I went to the Rogue Winterfest today and took a walk around the trees displayed. There were some pretty fancy things there. I loved this ornament. It made me think how nice it would be to have a little trailer that I could take and go wherever a whim suited me to go. I’m feeling like a trip, a long trip in a trailer, would be good for my soul about now.
A cozy Christmas Camper
Two nights ago I was watching the most recent Grey’s Anatomy. It is one of the few shows I enjoy watching. I typically watch it after the fact on the computer. Do any of you watch it? Well, there is a baby on this episode that is needing heart surgery. I didn’t realize until late into the show that the baby in question had the same condition as my son Kevin had. Today would have been his 27th birthday. They didn’t have successful surgeries for his condition in 1985. Hypo-plastic left heart syndrome was a sure death sentence for babies. They had tried a few experimental surgeries in St. Louis back then, but all the babies had died on the table. My husband and I decided to not put our baby through that. I wanted to just hold him as long as I could. I didn’t want to have him pass away on a sterile cold surgical table without the warmth of his mama. And so I did…I held him every single minute I could until his last breath was gone. Even tho it was 27 years ago….I always find myself feeling a little tilted from about December 7th until after the 13th. He passed on the 12th. My youngest brother’s birthday is on the 13th. That is my reminder that it is time to move on., This year, because of watching this show two days ago, I had it brought to my attention a bit more strongly than it has been in many years. Typically, since it has been so long, it is a slow awareness that brings it to my attention. Noticing the date and having my mind jolted into “oh yeah…that’s why I feel a bit off”. I hope you all don’t mind me sharing this with you…sometimes sharing things eases the weight of them a bit.
That same show held another moment for me. Bailey is struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I was diagnosed as being “symptomatic” of OCD years ago. I haven’t really noticed it being problematic or pervasive much over the last few years, that is, until moving to this house I am living in. Being where things are so broken and ugly and clutterd and just funky has made me feel more anxious. There is not one room in the entire house that is completely “normal” with everything in working order and painted and cleaned. It kinda wears on me.
So that is why this little trailer caught my eye. It made me think about just wanting to get in a trailer that was all cute and cozy and just go with the flow. Wherever I wanted to go. Of course, that isn’t going to happen. But sometimes…letting our minds wander like that, thinking about a trip to wherever, it can help one to get through the moment.
For many many months I was really struggling with pain and decreased energy. That was the reason for starting this thread on low production. Each day all my energy was used just to get a meal and maybe a shower. It started with the intense heat of the summer, then the smoke from the fires and then the weather changed dramatically in late September and the pain in my joints escalated to where I wasn’t doing much of anything. Or at least that is how it felt to me.
I had always been so active in the past. I worked hard and played hard. I work and worked a lot, always at physically hard jobs. I worked in food service for years. If you have been a waitress you know how demanding that is. I worked at the brown truck company as a pre-loader lifting approximately 50,000 lbs worth of packages a day. I owned/operated my own businesses, first doing housekeeping and then lawn maintenance. Then I went back to school at the age of 35. Single mom, working as a nursing assistant as well as still mowing some lawns a couple days a week in addition to taking classes to get into a nursing program. It took me 10 years of schooling, all the time working and raising kids and keeping a house, to get my degree as a registered nurse. It’s been almost 3 years since I have worked at a regular job and it is still hard for me to accept. And now, living in this house that needs so much attention and has so much cleaning to be done, while not having the strength or energy to do it, is really hard. Especially for someone that has symptoms of OCD. Every day I would hope to be able to clean an area or fix up something, but I just couldn’t stay out of bed long enough for weeks on end.
Then, just a couple weeks ago, the weather changed again. We hit a cold spell. A very DRY frigid cold spell. Low and behold, my energy has been better. My pain has been reduced. NO, it is not gone, but it is better than it has been for over 4 months. It’s been good now for nearly two weeks. The increased energy has come at a good time. It is the holiday season. I have things I’ve wanted to do and things I want to accomplish.
I am not much of a gift buyer, but I do enjoy making gifts. As most of you know the holidays take energy if one enjoys participating. So, I am grateful for this current improvement. I don’t know how long it will last. I never know if tomorrow will find me hurting too much to do more than the basics again. I am doing the best I can to do what brings me enjoyment and fulfillment each day that I get that I feel well. This house…it isn’t going to get fixed over the holidays. In fact, it is possible that it will never really get fixed during the time I live here. But I can do a few things to make it have a bit of coziness during the month of Christmas. I can bake and create lovely aromas to entice smiles and warm memories for anyone who comes by. I can make gifts of food to share with friends and neighbors to bring a smile to their face.
These will be nice little gifts to have sticking out of a bag or stocking! 🙂
So, production WAS down and now it is better.That is how it has been with the Layers too. They went through a rough summer. They were moved to a small funky coop in town. They were put with another group of chickens. They had to deal with the heat and the smoke. And then they molted. But now they are looking beautiful and giving us about 8 eggs a day. They are in a new season and production is good. It could change again. Production changes with the ever changing environment. I guess I’m not so different from the chickens. 🙂
I think there are still a few girls holding out. They must not have heard the rumor about the stew pot.
Ms. Ladybug and her Layers 