Sunday Afternoon’s #WeekendCoffeeShare

If We Were Having Coffee this morning, I would be late! I enjoyed a nice sleep-in until 0830, Al’s having gotten up sometime earlier, I think, to let the Scampers outside (usually sometime between six o’clock and seven-thirty). I now am writing my WeekendCoffeeShare post instead of eating my already late lunch. That being said, I do currently have hot water for tea or coffee, bottled water, milk, and a couple cold, left-over cans of Barq root beer. There’s also cheese. (Al ate all the rest of the doughnut holes last night. Not on my diet!)

The week’s been busier than I’d thought it would be. The joists are now up on Al’s workshop; a cousin and his crew, unable to get over here last Monday, did make it on Tuesday to put the boards on the roof. Al’s decided to do the rest of the roof himself. Hopefully the tar paper will go on easier when there’s no driving sun or wind gusts. This next try will most likely be on Tuesday, allowing for Monday afternoon/evening rain.

Progress

I would tell you that I got to do some lifting and carrying and holding boards in place while he nailed them down. I enjoy being able to help, even a little, with his project Getting quite excited about this, as he will have many, many happy months spent finishing the building inside and out.

I’d share with you that I have had fun taking flower photos during the breaks. I have, however, been more tired than I’m happy with and am taking more frequent naps during the day. I have ordered an extra reading copy of Coming Up for Light and Air: Poems by Barbara Crow, so that I will be able to find it when I need it. I do not, of course, know details—no personal information. The poet and her husband lost a child, and among her poems I feel avoidance, recognition and resolution, and an acceptance of grief as life goes on. I am finding that reading through these poems helps me to process my own grief over the loss of my sister and my parents. And, this morning, strangely enough, the loss of two siblings in their first days of life, whom I never got to meet in this lifetime.

Of contemporary poets, there are two whose volumes I keep close at hand with one or two extra copies: Barbara’s Coming Up for Light and Air and Samih al-Qasim’s Sadder than Water. At times, they are too real, but that is good. I do not wish to step out of reality, but to embrace it in all of its aspects. This is difficult, because I am cut too deeply by it and bleed too much.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present

I’ve a long-standing love–hate relationship with those lines from “Burnt Norton”.

Tomorrow, I have my next meeting with the grief counselor. I’m coming up on six months since my mother died and two and a half months since Father died. The poems that I wrote concerning them, the last day of April, the poetry-writing month, do so characterize the differences in our individual relationships.

I have signed up for the message boards at the American Diabetes Association web site and also a two-year (12-month) subscription to their magazine, which comes with a digital edition. I still have to make an introductory post, this weekend.

This week’s indulgence: On Monday, I ordered (and yesterday received by USPS) a set of “blessings” tokens based on Sharon Shinn’s Elemental Blessings series. They often lend an unexpected angle of perception on events and…add a filter, perhaps, to provide a range of helpful perspectives. Another writing prompt, if you will! I write my life! I had been using paper tiles, but finding them useful generally, I decided to go with a more durable set. They will not wear out or lose their print so fast as paper.

Thank you for visiting, once again! I’ve enjoyed your company. Looking forward to reading your #WeekendCoffeeShare post and meeting with you soon.

Best wishes,
Lizl

Please stop by Emily’s Nerd in the Brain blog to read her post. There you also will find the InLinkz button with links to other #WeekendCoffeeShare participants.

Sunday, April 30 | Weekend Coffee Share

Wild Violets

Welcome! The weather has taken a turn for the better, and we could sit in the back yard while we enjoy our coffee. Or water or tea. We’ve a chance of snow, come dawn, but until then the most to worry about is an increasingly brisk wind.

I have had a quiet weekend, here. I did write three more poems—one on Saturday and two more today—to finish up April’s poem-a-day activities. I must say that I enjoyed that very much. Because you are physically elsewhere, you will not have to suffer through listening to me read any of my poetic outpourings for the month. I would not read all of them to you in any case.

My husband’s progress on the backyard workshop has gone well. By next weekend, I think we could take chairs out there and sit sheltered from both wind and sun, but for what comes through the openings where windows and a door will be placed. Neither door nor windows have been ordered, yet.

I would invite you to spend some time looking at the tulips and wild violets that are growing along two sides of the house, now, in spite of the cold winds and snow of this past week. The last of the snow melted way this weekend; it sat in the perpetual shadow of the gardening shed. Usually it freezes over, which limits the selection of items we can store in there. Trying to chop out the ice for access only wrecks the bottom foot or so of the door.

Tulip, Newly Blooming

As I have mentioned, I am grieving the loss of both of my parents (November and February), and also, now, my youngest sister, who died on September 30 in 2014. Funny, how that all comes together in one great, big process. Concerning my sister’s death, I find that I am much more in touch with the reality of it, rather than wrapped in emotions. That helps.

A book of poetry that I came across by chance and ordered from an online book seller has helped very much. The poetry is written by a woman whose son died. The modeling of her/their grief has been extremely helpful to me. Once I have the time, I hope to write a short review on my review/reading list site.

I must go and leave you, now. My husband needs help with holding boards in place against the wind.

Don’t forget to stop by Emily’s blog: nerdinthebrain.com/ where you will find her weekend post and a link to the LinkIn, where you will find links to other participants in WeekendCoffeeShare!

Until next weekend,
Best wishes!
Lizl

April 23 #WeekendCoffeeShare: A Wet, Rainy Weekend

Thank you for stopping by, this afternoon for coffee, tea or water. Today’s gather includes cheese (cheddar, swiss, havarti and marble jack, I think). I’ve eaten all of the almonds, but there are still a few apples to go with the cheese.

Saturday’s Work

If we were having coffee together, today, I would take you to the back door and show you the progress that my husband and I have made on his workshop. I’ve done some lifting and carrying, and last night I helped cover the few boards that we could not carry back into the garage with a large sheet of plastic. Weighted it down with scrap lumber, so that it wouldn’t blow away in the strong winds.

I would also, if you don’t mind getting a bit wet, show you the tulips at the side of the house. They’re pretty, even closed up against the wind and rain. There has been enough rain and warm that grass is growing happily in the back yard in great profusion. This means that the rabbits are switching to new grass for their meals from the tulip leaves that they’ve preferred, mainly because that’s what’s been here and beckoning. It does appear that the temperatures will not be low enough to kill off my germinating wildflowers in the back garden, even if we do get some snow, this week.  We are going to look at the garden shop to see if there is fencing (still easily lowered for weeding) that the dogs cannot get through or over. So far, they’ve mostly been tromping down the sown seeds, but now they’re putting the sprouts in danger.

Closed Against the Cold

If we were having coffee together, I would be tempted to worry about my feeling tired and a bit down, this past week. I have been having some trouble concentrating. Especially, I am forgetting to eat, or, remembering to eat, I forget to take my diabetes medication. As a result, I’m trying to work out a method, having forgotten my morning meds until noon, too many days in a row, for remembering what I am to do, first thing in the morning. I have been going to bed and immediately to sleep, this week, much earlier than I am used to. But I am tired. When I wake up, still before my husband, I get involved in taking the dogs out, because it’s later than it should be, and they are desperate. Once the dogs are outed, fed, watered and taken out, again, I sit down to read the news, or even make my breakfast, but I am both too distracted and not enough awake to register the fact that I am indeed not following a proper routine. When lunchtime rolls around, I do notice my pill caddy sitting on the table beside me, and sure enough, the morning pills are still in there. On other occasions, I have forgotten what day it is and checked the wrong bin on the caddy.

I am thinking, perhaps, a series of appointments in my phone calendar with alarms to ring when I am to stop what I’m doing and check to see what I am supposed to be doing. Ah, my!

The poetry writing has gone well, this past week. I’ve got one day’s poems to get up on the relevant blog, and I’m only behind one day in the writing. I am so fortunate that at least my husband enjoys and appreciates what I write and tells me so. We even talk about some of the poems. I am grateful that we share interests enough to understand and respond to one another’s activities and interests.

Thank you for the time that we’ve spent together. I look forward to our next weekend coffee share. Take care, and have a good week!

Lizl

P.S. Emily is our current host for Weekend Coffee Share. Please visit her blog (HERE), where you’ll find her post for this weekend and the link-up to posts by other participants. Enjoy!

WeekendCoffeeShare, 16 April 2017 – My life includes poetry

Thank you for stopping by for coffee! We returned from the family Easter gathering across the river. A very enjoyable time with wonderful food and many (often simultaneous) conversations taking place throughout those three hours (approximately). We now have milk to go with the coffee. (At this hour, Toddy coffee from homemade concentrate. Or tea from a tea bag.) I now am trying to get caught up with my computer stuff. The flatware is in the sink enjoying another soaking, and the puppies have gathered around my husband’s chair. (He must have brought food home from the grocery on his way back from the hardware store, just now.)

This week, we got the walls up on the workshop and most of the horizontal-vertical alignments measured and braced. The next thing after the ceiling plates should be the trusses, whenever they can be delivered. Relatives have volunteered to come over and help with the lifting, whenever.

My Monday meeting with the grief counselor went well, as has my resulting time off from active participation in the “write a poem a day during April” email group. One of the prompts for the 10th was to write a poem based on the contents of a spam email. Way back at the beginning of my quiltedpoetry wordpress blog, I started out that way, using spam as prompts for poems.  I still haven’t written a poem for April 15th, but the other days so far, including today, have poems, which you can find on my blog at thewrittenword.net in the NaPoWriMo category. 

It is worth mentioning that I had a nice conversation with my brother next in age to me, this morning, about what has been happening since the death of our father in February.  It is nice to touch base on that every once in a while. He is the executor for the estate, and he has a lot of paperwork to do that must get done. We were able to talk about things. Was good.

I would take you into the back yard to visit my wildflower garden, if you were here at our home. Some of the seeds have germinated and I’m quite hopeful for the future of it.

The time has come to send you home, now, with a packet of holiday desserts. I hope your weekend has been a happy one!

Best wishes,

Lizl

P.S. You will find Emily’s Weekend Coffee Share post (and the links button) at http://www.nerdinthebrain.com/weekendcoffeeshare-the-one-with-fun-worry-cute-animals/ — please visit!

 

The building project et al.

All the framework for the walls is up. Measuring and fine-tuning, now, before adding the top wall plates.  Al has a tentative timetable in mind for getting more folks over here to help with the ceiling joists when they’re delivered. Aside from his sister and her husband’s coming over that one afternoon, I’m delegated to lift, carry tools and materials, brace supports, and hold the tape measure. Such fun!

In other news, the second meeting with the grief counselor from Hospice shook out some stuff that I am needing to address. Thinking about focusing my writing in that direction; I seem to have put aside the poem-a-day project. However, as I contemplate what needs contemplation, pieces that I have written come to mind. I expect that I will follow through with, (as I mentioned on the relevant blog before I started the National Poetry Writing Month group activities), reposting poems that I wrote previously, rather than pushing myself to write new ones, as seems necessary and appropriate.  I think I’m only behind three days (counting today) in posting a new one each day.

Also, I got a nice surprise this morning, when I checked my fasting blood sugar level. It was 112, which is the lowest it’s been since I started taking the medication for type-2 diabetes, the middle of December. The readings evening out, and the average drifting lower. Didn’t weigh in, this morning. Concentrating again on “what”, rather than “how much”.

I did pick up a “nourish bowl” at the local grocery, last time we went out to resupply. I like the idea, enjoyed the food, and am thinking about making some lists and doing up some of those for myself with my choices of veggies, roughage and the rest. Another activity to get me on my feet and doing.