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Going up?

9/8/2014

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One of the features I like most about our house is a simple thing.  Our stairs, which start at the front door, are not entirely enclosed.  In fact, they are open into the front hall about half way up on the left and then open to the second floor the rest of the way on the right.  The best part is that section in the front hall.  As you can see from the photograph, it's pretty handy.

Our office is a little dormer room directly over the front door which looks down on the street and, wonderfully, through a space between two houses to the water guarding the fifth and sixth holes on the Golden Hills golf course.  In the winter when the trees are leafless I can see Twelve-Mile Creek glinting in the sun.  I refer the office as "my little perch."* From this vantage point (I am sitting there now as I type this post) I have watched a full cycle of the seasons, kept Quicken up-to-date, edited photographs, written letters, talked on the telephone, even kept count of the sometimes numerous FedEx and UPS visits to the street on a given day.  And, from here I can almost see into the living room below.  It's an hospitable spot.

But, back to the stairs.  Having such an inviting and even essential room on the seldom-used second floor means that all sorts of stuff, from paper to camera equipment, has to go one way or another.  While on occasion a backpack or a tripod gets left at the foot of the stairs for a time, it's the pickets supporting the bannister that get pressed into use regularly as a sorting device.  Catalogs to peruse, documents and labels to shred, bills to pay -- all the stuff that needs to go up, it all ends up there, each category in its own slot.  The kitchen counter stays cleared off and I am saved many a climb.  Convenient.  (The appliances in the laundry room serve much the same purpose for everything needing to go to the garage, from tools that need to be put away to recyclables on their way to the various bins.)

These collection spots make me wonder.  I wonder about the considerable and unstoppable amount that comes into the house every day, mostly paper, but there's plenty of plastic, glass, steel, as well.  It's staggering, particularly in light of the fact that we are not shoppers for very much beyond groceries -- and then we carry our own bags.  We're not bringing home what I call "dustables."  It surprises me how much, in our down-sized state, we have to dispose of every day. 

It's just the way life is.  I know that.  But, all of it means something, doesn't it?  All that stuff going up the stairs, coming back down, making its way to the garage is made of some raw material, was dreamed up, designed, produced by someone, exists for some purpose and ends up somewhere.  It's part of what makes our lives work. 

I have an occasional moment, when I'm placing things between the pickets at our stairs, when I realize the considerable time I spend controlling the flow.  Then, I consider what life here would be like if I didn't bother to deal with it.  Either way, I have a hunch it's more controlling than it is controlled!

How does it seem to you?

* Click
here to see a view of the office on a neat day.


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In the forming fog

8/1/2014

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It has been so long since I have contributed anything to this page.  I cannot come up with an easy reason for my inactivity.  It has not been merely a blog  that has suffered neglect of late.  A multitude of normal activities have fallen by the wayside this summer -- using the camera every day, keeping up with email, note writing.  It feels as though every aspect of my life is in limbo or has been/is on hiatus. 

Maybe that's neither a bad thing or totally unexpected.  We all need a change of pace.  And, summer is a wonderful time to mix things up.  I have to admit, though, that whatever it is that's happened to my schedule hasn't been planned.  The crumpling of my daily structure simply happened about half way through July.  I'm in something of a fog. 

As I consider my state here at the beginning of a new month, I can acknowledge that Tal and I have been up against pressures we've not faced before.  Tal is involved in three times a week physical and occupational therapy (which, while not magic, is making a difference).  I have been involved in three funerals over the course of five weeks (two of them tragic).  I am not keeping up with the housework.  Meals are in the category of the best I can do.  The outside mowing, blowing, sweeping, edging, trimming stays just ahead of me.

Yesterday we traveled to rural Lee County to visit Tal's sister who is selling the "old home place" and moving to Nevada to live with her son and his family.  We came home with cuttings from mature camellias she had nurtured from cuttings Tal gave her some 25 years ago.  A returning.  The cycle of life.  Isn't it wonderful? 

The photograph here is of those cuttings on our kitchen counter.  I made newspaper pots this afternoon.  Tal mixed up a fragrant soil concoction.  A Corning ware casserole and a lovely glass salad bowl we don't use for salads much have been turned into a kitchen counter greenhouse .  It's already begun to fog up a bit.

There's going to be quite a lot going on under the surface ...  And, so it goes.  Life under the surface.  I have to trust that to be true for me as well.  While I might not get it together in some orderly way or return to life as it was at the beginning of summer, there is something happening under my surface that will enrich the coming days, weeks and months.  What it will be remains a mystery.
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My perch

3/22/2014

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It took days to get it this way. Days. Figuring there was the tiniest of windows before I began not putting things away again, I made this photograph with the vacuum cleaner still in the hall outside the door!
The office for the running of our lives -- complete with a four-drawer lateral file cabinet, the computer, router, modem and shredder, a closet full of supplies, copy paper to printer ink  -- this isn't actually my room.  But, as the keeper of both our calendar and finances, this is where I spend a good bit of my time.

Set in a single dormer on the front of the house, this room overlooks the street and the comings and goings of neighbors.  Beyond a row of houses on the other side of the street, is a pond which commands the respect of golfers on the 5th and 6th holes.  I write here, edit photographs here, tend email here.  I watch the weather from here. I daydream here.

It's a great spot, this perch. 

How about you?  Where's your spot?
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    For most of my 60 years I have let the question "what is this all about?" dwell somewhere in my being -- in the forefront at times, frequently banished to the depths. It's persistent, that question.

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