Harder than I've Ever Worked

My Garden Grows

I quit my job so I could write, travel and drink beer. No sooner than I had returned from San Francisco, my family called me to come "home" and tend my father and brother. My mother had been ill for several months, but was in the hospital and had received a terminal diagnosis. Since then I have been traveling between my personal space (home) and the world of my family of origin.

It has been an emotional roller coaster and I have a series I have been working on called, Notes From the Rabbit Hole. It addresses the insanity I have experienced for the last four months. I have been cooking, cleaning, and sorting in the world I left in 1977. There is more stuff than I could ever imagine. My mother died on March 2 and my father said, throw it all out. No way! There is incredibly cool stuff to share, pass along, or add to my collection of things I really, really need.

I've washed dishes more times in these four months than I have probably in the last three years. I schedule my chores for once a week and make due. But to keep my father from getting up at 6 AM to do dishes, I emptied the sink each night. The recycle staff know me by name. There is a facility that will shred confidential papers while I watch and wait, so I am there every week. We are clearing from 1995, sometimes earlier.

I am traveling. Guess I should have specified where. Some weeks I come home on Monday and return on Tuesday. Today I am home until April as my DA and I will be traveling to San Francisco. I am so ready for both downtime and personal adventure.

I have a standing commitment to drink beer with a friend. It started as Tears and Beer. I needed a place to release the overwhelming feelings and what I thought was my major support failed. I was expected to find levity, but there is a time to laugh and a time to cry. I needed to cry - to weep and wail, bitch and moan.

And I am writing. Not always posting, but my pen finds paper and words flow forth. It takes both time and space to write consistently. Thinking happens on the fly. Sometimes I make notes, but there is work to be tended. No job I have ever held required as much effort as this process and yet, it is precisely because I understand how to get things done that this has gone as well as it has.

Making Sauerkraut

In the midst of all these changes, I continued to make my yogurt. I experimented with Milk Liqueur and have three batches of sauerkraut fermenting. Even while I am away from home, my garden blooms. I have been blessed with five months to spend time with my dying mother, reconnect with my siblings, and help my father reorder his space for this new phase in life. There is still the visit with my daughter and travel with my grand-daughter yet to come. My life is full and I am blessed.


I opportunity was offered and I accepted the time and space to live freely.

My favorite coffee - Cafe Bustelo