The last of the pictures of the wedding

I finally found the pictures that I unearthed and then lost.

 

 

What hits me in these pictures is how utterly happy we are, and  how young and handsome the footless man looks.  We were besotted with each other and it showed. 

It was twenty years ago come Thursday

 Here we are when Footless Man had both feet and his eyesight.  Here I am, before school, training, and all the challenges of everything in between.
and look at us.  We are so radiant, so happy.  It took so much to get even there. If you look at the things against us it looked like it would never work.  All the obstacles all the hoops.  It seemed like it took forever to happen and it looked so impossible for so long.  And there we were.  
I think about all the challenges we faced, what we accomplished both together and alone.  For one thing we both expected that I would be widowed within five years.  Given that, the other losses seemed, well not minor, but more cope able.  Some how a prosthesis is a better choice than a coffin. 
Kids are raised,  School is mostly done,  We passed the expected five year limit four times. We have moved into middle and old age.
What an amazing journey.
There are very few photos of that day.  I went and dug around to find them.  I came up with this.

bouquet

hair wreath

And this proves beyond a doubt that mom is a sentimental pack rat.
So here we are twenty years later.  It has been one wild ride.  Next stop, 25.  Five years out.  Always five years out.  I can think about five years, it's manageable.
I will put up more photos later because they promptly went into the fifth dimension shortly after they showed up. 

Some things to think about

I re read my copy of Parenting With Love and Logic.  The one that helped me raise my kids without killing them.
I have been applying the love and logic methods of interaction to the Footless Man.  Suddenly we are getting on much better .  Footless Man sat down in the computer room and I was able to show him

The barking cat,

Maru
 and several other delightful pieces that he has been missing.
today The Footless Man removed the cherry paneling from the front of the refrigerator revealing it in its almond glory.  I have word that it is leaving next week.  Footless Man wants to figure out how to put the panels on the new refrigerator.  I sympathized. Sometimes reality is a hard place to live.

That was some grasshopper

Last week I was wondering what might be the result of the grasshopper sacrifice at the grand poo-bahs.
This week I am assessing the results.
Tuesday I got a call from the crew chief telling me that he had two crews loose and could he send them over to begin work at the house.  I OKed it and asked that they call The Footless Man and give him a head's up.  (I also clued them that the door bell is a decoy set up for sales men and Jehovah's witnesses, and that the standard is knock and yell.)
The Footless Man had the time of his life over the next two days supervising three crews.  Over the two days they sealed the main floor attic, removed and replaced our furnace with a new high efficiency one, blew the attic full of insulation, gave us a new thermostat, smoke detectors in every room, a CO detector in the upper hall, blanketed the hot water heater and put insulation around the cement edges of the crawl space.
Pictures will arrive when I get new batteries for the camera.
The new refrigerator is ordered.  The house feels different.  It is quieter, cooler in the heat, more solid.
I realized that over the years I have gained an intimate understanding of the houses innards.  I have been in all the attics. I know where the wires run.  I installed a lot of the plumbing and electric upgrades as well as the cabinets, the dishwasher, and the thermostat. 
I know the difference between a doorbell wire and a thermostat wire, how to light a hot water tank and the mechanics of a toilet.  I can tighten the cables to the TV satellite dish, and change out the outdoor faucet petcocks if I must.
This is a summer that is the beginning/ending of an era.  Michael the cat is gone, Edith has been given to a new owner.  James is moving out.  My responsibilities have begun to disburse.
Come this fall, things will be more stable.  we seem to be getting ready for something.  I wonder what.

Keeping an eye on the neighbors

This morning my eastward neighbor woke me up as usual.  I don't talk about the neighbors much. The house is a rental and seems to rent to a pretty tatty demographic.  The selection gets worse with every new set that moves in.  The latest ones are pretty impressive. 
They are oil patch workers, and their hobby is a truck that they take to shows.  The tires on the truck would pay for a furnace, and the rest of the truck seems to be of the same sort, fearfully expensive and high maintenance.
I have talked to the guys on occasion.  They are polite and pleasant and look like they spend their time off drinking and playing music that would sterilize frogs at forty paces at a decibel volume just under a jet takeoff. 
They are gone for a week, here for a week, with someone who stays here to keep care of everything. 
I have seen her twice in the seven months they have lived here.  The first time was seeing her out on the back porch shrieking and banging on the patio door about " lemme have my stuff! I need my stuff! Goddammit you almighty f^(%head, Gimme my Stuff!"  This was about 11 at night in February with the below zero temps.
she did get in and who knows what it was about.
The second time I saw her she was shit faced drunk and fell off the back porch.
So, not someone that I would find a kindred spirit.

So at 7 am this morning, when I would like to take the one day I can to sleep in a bit, I hear one of the guys coughing and hacking with a rising volume until he begins to retch.  This is loud enough to sound like he is on the back porch.  I check out the window.  Nope.  He is producing his magnificent volume of noise from the bedroom.
It's been a long summer living next to them.  I hope the heat breaks soon. 

sacrificing grasshoppers to the poo bah

some how after a very long time in stagnation things are moving along with a vengeance.
A long time ago I applied for weatherization and we had our application accepted.  Not very long ago we called and asked if anyone would be coming out to do anything ever. I guess that we poked them in a tender place because we got a notice not long after, that someone would be out on the 24th, which at 8:30 this morning they were. 
Three guys examined and tested and climbed into attic spaces and looked (god help us ) at the furnace.  Some of the numbers are in, and some of the numbers depend on how many grasshoppers they sacrifice to the grand government Poo bahs.  If the grasshoppers and the numbers add up we get a new furnace, the attic insulated, the crawl space vapor barriered, and a new refrigerator.  We might also get a new hot water heater, it depends on the government to grasshopper ratio.
My water says that the furnace is a go and the heater is a maybe, but they have guaranteed that I will by gum get a new refrigerator.
The Footless Man supervised all this from his wheelchair looking as forlorn and crippled up as possible, as well as footless.  They told him that they would clean out underneath the house to put in the vapor barrier, so he gets the crud pile under the house removed and doesn't have to hire it done.
I await developments breathlessly.

That was wierd

I wanted to go down and have an afternoon with the Erstwhile Child.  We thought that a treat such as the Real Pirates would be a nice decompressing afternoon.
Somehow the nice calm afternoon together turned into an outing at the Museum that included the Mother-out-law (a very nice lady) and the youngest son.  The family tree is messy.  Anyway I spent a lot of time with two people that I never thought I would be able to spend time with at all, due to some circumstances that could only be engineered by God. Then I got tangled in traffic and ended up spending the night in Boulder with my parents, Nothing I had planned at all.  I got back to find that we have been approved for weatherization on the 24th.  God's Steering cause I sure ain't.