And a thousand words more

please note: the door is closed.  I got Lucille in there and closed the door.  I got it done.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Here is a picture that I could not have enough words to say.

kind of in the middle

now

almost there, another few things need to go.

Indulging in excess

Yesterday I overdid.  In fact this entire weekend I overdid.  It started on Friday when I dropped everything at a moments notice to go dancing, knowing that I was also going dancing Saturday and had to provide snacks for the dance as well as doing my normal Saturday things.  So come Sunday  I had this day all planned in my head, that included cleaning up the kitchen and homework and building food for the rest of the week.  Then I got a text from Bestie.  she has been my friend for multi many years and had just got back from a trip to Italy. So instead of the quiet day doing things I needed to do for a calm week, I did do the kitchen cleanup mostly, and the rest of the day was spent in exercise. 
First I biked over to Bestie's house. Then we went on a hike up some lovely foothill country including a time sitting looking out over the next ridges and watching a hawk playing on the wind and hovering motionless until he would get bored and swoop and rise and find another  place to sit motionless with the wind holding him up.  We got back to her place, and I headed on. 
The ride back made me realize that I had not eaten in a long time and so I decided to detour  and hit the fish taco stand for a fast dinner.  I texted Sound guy these plans and we decided to meet up and do taco stand and eating together.  He was coming up from his place, and when I hit downtown  He was still a ways out so I decided to ride down along his route and meet him. 
two miles south, we meet up, and ride back together talking about what did we really want to eat.  We ended up at a pizza by the slice place.  After eating we were neither one ready to head back home.
So we went riding back up the  river trail another two miles, before heading down and towards my house. 
I would expect to be feeling like I had been hit by a truck after that much exercise.  I don't,  I am ever so slightly sore.
Four years ago I was extremely sedentary  as Mr Footless was failing and becoming more and more unstable.  I have physically transformed over the last three years.  I have my self, my strong energetic self back. 
I am so glad to see me again.

thinking about what happens next

As time goes on things have sorted out in a lot of different ways.  I keep learning about who I am and what I am able to do, and what I want to do that I am able to do, not necessarily the same thing.  The big question that I have circling in my brain is this: What happens next, and how?  What am I supposed to do, what can I do? and how will I get there from here?
Those are the distance questions.  Then there are the close up ones.  How do I make this day count in the scheme of things what are the tasks today that will count  for tomorrow and the distant future? I feel like I am building a bridge across air to a place I can't see with things I don't understand.  I have hopes  that I can't place and wants I can't articulate.  what do I want really?

•  To clean up the residual mess here, to sell this place and move to one that suits me better.  
• Something smaller, tidier, more manageable.
•  I want the means to live by my own lights.
•  If that means working, I want to work  somewhere that does not micromanage and that leaves me alone to do whatever it is. 
• Whatever my fears about getting from here to there, I want them not to drop me in my tracks.
• I want to live with no one in my personal living space. 
• I also want male companionship and cuddling from time to time.
• I have served others and cared for others all of my life.  I want to care for me mostly.  

I am still who I am.  I have a compassionate and caring heart. I just don't want to live giving all myself away. 
I am tired. I have a day in front of me I want to go back to bed.  Bed is boring. Time to move on.

Practice practice practice.  This is the latest Photoshop assignment.  The actual photo shoot will happen later today with someone who will not pick up and move the camera.

Short story

The last time I saw my husband, was the day I washed and dressed him for the long business of being dead.  I was so entirely drained by the last few months, the last few years of living with him and the illness that finally killed him that I was numb.  I wanted to love him, to feel his loss, to be sad about him going, and truth is, I wasn't, I didn't, and except on a very few occasions, I still don't.
I did want to give him a loving preparation, so on the day of his burial I went to the funeral home carrying the clothes and cloth and the soap and towels I would need to send him out clean and dressed for his last time above ground and the time after that below it.
My Husband lay on a table in a room.  He lay next to the coffin I had bought from the coffin maker and taken up to my home town.  I had painted the coffin with a nine pointed star on the lid.  It had taken three days to finish and now the lid was set aside and the box waited like an empty hole for its contents.
He was so still. He lay with his eyes half open, in the semi curl that his tightened muscles would never relax.  His legs were drawn up and the stumps where his feet would have been sat in the air. Who was that,  and what did you do with the man that I loved and lived with? Without life he was almost not recognizable, was that really him?
 He suffered deeply from the cold, always, so I had chosen and washed his favorite warm clothes.  I brought his lined jeans, the long underwear, the favorite shirt, woolly stump covers and one of his ubiquitous hats. I brought the knitted vest he chose the yarn for, that I had knitted and he had worn into a felted mess that he would not take off, except twice a year, for washing. I laid aside the clothes and pulled out a pan and soap.
I looked him over as I washed his legs and belly, trying to memorize what would be gone soon, trying to gather a sense that this was the same person I knew so well.  Even washing his face and combing and parting his hair feeling the whiskers under my fingers and his mustache, I still couldn't have a sense that this still dead form was anything but a seashell.
I changed the water three times washing the last remaining bits of his final days off him. they hadn't been nice days and he smelled. I left his hands for last.  
 The tendons in his hands had tightened over time closing his hands into half curls that he could open only partly.  He had worked with them all his life. Even old and shrunken his fingers were callused and hard palmed, with ingrained dirt and short nails.  Now they were curled tight against the palms like withered leaves.  I took a while to soak out some of the dirt and to loosen the fingers enough to place the burial ring on one of them.  They loosened a bit with the warm water, not much, just a bit.
 I uncurled the one hand and set the ring in place.  His hand curled around mine and cradled it in a movement that was so natural and so habitual, It was the movement that over all the years had held my hand and let me feel his love.  When we were driving at night, sitting together watching TV, curled together in bed spooned behind me his hand held mine like that.
 This was the last time he would ever hold my hand.  It was the time I cried the most and longest, for all the times he would never be there to hold my hand again.
I dried my eyes and wiped and blew my nose on the cloth I brought to wrap him in.  The rules said silk, Somehow silk would not have fit him at all.  I had looked through the fabrics that were on offer at the store and finally chosen a woven cotton flannel plaid in green and brown.  He would have liked it.  I wrapped the fabric around him carefully and asked one of the assistants if he could help me with the last bits.
Two men came in and very gently and respectfully lifted him into the open hole in the box.  I patted him one last time, and the lid slid home. He would have been happy to hear the battery powered drill that fastened the lid down seating the screws neatly into place, he liked a job done right.
He was made ready as well as I could, I was entirely wrung out and done for the day, and ahead for me was the burial and the funeral dinner. I patted his lid and said goodbye.
He rolled off to ride out to his last place, I folded my towels and picked up my things and walked home to get ready to meet him there.

I found something

The Equal opportunity silly hat

 now the hat alone