Accessed the other half’s computer today….

That’s always difficult.

It’s stupid, but I feel like I’m somehow violating privacy. He’s dead there’s no reason for him to need or expect privacy but I still feel like somehow I’m intruding.

Aside from the way he stored information on his computer, (to me it seems literally random,) there are other stumbling blocks to get past. The biggest one is that he’d subscribed to pretty much every mailing list on the planet and waiting for his machine to speed up means waiting for the download of all that junk mail to complete.

It had been almost a year since I’d turned his machine on.

I was looking for a student he’d been teaching to play the harp. As I’ve been going through yet more piles of crap, I found a cache of harp music. Sure I could give the music to one of the local harpists. Most of it would probably sit in their libraries, then be forgotten.

Or, I could gift his library to a person he loved teaching. Their lesson time together was always joyful and he was happy for days afterward. The student was marvelous, a quick learner, and impetuous enough to keep him entertained because keeping the lesson on track was a bit like herding cats. That particular student he really had to work hard to stay ahead of.

So it seemed fitting that his library be given to help feed this student’s voracious learning curve. I hope the child’s mother doesn’t think I’m some spammer.

I”d no sooner sent the email & shut his computer down again than an earthquake rolled through. I do hope it wasn’t commentary from on high.

There’s a lot of odd emotional back & forth when I’m sorting through his stuff, his computer is the most difficult for some reason. I feel it going through other things but the computer is the most draining for me.

I decided, after the emotional drain and an earthquake that lunch was necessary. I ate then got a shower & flipped on the boob tube. My intention was to catch up on the news and see if I could get the magnitude and location of the quake.

President Biden was blathering on about SCOTUS and wanting to make changes to the justices terms, He also wants to change the immunity that presidents have. I think he really should think long and hard about that one lest he be “Hoisted with his own petard”.

Joe Biden 1 640x480 1 640x480 1.It doesn’t matter, I can’t stand hearing Biden, Trump, or Harris anymore. I’m equally sick of the left / right members of congress. At this point they’re all liars, the only question remaining is, “To what degree are these bastards lying?”

So the TV was turned off almost as soon as it came on. I did learn that the quake was a 4.9 or so initial magnitude. I’m sure that number will drop because they always do.

I think it will be a while before I turn the other half’s computer on again. I’m not saying there’s a link between president poopy pants blathering on about something, earthquakes, and my use of the other half’s machine.

But well… It couldn’t hurt to treat it like a cursed object.

I think it’s time for a nap!

Yesterday was pretty good.

I’ve been bordering on being blue for the past few days. 

I don’t really know what’s causing the problem but I’ve been thinking a lot about Jerry, our life together, acknowledging that I was happy and feeling sad about missing him and the goofy life we made.

I was tossing a bunch of little things that were junk when Jerry put them into the junk drawer and they were still junk when I pulled them out of the junk drawer. That man couldn’t throw anything away!

Spring_flowers_2015_longwood_cr_Longwood Gardens L Albee.(I smiled as I typed that.)

Then a wave of sadness washed over me. The dog had been walked, but I felt like I needed to step outside. The sun was warm, the breeze pleasant, and as I looked over the back yard I noticed weeds had sprung up with a vengeance.

I went down stairs with the intent to just do poo patrol. Once I’d completed that chore, I thought, “Might as well do the weed whacking too.”

That felt good. I took all the weeds down to nubs, Then I did the patch of grass & weeds between my fence and the next door neighbor. During one of the winter storms, some limbs had broken off of one of his trees and were laying in the way. I moved them, then cut the weeds which had been growing under the limbs. The battery on the weed whacker died just as I finished the last pass against the fence.

“Great Timing,” I thought as I put the weed whacker away. Slipping the battery into the charger I noticed it was the bigger battery that came with my chainsaw.

This led to checking the oil in the chainsaw, and since I was holding the saw, I grabbed a charged battery pack, shrugged and headed out of the garage. Happily I went out to the side of the house where the limbs lay and started cutting them into small manageable pieces. 

From the winter damage I’ve seen on the tree that lost these limbs, I’m not sure it will survive. That’s sad because it’s a beautiful tree. Similarly, the butterfly bush in front of my house is looking pretty shabby too. I’m hoping it will recover but I’m not holding my breath.

The singing of my chainsaw blade made me happy. I’d noticed some of my neighbor’s Mountain Lilacs were overgrowing the power pole we share. So before he gets an abatement ticket or worse, Edison “Helps’ by butchering the plants, I started pruning.

Well, I had the chainsaw in my hand…  

I cleaned up all the trimmings, came inside covered in sawdust and debris from weed whacking, and asked Jerry if there was anything else I should do before I cleaned up.

Yeah…

My heart stopped for a second. In that breathless moment I figured out part of the blues I’d been feeling.

You see, I always did the outside work.

I can run the snow thrower and always could. In winters, Jerry wanted to help and contribute. But Jerry had shitty balance, doubly so on ice, so we agreed that he ran the snow thrower. I was pleased with this arrangement because while he was holding onto the machine, the odds of a fall were greatly reduced.

When It came to yard work, trimming, digging, planting, painting, and that kind of stuff. I did the work, Jerry supervised. He made sure that I was staying hydrated, and wasn’t out in the sun for too long.

Jerry told me enjoyed watching me working in the yard. He said I looked hot, and he liked my confident strut and my confidence while using the tools.

At the time, I’d never thought that I could be hot looking doing chores. For me, it was just chores. Other guys, looked hot doing construction, or farming, or whatever. I never thought about myself that way, but I was happy knowing I was good enough for him.

I suppose what I’d been secretly dreading was this “first” spring.

Last year, I was just going through the motions still “numb” from his passing.

This year, I’m getting back to something like “normal” and those normal things remind me what’s missing.

One “missing” ritual is this. In the first days of Spring, We’d have discussions about planting spring flowers, or changes in the yard, and trimming of various shrubs and trees. Sometimes there wasn’t much discussion, Jerry would come home with flats of flowers and ask me to plant them. I’d do it because I enjoyed the work and because the flowers made him smile.

It’s that time of year and probably why there was a bit of a sting yesterday. This is a part of the healing process. It’s just going to take time.

The good news is that being outside and doing the usual, normal work felt really good. There’s more to do, but I wanted to see what my arms and shoulders felt like before using the pole saw on some Cottonwood trees that are spindly and overhanging my fence line.

The other good news is that I’m not blue today, it seems a little yard work was all it took to make the blues disappear.

Maybe I’ll go look at some flowers up at the hardware store.

December 1st ????

This year has flown by!

Pretty soon it’s going to be snowy again.

I guess it’s not really surprising. Time seems to slip by faster as we get older. (At least I’ve noticed it more.) I’ve had a lot on my mind and been working through a bunch more emotional stuff. With those kinds of distractions it was easy for the time to slip  away.

On the plus side of things, Over the past week or so, I’ve been feeling lighter,  while I’m still unsure about a lot of things I don’t feel as weighted down or crushed as I have for the past year.

This isn’t just because we’re in the “Festive Season”. I haven’t even decided if I’m going to do the tree thing this year or not. It’s just me and the dog and Santa isn’t likely to come down my chimney.

I think there’s been enough time pass that there’s distance between Jerry’s passing and right here, right now. I miss him but it’s not the sharp dagger that it was. 

I make no guarantees about how I’ll feel mid January. But this first year of holidays and seasons changing has been hard. Two more to go and I’ll have survived them all. 

I’m not trying to rush the season, but I feel like making it to mid January is a milestone and somehow after that, I’ll be less burdened or sad. I have no proof that will be the case but it “Feels” that way.

It’s time to bust out the Die Hard Franchise, and Lethal Weapon just because they’re Christmassy I know Bruce Willis would disagree but Die Hard has been such a tradition for years I can’t resist.

It’s getting easier for me to toss things in the trash. It sounds stupid but after spending years worrying if I was throwing something of the other half’s away that was important. I was having a tough time getting over the habit. Nothing of his is important to him anymore, the only important any of it has is that which I assign to it.

I’m noticed I’m happier because the house looks less cluttered. There’s still a long way to go but it’s better and improves my general outlook on life too. 

I’m moving in the direction that I want to go. Whether I keep this place, or pack everything up and move, I’ll still need to be free of tons of useless stuff. Long range, my plan is to clear enough of the garage out that I can move my stuff from a storage facility up here. That will save me some cash monthly, and allow me to sort, sell, or trash stuff I don’t want or need.

If I’m going to move, I want the moving truck to be as small as possible.