I really thought when I got everything out of boxes, when I sold my camper and saw it roll away down the road with Dave, taking her to her next owner, a woman like me investing in the next bit of her future, when settling everything I owned into its proper place even if it was on the side of the road so it could be adopted, and my house was no longer a giant slide puzzle, that if I moved this thing, then that thing and that thing and that thing also had to move (I spent days with a giant bean bag chair in my kitchen because my living room had no room for it until I sold my dining set), when I got past that I thought I was pretty darn done. 

When I was packing all of this last March or April, I did not know what I was moving into. My house did not yet exist except in drawings. My attitude was to take it all with me and I'd sort it out when I got there, mostly due to living in a mobile home park at the time, they don't allow curbside giveaways. Here at my new place, it is like magic - put it out there and poof it is gone.

What I did not count on was all of the emotional work that would come from going through all my wall art. I'm a visual person. I comprehend and retain better if I can SEE it. My wall art speaks to me, speaks of me, every piece has meaning and a story from what it says to who I was with when I bought it, to who my heroes are. 

When I moved away from my marriage I took everything that I had created and was distinctly about my family. When I moved here, like I said, I brought it all. I saw myself happily sorting through what I had to work with, a bit like shopping for free from a selection I knew I liked and creating lovely warm spaces that told my story. 

What I did not count on was the number of times I would spend three days pondering. Is this still me? Is this still important enough to me that I want it on my wall? Do I still think or believe this? Will it need explaining? Do I want to have to explain it? Will I be able to look at this without being triggered? Does this describe where I've been, or where I'm going?

When art is more than pretty, when it is meaningful, there are decisions to be made and I just plain did not see that coming nor did I have the emotional energy to make those decisions. 

For example, I have an aged and darkened shiplap board with The Message version's James 1:21b on it: In simple humility, let our Gardener God landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

There were some triggers for me  - that word 'salvation' is loaded for me. I've spent too many years with men in church leadership who cared more about the salvation numbers at an outreach event than the human beings that represented those numbers, the human beings that trusted them, that entrusted themselves to them, all to be seen only as a feather in the church leader's cap and the denomination's success in its competition with other denominations - not ever as a person to be loved and cared for and included in the everyday of church community, you know, beyond the altar call at which they were numbered.

But I loved the word 'landscape'. It's like shaping and rearranging toward beauty. I don't picture manicured lawns and well trimmed hedges. I picture paths made easier and things moved to show off their beauty. I see rest and peace and birds and butterflies, life and growth and breeze and scent, dormancy and coming back to life. This verse led me to believe that there was hope for me, that I could be 'landscaped' into a thing of beauty after decades of my ugly being pointed out on too many occasions. 

The 'in simple humility' part both frightened me and enthralled me. Like, I've been simple and humble before and there were those who took advantage of that. I was more foolish and boundaryless than I was simple and humble really. But what enthralls me now is I get to choose who I will be simple and humble with. I get to be with safe and loving people who don't take advantage of those tender trusting parts of me. And if I remove God from the organized church, I can love Them easily. I'm rather fond of Jesus and the life He lived and how He loved people. I am more than willing to be landscaped by that. 

Today, now, for me, this verse means to stay soft enough to be changed by those who love you, those who can be trusted, both God and humans, and become that safe place for others - be a salvation garden for them.

I can write this easily today, in my cozy corner of the couch, looking out my big windows into the dark, with that aged and darkened shiplap board above it, but getting to this point has been a lot of work. 

But I did it. 

And on to the next piece. 

Only 47 more pieces to go. 

[Alt Text: the photo shows, from the point of the hallway and through the door, my bedroom that I finally got done yesterday. There's a tall bed with 24" clearance to show/store my antique luggage collection, many pieces of which came from my daughter-in-law, from her and my son's wedding, and from a Mother's day shopping trip with my son at the Fremont Street Fair. There is also an old Lucerne wood and metal milk box that would have had a wire carrier with those old squarish glass bottles of milk inserted by the milkman, who would have loaded it into his truck to make deliveries. It was my Dad's. He used them in his workshop. Each of us kids got one when we divvied up his things. Atop the bed frame over all the luggage is creamy colored sheets and pillows and a duvet cover with taupe roses that covers my beloved weighted blanket. Above the bed, the head board is made from two antique 36-pane windows, framed in dark wood with the cream colored wall showing through all the little windows. (When I made this I entered it in a contest at the local Structural Salvage place and won a prize! This is when I knew I could make old things beautiful. Rather an epiphanous portent if you ask me.) Above that is an oak coat rack with black cast iron hooks that my Amish neighbor made when I still lived in the NY Upstate. It is as long as the room is wide (less about six inches) and took every brain cell endowed to me by my engineer father to manage and leverage and shove it over my head while drilling in screws and hitting studs. (I was rather proud of that feat and I believe I should get extra points for the maneuver it took when on the third try my drill's battery began to wane and that I did it without crying.) The hallway is dim but the room is full of light from the biggest window that code would allow looking out over my re-forested yard, dotted with baby trees as well as 80 foot cedars.]

@lifewithtrees @alchemistsstudio

From your house to mine! 🥰

[Alt text: Two raku vases - look up 'raku', it's fascinating - on a window sill in my hallway, with the window looking out toward my baby forest. One of the vases is taller, slender at the neck but has a very round full base (I was going to say 'bottom' but 'round full bottom started sounding a bit lewd 😆) and is mostly green with some burnished coppery and maroon tones splashed across the, yes, 'bottom'. The other is rather pomegranate shaped, short and squatty with the top opening of the vase appearing as the pomegranate's calyx. It is putty white with dark brown speckles and a lovely crack pattern over its entire surface. Both vases were created by [email protected]]

SHAMELESS PLUG: Christmas is coming. Support your local artists. And your not so local artists who live deep in the wilds (Yeah, I took poetic license on the wilds part. Let's just say pretty darn woodsy, k?) of Canada, who do gorgeous work and are happy to ship! See rakupottery.ca for more information!)

I will have been in my house one month on Monday and this is my first morning where I stopped, got dressed up warm, and sat on my bench on the bluff and watched the sunrise. This feels like a turning point in the saga that has been moving that began in March.

Let me put it this way: I will happily die here, for the beauty absolutely, but also to never ever move again. 😆

[Alt Text: The foreground is still in shadows but shows a woodsy landscape and a cedar bench sitting on the bluff looking out through still black scraggy trees, over the river and at the snow-covered mountain that is pink from the sunrise.

Gave my brain at the house this week. Unpacking = at least 75 decisions an hour that must all be immediately and permanently retained so one can remember where that brown bag of lids to everything now resides, for example.

But.

One decision was this end of season great price bench. So I'm kinda rockin' it.

Do people still say that? Rockin' it? Well, I believe I am. 😵‍💫😆😵‍💫

I can tell I'm coming out of my exhaustion of this season, though I'm still too many days away from moving into my house.

I've been talking very little here. I've been talking very little IRL. People have actually texted me to be sure I"m ok. I've been working and fighting all the good fights of which there are many IRL right now. None of them bad, well one was a real peever, I tell ya, but all of them so draining mentally and emotionally that I wasn't even playing my favorite puzzle games because life was already too many puzzles.

And here I now stand, at the beginning of ten days when nothing is happening on my house. I have a certificate of occupancy from the county but I can't live in the house. We are all waiting on the appraiser who will approve final funding after they determine my house is worth more than the money the bank is lending to me, at which point the bank will fund the contractor and the contractor will give me the keys (even though I know where the key is hidden on site - it was not rocket science 😉)

I'm learning the consecutive nature and the inherent pitfalls in construction. When step 943 does not complete on a certain day, they try again the next day, which moves step 944 out to its next available date in the middle of a busy construction season, and step 945 out to its next available day, and so on. So one day late on step 943 now has become a ten day stall on all activity until the next step, 957, when the appraiser, which can't be just any appraiser but must be the same appraiser that valued the house before the loan was approved, is available and tells the bank that my new house is enough collateral to cover the loan and the bank can pay the contractor and the contractor can give me the keys.

Can you beLIEVE they won't give me the keys until I pay for the house? The auDACity! *she said in the most indignant yet sarcastic tone ever*

Half of me is pleased with ten days of no activity. I get to just live in my camper and work my one job for ten whole days - this feels almost restful at this point.

But the other half is . . .

After WEEKS if not MONTHS of no rain in the Seattle area, along with temps in the 80s and 90s, we have a week or ten days of 70's and 80's with some rain.

I wonder if we can plant trees? I have asked the powers that be . . .

So I snuck into my house. Well, actually, I had to break in because it was locked but the hiding place for the key did not take rocket science to figure out. 😉

I just hung out for about an hour and a half and measured some things and took pictures of some things and because I'm a visual person/learner, I was able to see how some things worked together and 'sat' in the home and in relation to other things. 

My office in particular - one wall is almost all window, and another is all closet and door, and I was having a hard time seeing how my desk and file cabinet would fit well and in a way that would work with my work flow. 

I took a ton of pictures but this is my favorite. I've been dreaming of this wall of windows since I bought the property. I'm standing in the corner of my living room and taking the pic past the kitchen and down the hall with all the light pouring in from the windows. 

It's all getting so close. 

*gushes at the thought*

Five years ago yesterday.

My kids dancing at my grandaughter's wedding. I'm not sure if I've 'splained this all to you: with my first marriage I 'inherited' Ray, the gorgeous blonde in the pic and her Momma who now calls me Co-Mom because we mom Ray together in much love. And Ray brought us her first daughter and thus, this wedding day.

My first marriage also birthed my boys: kind, smart, funny, creative, and so so loving, like deep respectful loving toward women - a minor miracle considering things. I shake my head in wonder at these humans that I get to call mine but are also all themselves, being who they are from the get go, and not waiting until 53 like I did.

[ALT TEXT: Two men and one woman, dancing somewhat together but not really, and probably kinda badly on a basement-feeling, and rather unadorned, wedding dance floor. The pic is not either grandly complementary nor self-explanatory but my heart knows their hearts for each other, and the joy they take in each others' presence and that speaks volumes to me.]