I have to fix the glass door to my fireplace.  It has 4 panes of glass and folds.  My son and I had a fire going a couple winters ago, and I had the door shut, it’s not air tight, just to keep all the heat from going up the chimney.  There are vents on the top and bottom of it, for the warm air to come out into the room.  We were in the kitchen and we heard it explode, ran into the family room and saw one of the 4 panes of glass had exploded into a zillion tiny pieces .

I’ve not been able to see how to remove the door.  I don’t know if I need a whole new door or can replace just that pane of glass.  But I had forgotten that I need to deal with it, and these people will want to see the house soon, so they’ll probably see it broken.  😦  Probably the biggest hassle I have to deal with, really.  My deck needs painting but that’s just work, not a real hassle.  This…will be an issue.

Sometimes, it’s such a pain to be a single female…Single mom, single homeowner.  Sometimes I get so sick of having to deal with all this crap alone.  And I wonder why I’m still alone sometimes.  But then, I remember, who I chose to fall in love with, lol. Duh. Trying to make wine out of raisins.  Nothing much there to work with, but boy I kept trying didn’t  I.  lol.

I’m pretty self-sufficient, and most of the time I like it that way.  I guess my marriage made me not want to have to depend on anyone, I just got let down all the time.  But sometimes, I just would like to have someone else do some of this crap, to be planning this move with someone.  It’s at times a daunting proposition, to move 1500 miles alone.  If I want to do it, though, it’s how it is.  I know it will be a good thing.  And, it is the way it is.

It’s all good, apparently my journey this time is to learn these lessons.  I can’t complain, I have a good life.  Love and light, all.

PS.  I just googled “making wine from raisins”, and there are a whole bunch of articles on how to do it.  So…..I guess you can!  I need a different analogy.

So why does this happen? I want to blame WP, but maybe it’s not. I was writing a blog, and usually I do them in Word and then copy and paste them, but this time I forgot, and was writing it in WP and suddenly the whole page blinks and the blog disappears. I try right-clicking and clicking “undo”. Nope. I use Firefox for my browser, and have Lazarus….but it isn’t there. I went to the file/edit menu and click “undo” but nothing. It’s gone, somewhere into the world, forever…..without a trace, except for the letter K which I typed after it disappeared.

Now, do I feel like writing it all again? No, not really. It was kind of a fun blog, but another time maybe. Not important enough to try to recreate the roll I was on.

My writing has been stifled lately. Some days I can come up with something that seems worthy of spending time writing about, but really the blog has always been about me working out my own shit. But now, too many people read it that know me. It’s no longer anonymous and with the loss of anonymity is the loss of freedom to say exactly what I feel, when I feel it, and be able to expound on it, or realize the error of my ways the next day.

So here I was tonight, kind of on a roll, the words kind of coming easily and not about anything profound but I was happy they were coming.

I’ve been alone most of the day. It was supposed to snow a little but it snowed a lot, so I didn’t go into work, since my street was not plowed until mid-afternoon. Hate to use a vacation day for a snow storm but I guess it is what it is. My son was here, but he’s not really company. He stays in his space doing his thing. Though we came together when we had to clear a foot of snow off the driveway and the snowblower crapped out. Did some serious shoveling of wet heavy snow (which is, I think, why the snowblower crapped out. Probably sheared a pin or something on the snow that quickly became ice inside the snowblower.) Then said son went to work and I’ve been on my own since.

I wanted to make jewelry, but found out I was out of the gauge of wire I needed to do wire wrapping. And I didn’t have sufficient beads to create the kind of beaded necklace I wanted to. So I messed with the Widgets and stuff on my blog site. I talked to a friend who seemed more interested in something else, or just bored and irritated with me, so I let that be. I made myself a nice dinner, I had a couple glasses of wine. Perused Facebook, found a meme I put up here….because it seemed appropriate. It kind of expressed where I was.

Oh I did some productive stuff too…laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, cleaned my glass stove top real well. Made cookies….

But I’m still irritated about the blog that disappeared. I was gonna say, story of my life…stuff comes and then disappears, just when I think I’ve got it going good. But maybe not. Maybe it’s just the blog. Sure hope so.

The day after the storm is beautiful, clear cold, and white.  So white.  We got about 8″ or 9″ of snow, so we got a little more than they expected.  Just a few miles south of us they got over a foot.  Grateful not to have to deal with that much snow.

My son will do most of the snow blowing when he gets up, but I’m going to clear enough to get my car out of the driveway because I had some plans with a friend and want to leave before noon, lol.  I heard him up at about 3 AM, I’m guessing he won’t be up til 11 or so.

It was a quiet night at home. I talked on the phone with a lot of people yesterday and last night.   I made a necklace for my friend who retiring on Friday.  She and I have worked together for 11 years, she is my best friend at work.  We tell each other our secrets, I will miss her.

I’m friends with the other women, but not close.  Two of the other women are the kind who love to be in the know, and can’t hold anything in confidence unless you say “don’t tell anyone” which I don’t often do.  For instance, one of them decided that when my mother died she would take it upon herself to tell my boss, “so you wouldn’t have to deal with it.”  I didn’t get mad at her, because she told me in a call where she was offering her condolences, but I was furious silently.  It was not her business to tell him.  It was mine to tell when I was ready.  The other woman, one day when I had a lunch date, like a second date with someone, shouts to me loudly across the room, “OH are you going on a date Deb?” so everyone could hear.  I spoke to her later, and said, “just because you know something about me, please don’t assume that I want everyone to know, ok?”

There is one more woman, who doesn’t feel it’s necessary to talk to everyone about everyone else, so we get along fine, but don’t have a ton in common.  So, I will miss my friend who never tells my secrets to anyone, nor I hers.  What Brene Brown calls “the Vault”.

The good thing is, I will follow in her footsteps hopefully within 6 or 8 months.  So looking forward to that.

Well, off to go deal with the snow.

I have been vegan a couple of times in the last 6 or 7 years. My sis sent out copies of the book “The China Study” to all of us, and my whole family went vegan for awhile. Some still are. But I couldn’t stay with it, mostly because my son was not about to go vegan at 17 years old. And I couldn’t keep up with planning two separate meals all the time. I still don’t eat anywhere near as much meat as I used to.

Fast forward to today. My son is in Colorado. He’s staying with a girl he likes a whole lot, and she’s vegan. He texted me today that he’s eaten all vegan since he’s been there. Can you say SHOCKED? Glad…but shocked. He even texted me a picture of the black been sweet potato tacos he was having.

All this has me reconsidering what I eat again. I work long days, almost always 9 hours. Leave the house at 8, get home between 6:30 and 7:30. My eating habits have gotten bad. I go for quick, easy, hassle free meals. I try to cook something on the weekend that will give me leftovers during the week, so it’s not like I’m eating crap all week. But not that well either.

I’m diabetic, and for the most part, well controlled. I expected when I was vegan my glucose levels would increase because I was eating less protein and more carbs, like quinoa, rice, etc. But the levels didn’t go up, they went down. I had to cut back my meds.

Worth a thought anyway, again. Especially if my son will join me.  Thinking vegetarian though, not vegan.  We like cheese too much, lol.

I have our book club here next Tuesday. We’ve been reading The Untethered Soul by Mark Singer. I only have about 20 pages left in the book, so at least I’ll finish it. I found it to be a lot like The Power of Now, which I read years ago. This was like a refresher course. Always welcome.

I also need to make a soup of some kind for them. Seems that’s what has become the trend in our small group (there are only 4 of us). We started out with snacks for our first few meetings, but since it got cold, it’s been soups. And some good bread. So I’m trying to think of a soup, not chili, to make. Not chili because the last couple girls have done that. I’m thinking of veggie soup, which I usually make with all organic veggies, and maybe adding some beef stew meat, like beef veggie soup instead of beef stew. Then I’ll have the leftovers for the week.

Anyway, it is always a good excuse to get the house really clean.

It seems so odd to me, not to have some emotional drama to talk about, lol. But none…..and it’s lovely really. Feeling pretty happy and content lately, even though I lost my mom, I feel her with me. Death is just another transformation. It was time for her to go be with my dad, her own parents, my niece. And I know she’s whole and at peace.

It’s all good. Love and light all.

Slowly getting the house ready to put on the market.  Furnace got cleaned yesterday.  My screen doors, sliders to my deck, will be done this morning.  I have the part to fix my closet door that’s been broken for 6 months, lol.  It’s a folding door, I’ve had the part but it’s just a pain to work on.  Up on a ladder, working over my head, but it’s not a big job.  That leaves fixing my fireplace door, a new light fixture for my kitchen and painting the deck in the spring.  Little by little.

Excited and nervous for this move.  I’m going to Florida in March for a week.  I’m planning to do some more intensive search around the area, to narrow down the neighborhoods I want to live in.  I have a good idea now, but my sis will drive around with me looking.  We’ll have more time than usual, because I’ve never taken a whole week there, it’s usually 4 or 5 days.  Very excited to go visit for sure.

My mom is definitely on her last legs.  She’s 94, suffered a major stroke and cannot speak, read or write.  She is drifting into deep dementia, though she still recognizes her daughters.  But she’s been stuck with only her thoughts and memories for a year and a half.  To think she only gave up her home about 4 years ago.  She lives near my sister in a memory care facility, so it will be good to be able to see her a bunch too.

The S and B drama seems to have died down.    Thankfully.  I still have healing to do around it, but at least there’s not new stuff coming up that I have to deal with like last week.  I’m not using their names anymore, that’s a request I can honor going forward.  But not going back and change all the old blogs.

Life feels good, hopeful.  It’s going to snow tonight a little….our first snowfall.  Not much thankfully, just a couple inches.  Hopefully I’ll be home by the time it starts.

Love and light, all.