Extended Pause

I hereby express my heartfelt regrets to friends, family and my blogosphere community for my extended distance. As dear brothers Seagh and Edmund would strongly advise, appreciate the quiet while it lasts – 😀

Now that we’ve acquired a new (to us) sofa and love seat, Erin and I continue the integration process. Rearranging her family’s years of collecting wondrous belongings to make room for “The Great and Powerful Roo” and her stuff, much has temporarily slipped between the cracks.

Things I have missed:

• Daily perusing the very enlightening and entertaining posts from my fellow bloggers,
• Emptying my inbox daily,
• Exploring the Reader for new blogs,
• Daily texts or chats with one of the kids and grand kids,
• Reading – anything other than momentary pauses in the library (bathroom), and short emails marked “urgent” or “immediate attention required,”
• “Urgent” and “immediate attention required” have become subjective to the tasks du jour,
• Make up. Scary, I know, but we’re all getting quite used to it,
• Leisurely walks around the neighborhood
  • our walks have been exclusive to the post office and grocery store,
• Daily vacuuming has been deferred to every other day – or so.
  • The 2 cats have no problem with this,
• Yoga and my daily weight workout – lifting and bending to sort boxes suffice,
• Meal planning – we eat whatever is ready when we notice excessive silliness,
• Paperwork – a box for catching “non-urgent” mail and receipts must suffice “for now,”
• “For Now” has become an extended course,
• Early May planting has been deferred to late May,
• Daily texts and conversations with Roan and Opal have paused,
• Tony DiNozzo is leaving the NCIS Team? What in the world…
• Doing absolutely nothing for almost an hour.

With all the newness New routines:

• The view of the Mesa and the Monument every morning,
• Sunday dinner with the local family – every single week,
• No moist heat packs or cold compresses needed – every single day,
• Hearing “We are/I am so glad you’re here” and “I love you” – every single day,
• Saying, “Good night, sweet dreams” and “Good morning. How was your rest?” – every single day.

And yet with all this change the world continues to turn. {Happy sigh}

 

“Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.” Philippians 4:11 (NLT)

Advertisement

Amazing, Moving Grace

More than ever before I am grateful for grace today. This is particularly so while our new household seems to be in chaos.

 

However, I’m delighted to report that, uncharacteristically, my mind is not in chaos. I attribute this unusual phenomenon to being in familiar, excellent company.

While many tasks which would help us settle in hourly slip through the cracks, grace and patience abound. With rare, good humor (albeit sometimes twisted) we make our ways together through the challenges of blending our households. Compassion and care are the first rule – as is best.

Our maze is beginning to shirink. The piles and boxes of household and personal items including years of our collected antiquities is becoming less intimidating.

Our options are limited while we manage our very restricting finances, yet we hope to also integrate more modern technical equipment, particularly internet access into our new life together. For now, sister Erin and I focus on our short term goals – finding our stuff and somewhere to keep it all handy. All this while we keep our long-term goals to promote a full, rich life in perspective.

While the volumes of our combined paraphernalia (all necessary to daily life, of course) astounds we two sixty-something women, we laugh frequently (mostly at ourselves). We weep almost as often (sometimes for joy), we hug for any reason and we assure one another constantly, “it’s gonna be great.”

Family pops in frequently to assist with the heavy lifting. This all helps distract me from the huge inconvenience of being disconnected from my cyber-community.

I employ my old Galaxy S3 (without carrier service) as a tablet via my active cell Hot Spot. While I can do many tasks from my trusty phones, we have yet to discover why we can’t connect on the laptops. Up for the challenge, my patience and confidence are tested daily while honing my technical skills.

Now fourteen days since I separated from my flesh and blood family, my heart is calm overall. Though I wonder about my girls in Texas, I am confident this newest change in our family dynamic continues to be good for us all. And late in the day when my faith sometimes wanes, experience encourages and grace comforts me. It’s all good.

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken… always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our body.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-…10 (NKJ)

Catch Up Over Coffee

While I adore the idea of meeting up with you all, I’m too much of a realist. We’d have to meet somewhere public and I don’t know my new area well enough to know some wonderful, quirky place with superior food and drink to meet yet. I will have to arrange to have one of the cars, which doesn’t always happen on anyone else’s schedule easily. Face it, we’d settle on texting photos, on our coffee breaks. Still, anyone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is welcome to come by. Call first, of course!

So, since we’re planning this date to share coffee together in the not-too-distant future, I can get to the local Starbuck’s which is now also Teavana – yeay! You are most likely aware I cut myself off of any form of caffeine and processed sugar after ten-ish. So tea, especially herbal blends are kind of a big deal in my world. That way you don’t wonder if I’m not a gremlin after midnight, manning the captain’s chair inside the head of a robotic costume.

I don’t give a care about what cups they’re serving around their beverages, I don’t frequent non-fair trade coffee shops enough that I feel any guilt or remorse (again, walking distance), and the atmosphere is almost always pleasant. Not only that, if we embarrass or offend anyone there, no one there will ever recognize us again. Besides, being new in the community and far from other friends and family, my speaking skills need remarkable warming up before conversing. You get to start!

While we share tea together I’ll be delighted to hear what’s new since the last time we talked (Skyped, whatever). I’ve learned (finally) that listening is actually more important than talking, or entertaining as I tend to do. While I have become adept at systematically changing names to protect the innocent in my stories, many of my dialogues and short stories come from simply listening to the people around me – with a little splash of creative drama now and then, just to make it interesting. Besides, I am literally so weary of my story where it is right now, I’ve been writing it in the first person the way I thought it would go starting two years back. It still sucks at times, but I feel better a lot more often in my fiction.

While we share tea together we’ll go over the last week’s global events and the news from each other’s localities. Getting trapped behind my side of my nose makes me forget the many different perspectives on the other side – your side of my nose. What’s more, the world isn’t quite as frightening on your side of my nose as it is in here! Over drinks together we get a better grasp of reality, examine truth for what it is and find better balance in the world today. As Ellen (you remember meeting her) used to say, “we must get together and talk through the world’s problems, fixing it all over a pot of tea (or a bottle of wine) soon. Balance. It’s all about balance in all things and one simply can’t do it alone.

While we share tea together I’ll torture you with the details of building my blog, the amazing things I’m learning about the mechanics of WordPress, the people I meet and the fun I’m having taking the Blogging U. classes. I’ll pester you for ideas to write about and how to promote myself where I haven’t already. We won’t talk about that episode last spring when I put into action a clever promotional idea, but the officer thought I was soliciting. I played the Grandmother card and he let me go. Whatever…

While we share tea together we’ll discuss the latest fitness challenges I’ve tried out and diet discoveries have come to light since our last visit. Surely something there will help me shed another five pounds so I’ll be back to normal body weight six months after I start lifting and boxing again. If I’m still breathing, of course.

While we share tea together I’ll tell you the actual discoveries I tried and work well for me in my overall health care (like coconut oil), especially during the last bout with cancer – ugh. It’s all gone and all good now, “… I said, knowing I gained five pounds the last six weeks. (The physical therapist ordered me to not walk every day). I couldn’t believe she was serious about that until I popped one of the sutures in my calf going down the stair too fast. Note, it was only one stitch.”

While we share tea together I can tell you the secrets to spotting poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac. I never heard of the latter either until I Googled homeopathic treatments, not wanting steroids. I can also advise you (after my second contact – they actually are bigger in Texas) how to treat the rash before it spreads – take the steroids. The End.

While we share tea together I’ll only be dull a few minutes boasting about my thirteen adorable, amazing grand kids, my marvelous sons and my heroic daughters-in-love. I promise only to show photos from my phone if you ask. And you know better than to ask just to be polite.

While we share tea together I’ll tell you the wonderful, interesting new ways I’ve learned to meet new people in Texas (not counting that soliciting thing). We’ll probably even touch on how I found the best church home (third time was the charm). You will be amazed that I’m not on the Worship Team and remember that’s where I served primarily for the last thirty years. We’ll talk about the good old days and we’ll look forward to what’s coming up ahead.

I’ll bet you can hardly wait. Hey! Where are you running so fast?