A little bit here, a little bit there, and then the snafu

 We recently made a trip to the land after work to plant sunflower seeds. Originally we were going to plant a nice patch up front, but Woodchuck changed his mind and wanted to plant them farther back and then we can harvest the heads/seeds and use those to eventually plant up front. After being stuck inside all day, it was nice being out in the fresh air, even though the sun was hot and intense.

This is the spot he chose. We had recently tried transplanting 5 elderberry sprouts nearby. 👆

We brought the tiller from home to make it faster. I am continually in awe of this man who had shoulder surgery barely a year ago. 👆

While he tilled, I enjoyed watching the turkey vultures soar overhead in the sunshine! 👇

A good friend of mine gifted these to me, so the first row of the patch was where I planted her seeds 👇

This past Saturday, Woodchuck had to take the day off from work to pick up the fish he ordered to put in the pond. After wasting A LOT of money and effort on chemicals to clean up the pond that didn't make ONE BIT of difference, we were told to try Tilapia. He bought 5 pounds, which ended up not being nearly enough, but we'll know better for next year. He stopped in at the bakery where I work and I got to run out to the car really quickly and look at them! I wanted to be with him when he put them in, but there was nobody to cover my shift and we didn't want to lose the money. He plans on getting more next year, so hopefully I can be with him on that trip! The pond is currently a swamp and because of the small amount he bought for the size of the pond, they said it could take a few weeks before we start to see any difference. They spawn every 28 days though!

We also checked on the status of the concrete in the barn that he sealed! I honestly wasn't sure that it would be dry with the rain and humidity that we've had, but it was perfect!

                                                            Ohhh, that looks nice! 👆

                                                    We did the water test and it beaded up! 

He put boards down behind and then one in front so that when he lowered the implements, they weren't sitting right on the cement. Ginny is now parked in the barn again!👆

Time to start moving stuff inside! On our most recent trip out, he built himself a workbench (he says it has to weigh at least 600 pounds 😏) and picked up some linoleum remnants to top it with to make clean up easier.👆 His next goal is to start emptying duplicate items out of the shipping container and into the barn, that way we have one of each thing at each end of the property and it frees up space in the shipping container to make it more organized and easy to move around in.

Speaking of shipping container....I think our Woodchuck is getting bigger, because it had to expand its hole entrance underneath, lol. 👇

My most recent trip into the forest on a humid day, while fighting mosquitoes, was spent removing bittersweet and Lily of the Valley. I didn't realize it when I went in, but I only had three trash bags. I have a system that works out really well for me since I work alone and because of the forest debris on the ground, I can't pull my work cart through the forest anymore. With it being a CRP forest and the trees are planted in rows going North and South, I enter in one row from the South, go North, and then come back South in the next row. If my bag is too full or heavy to continue with it, I leave it out on the edge of the path for Woodchuck to eventually pick up with the tractor. I grab a new bag and then head back in going North on the next row. On this trip in, I filled three 55 gallons bags with invasives. These next three pictures are Oriental Bittersweet and a very big problem on my land. I've been fighting it for just over 3 years now.

But I've found some great things along the way, both at the land and at our home where I've been working for four years to clean up a tiny strip of railroad land next to my yard and driveway. These next pictures are from the land and home.

                                            Carolina Cranes-bill (a species of geranium) 👆

                                                                        Bracken fern 👆

                                                                        Four o' clocks 👆

                                                                         Solomon's Seal 👆

                                                                    Oxeye Daisies 👆

                                                                            Fleabane 👆

                                                                Red Twig dogwood 👆

                            A very happy juniper tree with lots and lots of baby berries! 👆

                                                                        Elderberry 👆

                                                    A honey bee on the Black Walnut tree 👆

While the plant life continues to explode, the water in back ditch continues to go down and when I went to it last, I heard trickling water and was confused for a moment. The pipes leading to the pond were completely out of the water level, I got closer to them and still heard the sound but saw no water movement. I looked farther up in the ditch and there! The drainage pipe coming out of the forest, where we have no idea where it starts, was draining water into the ditch. Woodchuck bought the cap and we will seal it off the next time we are out there, though I still have reservations about it. I understand his worry that if this is coming from somewhere North of us that isn't clean, that is draining into our ditch and pond, etc., but I am also thinking about water levels in the pond. We have talked about also having a system on the culvert pipe at the end of the ditch coming off of the pond where we can close it off and keep the water in the pond during droughts. The company that we had out to access the flooding and slumping brought it up to us, but as usual, we are grasping at ideas and how to go about them with no idea really if we are doing more harm than good.

After getting up at 3 a.m. on Sunday and working until nearly noon, I was supposed to go to my oldest sons home around the corner from us to help him weed I got a text from him midmorning though that he wasn't feeling well again (he is on the spectrum and after four years of asking him to get established with an allergist and GP, I have been ignored.) Honestly, I was really, really tired, but in need of some sunshine and fresh air and was wondering if the lack of it was contributing to being tired; so I told him that I would come by myself for an hour and get done what I could. It hadn't been touched since I did it last year. I spent an hour and 15 minutes just pulling what was along the house on the driveway side and told him that we need to spend time each Sunday when I get off of work pulling weeds. I've yet to be able to find a trustworthy/reliable handyman to take over getting stuff done at his house. He needs stone put down if that is the look he wants to continue with, but he's got so many other things that need to be fixed before he does that. The before and after pictures.

I am again in that cycle of life where my three guys are leaning on me heavily and I have to keep reminding them that they are capable, grown men. The youngest and hubby are at each other again and barely talking and I am always getting stuck in the middle of their egos. Between them, trying to keep up on the housework here, sorting and packing, working at the land, working at my job 45-50 hours a week and being their referee, one day is running into the next and my head is spinning. So I treated myself to an impulse buy!

 I will never again get in any kind of boat with Woodchuck (I've been in various ones four times now with him in charge and can tell that he has no idea what he is doing in any of them, lol!). I wanted something that was just for me, controlled just by me, and to help me get over my fear of being in a boat on the pond. The Jon boats we have are too much for me to maneuver on my own and we went to a discount ware house recently to look around and I found this for $100 off the regular price. There was only three left and one couple was also trying to decide if they wanted one. When they picked one up and put it in their cart, I went back to hubby and told him about what it was and what was included. We walked away and I thought for sure they would be gone by the time I got back to them. We walked back up the next aisle and he said he wanted to see it too. When we got back to it, another couple was standing there deciding on buying or not. He was impressed enough that he grabbed one and put it in the cart for me! There is no way to look anything up inside of the building, so I knew we were taking a chance on buying a difficult product. Once we were outside and I was able to catch a signal, it turns out that it has great reviews! I did get some helpful feedback from friends about kayaks, and I'm not even going to try it out until the pond water swampiness gets cleared up! 

I also got some new shoes, barefoot shoes in fact! I have tried minimalist shoes before and while they felt great initially, after about 3 months my leg/foot would start hurting again. I can't afford to replace my shoes that often. I have a torn tendon in my ankle that is affecting my whole leg and after trying two pairs of shows in the past 6 months, I thought I would give these a shot. Honestly, I am a bit underwhelmed, but it could be more the styles that I chose that caused that. I got the same size, but two different styles. I love the turquoise ones and they fit great! The gray and orange ones feel tighter and don't offer as much toe protection at work. My leg is soooooorrrrre, but maybe it's getting strengthened? Someone else posted a picture of theirs and they look more like tennis shoes, where mine look more like water shoes. So if I get these again, I won't get the gray and orange style for sure!

The snafu part of life recently is that my work shift has been changed again. To separate myself from the problem employee that works up front, my shift has been changed back to what it was when I started working there. 10:30-6:30. While it is more peaceful, it has caused me some issues. I am now working at the slowest time of day and my tips have taken a 75% reduction while I am now doing the majority of cleaning and stocking up front. It also prevents Woodchuck and I from going to the land together after work on Wednesday thru Saturday. And speaking of Saturday, I have no idea how that will work now because before I was being sent home anywhere between noon and 2:00 when we got slow because there's no need for two of us up there when it's slow, and with me being the opener on Sundays, the boss wanted to make sure I was rested. Now I'll be getting home at 7 p.m., will eat, shower, go to bed around 9 and get up at 3 a.m. All because he doesn't want to fire an issue. I also found out last night that I will have to tag team with the assistant manager at closing to clean because our cleaner just quit. I am frustrated, tired, sore, and counting down the days until I can retire and get away from all of this dysfunction across the board in the workforce. To date, I have applied at 34 jobs since last September and either don't hear anything back at all (my application is still under review), or I don't get selected. I am 50 years old with some minor physical limitations, but give 110%. I mean, I am working 45-50 hours a week where I am, pushing myself physically, and honestly, I just want to climb into bed for the next few days and climb out of it a millionaire. A girl can dream, can't she? 😆

I recently stopped at my moms to see her, my sister, and my nieces. It was HOT and HUMID that day with my mom recently beating lung cancer but still having COPD, she was having a hard time breathing outside but wanted to stay near us. Once we ate lunch though, we all decided that we needed a break from the heat and went inside. I've been sticking to my clean/healthy eating as much as I can and I feel a lot better! Even the reduction in gluten has made a very big difference! My stepdad was grilling chicken and beef burgers, neither of which I could eat. I don't eat red meat and he has BBQ sauce on the chicken. So I brought my own food. Organic blueberries, carrots, hardboiled egg, horseradish cheese, and some herbed chicken breast. 😋I found lots of mock strawberries in their yard, but I don't eat anything from their yard/garden. They were a beautiful color though!

I look forward to the day when I am not busting my ass for money, but am working hard on my own land to get it healthy again and being surrounded daily by the peace that I deserve and try to give. May the sun shine brightly for us all. ☮

 

When you blame the full moon

 It was going to be a bit of a different week for me, as the co-worker who opens was going on vacation on Wednesday and Thursday and that left it up to me to open the bakery. Wednesday went fantastic! Thursday was a shit show from the get go and I had to call the cops on my first customer of the day. From there, the downward spiral continued and I ended up in my bosses office on Friday crying, Saturday didn't go much better, and Sunday found me getting my head bit off by him for doing a job duty but not at the time he wanted it done. How do I sell donuts without donuts in the case. I ask? While his daughter stands at the register texting right in front of the customers and nothing gets said to her. Woodchuck also started crap with me via text while I was at work. This does not align with my purpose, my needs, and how I want to be surrounded in peace. Why do people not realize that we have the power to make the world we want, but it's not going to happen when people feed the dysfunction and what they don't want. It has taken me so long to become the person I am, one that fights against falling or being pushed down into holes each day, one who wants to feed and spread love, positivity and light, and I am getting buried each day by just the opposite. As usual, I am holding on longer than is best for my mental health, but I can't leave until I have another job lined up and I am hoping that things get better in the meantime. 

What is life like as an empath? As someone who cannot be around negativity for long periods of time or handle being blindsided by it when I am kind? If you can imagine a tornado around me, a personal one at that. As it swirls, parts of me are being tossed out, but instead of the tornado being a negative force, mine is positive. The parts of me that are flung are my love, joy, kindness, etc. But when those parts are flung out, it leaves an opening in the tornado for a short time, and when there are holes in my aura, things make it in. Things that make me feel icky, things that bring me down, hurt me, things that are not my fault yet that make me suffer until I can build that tornado up again and close the holes. 

I can feel things just walking into a room, I can see the things that nobody else does, I can love in a way that most cannot, I can see both sides of a situation, I continually make things easier for others (or try to at least) while I am torn apart along the way. I don't ask for thanks, I don't ask for anything other than the basics of being safe and not to be taken advantage of. It's a battle I continually fight and always feel like I am losing at. How do I live in this world, how do I participate in a society where I am having a hard time finding others like myself. I need a safe place to land and a posse of positivity because friends, I am damn tired. It may be unrealistic of me in the standards of current society to want peace in my life, a safe haven, days filled with positivity and love, but if it's true that we create our own reality then it should not be out of my reach. It may not be important to others, but it's a GD prerequisite of my daily life moving forth. So mote it be )O(

Woodchuck and I made a trip to the land after work on the day that I had to call the cops on the customer, thinking that it would make me feel better. He worked on sealing the concrete floor in the barn, and I was sticking nearby and clearing invasives along the side of the driveway. Most of this had been done within the past couple of the years, but has grown back and the neighbor moved a small pull- along trailer and that opened up new spaces for me to get to. 

I was immediately overwhelmed. Such a small speck in the Universe fighting against such large forces and feeling like I am doing it all alone. Going back to the same spaces over and over again and circling and chasing my own tail, But this is important, so I jumped in and started working on a large patch of bittersweet that is choking out our ditch along the property line and grabbing hold of a Poplar. I did what I could and moved on to find more honeysuckle, autumn olive, multi-flora rose, and something that I haven't seen elsewhere out there yet.....burning bush.

And just stood there and cried. The place that has been my source of peace and healing is getting overrun with crap and I'm struggling to fight it and keep it under control. I take breaks, I cry, but then I jump right back in and keep going. It has always been me against the world and I am a moonchild, a Keeper of Light, carrier of my ancestors love and knowledge and at the end of the day that is most important and wins over all of the bullshit that humans keep slinging around at each other and all of the inhabitants of the blue marble we are all on.

I still honor the Full Moons and all of the chaos we feel under them. I see the beauty, I see the magick, I see the greater plan. Tear me down along the way, I will only be rebuilt stronger. Darkness will not overtake the Light that we bring and a balance needs to be found in so many areas of the world. Love will find you, it will find me, we will heal and we will carry on the battle. I will stand beside Darkness because it does not scare me, it only motivates me to create the shadows that Light brings when it shines on. )O(

Uh-one project, uh-two project, uh-three project, ah, ah, ah....

 We were ready to hit it! Beautiful morning, storms forecasted later in the day, and a long list of projects to get done before they did. We had to drop my car off again at the garage down the road first thing in the morning and then Woodchuck drove us to the land in his car. I admit that I sometimes miss being the passenger, as I do 99% of the driving when we hit the road. It was a welcomed change of pace!

As soon as we got to the land, we were greeted with the most adorable trespassers. We think they might belong to the family a couple of houses down who have a very tiny homestead. They were chill, adorable, and very hungry for all of the little bugs. I asked them to please eat as many ticks as they could! I wasn't sure of the sounds they make, as I tried various ones to get them comfortable, but they ended up making a sound between a duck and a chicken and are very quiet. They got within a couple of feet of us as we made our way around the land. And their feathers? Absolutely beautiful! I hate that I have seen them for sale at the craft stores :( GuineaFowl!

We tend to get a lot of adorable trespassers and hitchhikers at or from the land. This jumping spider hitched a ride on me recently back to my car to get in the air conditioning! 

                                                            He's cooling his little butt, lol.

Thank goodness for the wind, because it was humid and the sun was HOT!

While Woodchuck opened the storage container, I walked the area. Salsify needed to be pulled.

And I saw a lot of white blooms high off of the ground that I needed to investigate. Unfortunately, a massive Multiflora Rose :( This is an area we haven't touched yet in the clean out of invasives, so I'm really not surprised.

On to the first project! Creating a fence barrier in the ditch coming off of the pond so that when Woodchuck puts the fish in, they can't escape. He ordered some Tilapia after finding out that they can help clean up the pond. All that money he spent on chemicals and they didn't make one bit of difference. I have to admit that the sound of him sloshing around in the water sounded very refreshing, lol. For the first time ever, I put my hands in it to wash them, and it felt so good! He's worried about snapping turtles (as he should be), but honestly, I hate being afraid and just want to be smart about how we interact with natural places.

And done! We didn't know if Tilapia jump, so we made it two fence panels high just in case. It's anchored at the bottom with large pieces of stone and brick. 

Project number two, which I don't have pictures of, was us trying to transplant some volunteer elderberry babies. They didn't like it much, immediately went into shock, but it was honestly worth a try since where they were growing gets mowed and they would never mature there. I watered them well, and I'm sure we got the storm at the land too which watered them even more.

Project number 3 was capping off one of the drainage pipes in the forest. I am not 100% confident that this was a good idea. When we bought the land we were told that the start of the pipe had been capped off, however, we could see water flowing from it, so unless there is a break somewhere in it, or it has drainage holes in it along the way, that information was false. So we sawed off the broken part, capped it, placed a brick against the cap incase of pressure build up, covered it and marked it with a flag. I'll keep an eye on the forest to see what happens, but we were told the beginning of this starts at the house North of this pipe. It was where the previous owners mother lived. There is a family with some farm animals living there now and we honestly don't know what is going into that pipe and then draining on to our land. We tried stopping there recently, but nobody answered the door.

Before we went our separate ways to work on our own things, I walked around a bit. I found this tiny and lovely Parasola mushroom. 😍

And look! Some of the flooding has gone down in the back ditch! I would say it was a good 4-6 inches shallower now, though it was still very high.

It was time to head into the forest! Because I keep going in at the same spot and getting stopped at the same spot, I decided to go to the very end and work my way back. I didn't care if there was standing water, I needed to at least get my eyes on what was going on. I was greeted with a new patch of Packera! It is now dappled throughout the forest.

I did my usual pulling of cleavers, and babies of honeysuckle, bittersweet, multiflora rose, dug up lily of the valley, cut troublesome grapevine and inadvertently would dig up critters. I couldn't get information to load on this guy while I was in the forest, so I left him. Turns out he's quite the troublesome creature with crops and fruit trees. 😟

But I was SO excited to find the Twayblade Orchid again!!!! And is that a little baby orchid coming up next to it???!!! This is the only one I have found in our forest since purchasing the land 3 years ago! I always put a little cage system around it so that I can find it easier next time out and can monitor its growth.

I was sneezing non-stop and had faucet nose. Everything was covered in a layer of pollen, even feathers that the birds had dropped, and there were piles of cottonwood cotton throughout.

                    A species of harvestmen arachnid. They are super fast runners, and even jump! 

UGH, the first time I see the wild strawberries ripen and he ran over them with the tractor while mowing 😢 I memorized the location and will check on the ones here that weren't ripe yet.

These babies were huge! And although I was tempted to harvest them, thinking they were chicken of the woods, I needed to get out of the forest in a timely manner because the storms were moving in and the winds were really picking up. I also don't trust myself on identifying anything else but morels. I sent the picture to a mushroom guy just North of me and indeed, this was not chicken of the woods and not edible! 😱

                                I named this worm Jaba. He was so fat, and didn't even move! 

I checked on the blueberry bushes before we left, and they are getting closer to becoming actual fruit. Since we trimmed the bushes, they look so much healthier!

We picked my car up from the garage down the road, came home, worked out, and Woodchuck wanted to go to town to grab some groceries and dinner. Of course he waited until the storms were starting!

They followed us back home! I hurried up and jumped in the shower and was just getting out when the sirens went off. 

There was a confirmed microburst just North of us!

So depending on the weather for the rest of the week, Woodchuck wants to head back after work to finish weed whacking. I've also tracked down some free wood that he can use for the walking bridge, but there was a lot of interest in it and I don't know that it won't be snatched up before we can get there to pick it up. He has been toying with the idea of buying an old truck to make situations like these easier, instead of having to rely on my car and the trailer we hook up to it. The most recent repair, which I have to say that even though I've spent about $3,000 to get her fixed this year, are things that have been ongoing that are just now getting noticed and fixed. Yesterdays fix was a leaky valve cover gasket and although the guys knew there was a leak, they didn't tell me and didn't move forward with fixing it. Once I was told that there was a leak, I asked Woodchuck why she hadn't been fixed? He shrugged. So they fixed that yesterday, but because it gone so long with the leak, my spark plug wells were FULL of oil and all of that had to be changed too. So a $200 job ended up being $360. I'm glad she's fixed, and the guys at the garage are great, but damn it, Woodchuck! Why oh why does he let things go until they are a bigger, and more expensive, issue?! I tackled him and play choked him--which would have been hilarious to anyone watching. I'm 5 foot, 140 pounds. He's 5' 8" and 200 pounds. But seriously, my car is very, very important to me. Anything we spend a large amount of money on and rely heavily on is! I take care of these things to help them last longer and reduce issues. He had speculated that I was having spark plug issues because I kept telling them that the idle was weird on her, even with all of the other fixing they had done this year. Now we know why. 

Oh and! Today embarks on the first of many appointments to meet with bankers about construction loans. One step closer! 🙌

I will follow

 I've been in my head a lot lately, feeling like I am on the cusp of something meant solely for me. But even in my own quest, I am always thinking of others. I am continually fascinated by how humans are affected by the Cosmos and Forces of Nature. Celestial events that make us feel like we are completely out of control of ourselves...mind, body, and soul. We just came out of a geomagnetic storm, and paired with the oral steroid the Rheumatologist wanted to try me on, I was a force to be reckoned with. I would have gladly gone to jail for beating up stupid people. But I'm off of the medicine now and calming down, ready to tap in to my potential, my strength, my weakness, and transcend yet again.

One thing I have continually denied myself over the years is spending money on flowers in the landscaping. Food plants were always a priority, anything else I considered a waste of money that we didn't have to waste. But now? I am not denying myself beauty, color, joy, smiles. I am working my ass off and I want to play just as hard as I work. So I took myself to a local greenhouse that specializes in native plants. I have gotten native plants before from them, and this time I just wanted some color. While my idea to prevent more flooding on the patio worked by planting some edges of grass to absorb the water, keeping it cut proved to be more difficult than I foresaw. I won't mow because it sits lower than the concrete, and weed whacking it isn't efficient. So we pulled the grass out of two corners to see how this would work for us. So far we love it! It provides color and some happiness. I got petunias, marigolds, and this beautiful red one that butterflies and hummingbirds like! 

Another large project ticked off of the list! The concrete has been poured in the pole barn now! Woodchuck is looking forward to hanging up his tools (and I am too, because honestly, we have four of everything between home and the land and he still can't find what he needs 😁)

It has been amazing to watch the forests transform with the opening of the space to build. Any hardwoods along the edges are leafing out now the whole way down the tree instead of just at the top where they only had light because of crowding. And to see what was waiting for the light to make itself known! (pictured is sassafras).

Although you will lose a boot in the water and mud getting to them, the blueberries that we trimmed are alive and well! I owe some to a friend who helped us build the pole barn, so I was glad to see that I will be able to share them this year.

My fight against invasives continues, but I can see the difference it's making as more and more native plants are taking over the spaces where I remove invasive/non-native ones. This is Dames Rocket, and while she's pretty and smells great, she has to go. Not to be confused with our native Phlox, Dames Rocket has four petals on the flowers, while Phlox has five. When we move out to the land and are ready for landscaping, I will be hitting it hard getting native plants in the ground.

These beauties are volunteer Elderberry and I am really hoping that Woodchuck didn't mow them over yesterday when we were at the land. The plan is to transplant them now into a strip of land that will allow them full sun and some wet feet, and where they won't get mowed over each week. 

I headed into the woods, knowing the mosquitoes were going to be insane. I couldn't stop moving, if I did I was surrounded by them. I had on full coverage clothing, layers of chemicals on my clothings, plus a visor with a net on the front, and a gator over my head and ears. With all of the rain we've had, and the forest flooding, we knew it was going to be a bad year for them. Sadly, my youngest is allergic to them, so his help out there will be severely limited (not that he's willing to help, but I digress). 

The day was perfect to be out there yesterday. Storms were not forecasted until later in the day, so we got there early. No humidity and lovely breeze...that doesn't make it to me while I am deep in the forest. But I don't care. The crows are overhead, dropping their feathers for me to find as gifts for taking care of their home (and I had a great idea for some art to make from them!) I blew through several rows in the forest, pulling cleavers, bittersweet, garlic mustard, honeysuckle, and LOV. Sadly, each time I go in, I get stopped at the same point and never seem to get past that! I had to stop twice to go back to Woodchuck to help him with his stuff, and then a storm blew in.

I am finding so many wonderful things! Like small patch of Wood Ferns, now the third species of fern I've found on the land.

And finally, a native grape instead of the ones that kill my trees! I will continue to watch it though, to make sure it doesn't damage anything.

                                                Sooo much Sweet Cicily dappled throughout!

The storm blew in fast, and I was in the middle of the forest when I heard thunder. I got out just as I felt a couple of drops fall, and more thunder rolling in on the winds. I got back to the shipping container in time for it to rain harder, and as Woodchuck was closing it up, a lightening bolt struck WAY too close for comfort. We both ran for the car and were very lucky as another one struck overhead right when we were getting in! I consider it the perfect ending to a very difficult week for me. To become so angry, to let it out, and then there's calm. We came home and went our separate ways, me to the sewing room to continue cleaning out and packing up. 💜

Today, my one day a week to get caught up on chores, art, socializing, blogging, etc. finds me harried as usual every Tuesday. But I made myself throw ingredients into the crockpot for chicken bone broth. I saved veggie scraps along the way and the guys recently had a rotisserie chicken that I am using the carcass from. I find it giggle worthy that I won't eat the chicken but will utilize the body of it. And it makes me think of all of the other things in my life that I try to utilize. Some times I succeed and some times not, but after a recent conversation with the youngest about feeling stuck in life (he does, not me), some times we get too caught up in viewing our lives from the vantage of what we are missing. When we do that, we will never feel fulfilled. We must feed what it is that we want to grow, like viewing life from the vantage of all of the wonderfulness we are surrounded with and by. That makes it so much easier to then see how fulfilled we truly are even if that doesn't meet the guidelines of normal society. They can pound sand and take their expectations elsewhere. I will follow the call of the crows. )O(