sweater weather

Chaos in my mind, swimming swimming spiraling thoughts, need to make a list!

( list for moi )

I feel really good after getting up at 6am today, still in the darkness, to fill water jugs and the tea kettle and get henna in my hair and do all the dishes and shower and such before the water got shut off at 8am this morning. It will be off until 2pm. I am not sad to be leaving this problematic apartment complex. All apartments have their issues, but I have literally lost count of how many days we have had to go without water this year. It's at least 2x per month on average, for a while there it was every week. Power often gets shut off as well. I hope such things are more consistent where we are going. The house we will have more control over, but public utilities are another matter. Hopefully it will be okay.

I am *so nervous* about every aspect of home ownership. I could not sleep at all last night, so worried about the loan and mortgage and how to keep the house in tact and clean and in working order and comfortable and everything. It's daunting, to say the least. Nothing like say, parenting, but still.

Going to run off to silks soon, but I also wanted to journal about yesterday.

Had a ton of work to get done in the morning so I spent my day until about 1pm boxing up orders and cooking meals for Josh and such.

Finally got out the door and grabbed a latte, shipped my orders, and drove out to Saddle Mountain.

It was warm and sunny and I didn't get on the trail until 3:40pm, so I motored up as fast as I could within reason. Enjoyed the birds and chipmunks and squirrels, ravens and swallows and the autumn dryness and late flowers, most stuff has gone to seed at this point. Lots of mushrooms but I wasn't looking for them - the shaggy chanterelle were especially cute.

Reached the summit at 4:51, had it to myself, took ten minutes to hydrate and snack and gaze at the ocean and surrounding hills.

I'm really grateful to my body for being able to do this. My hands and hip and feet hurt a bit when I was done, but not too bad. I feel like I'm re-building my fitness after a really sad spring and summer. I feel hopeful this can continue. I just sort of had to re-set how hard I can actually push myself, and adjust my activity levels, but I'm slowly filling back in some of the activities I lost, and feel able to do them at a slightly softer pace. This is appropriate for my age and where I am in life, it's okay. It was really difficult to be forced to slow down, but I'm okay.

Looking forward to more time for art and wings and letter writing/snail mail and reading and today the weather is shifting, high of 62 and mostly overcast, and tomorrow the rain begins again. I'm actually excited for sweater weather and snuggly evenings on the couch with Josh watching spooky movies.

I'm tiiirrreeeed - got up too early lol. But need to grab some snacks and run off to silks!

I have my first mammogram tomorrow and I am DREADING it, I have to work all day tomorrow and Friday, but I have the weekend to myself, yay! Hopefully Saturday will be visiting a donkey sanctuary and carving pumpkins with Steph, that would be so nice.

ghost season

I hit a wall on my list of things to do today while driving around like a madwoman trying to get it all done and realizing I was dangerously overdue for an oil change. I got that done but it was SLOW and I was just done after that.

Lots of documents to go through for the house but we're chipping away at it, look at us, being adults together.

I think because of the house buying process, because of my mammogram tomorrow and my friend's breast cancer not responding to chemo, remembering my mom's house getting foreclosed on, watching her lose everything and become a ward of the state with alcohol-induced dementia, and then having to escort her through endometrial cancer radiation and surgeries, the childlike nostalgia I have over the changing weather and Halloween, I just hit a tsunami of unbearable grief, in the midst of all the errands, today.

( dreams )

...

Missing my mom suddenly and devastatingly, today.
I miss my dad, too. He died 25 years ago.
I miss what it felt like to have grandparents, as a small child (my dad's parents were no longer living when I was born, but my mom's were around when I was little.)
Wishing for a relative to laugh/cry over the osteo-arthritis in my hands commonly termed "Mommy Thumbs," while never having had the chance to be a mommy.
There are many blessings in my life. But also many gaping black holes of loss that I sometimes stumble into, unaware, unexpectedly, and then I'm lost in the dark for a few moments/hours/days.

I think I have a ghost child who has unintentionally injured my hands with her invisible yet chronic neediness. Maybe she made friends with Lunar, who has haunted our apartment since his death. I don't believe in ghosts, not even cat ghosts, but that doesn't change the fact that Lunar is haunting this apartment.