Here There Be Dragons;

Today was a bit discombobulated (which raises the question - am I ever combobulated?)  I didn't have any clear plans for today besides tidying up a bit (the trunk that I use for a coffee table is piled up and sliding to the floor.)  And I just felt unmotivated - more on that later.

So spent a couple of hours during/after breakfast chatting with Ebaida - covering things like the current political situation here to the American Civil war to slavery to some cute music videos.  I love that woman.

But I finally got up and On With My Day.  I'm almost out of my seedy bread, so I got that started (it's the kind of bread that you mix up and then let sit and do it's thing for a few hours before baking)  Then I remembered that I needed to do the trash run - the dump won't be open again until Friday and I'm out of space in the trash can for empty cat food tins.  There is no "putting trash in an outside can" around here - I can bungee a can to try to keep raccoons out, but that's less that successful with bears.

But trash days are also "clean the squirrel cage day" so did that first.  Then I remembered that I still had 50 pound bags of chicken feed and cat litter in the car that had to be dispensed into buckets.  Somewhere around this time I got a call from a friend because he hadn't talked to me for awhile (in Greg's case, this means "talk at you" but he's pretty interesting and with the joy of speaker phones I got a basket of laundry put away).  By then I needed lunch.  Trash run finally done.

Back home, I got another "talk at me" call from Rob, because they had given Zeke his birthday present of taking a flying lesson (pretty cool, right?)  Got more stuff done during that call.

Noticed that my bread wasn't rising at all.  Wondered for a moment if my yeast was dead.  Realized that I had forgotten to put it in.  I mixed it with a little water and squished it in as well as possible; it's rising now (amazing how that works)

But on to Dragons!  Our library had a Cosmic Con - a fun event with all kinds of tables and games and a costume contest.  It's a way to get families into the library.  The theme was "Here There Be Dragons" so of course I had to take my dragon puppet.

It was, of course, a hit.  People (adults as well as kids) love interacting with a puppet.  And, honestly, I love being the center of attention when it's not actually me who's getting it.

To make it more fun, I went up to a woman to admire her costume (a swamp witch with an opossum on her shoulder) and before I could say anything she goes "I know you!!"  She used to work at the museum 7 or 8 years ago.  So the two swamp witches hung out with each other, and we even joined in the costume parade that was wending it's way around all the library shelves.  It was silly and fun.

But today?   A little rough - because it isn't.  August 25th is our 51st wedding anniversary.  Last year I stressed for the week approaching it.  Lots of tears.  Made a special meal.  Opened the 50 year old bottle of wine.  Bought myself a cake. Cried some more.

But 51 seems anticlimactic.  Almost, but not quite, just another day.  I hadn't even planned anything special (I was more involved with getting ready for the library thing - I was altering last week's medieval dress to hold the fake arm and use the puppet.)  

But this picture popped up in my FaceBook memories.

I had posted this picture 6 years ago, in 2018, with the glib caption of "45 years.  So far, so good."

Yeah.  The innocence of that twists me up.  We didn't know that by our 46th anniversary we would be spending most of our time either in the oncology clinic, or going back and forth to Shands.  We didn't know that I would celebrate our 47th, and every one after that, alone.

The hardest years for me to think about are 2018 and the first half of 2019.  I look at pictures and memories and the word "innocence" keeps coming back to me.  We lived, and loved, and raised baby squirrels and opossums, went kayaking, took afternoon naps, had coffee together, played Jeopardy.  We just didn't know how little time we had left together.

I think I said it best on a post that I made in a previous anniversary:

I miss you.
I love you.

Thank you.