Not satisfied with unmucking the boys’ shed yesterday, Xopher worked on rebuilding the front path today.

It’s the summery day we’ve been waiting for.

 

I’m crawling with finches!

… when I proudly post pictures of DIRT!

I think that one’s a magnolia.

Seattle BTW was a long weekend to visit Aunt Alice.  She’s much the same as last time I saw her.  She’s non-verbal, but looked at me deeply when I spoke.

It was a coincidence that Aunt Lou died at the same time that I was scheduled to visit Aunt Alice.  I changed my return flight to hit the funeral in Virginia.

 

This was at the Arboretum in Seattle this past weekend.  I *think* this is a rhododendron, though there’s a chance it could be an azalea; I’m not good at identifying flowering plants.  We basically saw rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias, and cherry trees.  Larry and I went walking early Sunday morning.  Like most places, it seems, Seattle is much further along in the springtime thing than Vermont.

 

I used to think grieving was just about missing someone.

Or if a person’s life was cut short prematurely, about being upset about that, kind of on their behalf.

So, in my usual dense way, I didn’t have much patience for people making a big deal about somebody old dying that they had never seen fit to even mention before.

Now I realize that grieving is also about stories ending.  That’s the best way I can put it.  When I look at pictures of John, Barbara, Uncle Bill, and Aunt Lou, young and in their prime, I feel sad for their stories being over.

I wasn’t “close” with Aunt Lou, probably never spoke with her over the past 20 years other than the time she came to my wedding and the time she came to Barbara’s funeral.

Our families got together only once or twice a year when I was a child.  So I wasn’t this big part of her “story”, but I was part of it.  I was her sister’s daughter.  I knew her and her story and I was in it.

I look at pictures of their youth, and I know how it turns out.  There’s something just so sad about that.

Maybe it’s like a novel where they put this epilogue and tell you how everyone dies. That’s always kind of annoying, isn’t it?

 

 

 

What a difference HEALTH makes!  What a difference to no longer feel like a role in a commercial where “We’ve secretly replaced Tytania with a pile of crap… let’s watch!”

I have a lingering head cold and sore throat.

I have a few days of travel planned this month.  It is very bad timing workwise.  But they are likely going to be very worthwhile trips.

 

“I feel old” is a cliché.  Let’s say this: 50 feels like a peak after which instead of fighting upwards I’m going to be coasting downwards.  Sometimes it’ll feel like a great coast… sometimes it’ll feel like hurtling and not so good… sometimes it’ll feel like “downhill” in a good way, sometimes a bad way.  But downhill it’ll be.

But there I go living in the future again.  I am still firmly FORTY-SOMETHING.

“Forty”.  Ugh, such an ugly word.  “Fifty” doesn’t have the bad connotation.  Honestly it has something to do with my mom being an awful drunk through her forties but starting to turn into a sweet old lady in her fifties.

50 isn’t an arbitrary milestone to me.  I intend to live to 100.  So it’s the midpoint.

I don’t recall if the spinning wheel charm itself was cheap; it was an Xmas gift (which I asked for, from a booth at the VTS&W Fair).  But it was meant for a bracelet.  I paid a few bucks last night at what we call the Rock Shop (“Global Pathways” on Church St.) to have it put on a big fat clasp so I could wear it on my favorite necklace; and they threw in a repair to the clasp on said necklace too.  I wear this chain nearly 24/7.  The charm may be annoying to wear 24/7, as it gets caught on things, but isn’t it cool?!

And I was reading last night about how much fakery goes into photos that are taken with smartphones.  Apparently, whether or not you explicitly use a filter, the phones are making everything look much better than it “really” does.  Sorry you are always gypped out of full appreciation of my ragged complexion.  I don’t really look as sandpapered as I do in these photos.