va a con dios apartemente

Today was the next to the last day to have my apartment.  It has been emptied, cleaned, inspected, approved, the keys are turned in and the last pieces, the very last pieces are complete.
There is not so much as a scrap to tell anyone that I was ever there. Not  even a crumb.
Eleven months ago I was living with some very kind people who had opened their house and lives to me. To this day I can't tell them why I chose to set up on my own, I just knew that I needed fiercely to have my own space, my own bed, and a place where I could close the door and be there with myself.

• I learned that I don't want to work in a galley kitchen, and that I can anyway.
•  I learned that my natural way of being is much tidier than I thought, and that I can live in a small space if it is set up right.
•  I know that I need my own chair, that a table to eat at isn't something I gravitate to, and that I like reading as I eat.
•  I learned that I like living downtown, 
•  I learned that having scattered responsibilities in too many places leaves me on the edge of insane.

 I lost my dad. My husband died. I am back in the house I left eighteen months ago. My responsibilities are still scattered but they are a lot less and a lot saner. Someday I may have a house closer to the center of old town, right now I have one hell of a mess to deal with here.
 But I Am Home
Bless that little apartment. Bless the affordable  rent. Bless the time I was there, it was a sane place in a crazy situation. I hope that whoever lives there next loves it too.

Getting unpacked and other annoyances

After packing up the apartment and moving the last things home I have been working on finding what and where everything is going to live. Now really, I ask you, I have been in a space that was the size of my living room and had everything in the space neatly set up and tidily put in its place. So why on earth am I sitting in three times the space wondering where to put a couple spatulas and how to fit all the books on the book case when they fit on three shelves with room to spare before?  I seem to have expandostuff.
Mostly it is a matter of choosing just where I want to put things so I can put things there and have them stay, and then I don't like it there and ...
Sometimes the pretty stuff is harder that anything else. Finding a place for Sick Sir Lancelot the clinically depressed knight where I can look at him and laugh is important. Right now he sits in the bay window where he is backlit, and I like him there but he really looks kind of unfinished.

 On the upside such as it is, I can have and eat things that would have been barred preflight.
I also find that feeding myself when no one is looking is pretty problematic. The whole idea of making a meal with all the nutritious food groups just doesn't seem to be worthwhile.
I have relearned that you don't save glazed donuts for later, a few hours is fine but not a day or more. I am fussy about my bakery treats, My nose reacts to stale and rancid with revulsion, and I will go to the store in the morning to get them fresh rather than get them the day before and save myself the trouble in the morning

If you are wondering why I didn't find some of this out while living in the apartment, well some of it I did.  But then I was just not there for much because I was bouncing between my commitments and responsibilities. It was pretty much a place I slept and changed clothes on my way to the next part of what was going on at the time.
Moving my things back has put me in one place for the first time in a year and a half. Coping with both the old and the new of being here is uncomfortable. 
This house is/has been home for me, I realize that I have lived here most of my adult life and I actually could like it here.  What I make it is up to me, and right now I need to make it a place where I can put my kitchen away and make something I want to eat for lunch and dinner today.

putting my head above water once again

So I am starting this blog up again. seems like a place to figure things out while waiting for the stink of sadness to leave.
It has been about a year  since I last posted, and there are so many sad things, funny things and other things that have happened.
 My office has moved, My dad died, Mr Footless also died, I moved twice and sometimes I can't imagine being the person I was when I started to write things down  a few years ago.
Last weekend I moved from my wee apartment in the middle of downtown back into what is now my house.
I am struggling with my status as a widow.
I am struggling with rehabbing the house and de-stashing Mr Footless's possessions.
I am struggling with twenty seven years of living with a hoarder, and how much are his attitudes and my attitudes the same?
Sometimes I have no clue who it was that I was married to.
At present I am reintegrating the things from my household to my household and my main floor is full of trumpeting furniture milling about waiting for me to heard it into its new places.
Getting it situated will involve a daisy chain of events and unless I get the last chain of the daisies it won't go well.
Let us start over with some of the suspects and begin introducing them.
There is me.
Older female, faced with a collosal and overwhelming physical mess.
I am in the healing professions but my passions have been damped and I am rethinking what I do along with who I am.
I knit passionately, clean reluctantly, cook reasonably.
I have decent instincts but I don't behave well when I am operating from survival.
my organizational skills leave a lot to be desired
My sense of humor has been a bit impaired by grief and loss
I find that I am beginning to like living alone,and that my ability to enjoy life is starting to return.
there is a whole lot I don't know about myself as the lone arranger including how I am going to deal with the outside of the house, yard and seven possible flower beds.  It is mine and I don't know what I will do with it..
So tomorrow I will start my usual tasks including  spending the early morning with  my friend The Instrument of Grace.
oh and somewhere in the midst of it all I need to change my sheets, do a load of socks and run a bunch of towels as well.
my ability to attend to the details of daily life are off.
This isn't my first rodeo with grief as the event, and I know that by the end of next September I will be in a very different place.  How far I get is up to me and what I put in to it, my goal is to have put together some idea of a life that I can live with some comfort and enjoyment, be of some use to people that I might help, and manage well enough given some of my limitations.
It isn't much but it is a start.