There are a lot of things going on in the background right now. Just home stuff / life stuff and stuff stuff. Some big, some not so big, some that is threatening to become overwhelming if I let it.
Grandbaby No. 1 is due next spring and that's a huge life change. Suddenly I'm the "old" person in the room and the shoe is currently pinching. It's not that I'm not happy for the parents. I am. I'm thrilled for them because they seem to be thrilled (mostly) with the situation. It's just that I'm too damned young to be so freakin' old and I'm having a hard time adjusting.
There are other things, too.
MIL is fading mentally although she's still front and center physically. Her episodes of getting lost in the house - trapping herself in odd places because she can't remember how to navigate the twenty feet from here to there she's navigated without problem for years - are coming more frequently. Her speech is slurring, even though it's not related to her TIA of a few weeks ago. She's just tired, spending more and more time sleeping. The clock is winding down, it's just a big hanging question of when.
That when will then be followed by now what? That's a whole other realm I'm not ready to poke around in.
Fortunately, because of her bedroom being in our living room, we don't do the whole Christmas thing anymore. It's been four years since we last put up the tree and decorated the house and, quite frankly, I miss it but not enough to long to do it again.
We don't do Christmas cards. It's a huge time and money sink for something that's going to end up in the trash when all is said and done. Besides, if I haven't spoken to you in a year or more, it's likely that neither of us are particularly interested in working hard on the relationship. See my prior post about friendship and what it means to me - the 1:1 relationship. Since neither of us is particularly determined to work hard on it, it's easier to let it slide. Does that mean I'll be poorer for the lack of company? Probably. But that's a choice I've made and I'm ready to stand by it.
At least I don't have that stress, but there are other things and it's those that are making me twitchy.
After the dust of Thursday settled the rest of our weekend was nice. Recovery took about twenty-four hours and things settled down.
I still haven't gone out to buy the new shoes I need, even though that was part of my plan for the weekend. I put that down to the fact that I would rather drive a nail through my foot than go shopping. Can you tell from that, that I hate shopping? I do. Even though the leather upper of my right shoe is torn through and both are cracked and split.
I do have to go shoe shopping before January. That's when El Nino is supposed to hit and we're supposed to get buckets of rain. Gosh! I hope we do. Out of curiosity I was poking around on the interweb yesterday, based on a conversation about the water levels at Lake Tahoe, and I discovered a number of really shocking before and afters of Lake Oroville - one of Central California's major reservoirs.
It's going to take a LOT of water to refill that, and that's just one of the lakes of which I found images. Folsom Lake, east of Sacramento is another one:
I think that's something else that's stressing me, although I don't know why. I can't do anything about it. Still, it's unsettling.
So - pillar post pillar post... A running round of nonsense that I can't affect.
I can't affect MIL. I can't affect Sam, who is also fading although not as quickly as MIL. I can't affect the drought except to keep trying to save water. Many things poking and prodding about which I can do nothing. Is that what it is? Just that is causing me heartburn and problems?
Hmm. If that's the case then I need to stop and figure out how to deal with it, because I sure as heck am not going to keep going with this sense of impending doom hanging over my head.
So, I'm going to cogitate, perhaps examine my navel in great contemplative detail, and try to figure it out. In the meantime, I hope you have a tidily ordered day.
Best~
Philippa
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