Critical Thinking the Current Situation
The article below is dated 7 July 2011 - just a few short years before we lost everything.
Our former house was in excellent condition. It had all the things I love: vinyl fencing on the porch, a gorgeous front and back door, a massive covered deck, a huge maple tree and a memosa, good sized bedrooms, a massive kitchen, and a weensy living room. It was more of a pass-through. The front yard was inspired by Phipps. The deck housed our tomato and pepper bushes in terracotta pots. I was inspired as never before. I thrived because I knew our solid home would still be sound when we were elderly.
BUT...
My mother hated my lovely home. She bought a new home in haste. She bought it because she liked how the staircase looked - the same staircase that dad climbed on all fours because the stairs are steep. She refused to listen to my advice. No inspection. It isn't ADA capable. No bathroom on the first floor...
We moved in to take care of Dad. He eventually had a hospital bed in the living room. A loveseat and glass coffee table were moved, but all the other furniture stayed. She added the potty chair. It was crowded, and dreary, and very loud because my mother refused to wear her hearing aids. I begged that he have the dining room instead. We could take apart her massive dining room table and use my Nonna's old table. He would wake to warm sunlight pouring into his room. He could celebrate every season. But nope.
Now it's just the two of us and a lot of dogs. And a new shower that fills the whole house with mold.
I want to turn this home into our pleasant dream home. I want to thrive.
BUT...
I'm 20 years older than I was when we first moved into our wonderful Pembroke Cottage. I still haven't settled on a name for our current house. I know it needs a lot of work.
Fuck it.
My first project is digging out a garden by the fence.
My second project is to straighten up the garage so I can put the silver cabinet and other furniture in there.
Then comes the basement.
And then we empty the storage shed - I'm tired of paying over $100 a month. 120 months have passed, and we've paid roughly $12,000 for it.
And here's that article I mention at the start:
The Spider's Meal
I love my yards most in the early hours of the morning and at twilight.
Wildlife is most active during these times, a beautifully orchestrated
symphony of insects, birds and plant life.
This morning, I had hope to digitally capture the humming birds that had
(finally!) returned to feed off of the memosa blooms. I wasn't very
successful and occupied myself by photographing a few stills of my
budding tomatoes and pepper flowers. A sudden, violent movement caught
my eye.
A spider had snared a small beetle in her web. It had alighted as I was
zooming in on a particularly graceful grouping of young tomatoes, and the
spider, lurking somewhere under the porch railing, burst onto her web
with dazzling speed, snaring the befuddled insect and poisoning him.
It was a fabulous display but I wasn't able to calibrate my camera to
catch the entire dance. I had to settle with a few shots of her
struggling with the dying insect.
