Good Decisions and All.

For years the back porch has been filled to overflowing. In fact, there have been varying degrees of full since we bought the house 18 years ago. It has seen many things come and go over the years, but it's always been pretty packed . At one point we actually tried to tarp it off, so the things on it wouldn't be ruined by the weather, and so it wasn't as much of an eyesore for the neighbors, but the wind and the sun destroyed the tarps, and we had a mess. 

A few years ago when we started working on cleaning up the backyard, we actually had the entire porch cleaned off. Ok. Maybe not completely, but it was close. We still had a stack of chairs, and a big metal footlocker that Hubster had used in his work truck for years, but for the most part it was clean. Unfortunately, it didn't stay that way. It didn't take long for it to be filled with overflow when we tried to clean out the garage. (I did, however, get rid of the stack of chairs several months ago, and the footlocker went a few weeks ago. Yay me!)

I'd hired a neighbor kid to help me with it, but it was more than he could handle. Heck, I couldn't even handle things. Frank has helped me with it here and there, but he really isn't into working much, so it's been very hit and miss. Awhile back, I asked Atticus, if he was interested in earning some money and helping me to dehoard. He's between jobs, so it was a good fit. He also grew up with hoarding parents, so he's familiar with the mindset, and he's been a huge encouragement without pushing me to make decisions I'm not quite ready to  make. As a result, we've made huge progress! 

We finished cleaning the back porch off completely a few weeks ago. It's since been somewhat filled with other things, but it's because we're using it as a staging area. In one area, I've got the things I'm selling, in another there are things I'm keeping, and in another area I keep the stuff that's being donated. It's been nice, because as I go through things in the garage, Atticus can take them to the appropriate place on the porch, and I can deal with it further from there. 

I've sold a few things and donated a bit, but by and large I've either given things away or thrown them out with the trash each week. I've been able to get rid of things that I've hung onto for years with relative ease, and when I struggle to get rid of something and finally  make the choice, Atticus chimes in with, "Good decision!" It's encouraging. 

One of the big decisions I made last week was to get rid of papers I've held onto since I was in high school close to 40 years ago. I took classes in architecture and drafting back then. I liked it well enough, but I wasn't quite suited to it. I struggled to get the perspective perfect in spite of the tools I had at my disposal to draw them correctly. I just couldn't get it quite right. In a weak moment my junior year of high school, I cheated. I took another student's drawing, (with his permission), and I turned it in as my own. I was found out, and I ended up with a poor grade. I don't recall, if I got an incomplete in the class, or if I only got an F on that paper. It's been a long time ago, and a lot has happened in my life since then, so the details are blurry, but it has hung like a millstone around my neck all these years. 

I'm ashamed that I was so weak as to think that cheating was an option just because I was overwhelmed and I had a looming deadline. I'm not proud of myself for that. I think it's one of the reasons I've hung onto the blueprints all these years. I wanted to punish myself for my failure, because I didn't deserve to forgive myself. How could I forgive myself for such a moral failure? As a result, I've paid for that single moment of cheating many, many times over the years. 

Last week, I went page by page through the blueprints, as I told the story to Atticus. As hard as it was to admit, it was so freeing. I was able to forgive myself, to put the past in the past, and to move in to the future. 

Good decisions. 

It Was Nice Knowing You.

We've been through a lot these last 365, you and me. I hope you don't mind me moving on. It's not you. I promise.

I'm not complaining. At least I'm trying not to complain, but I really am ready for the new beginning that a new year promises. It gives me hope, and hope is what I need. 

I hope that things start to normalize for us a bit. 

I hope that the behavior therapists can help the girls and help us with the girls when they struggle with their emotions. 

I hope that we can figure out something that will help Hubster more with the Parkinson's, so he isn't so tired so much of the time.

I hope that we can figure out something to help the girls better with communication.

I hope that we can get a central air unit, so Hubster has a place to escape the heat this summer, since it kicked his butt last year.

I hope that I can make exercise a priority again.

I hope that I have the willpower not to drink that evil elixir that rhymes with Moctor Depper. 

I hope that now we have finished the clutter on the outside of the house, we can make headway on the clutter that is within. 

I hope that I can make it to my blog to post more often, because I find it therapeutic, and I miss it terribly. 

I hope that I can be silent, that I might hear His voice and abide in His love even more.

And I hope that each of you has a wonderful 2016!

Happy New Year!

Life Exploded Again.

I can't believe 2015 is over halfway finished, and this is my first blog post of the year. It isn't because I haven't been working on the hoard. I have. It has to do with life getting the better of me and knowing something had to go on the back burner, or I'd end up burning everything!

For the last several months, we've been working on the yard. The poor landscaper is still finding elm trees, in spite of having removed hundreds of thousands of them already. What? So what if there weren't actually hundreds of thousands of those stupid things? What if it just seemed like there were hundreds of thousands of the stupid things, because we hate them so much? I'm just so glad to be rid of every single one of them!

Our yard looks huge without the trees, and it's starting to take shape. The fence in the backyard was finally finished yesterday. They still have to paint the front fence, though. And I think we may actually be to the point where the sprinkler system, sod and stone will all be finished soon! It's going to be wonderful to spend time in our little backyard oasis, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

The last several months, Hubster has been struggling with his health. His hand began to tremor. Then his leg did. He'd stumble from time to time. He had to concentrate to walk, so he didn't appear drunk. He was exhausted all the time but couldn't sleep. And he was so weak, he said he felt at times his legs didn't have the strength to hold up the weight of his body.

We got official word yesterday that Hubster has early stage Parkinson's Disease.

Of course we are devastated, but we will handle this like we handle everything: as a team. We will meet it head-on, and we will fight it hard. He starts his first meds today, and we are praying they work well to help him feel more himself.

In the meantime, I will be trying to find time to blog again. Writing is therapeutic, and I'm thinking I may need a little therapy...

Whooped

I am so tired tonight I can barely move.

Hubster took the week off, so we can try to get the backyard in shape. We've got to cut down several trees-a small peach tree, a huge apple tree, a few ash saplings and hundreds of the dreaded elms. Most are less than 3 years old and only about 2 to 3 inches in diameter, but there are a couple that we've cut down so many times that the trunks are quite a bit larger and the new shoots coming out of them are 2 to 3 inches in diameter. 

We got started on them today. Between raking and shoveling up the fallen apples that have fallen and begun to ferment, sorting the apples from the tree that are still edible and cutting a few branches down I can hardly lift my arms tonight. Good thing I don't need to live them in my sleep.

We all got our flu shots today, too. The girls did amazingly well with getting them, and it was 1/100th of the struggle it usually is. Last year when Hopper broke her leg, I had to give her shots of blood thinner in her stomach twice a day. She actually did very well with it, and the repeated injections seem to have desensitized her to getting the regular vaccinations. 

Who'da thunk it? We wouldn't have. I can't begin to explain the fear that we all had when we found out we'd need to do her injections at home! At the time we weren't really happy that we had to do it, but now we're are so very thankful that it wasn't an option.

I'm off to bed much later than I should be, but I'll sleep like a log tonight. 

I'll take it. 

I'm thinking logs sleep pretty well.

Well, unless they hear the chainsaw revving up in their dreams. Then they probably don't sleep very well. 

Here's to chainsaw-free dreams!

500

That's the number of posts I've published on my blog so far. In many ways I wish that I'd have been able to keep up with daily posting. I'd be close to 1000 posts right now, if I had, and that would have been sort of cool. That being said, I want this to be a place for me to unwind and decompress, and pressuring myself to keep up with daily posts is not conducive to decompression. 

So 500 it is.

At the same time that I want this to be a place to decompress, I don't want it to just be about kvetching about my life. My mama taught me that if I can't say anything nice, I shouldn't say anything at all. I think there can be a happy medium, though, so I'll probably be back here complaining from time to time.

It is what it is, and I am who I am.

So I figured something out the other day. One of the amino acids I'm taking to help with the neuropathy sort of counteracts my thyroid medicine. I don't know why I didn't see that when I researched the amino acid. I don't know, if the information just wasn't there, or if I overlooked it at the time, or what. What I do know is that I've been absolutely dragging the last few months. I've had no energy, and that's a major symptom of hypothyroidism. 

I've been taking the amino acid for over a year now, and I hadn't noticed a difference in the effectiveness of my thyroid medicine until somewhat recently. I don't know, if it's because it took awhile for the effectiveness to be altered, or what. Unfortunately, my neuropathy has been out of control lately, so giving up the amino acid isn't an option, and in fact I'm needing to double up on it and take it twice a day. It's the only thing I can take that makes any difference in the pain level. I'd love it, if the prescription nerve meds worked for me, but they don't. If I take them, I sleep for days, and that just isn't an option. So I've made an appointment with my doctor to discuss it all in the next couple of weeks. 

In the meantime, I'm hoping we'll all be feeling well enough soon, (This hit and miss stuff that always happens once school starts for the year is so frustrating!), so we can finally officially celebrate the 4 birthdays that have happened since the end of June. 

We're also hoping to get a bunch of yardwork done and get rid of a bunch of elm trees in the backyard that have once again grown into a jungle back there. We'll take down our apple tree when we're back there, too. A windstorm took about half the tree a couple of years ago, and another wind took half of what was left back there a couple of weeks ago, so it has to go before it falls on the house. And then there's the scraggly little peach tree in the corner of the yard that has been slowly dying over the last few years but is tall enough it's in the middle of the power lines. 

Once we're done getting the trees down, we're hoping to toss some grass seed down and cover it with straw to help it stay alive over the winter. If it survives, we'll just rake up the straw in the Spring and have an actual lawn instead of the dirt pile we have back there now. We'll also be chipping the trees with a professional chipper and we're hoping the wood chips put down between the fences will prevent future saplings from taking root. We so need to get the trees out of there, so we can lower our fire risk. After all the wildfires we've had in Colorado this year, we don't need to add to the problem.

And to end this on a good note...I spoke with the attorney today, since we still haven't gotten our paperwork in the mail showing that we are officially the girls' guardians. He said that he mailed them yesterday or the day before, and we should be getting them any day now. 

We can hope.

Bitter little women.

So I'm starting this post on Tuesday night. I can't sleep. My head hurts. I either have the end of a really nasty cold trying to finish up or the beginnings of a nasty sinus infection getting well rooted. I can't tell for sure just yet. So I continue to rinse my sinuses and drink plenty of fluids. But the headache. Well, yeah. I don't think water's going to take care of it.

We have a crotchety old neighbor lady. She has one friend on the entire street and I think that other than that, only one other neighbor and myself are nice to her. She likes to stick her nose into everyone's business, and she's gossipy. She rarely has a nice word to say about anyone, so people just avoid her.

I sometimes think that she's bitter, because she's alone now. Her husband died shortly before Christmas 6 years ago or so, and they never had children. So she's very much alone. But she was bitter before he died. She was constantly telling me what I needed to do in my yard. She has a beautifully coiffed lawn with gorgeous flowers. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see it in a magazine. Her husband spent countless hours gardening and tending those flowers from his mobility scooter before he died. And I'm sure that she feels that she needs to keep it up for him. I understand that. I really do.

The problem is that she feels that we need to keep our lawn up to her standards. And she's nasty about letting us know. Granted, we have a horrible yard. We know that. It's mostly weeds with grass in between in the front yard. Every year, we dig the weeds out the best we can, but we haven't had the money to lay sod. I don't see it happening anytime soon, either, land we'd need so much weed killer we'd have to sign over our firstborn to pay for it. We keep the lawn mowed, but the last couple of years, the elm tree sprouts have gotten out of hand. My husband spent an entire weekend a few weeks ago cutting them all down and wiping them with poison to hopefully keep them from coming back again.

So we do try. Honestly. But we inherited a horrible yard with no sprinkler system, and when you're raising a family on a single income, sod and sprinkler money can be hard to come by. And when you're raising two children with special needs who frequently need constant supervision, and you're dealing with medical problems on top of medical problems time can be hard to come by. Factor crazy work hours by the husband and you're looking at very little time for both of us to work in the yard together. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

About a month ago, she called me up after 8p.m., asked how things went with our daughter's wedding and proceeded to light into me. She didn't let me get a word in edgewise to try to explain everything that had been going on. She just started berating me. Then she threatened to call code enforcement on us. Out of total frustration I told her that in spite of the fact that her dog yaps at all hours for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, that we've never once complained. That we could easily have called in for a noise complaint, but we didn't. Not once.

Her answer? The dog barks because of us. We apparently have cats in our yard at night, and the dog goes nuts to try to chase the cats out of our yard. Mind you we don't own any cats. We never have. But the neighborhood cats that people let out of their houses to run around are apparently our fault as well, and that's why her dog barks. It's our fault.

After listening to her rant full throttle for 10 minutes, I told her I couldn't do it anymore. I was done. I told her, "I can't do this right now. I've got to go. Goodbye." And I hung up. I didn't feel that I hung up on her. I told her goodbye. She knew it was coming. I can live with myself over how I handled it. I didn't want it to escalate, and I knew the way I was feeling it was going to. I'd say something I regretted, and I caught myself before I did.

No sooner did I hang up the phone than she called again. She hung up without leaving a message. She apparently thought better of it and called back immediately. She started ranting on the answering machine yelling some more. She was quite ugly and said that I "didn't have to be so nasty." It went on and on.

So I told the hubby about it, and he called her once he calmed down. Told her that, if she had a problem that she should call him, and he gave her his cell phone number. He explained that with his work hours and my health and the girls, it's been difficult to get much done, but that we are working on things. He told her that he would be out of town the following weekend, so he wouldn't be able to do anything until after he got back home. She said she understood and would give him time to get things done.

He worked outside all weekend Mother's Day weekend (the weekend after he got back home), and all weekend last weekend. However, we found out that the bitter widow from next door called code enforcement anyway. In fact, they apparently came by and inspected things the Monday after Mother's Day. So she obviously did it out of spite, because she didn't give him time to get anything done.

The thing is, she is complaining about the backyard, which is in bad shape. The back porch is covered with stuff we need to get rid of, but it hasn't been nice enough outside for me to go out there with my husband and go through things. Even cool weather makes me ache from tip to tail, but when it's cold it's like I'm frozen stiff. But from our understanding code enforcement doesn't inspect backyards. It inspects what can be seen from the road.

And we do have something stored at the side of the house that they can see. We've been meaning to get it out of there for awhile. It's a trundle bed frame. I know it shouldn't be there. We've been waiting for a clear space to be able to bring it in, so we can use it. And now that the girls' room is finally clean, we have a place we can put it. It will be sprayed for bugs this weekend and brought in.

We also have 4 pallets neatly stacked on the side of the house that I had every intention of using for raised garden beds. They're made of 4x4x12' pieces of untreated solid oak. They'd be perfect to use, because they wouldn't leach any chemicals into the garden, etc. However, they've been neatly stacked there for several years, and we have used them to store the trash cans in the past as well. They're not an eyesore. In fact, they look like they're part of the house. But now we either have to get rid of them completely, or at least break them down and stack them up in a smaller area. We haven't decided 100% what we're going to do.

And while those are easily rectified situations, the other thing that code enforcement apparently has a problem with is the storage container with all our stuff from the basement that's on the driveway. It apparently "does not meet setbacks". So it's either too tall for the area, or it doesn't leave enough room for firefighters to get through, should we have a fire. We're not exactly clear on it.

According to the letter, we have 10 days to comply. Like I said. The two things are really no big deal. We can do them without a problem this weekend. However, we are not going to be able to unload the storage shed yet. So my husband is going to call in the morning and talk with the code enforcement officer. He's going to ask, if we can have a couple of months to get it unloaded and explain the situation. We already had plans to work on the basement and the back porch this weekend. Looks like those plans may be put on hold for a bit.

It's just been frustrating. We are working on things. We've made huge strides. But because they're strides that our meddling neighbor can't see, they're not good enough for her. And now my husband wants to find out, if the backyard is controlled by code enforcement. If it's not, (I believe it's only what can be seen from the street), he wants to pile the stuff that's at the side of the house right by her yard. Just to give her something to think about. I'm trying to talk him down, although I've had visions of white dandelion puffs and a leaf blower headed in her direction!

In the meantime, I've blocked her phone number. If she tries calling our house, she'll get a message that we're not accepting phone calls. The last thing any of us needs right now is her calling the house and going off on us.

Who needs the added stress?