These last two weeks are not easily summarized...

...and since I can't even begin to summarize all the nuances of this massive life change, I'm going to start by entertaining any of our faithful readers with a fun little exchange that took place from us gals at home and our working hubby/daddy! I promise that Jason is mostly working really hard and we do not distract him during the day. But the other day while working on a gutter job he came up with a rhyming riddle related to roof geometry that he texted to us for Alida to use in her weekly newspaper that she writes. It just so happened that, at the time, Kali and I were having a butter shaking competition. So in the same vein, Kali came up with this one: What do you say when a person beats you so badly in a butter shaking competition that your milk hasn't changed in textures?... You creamed me!

Now I didn't cream her but I did beat her solidly (just for the record). But that mutual sharing of riddles then kicked off this exchange (and I must say that "us" below is probably 90% Kali!):

Jason: Was it a jarring experience for her? Maybe next time she should focus less on competition and more on clabberation.

Us: She wasn't too shaken by it. She said maybe she just needed to moooove a little faster. 

Jason: I can see you all are going to milk that pun stream for all it is worth.

Us: There's no whey we'd stop now even if they get a bit cheesy.

Jason: I wish that one had ocurd to me.

Us: I'm sure that must be udderly frustrating.

Jason: No big deal, it's just a parlor trick anyway.

Us: (me without consulting the girls) Well, I'm hard pressed to come up with anything else and have clearly aged out of this conversation. But I think your eldest still has more up her sleeve.

Jason: Probably, but I'm not too agitated.

Us: (Kali) I don't think I'll run out of puns, even if I have to steer in a different direction with them...But yes we should stop being interrupting coMOOO! [from a knock knock joke about interrupting cows]

Jason: Yes, we don't want [the people Jason is working for currently] to have a beef with my progress today.

Us: HeFair enough.

Jason: Please don't ox me to come up with any more.

Us: I don't bullieve we ever oxed you to. Feel free to moooooove on.

Jason: No pun is bellow you, is it?

Us: I'm surprised you're not cowering from them yet.

Jason: It would behoove us to stop.

Us: You butter stop then.

Jason: They do make me want to hide. I don't know leather to keep going or not.

Us: The steaks are too high to stop now uh?

But, alas, we did end up shifting our attention to other things! We were scraping the bottom of the barrel by the end. But it was certainly a fun little exchange, one of the many new experiences of life of late. 

It's been two weeks today since we returned from our little getaway described in the last post. And I would say after I took a nose dive crash in the days following, life has been on a slightly upward tack since. I'm grateful! I imagine there will be plenty more hills and valleys to come, but it feels like the air (my mental and emotional space) is clearing just a bit...

I'm going to limit my reflections here to sharing two things from my process. First, I was introduced (or re-introduced) to Carrie Newcomers' music this past week by a CJP alumna who I'm so happy to have reconnected with around the time of my transition. She shared the song You Can Do This Hard Thing. Give it a listen! It resonated with me, and I have felt a chorus of loved ones around me through this whole time sharing their confidence in me that I can do this, even when I feel I can't. After listening to that song a good number of times, I wanted to see what else was out there by her and it wasn't long before I came across I Will Sing a New Song. My goodness, this resonates!! 

The other thing I've been thinking a lot about is the deep gratitude I feel for the care that was put into my transition. There was a lot of intentionality in the process. There was adequate time for training, for rituals of closure, for saying goodbyes, etc... That planning and love and attention to the process is going to be a source of comfort to me (and I hope a help to others) for a long time to come. It's had me thinking about Nora's death and the role that palliative care played in the last week of Nora's life and in our grief journey over the years following her death. Maybe to some this comparison will feel like a stretch, but it's really connecting in a deep way with me. The palliative care team collaborating with us as Nora's parents gave us the opportunity to walk with her in the last week of her life and her death in a way that honored her, left us with very few unanswered questions or regrets, gave us the maximum amount of quality time with her, and also helped us think about our whole family as a system that needed to be tended to. It was powerful at the time, and has been a source of comfort through all the years since. It's how I feel about the months leading up to my departure from CJP. I'm so glad for all the colleagues who walked with me in such tender caring ways and helped me to make a plan for my departure that did the best we could do under the constraints we had to work within to transition things smoothly. I'd be in a lot worse shape had that not been the case. 

Ok, that was a lot of text! It's time for some pictures. Maybe we'll start with today and move backwards because it's my mom's BIRTHDAY today and what fun we had celebrating with her tonight and how special it was for me to get to bookend my day with her - a walk in the morning and a feast together in the evening! The girls chose to wear the hand woven skirts for the occasion that Mom had given them (and even I got out of my bum around clothing for the first time in weeks!!). Our girls love birthdays, doesn't matter whose it is! Alida was practically trembling with excitement this evening before they came down for dinner. So happy to be able to celebrate Mom's 77th birthday and to also reflect on her approaching 19 years since her stem cell transplant (so happy for her example of living each day to the fullest!). 

And since she is by far our biggest blog fan, it seemed appropriate to end her birthday getting a post ready to be waiting for her in the morning!

While we cooked for my parents tonight, Mom cooked for all of us last evening and it was a special meal! Mom was asking me recently what I thought she should do with her mom's old recipe file (it also has recipes from my dad's mom). As we flipped through it, she got the idea of making a meal using just recipes from that box. Last night we savored the first of such meals, and I hope it won't be the last. The meat balls and muffins and lemon bars were scrumptious! And we got some good laughs with the pineapple banana salads and dad got most of the maraschino cherries. Jason, who is working construction again, thought his looked like someone with an injured finger. You can see where his mind is these days! I still am not sure what Mom should do eventually with all the recipes, but I hope we might craft a few more meals from the contents of that box. Maybe I'll even have time to flip through it myself!

It's getting near bedtime here, so here's some other random, but special snippets from the last few weeks:

The girls and I had so much fun walking down the road together this afternoon to do a little photo shoot before our newest neighbor joins us on the outside.  To say we are eager to meet this little person is such an understatement! We are over the moon excited! But also happy that so far this little one is staying safely tucked inside, giving their parents just a little more time to fully recover from being sick. It sure does seem to me that so often babies know when the time is right and work in tandem with their mama to discern when it's the best and safest time to emerge. But whenever this baby comes, there's a lot of eager arms and hearts full of love and excitement to see who little person is going to be and how they are going to enrich our lives and change us!

On to less pleasant things: we have discovered a major problem with the roof on the in-law quarters caused by roof fasteners breaking down (prematurely) and allowing water in. This is no fun... While a good number of other things have gotten sorted out in recent weeks, this one is still pending. Will homeowner's insurance touch it? What about the roofers who did the installation? Here's hoping!

We have two main winter projects we hope to complete. Don't ask us exactly where that's going to fit since Jason is now the sole member (business owner) of Sassafras Enterprises LLC with plenty of people eager for a piece of his time. But the hope is to have a bike shed and seed cage constructed before the growing season gets underway. Digging for the bike shed has commenced.

The snow has finally disappeared allowing for some outside work. But before it disappeared Kali and I enjoyed a hike to Hensley's Pond with friends. It's beautiful in every season.

As often as we can enjoy it, there's popcorn seed testing to do. Kali has LOTS of seed candidates AND she offered to learn to do the popping and I've happily turned the job over to her!

I've been trying to work down my pile of coupons from the kids. This sounds like a hardship but it is not - quite the opposite. This past week in the two blocks I found to work on my doula reading I cashed in a "you choose" coupon from Alida and one from Terah - I got a back rub and my hair played with while I studied! And then I found the REALLY old coupons from Kali and she helped with a pizza dinner. :) Thankfully she didn't have an expiration date on this one! 

I'm really savoring having more time with the girls throughout the day and for that time to be less pressurized. I feel an easing in our interactions which is so welcome. I'm not constantly rushing around to do something for them in the 2 minutes between zoom meetings or making them feel (by nature of my insane schedule) that their needs are unwelcome interruptions. 

Terah is soaking up her daily cuddle time (a Christmas coupon) and we are learning all sorts of things reading a stack of Kids National Geographic magazines a friend passed to us. But a good part of the day right now the girls, and especially Terah, are working hard to master a computer game they discovered: Crazy Roll 3D. I'm SO bad at it and cannot emotionally handle the ball free falling into the abyss when I get off the path. It's interesting to see how Terah gets a bee in her bonnet to learn something and she is ultra-focused. I am trusting that the newness of this will wear off in time and she eventually won't be playing it for hours a day! Having her own email account now has put a fire under her to learn to read, so that's been a focus these days as well.

So chick hatching is coming up soon, and I'm feeling eager! The winter chicken coop repairs are done and tomorrow will include some chicken shuffling to get breeding combinations together. One of the winter coop modifications was a new nest box on Alida's coop. It's making evening egg collecting much more enjoyable!

And, finally, Mom and Dad continue to "settle in" here. I don't know if I could say any of us have necessarily caught our stride or have a daily rhythm yet, but I would say it feels good and right to be the 7 of us here at Tangly Woods. We did a deep clean of the shared laundry room recently and Mom is itching to do the common room next (which I promised, in her bday card, to get on the schedule soon). We need to get these inside things done soon as the warm snap we are in right now and the daffodils pushing up (they are going to have a rude surprise this week when we get down into the teens again), is a reminder of spring's pending arrival. It seems like we are going to need a full cycle of all the seasons to get a sense for what new patterns of living will emerge in this time. I'm glad that as the days go by, I can see glimmers of a sense of adventure and a bit of optimism returning to my spirit.