Winding Down the Year

 I've always thought of the week between Christmas and New Year's as the quiet week.  A time to contemplate the year past, and the year coming up.  Look at last year's intentions, and think about future ones.

In the last two days, I've made two batches of orange marmalade (I'm still eating my daily orange, but there are a lot on the tree).  

The clearing of the path around the stream continues (a bit slowed down because of my messed up arm).  This is really doing something to/for me.  I realized at one point that my face felt funny  -  I was smiling.  I've been having an odd feeling - it's that I'm happy, and it's a feeling I haven't had for years.  I found Squeaky Frog Pond (so named because of the little squeak the frog would give as they leapt into it. ) I laughed when I found a little rivulet where another pond drains into the stream.  When we used to go for a walk in the woods with the goats and sheep (which felt pretty magical on its own), Vincent - who was quite a large sheep - would balk when we got there, then finally bunch himself up to make a great leap over it.  The funny part was that the gap was maybe 8 inches across.

I've spent a lot of time just looking.  It's all so beautiful that I can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that this is mine; it belongs to me.  It is part of my home.  And it feels magical; I expect to see Baba Yaga's hut on chicken legs through the trees.

I'll probably spend the next few days going over this past year's blog to see what I can learn from it . I know that it's been a decent year, and that I'm a lot calmer, and my grief has moved from acute to chronic.  Partly that's just circumstance - knock wood, but in 2024 no friends, cats, or chickens died.  The roof didn't leak, the AC works, the porch didn't rot.  This might be a record year for me. (Of course, I got rear ended, and then later pulled the front bumper off the car - there has to be something)

My main intent for 2024 was to not push myself so much.  I really put myself out there in 2023 because I thought I should.  This year I just admitted that I'm basically an introvert.  I'm more self-reliant, mostly because I have to be, but I seem to have stopped feeling sorry for myself about it.  Like after my fall last week.  Yes - it would have been *really* nice for someone to run over, ask if I was OK, then help me inside to rest and recover while he took care of things.  But that's not my option at the moment.  I got up, got the chickens put away for the night, got the squirrel and the cats and myself fed, and then rested.  And drove myself to get X-rays the next day.  But that's simply how things go now.

I've read a lot - 49 books.  My big pleasure is when the weather is decent enough that I can sit outside to read - either on my back deck, my front swing, by the fire while burning yard waste, or - new delight - leaning against a tree down in the woods.  The reading is all over the place; I leaned heavily into fantasy, but also a lot of classics, and some non-fiction.

I'm still doing my walking challenges.  I did the 180 virtual walk of the Shire, and I've currently walked 663 miles around Iceland (164 miles to go)

Of course, the big thing I did this year was empty tonnage out of the barn.  Then things sort of stalled - nothing much has been particularly organized.  But I know what's there, and where it is.  This year's "winter project" is the stream path.  I confused Mike when I mentioned having a winter project - living in Boston, his idea of winter projects are indoor ones.  For a Floridian, it's the time of year you can work outside without heat exhaustion or getting chewed up by insects.

I'm re-reading my blog posts of this year.  The early ones show a lot of pain.  Going through the anniversaries of the time between when Bob when to Shands, and when I came home alone.  I wonder how that will be this year. (I note that I referred to this period as the "memory rodeo.")

More reviews to come in the next few days - I've just realized that I'm getting sleepy.  Rob and Jeff will be in town tomorrow (they went to Pensacola to visit Rob's family for Christmas) so I'll get to visit with them.

(Just noticed a theme that I need to visit. It's that I can go really well on the parts of a project that I can see what to do - like taking the 40 or so bags of stuff from Bob's room, or the Great Barn Clean Out.  But after that - with things looking half done, I just sort of stall out because the obvious stuff is done, and what do I do now?)