Our evening

Image #1:

As I walked up the driveway, Kali and Jason were coming down and met me there on the path. A hug and kiss from Kali greeted me. I joined them after changing into comfy work (outside work, not office work) clothes and we dove into the task of the evening - driveway widening. It gets us a step closer to a dream in the making - the building of Mom and Dad's quarters on our home. It was one of those picture perfect evenings - the air was cool but warm enough for short sleeves while working. Our neighbors were out working in the garden, in the blueberry patch, coming up the lane. We exchanged greetings and some conversation. The birds were singing. Kali played happily among the trees. Jason and I met for a kiss on the driveway. The light on the mountain was breathtaking as the sun sank. Kali and I went up to the house to use the bathroom and came back with a homemade grape juice popsicle for each of us. As light waned we walked up to our cozy home together and tucked ourselves in for the night.

Image #2:

I put in another long day at work today - over 9 hours straight in preparation for graduation, just days away. I wasn't home minutes before I was outside with work gloves donned to tackle the second portion of work for the day - tree felling and brush clearing on our driveway. Kali and I tugged on ropes as Jason cut down tree after tree. As each came crashing down, the knot in my stomach grew. I understood on one level why this was necessary - most of the trees were cherry and right along the fence of our neighbor's cow pasture - the leaves when wilted are toxic to cattle; so a good neighborly deed?! And in order to make enough space for construction vehicles and, hopefully unnecessary, emergency personnel, they needed to come down. One fell and I saw a robin fly out. The knot tightened and as Jason began working on the tree, he found the nest. Almost relieved he only saw eggs at first; then discovered a baby bird not more than a day old. Oh, it is hard to be that intimately connected to the consequences of our actions. The knot became closer to nausea. That mixed with the noise of the neighbor's bush hog, the mower in the blueberry patch, and the noisy chainsaw caused my brewing headache to burst forth. The gas smell of the chainsaw at times was overpowering. It didn't help when our neighbor asked us, "So what's the long term plan here...to remove everything green?"

Both images represent my experience of the last 4 hours. Blending the two creates a good dose of cognitive dissonance for my day!