Transitions

A beautiful summer evening, the weather has cooled and the wind is blowing.  The sound the wind makes in the tall trees is becoming familiar, a ‘home’ sound and I like it.  It is not lost on me, that this time last year, I was a few weeks out of cancer surgery.  My scar was fresh, I tired easily and I felt like I was swallowing a golf ball.  To be here now, in this beautiful valley, with neighbors whose kindness knows no bounds, and a place to share with our children is a blessing beyond words.  It is probably why so many cats keep turning up, just to keep me humble.

Our dogs have had a hard transition.  Luckily, they have a large dog run, if in fact they wanted to ‘run’.  The problem is that the old deaf dog only wants to run, when she is out of the run.  Then she is happy to run off down the road, scaring us all that she’ll get hurt or end up in the next county.  She is also at that stage in life where she is a bit incontinent, and as they do not make ‘Doggie Depends’ this limits her ability to be in the house, due to my strange desire to not have our home smell like dog pee.  Our lovable Lab when out is happy to run in short bursts, picking up horse poop, eating the cat’s food and lifting his leg on my pumpkin patch.  (If you receive any of my pumpkins, I highly suggest you wash them before use).  For most of the day though the dogs are in the run, which sadly limits the number of pats on the head they get.  We believe we’ve finally come up with an option for them which will include a radio fence and a doggie door into a small area of the Fat room.  (Yes, I really did say ‘Fat room’.  This is an old addition and the walls are about a foot thick and the inside filled with sawdust.  It is the original cold storage room in our historical home.)  Our friend the farmer, informed us that when cutting into the Fat room, make sure to start cutting from the outside.  It would seem that the odds of there being a few mice living inside the walls is highly probable and when they come out, they’d better be outside NOT inside.  (Note to self, when the cutting starts, collect all cats to be nearby and present and then go to town.)

Our long-term plan includes a creative place for me.  As lovely as it will be, it is a long way off from happening.  This has me feeling a bit ‘adrift’.  We’ve been here 4 months, but 2 of those months have been filled with teens and seem to have been lost to ‘crowd control’, so it feels as if those months don’t really count toward getting settled inside the house and certainly not toward finding a space for me.  The kids have their rooms, my loving spouse has a large workshop, the dogs have the run, the chickens have their coop, the horses have pastures and the barn, the cats have anywhere they decide they want and I need a spot.  No, the laundry room does not count.