Love, Life and Everything

 They say there are 7 stages to grieving: Shock and denial. Pain and guilt. Anger and bargaining. Depression.  The upward turn. Reconstruction and working through. Acceptance and hope. They also say there is no time line on how long you should spend in these stages, and that not everyone goes through them, and those that do, don't necessarily go through them in the same order.  They may even go back an forth between the steps.  The point is, there is no perfect formula for grieving a death.  There is no such thing as grieving by the book.  No one can tell you how long you will be in shock, or how long you will experience anger.  And no one can tell you that you haven't grieved long enough, or that you are grieving too long.  That being said, it is important to know those stages, so that you can understand what is happening, and can work through it.   When my aunt passed away, we were expecting it, I did a lot of my initial grieving before she even passed.  But, it still hit me

    The other day, I read a blog post about someone's husband rarely giving her flowers.  When I first clicked on it, I thought it was going to be a sad post about how he never shows her loves her, and I was planning on commenting on it that maybe flowers aren't necessary.  But, it wasn't.  It was exactly about how flowers aren't necessary. And I was thrilled.  She went on to talk about how he showed his love in other ways that were much more meaningful to her and I completely resonated with her message. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers, I just don't like flowers that had to die in order for someone else to show you an act of love.  Some people do, I'm not one of them.  My husband knows this.  He's given me flowers maybe twice because someone bought them ahead of time and gave them to him to give to me.  So, how does he randomly show his love on commercial holidays you ask?  He doesn't, not on commercial holidays like Valentine's Day.  He shows

After getting the subfloor installed, we went back out and began the process to anchor it down.  For those who don't know, the winds in Northern New Mexico can get very strong.  So much so that it could easily have lifted up our shed platform and relocated it, causing much damage along the way.  It's not uncommon for small buildings that are not anchored to be blown away.  It's also not uncommon for small buildings improperly anchored to be destroyed by the wind gusts we get here.  I wasn't able to be there for the whole process due to starting to teach online at this point.  I also wasn't able to help much as I was recovering from some unknown upper respiratory thing that wasn't COVID.  But, we had to dig a hole, fill it in with cement, and then back fill with dirt after the cement had set a bit.   Digging holes in compacted dirt isn't exactly easy   It required not only a post-hole digger, but a spike bar, lots of water, and a whole lot of patience     And

 After we got our running boards and floor joists on, we started on the next task.  We were worried about the pandemic getting out of control and we weren't sure what businesses would get to stay open once things started shutting down, so we wanted to get the floor of the shed finished, so we could put a tarp over it and start again when things hopefully calmed down.  So, we started with the rim joists.  Should be easy right, just slap on some wood around the edges of the floor joists and we're good to go right?  Nope. Getting things perfectly square may seem like an easy thing, but as you nail and screw things together, other bits get out of alignment.  Plus, wood is not all the same... sure, you know what general size you are buying, but there are bows and notches and knots, and sometimes, it may not be the same width as all the other stuff, so that slows down your progress a bit.   But, once we got that done, the next part came together fairly easily. Nails may not have been