a cold and very little allergies with which to contend.  I don’t know if I had a 12-hour virus or if I ate something that was bad.  I tend to think it was the latter.  I had a sandwich left over from a restaurant and I pulled the meat off of it and ate it early afternoon.  It wasn’t long and my stomach began to hurt.  Being who I am, I figured I would just ignore it and go on with my plans to hike up the back forty.  I took the hardest route to push myself but by the time I got through walking a couple of miles, I was feeling pretty bad.  I sat down to talk to my dad on the phone and by the time I got off the phone, I felt so sick I didn’t even want to stand up.  I ended up laying around and sleeping the rest of the evening with my stomach pretty messed up.  I woke up feeling fine this morning and I really think it was the meat from the sandwich that I ate but that could just be coincidental.  I have eaten very little meat that over the past four or five years that we have not raised ourselves and I am usually very careful about what I eat when I eat out, mostly choosing vegetables or fish unless I know where the meat has come from.  When I began eating this way, I did it for a short term just to bring awareness to locally, humanely grown pork and beef.  After a few weeks of swearing off “feed lot” and “high production” meat products, it became a lifestyle for me.  Over the years, I occasionally eat something so as not to offend a host or I give into a moment of impulse when a particular dish looks really good and I have almost always regretted the decision.  I am not sure why, but most of the time when I eat meat from other sources, it affects my stomach.  At any rate, eating the meat off the club sandwich definitely proved not to be in my best interest and I don’t think I will be wanting to regress to eating mass produced, preservative filled meat for a very long time.

I didn’t accomplish a whole lot yesterday before I started feeling bad.  I did some housework and made a run to the dollar store.  The dollar store is only a couple miles down the road and is really the only source to purchase things economically unless we drive about 15 miles.  There are a couple of general stores where you can buy everything from expensive gas to expensive canned goods but I try to stay away from those places.  I know for years they were the only places for the locals to get anything if they didn’t want to drive far and I am sure the new dollar store has really hurt their business.  I also made Mike a rhubarb pie before I started feeling bad.  He had brought the fresh rhubarb from Staunton and requested it.  I often make pies with an extra thick crust around the edges because we both love the crust so much.  I know that is not “the right” way to make it but we sure do like those thick edges.  I told Mike if I entered any pies into a contest I wouldn’t be able to make those thick crusts.  Yesterday I did it “the right way” and made thin edges on my crust by cutting off the extra instead of turning it under.  I took those pieces and rolled them out, spread butter on it, and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.  After baking it crisp, it’s a delicious treat right out of the oven.  I remember my grandma do this when I was a little girl and it brings back good memories. 

Once again, we are disappointed in the local contractors.  The man who is to work on putting up the board and batting on the barn has so far been the only person to show some real effort.  I had high hopes for the contractor that came by last week and spent several hours talking to Mike.  However, when Mike talked to him yesterday, he was already backing out of the jobs that we had hoped he would do for us. 

September 16, 2017

This day is the anniversary of the day when Josh’s heart stop beating here on this earth and the hearts of all who love him were broken.  As a mother, I believe his soul is as peace but my heart still cries out over our loss.  I have learned to live with my grief, but that event forever changed my life and the lives of those who love Josh.  Especially on this date am I forced to remember just how evil this world is and I must call upon Grace to help me to have the strength to allow Love to rule.  I have seen a lot of tragedy in life, things that have shook my world to the core and things that I recognize in others as leaving deep pockets of grief.  Even with the pain, I know that I have so many good things to consider and that has always been a source of strength to me.  Recognizing the pain that others face helps me to not be so self-centered that I think I am the only one who hurts who has suffered tragedy.  As humans, we all know pain and we have all been hurt and wronged and felt the sting of a cruel world.  It is what we do with the pain that comes from that grief that marks us as men and women of character or as individuals who take our hurt and then hurt others in return.  I wish that I could say that I have always chosen the path of Love and that I have never allowed self-pity, pain, selfishness, anger, bitterness or any other negative emotion to choose for me a path other than Love. I wish that I could say that I never allowed my grief to wear me down and the loneliness and isolation that come from grief cause me to act out of character or with lack of judgment.   I can’t say that I have always made the right choices but I can say that I keep coming back to believing, no matter how many times I feel pain brought upon me either by my own actions or the actions of others, that Love is the only option for real peace.  After nine years, my heart still doesn’t understand how darkness and evil can be so strong.  The events that led to Josh’s death are unfathomable and heart-wrenching.  I know as I proclaim love and take my stance again violence, against the taking of human life in any form, and as I follow my beliefs that Jesus taught a radical way to live (something I aspire to but have never come close), that many (I would say most) think I am absolutely insane.  The only time I have “lost my mind” is when I stop letting Love rule my heart.  That is when I have done the most damage to myself and others.  Living out love is never easy but it’s always easier than choosing hate, revenge, or selfishness. 

This must be the day to journal about my feelings because in addition to the grief that surfaces today with the nine-year anniversary of Josh’s death, my heart is feeling the bitter sting that comes from the reminders that resurface from those who want  to find  fault, tear others down, meddle in the business of others with intent to criticize, condemn or even worse, destroy. 

I am a “writer”.  Writing has always been as compulsive to me as breathing.  It’s not a matter of choice.  It’s a matter of survival.  I have chosen to write in many ways over my lifetime that have allowed my thoughts, feelings and the events of my life to be “public”.  When one does that, one subjects themselves to the critical and gives those individuals the fuel to pick one’s life apart.  Mostly I think people are pretty careful about admitting where they get their information.  They don’t want to be perceived as a voyeur.  But social media especially gives a tool to those whose jealousy, hate, selfishness or condemning nature seeks out way of destruction.  Life has shown me time and time again just how low people will go to destroy the lives of others and many times they do so with the pretense of actually caring.  At fifty years of age, while I still believe the answer is Love, I’m also very tired.  When I was young, I wanted to change the world.  I would read books of how people went into the most challenging of situations and would come out triumphant in some manner because they persevered.  I saw the glory of the end of the story and didn’t really understand just how hard it was to live a lifetime, sometimes, before seeing results.  And often, the results were only seen in retrospect (and sometimes not at all).  My idealism downplayed the struggles because I could read and see that loved triumphed at the end of the book.  Always, always, always I have held to idealism and hope and bounced back to believe that I can conquer the world no matter what has hit me.  Here is what I now I understand:  Love is still and always will be the answer but it doesn’t always have a storybook ending and mostly it is misunderstood and often it is abused.  Still, love is the only right way to meet every aspect of life.  The more I understand Love and the more I allow myself to let love flow through me, the more it doesn’t matter who understands or accepts the story that is my life.  And I think, that at fifty, I understand that Love doesn’t change the world in the ways we sometimes imagine, but it changes those who choose to allow love to be their guiding force. 

So, on this day of remembering my greatest loss and reflecting on the hurt caused by others to my family not just from that event but from others in the past years, I pray that God renews in my heart the desire to choose Love above any negative response or emotion.  I pray that He will help me to continue to forgive when others pry, condemn, stalk, gossip, misunderstand or flat out seek to do evil or harm.  I pray that He will take the hurt and bitterness that I feel and transform it into an aggressive Love that burns like a hot fire. 

September 17, 2017

Two events worth remembering from yesterday I wanted to get down in my journal:

 I saw an elderly lady yesterday to whom I had sold some Christmas lights at a yard sale.  I mentioned to her that I remembered her.  She said that she hadn’t decorated for Christmas in years after her husband was killed, but that her great grandchildren were now living with her and she wanted to decorate for them this year.  I responded that “Little ones make a difference, don’t they?”  She responded that indeed they did.  She went on to explain that it was her great grandson’s birthday and that he was two years old.  She spoke his name.  I heard it and I smiled inside.  Mike asked her, “What did you say his name is?” To which she replied, “Josh”.

How sweet.  A simple little reminder that although we may be consumed with grief, there is still joy in the world.  While my heart was hurting over our loss of our Josh, this great grandmother was celebrating the life of her Josh who was bringing her hope and joy and causing her to feel like Christmas again.  It’s these little reminders that life continues that bring me hope and joy. 

Last night we went to the little auction house that provides me so much people watching entertainment.  Every weekend, the auction house has a 50/50 raffle and the money is split between the winner and the staff.  Mike and I never participate.  Last night, the money was going to be given to the auctioneer’s granddaughter whose baby had been born ten weeks premature and is in NICU.  At first I said I wasn’t interested in a ticket but then decided that I wanted to give some money.  I suggested just giving them the money but Mike suggested going ahead and getting the tickets and then if we won, we could donate the whole pot back to the baby.  As I said, never do we buy raffle tickets or gamble in any way other than farming, which I always say is the biggest gamble of all.  When the ticket was drawn, we won the winning ticket and were able to donate the proceeds back to the baby.  Again, a simple thing, but it brought me joy and I was thankful that a new life was benefited on the anniversary of Josh’s death.  God is good to me.