Wednesday, September 2

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Another lovely day, except for some short bursts of rain/hail. Thankfully the rain we had last night wasn't too much to prevent us from getting the concrete removed.

WE GOT THE CONCRETE PILE REMOVED! This was concrete from demolishing the trailer last year to make way for the house. The trailer had several concrete pilings for support, and a sidewalk all the way around it. Some of it did get removed last fall, and the rest has been there since last year. We hired a guy to haul it to a close by neighbor's place, to help fill in a giant pit that was on his property, dug by a former owner of that property. It's not often that a favor helps both parties as much as this does. It really cut down on our costs to haul the concrete to our neighbor's place. We likely could not have afforded to pay someone to haul it to the regional landfill.

This same guy also moved some of the clay around to even out the edge of the driveway, and to put some topsoil around where the septic tank was installed.

The furnace guy came to drop off a thermostat we need, and since he keeps bees, I sold him the bee keeping jacket we bought so my sweetie could remove that hive from our house. I don't see us needing it again, and I guess if we do we'll go get another one. At any rate, this guy got a jacket that was only used for a few hours for half price, but we got rid of another potential item of clutter.

I took a HUGE pile of jeans for the woman who works at the transfer station (the dump), whose house was burnt down. She lost almost all of her clothes in the fire, but I thought a lot of the jeans that are too big on me now might fit her. I rounded up probably 20 pairs of jeans and sweats for her, and you know what, I doubt that I'll miss them. A lot of them I did get at the thrift store, some I bought new, but I haven't worn them for at least a year, some a lot longer than that, so they should get a chance to make life better for someone else. She was really happy to get them because she literally had nothing left. I told her that whatever she didn't want, to pass them on to someone else. I didn't need them back. I hope this small act does something to help her feel better about people, after having someone burn her house down.

I feel a little better about her situation, because at least she was actually in the process of moving into the home she and her husband bought, so she has a home. However, a lot of her personal belongings were still in this other house. At least she didn't lose any animals in the fire.

I'm also grateful that she passed on some important news to me. I don't know if anyone reading this remembers me talking about what a difficult neighbor we have right beside us. In short, they moved onto their place the same time we moved onto our acreage, and we really wanted to be on good terms with our neighbors. We went out of our way to be helpful and friendly, and visited with them quite a lot the first year or so. We really liked the wife, but her husband is just plain scary. He's controlling and abusive to his wife, and the more we got to know him the stranger and more unstable he seemed as we got to know him. We quietly distanced ourselves from them, until he got all crazy and verbally abusive at me over a dispute about the fence where our properties meet, and I actually called the police about his behavior and severed all contact with him. Well, the woman who works at the dump told me today that the wife (who lives right next to us, that I haven't spoken to in a few years now) has cancer, and was told she might only have a year or so to live.

Because her husband is nuts, and because of our dispute, I don't know if there's any way for me to contact the wife and talk to her. Normally I would extend any kind of help we could offer, or would just spend some time with her, or...anything. I'm really not sure if I'm even going to be able to see her again.

So, overall, another strange feeling day, with a real high because of moving concrete, and a real low finding out about our neighbor.

Lately, life has just felt so surreal, like everything just feels so fragile. There's so little of my life that feels like it ties into my life from two years ago. It's almost like I got spliced into some alternate time-line, because it's like I'm just walking along, and all of a sudden I don't recognize things anymore. Like if all the houses got repainted in my neighborhood all at the same time, or if I was in a coma for 20 years and I woke up, and technically I was in the same world, but everything had shifted.

I'm just trying to find ways of feeling like I'm being engaged in my life, making decisions and acting on things, and trying to be good to other people especially because it might be the good thing they need right now. If all I can do is be nice to someone, or do something useful for them, or remember to call them and talk to them, ANYTHING to be that one nice thing for someone today, then that's what I can do in the midst of all this insanity.