The week leading up to the year marker...

Midday today we arrived home from a long anticipated weekend away with friends. More on that in a subsequent post. For now, while our younger gals take in some Charlie Brown and Snoopy entertainment (not as good as the friends they played with all weekend but some veg time was in order upon arrival home!!), I'm going to share a few things from this past week prior to our getaway weekend. 

Jason officially kicked off his Sassafras Enterprises work year this week and will be working a good amount in the coming weeks to hopefully allow for a lighter schedule come spring planting time. It was a bit of a challenging start since we have good reason to believe that Jason got a dose of food poisoning Saturday, knocking him out for much Sunday and making his week start out with less spunk and energy than he would have preferred. Thankfully, his appetite is back to normal now - I knew it the day I came back from a walk and he was gushing about how delicious his breakfast of eggs and toast had been that morning!

So he was home and moving slow on Monday when the friend we bought our three piglets from came out to castrate one. Long story but it needed to be done and sadly didn't go off without a hitch - unbeknownst to us, Snuffle had a hernia and that became very apparent during this normally very routine procedure. We aren't sure the final end of the story as the friend came and took Snuffle and replaced him with a different piglet. We are not vets and were anticipating putting the farm in someone else's care for the weekend so didn't feel like we could take on an additional pig surgery or nursing care. (Just got a call from the friend saying Snuffle is doing better, acting interested in food again and starting to eat - very good news!!)

A short paragraph does not adequately communicate how hard this ordeal was for all involved, but especially Alida who had been central to the taming of the piglets and Snuffle had been her favorite. I was glad that she was able to spend some time with him in his house before he returned to his initial home and I feel certain he knew that she cared about him. At that point she just didn't want him to suffer, which was how we all felt. There is much more than could be said, but the new little guy is solidly at home here now and has seemed to blend in very smoothly with Upa and Gus. The new one hasn't been formally named yet but Friday, before we left for Douthat State Park, Alida came up excited to tell me that she had gotten him to flop over for a belly scratch! It only took a few days of her patiently hanging out with him and the others for him to learn that she was someone to stick around and be friends with!

Our week on the home front unfolded a bit differently than we anticipated after I had my closest COVID call (that I know of) yet - a long outdoor walk and talk with a few dear friends a little over 24 hours before one of them tested positive. Thankfully she is on the mend and it appears the outdoor air flow worked its preventative magic for the rest of us. But the exposure did a number on my health anxiety and also meant some adjustments to our normal cousin playdate and Luca care schedule. That opened up some unexpected space to???.... go through clothes!

I will just note a two things:

1. I love going through my closet with any of my daughters! They are so helpful practically and emotionally, coaching me through any decisions I get stuck making. We set metrics for how much stuff we'd feel satisfied, great or amazed if I got rid of. We surpassed the amazed mark! A KC Davis podcast on getting rid of stuff helped me many times - is the relief I will have getting rid of this item greater than the sadness I could feel due to parting with it? How often do I use it and how easy would it be to replace? Is it worth keeping shoes that are falling apart in my closet rather than just throwing them in the trash, even if I feel bad that I can't think of any way to repurpose them? And so on...

We also had some fun and comic relief with a few items!

2. My closet project gave Terah "the bug!" She was so so so eager to go through all her clothes. We started with their dresses and then I caved and offered to help with the rest of her stuff. As she started trying things on many things were no longer fitting. How did this happen so so fast? I got the next size down from the attic and it was a good thing I did because even some of that stuff was already too small. By day's end we had about 5 bags of things ready to go to Ivy, I was wiped out, and Terah was very excited to have her wardrobe organized again! I love hand-me-downs so much. As we went through the next bin, it felt like a trip down memory lane. She is now enjoying a pair of Kali's favorite pj's!

It strikes me sometimes how good it feels (and still strange) to have enough wiggle room in my life now to say "yes" more often to the girls' requests for help or for me to do something with them (spur of the moment). I get pangs of sadness for how much I tried to fit in the cracks for so long. I think we are all savoring having more time at home together. Yesterday marked one year since my last day at CJP. While the processing and healing continues, and will for some time, I crossed that one year mark with no regrets for having made that major life transition last January, and with more energy and eagerness for what this year will hold. When we got back today from a super special weekend that felt too short to all of us (again, stay tuned for more on that soon), I told Jason, Terah and Alida that it would be even harder if we didn't return home to a place I love so very much!