Getting ready for Sunday dinner

Still working on the house stuff. Son still interested in our house, we are still interested in my mother's house.

I cried for 3 days when her apartment became available. So many things were going through my head. First I was thinking that last year at this time we were getting ready for our son's wedding. Such a wonderful and happy occasion. Soon afterwards my dad became ill and passed away.There was not an inkling in my mind that we would be picking up and moving a year later.

I cried for my mom because she is being so brave to start all over again at age 85, when her entire life was devoted to her husband and that house. I kept thinking it was not really going to happen, that she would change her mind. I guess I was in denial.

I think I had to cry my way through it all for a few days, because now I am feeling so much better. Even my knees are doing better as far as the pain goes. I called and canceled a cortisone shot I was scheduled for because I no longer needed one to my surprise!

We are busy getting rid of clutter we don't want to move or need and that is good no matter what happens.

Been in a creative state lately. I entered 3 categories for the big statewide fair coming up next week. Salon prints, digital pictures, and I did a collection case of Beatles memorabilia. I will find out how I did on Friday. Sort of a fun distraction away from moving and all that stress it entails.

So there u have it. So much more I want to write, but I space out on Frontierville when I have the extra time. Sort of relaxing and like working on an electronic color form set to me. Except the click of a mouse makes it so much easier.

Work is going better, too.

I have come to believe it is more about how we think about the situations in our lives that causes so much suffering than necessary. There are a lot of folks out there who talk about that and I am reading them and really trying to put their strategies into action. I post them all over my Facebook so I will see them every day.

Off to Sunday dinner at my mom's house. We are getting down to the wire now with these dinners. As they will never be the same as they have been all these years in just a few short weeks.

Who knew when I started blogging and writing about the Sunday dinners that I might be the one to carry the torch for my mom in her house? Life is full of surprises and redirections and if it wasn't, how could we ever stretch ourselves?

Take care

I am having such problems with my old knees. My good knee is now bad and I am needing replacement surgery on both of them. The surgeon wants to try to put it off, because I am on the young side to have it done. The new knees only last about 10 years and then you need another replacement, so they say. I want to go along with that because I am not looking forward to surgery, pain, recovery, rehab, etc. but I am not sure waiting is an option as I find my life is becoming more and more pain filled and I am limited in my activities.

I have to figure out what I am going to do. I was falling into a depression because of the despair I was feeling and then had another wake up call when I went for my yearly mammogram.

I was called back to have another mammogram and ultrasound, one day after I had my yearly appointment. Over the phone they were talking about density, cysts, etc. and giving me per cent ages of how many are not malignant. I know many women do get called back and find out they are fine so I tried to not worry about it.

And I didn't worry too much during the day, but I found I had no control of my dreams and I would wake up from dreams about cancer. I would lie awake shaking for awhile. So it was a very stressful 3 days of waiting for my appointment. It gave me a lot to think about, a lot to pray about. I used those days to think about what I need to do to take better care of myself, and I need to start soon. I am ashamed of how I have allowed myself to get into a mess with my health. I worked on a plan to address my issues no matter what the outcome of my tests would be.

You can not imagine my relief and happiness when the technician walked into the room after consulting with the radiologist with her arms waving in the air to tell me that they did not find anything and that I could leave!

So now I am trying to keep my word to myself. I have been doing so much reading about women's issues and all the experts say that there is one main issue that keeps women from taking care of themselves.... It is not feeling worthy. I try to fake feeling worthy, but obviously it isn't working. I am going to keep on trying until I am not faking it any longer because I really want to feel good, feel free of the anxiety I feel on a regular basis.

Seems silly at my age, not to feel worthy. But something has a hold on me, something that has been there for a very long time and I am so tired of how it has made life such a struggle. I want to be free of it.

F R E E ...

It 's Monday, all day long

Things are progressing as far as buying the house where I grew up. We had the house appraised and now we are in the process of making a final decision. Our son is very interested in buying our house, the home where he grew up and I love that idea. It would make the move so much easier as we would not have to rush to get the house on the market and have strangers coming through So that would be plan A: We buy my parent's home, my son and daughter in law buy our home. I won't really have to say good-bye to any house. We will see how it all turns out.

Work has been dismal for me personally. I want to be happy there and I really, really try. But since they changed my job description, I feel like I am not being challenged in the ways that I enjoy. I get my work done, but feel so empty. Nothing I can do but deal with it every day the best I can, and still keep my eyes open to see if there is anything out there for me that would be a better fit.

I have made my list of what I want, I scour the job ads, and I try to stop the negative thinking in my head. You know, thoughts like: "Who will hire me at THIS AGE?", "There is NOTHING out there in this economy." Or, "Do I really want to change jobs at this point in my life and start ALL OVER again somewhere else?"

I really know how to give my self a pep talk talk, don't I??

The Sun

A few years ago in a Food Co-op in Vermont, I bought my first copy of The SUN magazine. I stayed up all night and read it cover to cover. My favorite section in the magazine is called, Readers Write. Every month the editors select topics for readers to write in about. Any essay that gets published receives a free 6 month subscription to the magazine. It was my goal to write an essay for it, but I never did until last month.

The topics never resonated with me, until this summer. So while I was on vacation, I wrote an essay about it and I have mailed it in! I feel so good that I accomplished something that I wanted to get done, whether it gets published or not. They receive so many entries and the competition is tight, but it is exciting waiting to hear if I get in or not. The topics are broad based in order to give room for expression and they look more for thoughtfulness and sincerity over writing style.

If I don't get it published in the magazine, I can post it to my blog anyways! Now all I have to do is sit tight until March. LOL

Summer Saturday

So the heat wave around here has not let up. I don't know if there is even any rain in sight. But this has been the first enjoyable hot day I have had all summer. Our pool has been giving us headaches and even though the water isn't crystal clear yet, I had to give in and go in it today. Finally all the algae seems to be disappearing.

Moral of the story: Don't open your pool just before u leave for vacation, extend your vacation, and have no one back home looking after your pool.

Now I am relaxing and drying off on the deck and the heat is bearable enough to sit out for awhile.

We are going to go to the next step for my parents house and will have it appraised. While in our heads we have it all renovated and redecorated, we are still not 100% sure what we will do.

I think Sona asked if it was a house we would buy if we did not have the emotional attachment to it and I would say probably not. But that would still depend on what is out there. I know ranch houses are hard to come by and that is the number one attraction of this house for us. Even though we would probably finish off the attic, the main living area and master bedroom would be downstairs.

There is a huge basement with big windows that would be perfect for my husband's art studio. Great lighting. When I lived home I had so many indoor plants down there and there is plenty of room for me to still do that, plus a workout area. And a pool table would fit fine for when the kids come over.

We can add on the extra bathroom and laundry room that we would need.

The only 2 drawbacks: It is a longer commute to my work. But hopefully I will retire from my present job in a couple of years so I don't want to make that a factor since it is not long term.

The other concern is that it is a very high traffic street. The house if far back enough away from the street so that is good. Unless there are plans to widen the street which we should look into.
It is just hard to get out of the drive way at 5:00 P.M. due to the heavy traffic. Always has been... but we have all managed it all of these years.

Presently we are helping mom sort her things and working on our house to ready it for the market. We want to move either way, so it is good motivation to get things done.

On a side note. I made the mistake of getting involved in FarmVille on Facebook. I am now addicted! I have trouble with working on the computer for a limited time and then shutting it off and walking away. Email, blogs, and Facebook took up so much time. I avoided FarmVille for a long time because I knew I would be sucked in. Bingo. I need to stop and do more useful things with my time, but those gifts keep coming. And I just got my harvester and tractor!

Changes?

I am still getting settled back home after a nice and relaxing vacation. We set out to spend a week on cape cod, and to our surprise the owners of the house we rent offered us 4 extra days for free because their house was not rented for the next week. We could only stay 3 extra due to previous commitments, but those extra 3 days were like icing on the cake. How nice was that?

I also enjoy having the rest of this week home and getting stuff done around here. Although with this intense heat, I am not doing all that much.

My mother decided to move into a senior apartment building to be with some of her relatives. She is too lonely in the house now that dad has passed away and wants to be around people. So we are in the process of helping her clear out the house while she waits for an opening.

My parents built their house after they married and lived there for over 60 years. It is the house we all grew up in and where we continue to have Sunday dinners on a regular basis. I am so sad about letting it go and have been thinking about buying it. My husband and I made out our list of pros and cons and they come out just about even. It wouldn't be my dream house by any means, but I believe we would be happy with it.

So we are working through this issue right now and trying to make a decision soon. I know that part of the reason I want to buy it is that I can't bear to lose it right now. Too soon. I feel my father's presence when I am there and I find a great deal of comfort from that. I am not sure if that in itself is a reason to uproot and start all over in a new town, but it feels right to me. My husband seems to be on board and I didn't know if that would happen. Still many things to figure out after discussions with family members, but we are heading in that direction for today.

Good morning