I am enjoying the little writing desk that we refurbished. It seems to bring calm to the home, maybe another feeling of living like the past.
Life has been quite hectic for us for the past fourteen months, but we are not the only ones that go through complicated times. Everyone goes through some kind of changes, it can be good change and then it can be not so good such as illness, accidents, unexpected expenses, death of a loved one, job losses, a business that has failed, and then sometimes there is a need to become a caregiver for a loved one. These are just a few things that can get us out of balance.
Keeping a home running smoothly can be a problem when there is upset in the household. Our house and garden has been neglected, our house has been very cluttered, the pets have had problems, storms have cause damaged to our home and then two weeks ago damage at Madge's house. We have been driving back and forth for months fixing things here at home and up at Madge's house only to get them fixed until another storm or something that has caused a problem.
This has created meals to be off and ironing backed up. Dishes left at night because my body had to lay down before it was done. This probably sounds familiar to many of you because we all have problems at times. Some people have gone on like this for years.
Albert has remained steady, even though his lovely garden that he guards has become very disheveled.
There are a few things that are still growing such as garlic, onions, parsley.
Last week I started trying to get a better grip on things and started focusing on getting one room at a time in better order. I re-arranged the kitchen, and started a do over on the meal planning. We get in trouble with keeping our house in order when we don't dig our way out when the life situations have settled a bit.
When disorder happens and many things pile up, we lose our energy, and energy and strength is something we need very badly to overcome the disorder. It is similar to snow piling up without shoveling a path to get out. We have a lot of shoveling to do but not with snow.
It was not easy to take those steps to getting back to finding normal, my body wanted to stay in bed. I did not have much strength left when Madge died, I was having my own medical issues at the time and since then. There was so much clutter after Madge died, here at home and at Madge's house. There were and are so many home repairs that never got done, and still are, that we went from a list to a book.
I knew I had to keep trying because if we do not get our routine back we can forget how we did things. I decided to go back to basics and start building from there. Now I am finding me again and I can feel that I am getting stronger even though some of the same medical issues are there. We all need something interesting we can focus on and look forward to.
This is why I love the history studies, I love learning and I look forward to learning what I never knew. This causes excitement when we find out new information and that stimulates our brain.
If we cannot do everything as we had been doing, then we do what we can. We focus on cleaning up the mess one thing at a time. We get in our mind this cannot be done in a few days, and then relax and go at a slower pace.
I finally got over that there is going to be a mess for awhile because I know that many times in life when we are actually making progress we make quite a mess getting to that end result.
I sat down with Charles and asked the question, what if we try and do three things per day that are not regular things we do?
So after talking about this, we decided each of us would do something that we want to do. Charles chose working in his wood shop one hour each day after he comes home from work. His wood shop is a mess because he usually grabs tools to take with him when we drive up to Madge's place. He has been so busy that he has not had time to put it back in place and his shop has become quite a mess.
One of my three things is to sit down for thirty minutes and crochet edging on different cotton cloths that are unraveling. Such as terry bath cloths and flannel cloths I use for cleaning and such as that.
Another for Charles is sorting paperwork and shredding for at least a half hour per evening. There are boxes and boxes of paperwork to go through from Madge's house. Another for myself is emptying one drawer in the house per day and straightening that drawer. When the drawers are done I will add something else for my three things. It must be a small project that does not take a lot of time.
Another for Charles is to read one of his books that he enjoys for half an hour or more if there is time.
Another for myself is to write out a recipe each day for my handwritten cookbook that I have been working on. I started the book before Madge got sick and am just now getting back to it. My example is a very old handwritten book that was started in 1924. The pages are getting very brittle and I want to add these recipes to my book before they can no longer be read.
When bad things happen, we do our best to go through them day by day but do our best to try to get back to normal when life has calmed down.
My motto is, if it doesn't work then change it, at least try in case it makes it better.
Don't just give up and leave things as they are if our situation is not working. We can all change our minds and try to fix things, but I see many people that get bogged down and just settle in what can become a miserable situation to remain in. Sometimes it requires hard work to fix this whatever it is that is isn't working. Sometimes it requires making a change, but life is too short to not fix something that can be fixed. This can apply to many situations in our life from a wrong color rug in a bathroom to an education choice.
This picture was taken several years ago. I had an image in my mind of a path in our yard and so one day I started digging out a path. I kept digging and planting monkey grass to border the paths. This took several years and I ended up making a twisting Labyrinth vegetable path throughout the entire back yard. I am glad that I started digging a path that day because it was the beginning of an interesting back yard that produces food.
Our three things that we decided to do each day has caused us to get more done because even if we do not do each of the three things we chose, we seem to be replacing that spot of time with saying, I will do this instead.
Bernadette getting a hair cut.
I finally groomed our doggies, Elizabeth was the worse of the neglected babies and I cut her fur very short and then I groomed Bernadette, I cut her short too. Last night we trimmed their nails and neither of them wanted their nails trimmed. Katherine does not get her hair cut because she is short haired. But she got a bath. Her nails will be next. This is something that has made me feel better and they feel better. This took me three days to groom them and those three days would have gone by anyway. Charles did not get to read his book, he chose to help me with clipping their nails and holding Bernadette so I could finish trimming her fur on her legs and feet.
I did my first drawer clean out in the kitchen and found a cookie stamp that I have been looking for. I was happy about that and the drawer looks much better. I will keep going.
No matter how young or old or slow we are, we can make a difference if we start with baby steps and keep going. We may not get to running or even walking, but baby steps will still get us there.
I hope something in this post has helped in some way. Have you had to overcome some difficult times that you are or have had to take baby steps? What would you choose for your three things to do each day? You can comment over in the forum, or just pop over to read what others are saying. The forum link is up in the menu section on this blog.
Grandma Donna
