Not a Good Day

I wasn’t having a very good day today. It’s not like there was anything life-threatening that happened. Just a lot of little things started overwhelming me.

There is no doubt in my mind that many things went wrong at once or over a period of time when my husband was alive. Machines stopped working, orders got mixed up in the mail, and plans went awry. However, I don’t remember them being as traumatic as they are now.

I only remember the two of us working through each catastrophe or upset. If he had the better expertise to deal with the situation, I would step back and watch him take care of it. If I had the better handle on the problem, he’d stand beside me as I took up the responsibility to make the situation better. We were a team.

Now, it’s like I’ve got no right arm.

In the beginning, I must’ve been in some kind of bubble. I really thought that I was going to be able to handle this new life. Today, I’m not so sure.
The weeds are over knee high, and I can’t seem to get up enough nerve to try to start the very tricky weed eater. At least I found the two cycle oil and know the proportion to put into its gas tank. My salvation is that it’s going to rain tomorrow so I might as well wait until after this next batch of rain and try the weed eater later. I can pull the weeds into the veggie garden by hand if need be and wear high boots so I don’t step on a snake.

I only want to grow three tomato plants, some broccoli, some chard, and some green beans and cucumbers. I need to turn over the soil in the blue barrels we set up to prevent the moles from eating the bugs around any plants’ roots and making them topple over. However, the ground has gotten hard. Maybe if I wait until the rain comes through, the ground will be softer and I can handle the turning fork in the clay. I’ve got a chance to dredge some mushroom compost from the remnants of a pile my neighbor got. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to cart it up from down the hill. I don’t have the strength to wheelbarrow it up. Maybe I can put boxes in the back of the Tracker and shovel some into them then drive them up and put them in the wheelbarrow and get it to the garden. It seems like such a little thing for me to do, but it’s overwhelming without the man strength I depended on for so long.

And then there’s the motor home I’ve been trying to keep running for the past eight months in the hope I can sell it. Now there’s a little red light on the screen that won’t go off that looks like it means I need to put water in the radiator. I can’t figure out which tube goes to the radiator and what to do about it anyway. Fortunately I met the Diesel Repairman at the post office who has promised to come out to see what I’m talking about.

That’s the other thing. I’ve contacted a solar expert who was going to help me figure out the solar and battery system who has never returned. I had someone who was going to weed eat, but they got poison oak and haven’t been able to work in the sun. Two people have said they would come out and help me chain saw the oversized oak wood into smaller pieces so I can use them in the wood stove. Another one has said he would come and cut the downed wood into smaller pieces from the fire break I hired done. And another person said they’d come and help me clear out the second room in the shed so I can convert it into a work space. No one’s showed up. I’m living on ‘promises’ and I’m frustrated.

The last thing that went wrong today was the computer wouldn’t boot up. I sat and prayed and cursed and prayed some more. I turned it off and on several times and still it wouldn’t boot. I finally hollered and screamed and turned it off and left to go into town where I promptly lost it and cried like a baby in someone’s arms (I don’t remember her name, but she knew me.) I asked a few people for help, and we’ll see. The hardest thing in the world for me is to ask for help. When it doesn’t ever come, I feel like maybe I wasn’t supposed to ask or that somehow I don’t deserve it. I can do a great number on my own head where this topic is concerned.

But I did ask, and now when I got home, for some unknowable, but magical, reason, the computer decided to work. Gratitude showers through my body and clears my mind with thanksgiving for any small bit of grace the universe would like to provide me. Hopefully the rest of the mundane problems with the physicality of life will begin to be answered as well. (Maybe even magically!!) I can only hope!

A Mourning Insight

Flames flared as I sparked the lighter under grasses I’d collected and dried last year during weed-whacking season. One small flame traveled the length of one dried stick and lit at least 20 other thin reeds. Nothing stopped its travel in all directions, not even the damp kindling I’d propped on top. The billows of smoke told me something was perking underneath and sure enough, after what seemed like an inward gasp for air, fire whooshed through the pile.

I hadn’t intended to set off another burn pile this morning. I’d only intended to clean around the sweat lodge and fire pit after our women’s circle last evening. But when I saw the dew was still on the meadow grasses, I knew I needed to take advantage of the night’s moisture. “Neatening things up,” my dad would say. “Getting things done,” my mother would say. “Good job,” Y would’ve said. “Procrastinating,” I told myself.

My original plan for the morning was to clear the area, reposition the tarps to deter weeds, then work on the next quilted wall hanging. It’s not that I didn’t want to pursue a creative project. So maybe I wasn’t putting anything off.

Feeling the sun across my shoulders and smelling the freshness of the spring day, I had moved from one focus to the next. That’s how I’d ended up watching and tending the fire. From two other piles needing to be burned, I hauled branches and limbs, building this bonfire higher and larger. Suddenly I stopped and realized the more I piled on, the hotter the fire became, like when I set a direction to my thoughts.

My body became warm from the inside as an understanding brightened my awareness.

If I snag a thought that causes my reactive self to anger, I can pull in one thing after another to feed that anger until I’m ranting and raving in my mind and slamming around the house. If I start a thread of memory around my loss of Y, I unravel every memory of every moment in the hospital or here at home loosening my heart to a point where I cave into a puddle.

I stopped feeding the fire and just tended to it as it was. I saw it begin to burn itself out. With no fuel, the original flame consumed what was present. If I stop feeding innocent enough beginnings of fierce emotions, perhaps I won’t be over-ridden for days with rage or weeks with sorrow. I can choose when to stop feeding my consciousness with inflammatory details, and I can choose what to feed into my awareness.

Today it’s purple and yellow wildflowers cuddling the curves of a green, rolling landscape and the smell of burning wood.