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15 November 2009

Curves on our road

When i was picture hunting last week, i took a number of pics that inadvertently showed the road. I didn't get all the curves in our road, but i got quite a number. Today i'm posting just to show the road we travel. We go the "back" way - highway 38. While 38 has plenty of curves & is longer than the "front" way - highway 330/18 - we don't have as many curves or ones that are extreme. Highway 330/18 has a number of sharp curves & a few hairpins. I don't like that road!

Duane & i tried to attend church today. I had a bit of headache & thought of bowing out, but then decided not to wimp out. And the headache was largely gone after i took a shower. (I'm having a much harder time making myself go to church these days & am trying not to give in to the desire to skip.) But neither of us made it past the first 5-10 minutes.

They'd painted the interior of the church this week. I'd voted for using
"no/low-VOC" paint. Maybe they did, even, i don't know. But the first thing said when i recommended that was "How much will that cost?" I'm concerned for our environment, but also for being able to breathe. Folks pretty much disregarded my concern as they said it is latex paint that won't retain smell "for long." I get the feeling that environmental concerns are a low priority in our church.

As i said, they may even have used the environmentally friendly paint. I didn't immediately recognize it as "paint smell" but simply something not very good. So we sat thru the announcements. And i felt like i was having a hard time breathing - but i also realized that it could have been anxiety or upset & i was trying to talk myself out of it. But then the headache began to reoccur. I knew i would not be singing.

Last week, on our way home, i had some essential oil in the car, sealed in plastic zip-lock baggies. Duane couldn't stand it. Said he couldn't breathe - & i couldn't even smell it & neither could my MIL.

So this AM i turned to him & said, "Essential oil was bothering you but this doesn't?" He responded that it did bother him, but not as bad.


But after a very short time i knew i would
n't be able to tolerate it. So i told Duane i'd wait for him in the car. I didn't want him to leave if he didn't need to, but i couldn't stay. So i settled into the car. About 5 minutes later he came out. "Remind me not to sing after they paint, next time," he said. I think if either of us had stayed we would be having some serious asthma issues this week. We had to stop attending church (not Lutheran who don't use incense, but the Anglican) on high holy days because of the incense. Even "non-allergenic" incense bothers us.

So we went to breakfast. And while at breakfast we read the scripture in the lectionary for this week.

When we got home our downstairs was chilly (55F). Up here in the bedroom is warmer - it is 57! So i built a fire downstairs to warm off the chill. And i went out & stacked some wood. Ben's weather says it is 42F outside, but it feels much
warmer than that in the sunlight. We have been whittling away at the wood pile (pics of which are in the next post) little by little. Most of those logs are already cut to fit a regular fireplace, but they don't fit in our wood stove. Duane worked about an hour yesterday cutting. I told him if he cut i'd stack - but not yesterday. It was too late & too cold for me to work then. It took about 20 minutes for me to stack what he'd cut yesterday.

While stacking i was thinking about another blog i read, Mrs. Mac. She's coming out & we might get to go to lunch or something when she is here (in Feb). And by "here" i mean California not Big Bear!

I've met other online friends. Duane & i were thrilled to meet dear friend Dawn & her husband John on our trip this summer. And, of course i know David & read his blog. But we were friends before the blogging. This is the first time i'll meet someone who reads my blog sometimes, & i read hers. I don't know why i find that exciting, but i do. (I'd be really excited to go to India & meet Amrita, but that isn't going to happen any time soon.)

Seems like i had lots of interesting & intelligent things to say . . . but somehow my head lost them! I hate Swiss cheese brain.

So, if my brain isn't working i guess i should go use my body. I have mountains of laundry to do. Speaking of mountains, our radio station here says we're "a mile & a quarter closer to heaven" at our altitude. I check it out, & Sugarbear is 1.30 miles above sea level.

I'd better go check the fire.



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5 comments:

David Edward said...

i too long to visit some of my blog friends and to encourage them in the Lord. India is now on my list. THAT would be a great trip. Maybe after my work here is done

Amrita said...

Hi Kathryn,

The mountain road is very scenic.I lived in th Himalayas where our road was similar.

Sorry about the paint. Hope the smell fades out by next Sunday.
There were lots of smells I also could not stand and they made me ill but surprisingly I was cured after an ENT surgery.

My right knee is giving me arthritic trouble and that too after 3 years. I though the pain would never come back. I am massaging myself with herbal oil and also using a herbal cream.

David and you are welcome to India. You will find it so different from your world.

Mrs Mac is a lovely lady, you will be so lucky to meet her, if that 's possible.

Land of shimp said...

Oh...fudge! I just lost a really long comment. Darn Blogger and it's fussy word verification. Gah!!

I'm going to foreshorten it this time.

Great pictures, as always, and thank you for sharing them.

You know what struck me as I caught up on your blog, Kathryn? Particularly as I read about making cabbage rolls and pushing yourself beyond your limitations to do so because you were afraid of what others would think if you had to lie down.

I do that, too. I don't like to have other people see me limp, and sometimes I do too much, in the quest to conceal what I think of as a weakness. It's not a weakness though, it's just the breaks of being me. I can't walk five miles without having a dreadful limp the next day. I got my pride and self worth all tangled up in it. I cared too much about how others would see me -- and you know the thing it really took me a long time to figure out was that I was making them responsible for my self view.

"They'll think I'm a weakling! Oh dear!" when the reality, at least for me, was that I was the person doing that to myself. I was viewing the fact that a five mile walk would leave me with a bad limp as a sign of weakness.

Turned out that the people who loved me just hated to see my limp ...not because "Darn, she's almost crippled at times, isn't she?" but because seeing me in pain bothered them....because they didn't like to see me in pain.

Just pointing that out because...well, I've done it in the past...I put the bad parts of my self view onto others, when I really needed to accept that it was the situation I was having trouble accepting.

Sometimes the five mile walk is worth the limp. Sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes making cabbage rolls will be worth being totally exhausted, and sometimes it really won't be....but when you're worried about what it means other people will say? It's actually the stuff you're busy saying to yourself, not anything they are doing.

I think that's an important thing to know, at least it was for me. I had my pride tangled up in what was just the breaks of being me. Your situation is so much more difficult than my being saddled with a limp, but you are judging yourself far too harshly for it. I don't think you'd do that to another person, Kathryn. I truly, truly don't. Extend the compassion towards yourself that you would towards any other person. You're worth that.

I'm sure I said it better the first time out (isn't that the way lost words always feel?) ...I'm sorry. I just see you revisit the "I was afraid of being judged, so I did too much." at times, and I recognize that feeling.

What I found was that it was really only about me, judging me....and having too much pride to be seen as limited by something which, legitimately and understandably limits me.

I wonder if that's the same deal for you? If not, cool. I just thought I'd hang it out there.

donna said...

always love to read your posts...and enjoy your beautiful pics..

hugs
donna

Mrs. Mac said...

I just mentioned meeting with you today to my husband Terry. Hoping you are feeling better soon.

Cathy