Bittersweet

One of my all time favorite movies is the spoof on Pride and Prejudice called "Lost in Austen".

It is flippin' HYSTERICAL. And romantic. But there is one line, from Amanda, at the beginning of the movie that always rings true to me and it is this...

"It is a truth, generally acknowledged, that we are all longing to escape....I escape always to my favorite book. Pride and Prejudice."

I have to agree with her and I do love the book Pride and Prejudice as I am a huge Jane Austen fan. But when I want to escape? I escape to my favorite authoress....LaVyrle Spencer.

Oh how I love her books! My absolute favorite is "Bittersweet", followed closely by "Family Blessings".  These books are ones that I have read at least a hundred times. I could quote so much of them word for word and I know what happens each time I end a page and turn to the next. But they comfort me and I love them.

I just began Bittersweet again tonight. I packed all my other books and they are stashed away in the trailer waiting to make the trip to my new little home...but I could not pack that one. When I am blue, I read this book. When I am sad, I read this book. When I am happy, I read this book and when I am nostalgic, I read this book.

I have for years wanted to make a trip back to Wisconsin. My Daddy took my brother and I back to Crivitz, Wisconsin in 1968 to the old farm his Mother and Father began when they immigrated from Poland. Daddy said that Grandma and Grandpa were SO proud to become Americans that they would not allow their children to speak Polish in the home. They were AMERICANS and they would speak English as Americans were supposed to. (Times change, eh? Press ONE for English....)

I will never forget that trip. I loved Wisconsin. The green and the water. The hay fields and the woods. The lakes that stretch forever. Bittersweet brings so much of that back to me.

Crivitz is on the other side of the bay from the Door County peninsula....just a couple of hours drive from Fish Creek where the story of Bittersweet takes place. It would be so easy to just drive from one small town to another and I dream of doing this each and every time I read my favorite book.

Maggie and Eric have become such good friends to me and although I do not condone the way they get together, I rejoice when all is set right. I cry with Maggie, I agonize with Eric. I laugh with Brookie and I thrill when Maggie finds Harding House. Get the book. I know you will LOVE it!


I know I cannot make this trip this year because of the move to my new home, but next year.  NEXT YEAR in the fall I am going back!!!

Thorpe House Inn

Cana Island Lighthouse

Gills Rock, Wisconsin

Peninsula State Park

Chambers Island

Phillippians 4:11

This move has really been an eye opening experience.

I mean besides discovering that my body is no longer 21 years old and I cannot do as much as I did back then. (Packing and moving boxes sucks at any age!)

Moving to a small home simply makes you take stock of what is important to you. What you CAN live without and what you CANNOT live without.

I have always considered myself a non-materialistic girl. Stuff is just stuff and you can always get more stuff. But in looking over what I have now in comparison to what I had when I moved from Colorado I found that I really have gathered more STUFF.

The difference is in what I gathered and the question is, how would my life change if I had to give it all up? Such tough decisions concerning what is essential to me in the house. The barn decisions were easy! Ten stalls with HUGE runs, a heated tack room, a feed room that can house all the supplements, pellets and hay, concrete aisle with cross ties and all close enough to see from the kitchen window. (I like seeing my Houdini and his gang since they cannot live in the house with me!)

But decisions in the home are coming a little more difficult. Do I want a dining room or do I want a library? Do I want a claw foot tub or can I live with just a walk in shower? Extra closet space or a big pantry?

So my decision? I want it all. Just not in a 4 bedroom house with over 2600 square feet. One bedroom will do and that will come after the barn is completed and horses housed well. I just need to scale down. And lose a more formal dining room. But I CAN do it all and I don't have to give up the things I absolutely love. Books. Photographs. Plants.

I love all the ideas from the Tiny House movement. My house may not be under 500 square feet, but the ideas taken from this movement will enable me to have exactly what I want.

LOVE IT!

loverly idea for a kitchen armoire!

Between the studs bookcases....yeah baby!

Eight days and counting......

Well the Big Move has begun.

The backhoe guy was out on Saturday and the temporary place for the horses has been leveled, the place for the barn marked and ready to begin.

I have taken down the upper cabinets, painted the lower, inside AND out and ripped up all that nasty carpet.

I have cleaned the icky concrete floors, (thanks Prince Charming for taking all my flooring money to fix your crank sensor) and the bathroom is sparkly clean!

The living room furniture is in place and the horse trailer spic and span waiting to be loaded with boxes I have been packing for a month.

This is going to be a BUSY week! And I am excited. On the other hand, I am sad. Sad to be leaving this rental home that has been so wonderful.

When I arrived here I was coming out of a horrible relationship. This home, although I do not own it, has been a place of healing. I have always looked at it as a gift from God. A place that was safe, where he could not reach or find me.

I hope that whomever rents this house next will find the peace that I have found.

I would not have missed this for anything.

All in good time......

Hate to admit this, but it was good to be back at work today.

I started off at about 4:30 this morning thinking I would never make it through the day, but then, I never was a morning person. My best work is usually done somewhere between 10:30 pm and 3 am. I am indeed a night owl.

I really DO have difficulty getting OUT of bed in the mornings. It is not that I am not awake, I am. I just hate getting out. Most days anyways. There are some mornings, (like on the days I am heading to Disneyland!), I pop right out of bed like a piece of toast in an over sprung toaster. And then there are days such as today, (most days), where I feel like just staying in bed and sleeping until the Rapture.

Which is rather awkward when you are in Occupational Therapy and work with patients in a nursing home that gets them up at the butt crack of dawn. If you are going to re-train them in the art of caring for oneself after having a stroke or pacemaker, or heart attack you have to be there at the butt crack of dawn also.

What. Was. I. THINKING???

(Most likely money.) Still the bright side is you get out early and still have lots of daylight to do whatever it is you want to do with your life. Which is what happened today.

YAYNESS!!!

And so today I moved most of the garden fencing over to the new place, moved that icky, funky, outdated carpeting out to the porch to be carted away when I get the flatbed over there, swept up the majority of the carpet crap and dust bunnies and got the first storeroom ready for all the boxes I have yet to pack. Well okay, I have SOME boxes packed, but a great many to complete also. In the meantime, the cats are having a great time popping in and out of the boxes I have stacked everywhere.

I will have to replace the turbine on the roof before I start bringing boxes in though. I looked up today and noticed, (YIKES!) the vent hole with no turbine on it. Ran outside the shed and lo and behold, there it was, sitting on it's head on the ground. I think some gorilla glue may be in order.

If you have not yet guessed, I am NOT Bob Villa or even Martha Stewart. I have little experience in construction, let alone electrical know-how, plumbing or working with drywall. But I am about to learn.

The undertaking of this HUGE project may be the undertaking of my life. Literally.

I know just enough about what I am doing to make it REALLY scary, but I am plunging in anyways and really! Does anyone ever TRULY know what the heck they are getting into and doing? But hope and optimism spring eternal in my heart and I dream of being a little more self reliant. Eating a little more ORGANIC food grown by myself. Creating a home where I do not have to consider the fact that pink is a feminine color that my husband won't like in the living room, AND having enough acreage to save 20 horses instead of just the SIX I have now. (I have 6 rescued or abandoned horses).....(I have 10 altogether, IF I count my Studley DoRight visitor Bo.)

And besides. What the heck else am I going to do? All in good time, Ms Cate....ALL in good time!

And speaking of the weather.....

It was absolutely perfect this weekend.

This is the kind of weekend I moved back to Arizona for. ABSOLUTELY beautiful. Not too hot, not too cold and no wind to boot! And where was I this weekend?

Nursing a head cold and wishing they had a cure for the common cold. I should buy stock in Alka Seltzer. I feel like I have been run over by a Mack truck!

I swear. Every single time I say I am giving up DrPepper and going to start eating healthy, I get sick. What. The. Hay???

I am going to start drinking DrPepper again tomorrow. I had a girlfriend send me this as she found it on Facebook. I think it fits me right down to my boots!

Being sick SUCKS.

Pretty Please Saturday

Just dreaming....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Saturday, my friend.

 

 

 

 

Frequency

I have a love of books and movies that deal with time travel.

Tonight, I finished watching the movie "Frequency". (For the 83rd time...maybe more!) And although it is not a true "time travel" movie, it touches my heart and stirs my mind the same way.

My heart always breaks and I ALWAYS cry, (regardless of how many times I watch it), when Dennis Quaid, as Frank Sullivan, tells his son, Jim Caveziel, who plays John Sullivan, over the ham radio...."I love you son". Johnny's reply and Jim Caveziel's acting should have won him an academy award for that scene alone.

I wonder how many of us would go back into our lives and change things that have happened. What would those consequences be? How much does someone's life REALLY impact the world? Important things? Not so important things?

Maybe that is why I love this movie so. Lucky for John, he got his father back, and his mother also. The bad guy ends up dead. People the bad guy was supposed to kill did not die and all was well.

Life is not made of stories that always end happily. I think we are all walking examples of that. Each of us hold memories that hurt and have shaped the way we see the world, how much we are able to trust. How much we are able to love and give and receive. It is called growing up.

Psychology this day and age has screwed with the world more than many people know. Where once we took responsibility for our actions and words, now we cover things with 'disorders' and 'syndromes' and allow people to shift the blame to someone else for their bad behaviors.

I am not saying that chemical imbalances and mental disorders are not real. What I AM saying is that sometimes, a LOT of the time, people hide behind those as a way to act badly and not take responsibility. I have witnessed this. More times than I care to remember.

How precious the love between a father and his son, or mother and their child is! But so many times I see this destroyed because the child blames all his misfortunes and all his bad behavior on parents who only did the best they could with what they had to do it with. Such an entitled society we have created. Where any and all can be laid at the feet of our parents because WE are too entitled to take responsibility.

My mom was a mess. You would not have known it had you met her, but that poor woman was a MESS. She came from a difficult past. Lost her Dad when she was really young. Grew up in the depression. Fought for all she had and kept fighting until the end. But never once did I hear her blame her mom for her problems. Along the way she gained some pretty nasty habits. Habits that I strove to keep out of my version of mothering. We never did get along very well. But not once, not one single time, did I ever hear her lay the responsibility of her behavior at the feet of her mother. She was a hard woman and not always fair and was a lot of the time selfish, but she was what she was.

If I am ever compared to my mom, I hope that is what is said of me. She took responsibility for her actions and did not blame someone else when things did not go her way.

I was so angry at my mom when she passed away. I had long ago pulled away from her due to her bitterness and anger, but I always held hope that someday.........someday we might be able to sit and talk and come to some sort of mutual respect, if not understanding. One where she did not attempt to guilt trip me or ridicule me for my beliefs. And I held the hope that I could get her to understand Who Jesus is and what He did for her and every other person on the face of the planet. Regardless of our differences, as much as I disliked her behaviors, I always respected her. Simply because God placed her in my life as my mother.

When she passed away that hope was killed. And I was angry. Sometimes I still am but I am sure I hurt her in many ways, just as she hurt me and there is this little thing called FORGIVENESS.

Totally gets in the way of carrying that anger and hurt. But so, SO worth doing. Sometimes I have to forgive on a daily basis or minute to minute basis, depending on thoughts that bounce into my head much like that big red rubber dodge ball did when I was in grammar school recess.

The one thing that saves me from going crazy is knowing that at the time I did all I knew how to do to make things right. It did not work, but I did what I knew to do. I could do no more.

Hind sight is 20/20 always. I know that the Bible teaches us "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all people" (Romans 12:18) But some people will not allow you to live in peace with them. That is when you forgive and in my instance, back away because all you are going to do is continue to argue and cause hurt. So in the ending of this musing let me borrow Frank Sullivan's words in paraphrase.

"I love you, Mom"