Thursday, May 30

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A lot of things, this past week or so. I haven't been able to post because I went home to visit my Mom (no computer), and the internet here at our house has been really spotty for the last while.

I had a decent trip home, I am trying to get used to the idea that several people in my family are quite frail now, and who knows how long we have. I am trying to get used to how our traditional May Long Weekend may change, how spread out and somewhat estranged we have become, and yet how precious it all is.

I chose to visit my eldest sister, who lives three hours out of my way, but I did spend two nights with her and her husband, which I haven't done in likely over ten years. I don't typically see her in person much, though we do talk on the phone, so I do know what's going on in her life. She has horses, and I got to ride her very nice elderly Arabian horse on a little trail ride, which was great. Overall, it was nice visiting her home.

I got to walk around on the family farm with my nephew, who is 16 now, and is driving. He's one of the few kids that I got to see a lot of as he grew up, and hopefully we can maintain some kind of connection. We drove together to see another sister of mine, who really doesn't live that far away. I'm trying to set an example of actually visiting each other. It's weird, but my family doesn't seem to do this much, even though quite a few of them live within an hour of each other.

I've been back for nearly a week, and it's been crazy busy. My sweetie is home for a while now, to use up a ton of banked time from work (they give him time off instead of paying him for over time). We did a lot of work this week, getting the garden cleaned out of grass and weeds and planted.

Last Sunday, I went on a trail ride on River, with a group of other people from the barn. I was pretty nervous, as I haven't done much outdoor riding on River, and I wasn't sure what he would do (though his previous owner did trail ride with him). He did great. We rode through some bush, and through some marshes (though I think maybe that was reckless, too much mud) and he didn't hesitate to go in the water.

Right now is hurry up and wait, as far as whether or not we are moving a house onto our property. We put a deposit on it, and for all intents and purposes it is ours. We are waiting to have our permit approved by the county, and that is June 19. We can't begin to move the house or do anything else until then. My husband has done a lot of legwork getting quotes from people about the basement and so on, so that all of that can go into motion once we get the go ahead. I am kind of in stationary panic mode, but that can't be helped.

Fatty seems to be doing well with the treatment, and every day is a precious gift.

My beautiful animals. I missed them so much when I went to visit family, and it was so good to be with them when I got back. I am also grateful that my sweetie could be here to care for them.

That my sweetie got so much done while I was away.

Today we went to the city, and had a fairly laid back day. One of the things on my list was to get supplies for quilling (sort of a paper decoration that I want to do for cards), and we got to the craft store that had supplies for that.

We also managed to make it to our pottery class earlier this week, and I got some glazing done, and managed to throw some pieces for the upcoming raku day. Hopefully they will be ready in time (they have to dry, and be fired once before the outdoor raku firing event).

The air quality was really awful today, because of the fires up North. It is a reality check to have this smoke everywhere, because other people's crisis can seem distant and unimportant until you have some physical reminder that we are never so far away from such events.

That I am even able to use the computer/internet right now. It's been so spotty that I've mostly not been able to access the internet at all.