To top it all off... When we blow the leaves, we blow them across the road because there is a big field right across the road. Well, yesterday I decided to go grab some more leaves before they got taken up by the park manager or waste management. I would suck the leaves back up with my blower, dump them back out when it was full, suck them back up again (which shreds them even finer) and then fill the leaf bags. My neighbors all must have thought I was crazy! A lot of people around here don't understand the value of their fall leaves. They just blow them all out on the road and forget about them. I must have looked like a crazy woman yesterday as I stood there sucking back up the leaves from across the street that were just blown across the street, dumping them back out again and sucking them back up! lol I don't really care what they think, because next year when my garden is flourishing with the help of some leaves, they'll all wonder how I did it! lol

Hi Mark, Always remember.....you are not alone. On this journey, you may be alone physically but never alone emotionally. Coming to this forum after loosing my mother in August 2008 made me see that there are other people on the exact same emotional plane I am on. There is nothing anyone can say that will make you feel any better but the support and compassion you will find here may be your line to surviving. It was for me. It has been 6 months since my Momma passed and things are more different than I could ever have imagined. Some days it is still a huge struggle. I can say that time eases the initial breathtaking pain but it also increases the longing. I have come to realize that grief is the emotional price I pay for loving my momma so much and so I have decided to try to embrace the grief. My tears are the only power I have to show the depth of my love for her and how her loss has devastated me. I also lost my older brother in July 2006 to murder. I had not seen him for a few years and his loss affected me totally different than my mother's loss. Every day is a struggle but I try to remind myself that she would like me to honor her and not waste my days so I have been trying my best. Keep your chin up, remember they STILL love you and only try to get thru the moment. I wish you the best :) Blessings to you, Lisa

These decks can also walk you down memory lane . . . as I was looking at mine not to long ago (given to me by my painter) I came across the color "whispering wind". It immediately brought me back to the Indian Maiden days with my daughter. In our Shoshoni tribe, my name was "Whispering Wind" and she was "Gentle Breeze". I wanted to use that color for that reason alone except it really didn't work into my color scheme.

I've been having neighbors with fireworks going every night for a solid week and they have some pretty good fireworks. We're not talking just bottle rockets and sparklers. It's over for the night. Oops heard a pop off in the distance, but that's nothing major. The cats have gotten so they're not interested anymore. The one who enjoys thunderstorms would run to the window when they started it earlier this week but she's gotten bored with it now. When I have trouble sleeping and need to get some rest I do some breathing exercises, kick back in the recliner, turn on some soft relaxing music or a boring TV show and concentrate on relaxing or a boring thought. Especially effective when I put a blanket over me and get a little warmer than usual. Get warm=get sleepy. If nothing else I'm at least relaxed and get some rest so I'm not dead tired the next day.