Change is Hard

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled.

 - Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a Changing

There are those who insist that nothing is impossible. I respectfully disagree. I used to do nothing every day. Except this week while I’ve been staggering more than a one legged man on a tightrope. I saw this fork in the road, and I took it and I didn’t realize it would involve so much deciding, spending, worrying, scheduling, working and getting dirty.

And so very much cleaning. Hoarding should be a hanging offense and everybody should have to move every 5 years. To a smaller place each time.

I would have said doing all this in such a short time was impossible. I was wrong. I also underestimated how cranky it would make me. And believe me, I already know I am easily pissed.

The cats complicate my life because they have to be segregated from each other and from whatever room people are coming and going and there’s been a lot of that. The other day, I was wandering around looking for my misplaced (fill in the blank) and glanced outside and noticed Lily strolling through the back yard. Inside the house no longer constitutes an enriched environment/hoader’s paradise and the cats are cranky about losing their hiding places.

With all the coming and going and packing and loading and cleaning and looking for the disappearing magic markers (Wait! Is that why they’re magic?) I’ve been blocking hallways or been blocked in doorways. I have totally not been stalled and I’m covered with the kind of bruises only a 3.2 INR and hauling boxes (or losing a meth-head slam-dancing contest) can make.

What has got me through? Although I have not abused any substances, I have treated several with great respect.

(Photo credit: Kitty Crowther, Le Grande Disordre, which looks like me but I wasn't getting any help from living rats)

Winds of Change are Blowing

" You don’t need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows."
Somebody Else

Ok, I know I’ve said this before about summer coming, but it’s really here now. A week of temps in the 90s with dry winds that signal only the beginning of the santa ana hot dry fire season. We may not get oil spills or floods, but we get earthquakes and fires.

I haven’t felt all that inspired to work outdoors during the last few mild weeks and months. So, naturally, I spent yesterday afternoon in the back yard, sweating and moving my little wheeled seat/tool cart around the patio to keep it in the shade. I weeded between the paving stones, something I’ve never had to do before.

This summer, I’ve had the patio watered with a timed sprinkler. It hasn’t received enough via my hand watering for the past several years since the automatic sprinklers died. Who knew? And after removing clover, what I think my Mom used to call chick-weed (sp?) and some other ubiquitous weed that grows like ground cover, I carefully put in creeping thyme cuttings dippend in root hormone. Martha in Michigan calls one of the thymes lime - I think because of the color of the foliage - and it has small pink flowers if it gets enough sun. There’s another kind with foliage that is more bluish, and I also put in some of that. I may actually achieve my dream of a sustainable flagstone patio as long as the water holds out long enough for the thyme to establish itself. Once established, I think I can cut back on watering. Time will tell.

I also managed to plant some more in my layered tall pots that I got for $8 and $10 at the lamp store. I think they’re supposed to be ceramic lampshades, but Tech Support Guy drilled holes in the bottom and I’m planting them with what I envision will be a killer succulent arrangement. I won’t post pics until I see how things turn out. The top 4 inches of these 20” and 15” tall planters is full of small holes almost like lace. The pots themselves are very dainty and have already been glued back together. Again. Time will tell.

This has been a rough summer for me physically with more than a fair share of aches and pains.

I spent the last half hour of my outdoor time, sitting in the chairs, meditating on happiness and controlling pain, because of course, I strained my back at the end of the day. Later, after some killer homemade meatloaf with a healthy dose of roasted tomatoes and peppers, I resorted to controlled substances to control my pain. I have a pretty high tolerance for chronic back pain in the cervical spine but I’m not so biblically accustomed to low back pain. But as my crazier relatives often say: It’s getting better.