Janine's Journal

It's astonishing to realize that we are now closer to Thanksgiving and the holidays than we are to the summer sun and the world in bloom. The truth is, I've been so busy I've hardly had time to look up much less to sit down and write. When school started, I wasn't ready AT ALL! I felt like summer had only lasted two weeks and I was neither finished with the work the yard/garden needed nor caught up on the rest required to go back into a world full of spiteful politics, malicious backstabbing, disingenuous declarations and rampant disregard. I speak, of course, of high school; although the current state of the country is clearly a reflection of that most hormonal and uncertain of times... Apparently, it is not only the nation's teenagers that need a good slap upside the head!...        But let's get back to me, shall we?  :-)

My mom went in for surgery on her hand last winter and after having been released from what was basically an outpatient procedure, she went home and got a staff infection they had to admit her to the hospital and put her in isolation on an IV antibiotic drip to cure. It was a really scary time for me. She had lost her mom before she turned 40 and I was NOT prepared to lose her before turning 50 (which I will not do until Dec. 2009 for the record!). She will probably never have all the energy she used to and I am AT LAST able to keep pace with her while window shopping but I don't think we're going to lose her any time soon and that's good enough for me.

A few months into her recovery, she decided it was time to put her condo up for sale. She's been talking about that on and off for a few years but she wants to travel, the economy isn't going to get better any time soon and she just didn't want to have to worry about money any longer. So we sorted through (my brother, sister in-law and I) and packed up over 30 years of family history, farmed a lot of it out, painted and cleaned the condo and then moved her into a friend's house where we all think she will be very happy for an indefinite period of time. The condo closed on the 30th of Sept. which brought to a close the months of work that goes into a change/move of that nature.

Among the pieces that came to me were two steamer trunks that my grandfather (Mom's dad) purchased in 1929 to take Grandma to Norway with. They looked AWFUL!!! It took weeks for me to strip them (my GOD that stuff is toxic), sand them, prime them, paint them (the leather and metal bindings got different types of black paint and the brass carpet-style tacks and mounting edges I did in a liquid gold leaf) put vintage hotel stickers on them and then seal them so we can move them into the living room to use the large one as an end-table and the short one (they have the same footprint but are different heights) as a coffee table in the living room we're turning into a library.

Whilst doing that "little project" I was also using a couple pallets of cinder block we had sitting over by our shed to build a retaining wall around a raised garden bed that sits in the back corner of our lot, overlooked by the deck and our great-room windows. It's only about 16-18" high (the blocks are about 6 X 12 X 6) which is two blocks and a capstone high; and the wall is in a semi-circle roughly 15' long. But I had to dig out some of the lawn and level the earth to do it and I had to cart the blocks from one side of the house around the front and to the backside on the other end of the lot, about 4-5 blocks at a time because neither my yellow wagon nor I were up to carrying any more than that in one trip. Those suckers are heavy!!!

I also painted the door to our pantry with green chalkboard paint because it's easier to make a list ON the pantry of what I'm out of INSIDE of it (let's face it, you really only keep track of what your out of WHEN it runs out!) then to try to keep and maintain a list on paper somewhere I may or may not remember it. 

Along with all of that was the usual maintenance of house, lawn and garden which I added to by yanking out a bunch of the rosebushes and restructuring the beds to suit my taste rather than the taste of the gal who planted all of it (it's neither her house nor her yard anymore and if she wanted to keep the roses she should have just taken them) much to the chagrin of my neighbor who was very close to the former owners and spent a lot of time gardening with them. THERE WERE 40 ROSE BUSHES... 40!!!!!

I'm just NOT that girl! So, in one of the beds, I used the very, very, very old "Old Blue" wheelbarrow as a planter and it really looks rather quaint!

Oh, and in August I had my 30th high school reunion and reconnected with some VERY old and dear friends I've known since grade school who are both fairly local to where Hubby and I live. Which turned out to be a good thing cause I ended up needing oral surgery the beginning of September and I was able to ask one of them to drive me to and fro. I'm in the process of planning a dinner party so that Lynn and I can satisfy Dave's desire to ask Kelly on a "date" (Lynn and I don't think they're very well suited to each other but I told her I'm PERFECTLY happy to invite everyone over and then "watch the floor show"!) as they are both single and he is clearly "Looking"!

It's funny that so much time has passed but it feels like virtually no time at all. Dave was really good to me after a couple of nasty breakups in my past and at one time we decided we would get married if we were both still single in our 40's. NO... I'm in love with my husband and Dave respects that. And Lynn, well she's one of my favorite people on the planet and always has been. She's just good people. I'm lucky to have both of them back in my life.

Luna is fat and happy although I'm not sure his IQ will EVER get beyond 1 or 2 digits! I still think about Molly daily... and sometimes I cry. But my kids are all in the ground together (did I tell you I lost HRH Penelope?) and I'm making the stone for it myself so I can say what I want to to honor and remember them... I've created what I refer to as "The Bird Sanctuary" in the back yard and  bird watching soothes and calms me even though Blue Jay's screams are the finger nails on chalkboard of the bird world and I have crows tapping on the skylights in both upstairs bathrooms... I will be, over the course of a year or so, adding other types of bird feeders than what I have now (and I am SO thankful for "it won't sprout into more things that need weeding" bird food) as well as bird houses and even squirrel feeders so that they don't have to hang upside down by their feet from the limbs of the butterfly bush in an effort to steal the peanuts out of the birds feed stations... and maybe, I'm ready to make myself available to adopt another bird into the house as well.

The garbage needs to go out and I have to get to the post-office so I have to get my ass in gear here.....

My heart and my love to you all and congrats on becoming a "chin mom" Katmac, it is a wholehearted commitment to life in a small, very soft, furry body.

;-)  Janine 

Hello Girls!

My goodness gracious... Have I really been 3-D SINCE OCTOBER??????

It seems as if time must have jumped it's trajectory and gone shooting off into another galaxy, leaving me without a clear way to mark the passage of the seasons, or anything else for that matter.  On the one hand, so much has happened it's hard to know where to start.  On the other hand... perhaps it's only been one single instant that I've been gone and that instant is frozen under glass and compels me only to watch while everything changes around me...

When Christopher came home at the end of last season, he stayed home. The company hasn't had work for him until just the week before last.  It was a long time on unemployment. But it gave us a lot of space to sort through the pieces of our history and put them back together in a way that allows both of us to be hopeful about our future together and happy with the relationship we're building. A good marriage seems to always be a work in progress but at this point I think that the fact that we're BOTH working on it says a lot about how far we've come as a couple (I know, I know...

a couple of "WHATS" right??????).

We had both sets of parents over for Thanksgiving (mine are divorced, his are.....

still together although I'm not entirely sure they're happy about it...) and IT WAS WONDERFUL!!! The four of them have been over for dinner a couple of times in the past and they really seem to enjoy being here together as much as we enjoy having them. I'm hoping we can make a "mini" tradition (there are other family members to consider) out of it and do it again next year. Then maybe every other year after that... But of course, times change as do people and nobody should get wrapped up in the idea that they have an enormous amount of control over the way things play out.

We were both down with the flu over Christmas so we stayed home and hung with the critters... although Santa Bear got me a new laptop (the keys on my old one were falling off and it was telling me that it wanted brain surgery... and a heavy dose of electroshock therapy, so we retired it and started over with a new mac).... I love macs. If an electric "appliance" can be said to have personality and a temperament then I think macs are really just happy little buzz wires! Oh, and Santa Bear got a new HDTV and surround sound (more on that later).

Needless to say... Why do people say that when they KNOW they're going to say it anyway and that "needless to say" is really just the introduction for the point they're making, the story they're telling or the punch line that is coming for which NEEDLESS has absolutely no meaning?!...... I mean really........ It's all so NEEDLESS!!!!  ;-)

So I've been working a lot this season. Not as much long term stuff (substantially fewer pregnancies in the district this year) but with hubby Bear at home, we've needed every dollar I can bring in.  I'm thinking it's about time for me to get a math endorsement and apply for a full-time position. Probably middle school math because NOBODY wants to teach middle school and the desire to teach MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH ranks somewhere around emergency root-canal on the list of things most people would rather do without "thank you very much"!

My Mom had hand surgery last month.  Then she got a staphe-infection (how DO you spell that kind of "staff" anyway?) and had to be hospitalized and put on IV antibiotics. It was really rather shattering emotionally. I was afraid it was flesh-eating bacteria because NOBODY gets admitted to the hospital anymore unless they're going to die in the near future... Anyway, she lives about 45 min from us and my brother and I had been trying to convince her to move closer to where we're at when she sells her condo this spring. I was making the trip to see her along with working, having my Sugarpuss a couple of nights a week (she has swimming lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays so those nights, we pick her up from daycare, drive down to the pool, change into swim togs, have the 30 min lesson, shower and change back, then hurry home to have dinner because she's STARVING by then)... So, I also do the grocery shopping, take care of all the household accounts/administration, most of the laundry, cleaning the house, taking care of the critters and... well, most stuff related to us actually living our lives... And I don't say that to be bitchy or pissy about it. I say that because being responsible for those things also gave me a certain amount of self-assurance and inner strength. It reminded me that there is some strength and courage in me. Which proved to be kind of a pivot point for me when Mom got sick. Ironically, having her in the hospital actually ended up making both of us pretty happy (and not in the sick, dysfunctional "of course my mom knows where all my buttons are SHE INSTALLED THEM!). It forced me to grow up and realize that if we put all of the "issues" we have with/in our relationship aside, she's just like every other woman I know including myself and is trying to do the best that she can......

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But soon enough we will all be gone and if I want to look back on our time together without regret, anger and remorse then I'd better start doing something about it right now.  I also learned that her circle of friends, these wonderful women she has in her life are an enormous part of what her life is all about. So although the time may come when we'll be forced to move her closer to where we are (my brother and I), at this point she's right... she really needs to stay in the area she already lives in. Her "girls" are as much her family as we are and she needs to be close to her "family".

... and I still think about Molly every day. I still wish she were here with me and wonder why she isn't... and Miss P died on Wed. April 16th. She was 6 years old...

and please... PLEASE, don't talk about god's plan, or that she's with all of our loved ones.... I just don't believe that's true. Because the truth is that terrible, awful, unexplainable things happen every day around the world and god never does anything to prevent it. You can't have free will if there's a "plan" and if taking my pets from me is part of the "plan" THEN THE PLAN SUCKS!  I have gotten the book on Buddhism that I started (in my search for answers) after Molly died and I am finding both truth and comfort in it's pages.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get out and work in the yard. I've made a lot of plans for home improvement over the last few months. Some of those plans involve painting all the rooms downstairs and making the living room into a library. Other plans were for the yard and include installing rain chains and catch barrels so we can water the garden with "caught" H20. I'm also going to dig out some of the rose bushes and replace them with a cutting garden and paint the railings of Kailey's crib with the same paint we used on the deck and then attach them to the house as a trellis. Then, perhaps next fall, I want to start a vegetable garden in front of our shed alongside the southern wall of the house/garage. We've had a REALLY long, late winter out here and we only seem to get one or two days a month to work outside so I've got to take advantage while I can...

Also, don't worry too much about me. I am actually doing pretty well. I haven't pulled my head into my shell and retreated from the world in despair... There's just too much to do. And for now, that's a good thing.

My love to you all~

J