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Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012
Almost Midwinter - December 14, 2011
Saturday, Noonish, Sunny - November 05, 2011
October, White - October 31, 2011
October, 2011 - October 04, 2011


October 04, 2011

6:34 a.m.

Good morning, D'land! It's a chilly morning in Connecticut. I've got the oil lamp burning here in the dining room, and until a minute ago the space heater was helping me ward off the chill. Smidge is outside in the early dawn, skulking among the leaves and wet grass. It's a beautiful morning.

Current events: Rose is looking for a new job in earnest, having given her six weeks' notice at the doctor's office where she's worked for many years. The overseeing organization's policies (see more patients, make more money, compromise care) have finally driven her away. She's hoping for something at the University four miles away. The pay would be a lot less, but she'd get summers off, and no required overtime. No more 10-hour days all week. She's completely burned out. I'm sending out prayers.

Karl got meningitis last month and was bedridden for a long time. He's slowly coming back to speed, but it was just horrible.

Work is work; sometimes fun, sometimes tedious. I am grateful to have my job and I hope the company survives.

I am still madly in love; happily in love. Radar is moving in next month, in fact. We weren't going to live together, but since we started talking about it during the terrible week when I though I was going to have to manage the mortgage on my own (sorry if I'm reiterating here), it evolved into a good idea and we got really excited about it. We've done one trial of 9 days in a row where he stayed here, and it was great. We'll do another week this month and he'll move some stuff over, then have our week more or less apart, then do the real move. Dar has been, after the first bumpy period adjusting to there being another man in my life, extremely supportive, and I'm grateful our friendship is intact.

I don't know yet what's going to happen at the holidays. Dar usually manages to come down for a couple of hours before heading to his sister's in New Hampshire. Radar will be with us at T'giving dinner, having no family at all nearby, so I'll see if Dar is comfortable meeting him, if he hasn't already by then.

That's a couple of months away and I have lots of other fish to fry before then. We're running pipe in the house this week in prep for a propane tank installation outside the kitchen, which will run a wall-mounted, 18,000 BTU space heater. Ya-HOO! The kitchen will be WARM this winter. Ultimately the tank will also run a gas (propane) stove and a dryer, neither of which I have yet. I can also pipe it to a grill outside so I won't have to be refilling a tank. Just so happens, Radar's roommate is giving him a large, not much used, grill to bring here.

We've cleared lots of trees and brush for the building of a woodshed, which will also commence soon. I've started painting the master bedroom and we have a plan for fixing the ceiling. The pellet stove is cleaned and almost ready for the first lighting; the wood stove needs pipe all the way up the chimney this year and Karl has promised to do that. That, and a cap, will make me feel much more at ease about running it.

Plans are in the works to have goats next Spring as well as chickens. Rose will help with the goats; we both want them, but as they'll be doing construction in the yard at their place, there won't be room to set up the goat area yet. So we'll have them on my back rise and it'll be a family project. Radar is so happy about our microfarm he practically does whirlystands talking about it. It's a huge relief to have help around here.

Anyway, it's time to go to work. I was just sitting here this morning, in the quiet dining room with the oil lamp burning, feeling like I was in two places at once -- here, now, living these good old days, and looking back from my elder future, smiling at what a wonderful, rich, living time it was.


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