The Next Day

 I actually posted on FaceBook the day after I came home (in addition to the death announcement on The Day).  It just showed up in my memories.

"After having been sequestered in a hospital room for the last three months, it feels oddly expansive to come home to where I can wander several rooms, have a real bed instead of a small couch in the corner to sleep, and even have a kitchen to get food instead of going to the hospital cafeteria. (Dear friends stocked the fridge for me). It will take me awhile to get used to this much freedom."

I felt like a pressure cooker that had the lid unexpectedly removed. I was still in shock - functioning, but not feeling. And dealing. When I came home, the first thing noticed was that my air conditioning had died. Rob was nice enough to set up an appointment with some AC people, and to come back the next day when they showed up. That was good - I was sort of functioning and then I would phase out. "Sorry I seem out of it - my husband died yesterday." Just yesterday. Bob died. And now I was at home with my cats and chickens and dealing with the air conditioner. Every now and then I would say "excuse me a moment" and step away and breathe.

It was good to get out of the goldfish bowl. For three months we had lived with a window in our room, a nurse usually outside. Someone walking in the room at least once an hour, checking vitals, hanging bags of blood or platelets. Alarms and bells going off, IV drips clicking. Sometimes the crash/evaluation team running in. And I had to keep my act together. All that pressure was now gone. I could take a shower without some stranger in the next room. I didn't have to stay alert for Bob needing something, or grabbing my notebook anytime a doctor or nurse came into the room. I didn't have to hold myself together for anyone. I could lay on the floor and scream without someone splashing water on my face. I didn't owe anyone anything.

So I got the AC replaced. A few months later the ceiling leaked during a hard rain and I got the roof repaired. The front deck was rotting and I had it torn out and replaced. And yesterday I had the goat shed torn down and hauled off.

When we first moved here, I wanted chickens. We got chickens. I also wanted sheep and angora goats (angora for the mohair). So we fenced in the area behind the cottage, built a shed, and got some sheep and goats. Have I ever mentioned that Bob spoiled me rotten? He even called around and found a woman who had angora goats. The sheep came from a co-worker who was getting out of the meat sheep business. This was one sheep that she had never sold nor butchered but kept as a pet. At first I said no - I was interested in a fleece sheep, not a meat breed. "But Rosemary said he's very sweet." Nope - nice doesn't necessarily make good spinning. "He got attacked by a dog when he was just a lamb and got his ear ripped off, so his name is Vincent Lamb Gogh." So of course we had to get him, bringing him home shoved into the back of our mini pickup with a small camper shell. It happened to be Earth Day, and when people noticed we had a sheep in the truck they assumed that it had something to do with that (is there a tradition of carrying sheep in a truck on Earth Day?)

Later we went and got a couple of angora goats. I need to find pictures of Vincent and Shazbat (our little Angora) but here's Sid - short for Don Simon Xavier Christian Moreno de la Cadena-Ysidro. We bonded. I adored that goat.

We loved having them.  We'd come home from work, let them out of the pen to graze a bit, sit with them, feel our blood pressure drop.  But we had to admit that they tied us down, and sometimes horrible things would happen like coming home and discovering that someone's dogs had gotten into the pen.  Eventually time took them away from us and we didn't get more.

So the shed became storage for random, well, junk.  And started falling apart.  And dragging all that crap out of there and taking the shed down got put on the permanent "things to do" list.  And a few months ago it simply fell over.

A few days ago I wrote about chatting with a guy in the parking lot of the gas station while we were both at the little food truck.  Well - he came by yesterday - and the shed is now gone.  Feels strange - it was there for almost 30 years.  But I have to admit it was an eyesore.   And he did such a good job that he's going to come back next week and take away all the stuff "that maybe someday we'll do something with" piled up behind the barn.

Things are looking emptier.   Much better.  But emptier.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a spinning project  - have decided that I need a handspun shirt (which is insane - it will take a hundred hours or two, but it's what I do).  I was going to spin and bit and watch Downton Abbey (never got around to watching it before) but I'm a little sleepy and it's after 10 so a book and bed might happen instead.  Yes, bed.  In my reliving of 2020 I'd taken to sleeping on the couch again, but it's time to return to the bed, even though I'll miss Hamish plastered up against me.  Some of the other cats like to sleep on the bed (whether I'm there or not) and he doesn't like being with them.  And if I'm honest, I don't know if he was so much sleeping with me as that I was sleeping on *his* couch and he was just nice enough to share.