Gratitude

It's been in the 90's here for many weeks. With humidity. If I need to find something to be grateful for it would have to be air conditioning.

Yesterday

Yesterday my significant other turned 40. We have been together for forever and I can say he is a really good man. It's been quite a while since I turned 40 and a lot has happened in those years. I don't plan to share it all with the world. Suffice it to say, huge shake ups have left me on a life path I never planned for and never saw coming. Well guess what! That happens. The life path I am on now is so different that I don't have the map for it. I had thought to be sharing my life with a husband of many, many years when retirement came. Didn't work that way. Oh, well!

I am left with so many choices for the rest of my life that I am overwhelmed. It is funny that having a life plan that has been around a while is so confortable. I have always valued my independence. That is, since I can remember. It was an illusion in some cases and that was alright too. For a while. But when in a relationship, independence is something that is tempered with thought for the betterment of the pair. For instance, if I loved to travel and wanted to be gone a lot, the independent thing for me to do would be to make reservations. But what of the partner who likes to stay home? That is the sort of process my plans take on a regular basis. When I was married, I thought we were on the same page, life wise. How wrong I was. Now in the current life, I ask and watch to see where we are. So when I say my map is gone that's what I mean. I have given up trying to always be on the same page and just look to see if we are in the same book.

No matter how esoteric the previous post is, it still speaks to me not knowing where I am and where I am going. As you can see in the pic of my partner and the one of me, there are some huge differences in us. Makes the mapping a little more difficult. But guess what, the road not taken has left me on a road with a lot of interesting side streets.

Last Wednesday

Last Wednesday I turned 65. I had thought it would be difficult to deal with getting older and I was not looking forward to being considered old. I remember my grandparents and even my mom when 65 showed up. It was almost as if life had ended for them. Of course there are endings when the age creeps up. But I am at a loss to understand what causes reasonable intelligent people to think retirement and reaching 65 is a bad thing.

I went to the mountains with my honey on my birthday. One of the places we visited was Bald River Falls. We sat by and in streams and rivers. We looked for crawdads and fish. We found a baby snapping turtle and saw two young deer on their way to the river to drink. Unfortunately the weather has been dry so there was a lot of dust but nothing can completely negate the feeling of being enfolded by mother mountain. Millions of years old, the mountains are really just getting started. They provide the most soulful peace I have ever experienced. And as I was sitting on a rock looking at the clear rushing water and the trees I realized I was the author of my life. There have been books written on the subject. I read them but didn't get it. The mountains have been shaking off bad stuff for millions of years. Of course I am able to do it too.

As for being the author of my life, I am responsible for the bad things, the problems, the unhappiness I have felt. I could have done something about the overweight at any time had I chosen to make it a priority. I could have had my home looking like I loved it instead of just paid rent. I do own my own home. I could have taken the time and the effort to do the things I love and to get good at them.

That waterfall has seen all sorts of problems. There have been droughts, storms, tornadoes, etc. It is still falling and giving its beauty freely to those who come. When I think of problems about things I would like to do, I can remember to keep on. Just keep on.

Hot

The weather here has been hot and muggy with bad air quality. The Gulf has oil everywhere. New York has become the baked apple. Shall we say Washington State or Oregon. Meet you there.

I have to remind myself

Today I had to remind myself that this is just another day on earth. We have had our mailbox vandalized many times since we have lived where we are. It is on a stretch of road that some people speed on and they also seem to carry baseball bats. I don't want to call names in the blog but they are definitely not my sort of people. I spoke with my mail carrier and she says there are several boxes knocked down on a couple of other streets near, all through streets.

I now have a PO box.

Nuff Said