Good grief, Jan! Take it easy and get some rubber grips for the bottom of that step stool!

I haven't posted in such a long time but check in from time to time. Was thinking of everyone today, made me think of ghosts, how sometimes we know someone is around, we can sense them, we just can't see them. On the flip side, there stands the ghost with so much to say, but no one can hear them.

Work consumes my life these days. Just when I finish deploying an entire Division, there are Reservists and National Guardsmen standing at the door. When I get a moment of peace, I catch a glimpse of my own ghost standing close. I just can't seem to catch her and pull her in to make me what I once was. So I throw myself back into my work and convince myself that it's what I am suppose to do.

The NE National Guard are here, I get to work with them next week and I'm looking forward to it. I automatically thought of Gandle when I saw they were arriving, life has a funny way of tieing strangers together. When their advance party arrived earlier this week, they told me I had quite a reputation back in NE. I told them I had never stepped foot in NE, so someone must be writing on bathroom walls again. A big strapping Sergeant, someone I thought as the epitome of a farm boy, stepped forward and said "Ma'am, we don't have many bathrooms in NE so we write on the sides of barns!" Their sense of humor is charming and I've mentally noted that I must travel through NE before I die.

I stay out of the garden as much as it's possible for one with a love of gardening to do. The time has come for me to give up this house. As DS puts it "cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it". I've cried the river, the bridge is almost complete, but it's so hard to get over it. I keep telling myself it's silly to be so attached to a house. It's JUST A HOUSE, for Pete's sake. But to me, it was more than a house. It was a home. My first real home. I set down roots here and, while those roots can be dug up and replanted, there will be transplant shock. I had found a house to rent, for renting is what I've decided to do at this point, but the gal who is currently in it had her deployment date extended by 90 days. She has graciously offered to let me take over if I'd allow her to rent one room, but I'm over analyzing the situation and have concluded that perhaps this is a sign that I'm not suppose to live in this house. I know, seems silly, but some days I feel like I've missed reading a lot of signs in the past and that's why I am where I am. Or perhaps it's just my way of putting off the inevitable. Whatever the reason, I stay out of the garden for fear that I'll be overwhelmed with sadness at the the reality of having to leave behind my heirlooms.

All the kittens that arrived last August were placed in homes, along with their mother. I kept one for myself, a skitish solid black one we call Boo who has attached herself to me and drools when she purrs. Being the stupid human, I failed to have her spayed and it only took her getting out once to become pregnant. Being the stupid human, I miscalculated her conception date (or totally lost a month of my life somewhere) and when I came home from work on Wednesday night, she had delivered one kitten back behind a huge stack of boxes. Later on (seemed like 3 hours later), she delivered a second kitten. So, I now have 2 solid black kittens that will need homes in a few months. And Boo will be spayed as soon as possible. This crazy cat has decided she doesn't like the birthing box, and she doesn't like having them in her cat bed, and she doesn't like having them in a basket. No matter where I moved her and babies to, she kept moving them to the hallway. Cats definitely own the human, I caved and let her stay where she was happy.

I seemed to have caught some type of crud that's going around and while sitting here last night feeling like death warmed over, my phone rang. It was my old employee who was medically retired (finally) last year. She got sick, the doctors deemed her heart to be failing. Once they got her stabilized, they found a lump in her breast...it was malignant and had spread to her lymph nodes. This was only 7 short months after losing my other employee to cancer, and this fact is always in the back of my mind. We spent 3 hours on the phone catching up, she had her first cancer free mammogram, but they found nodes on her thyroid and have biopsied that. And she had an internal defib implanted last week. She feels good but lives in fear that some day something will go wrong and her daughter will find her body. So she sold her house, her daughter and hubby sold their house, and they bought a new one...75 miles north of here. I'm happy for her, but the thought of someone else crossing that bridge I'm incapable of crossing depresses me. After a 3 hour converation, we ended with a promise to get together for lunch in a few weeks, while she's still close enough to do so without my having to pack an overnight bag. And that thought once again brought me back to thoughts of Gandle who drives hundreds of miles to a basketball game while I'm incapable of driving a simple 75 miles.

And that has what brought me here, the ghosts of strangers standing so close that I can sense them, but not touch them...

Maryanne

Have to get out and water my gazillion pots but just wanted to say sounds like both of you are really going thru tough times...especially coming to terms with leaving much-loved homes. Just wanted to say you can do it...just don't look back. I threatened bodily harm if anyone goes by our old home/garden and reports on changes...I don't want to know!

Jim has done a nice drawing which will preserve our trees sheltering the old house and some of my landscaping forever...I decided to give it to our son because it's etched in my mind...I don't really need even photos. But I don't want to even imagine any changes.

Hope both of you can get through this and feel better about the move. Smaller simpler house and gardening in pots has been a delight for me once I got over the initial sadness, josh

Maryanne, when this is over hopefully we can get together
once again and drink wine and catch up on all the things we've missed out on.

One of the guys working here yesterday said to me.
"I wish I had the money to buy this house, I would never
leave it."

I'm still kinda looking at other houses but I really think
at this point in my life a condo would be better.
I was outside this morning limping around the yard and
trying to hook up a water hose and sprinkler. Gardening in
containers and pots looks better to me all the time.

Here's to you Maryanne. Keep on keeping on. Maybe we'll
both look back on this and wish we had done it years ago.
I've already done it twice before and while it hurt to
leave those houses behind, I soon got caught up in making
another house a home. No doubt I can do this again, kicking
and screaming maybe but i'm packing up just the same.
You do what you gotta do.

While reading this, I came more to the realization of the term 'Steel Magnolias.'