As the Winter goes….

 There’s a lot to catch up on.

The work on the house continues, and it’s glorious. I can see the end in sight. I mean, to some degree, it never ends because once the house is finished, then the outside needs to be done. Ugggh. BUT, there is one lowly little bathroom left in the upper story. My hardwood floors are refinished! Perhaps that’s how I should start this…

Here are a couple of “before” photos of my floors:

  

And here are the after pics:

   

Those floors needed some love. I am thankful for me mom, who, when the house was new in 1963, covered them with amazing shag high-lo carpet! That protected those floors for the years until I could come back and refinish them! We did them one room at a time over about a 20 year period, and just once in my life, I wanted them all the match and be done at the same time.

THEY ARE SO PRETTY! The flooring company did a REALLY nice job on them! Getting this house repaired after about a decade of small children and adult children sometimes “renting” and more often than not staying for free has been a trial!

We will also be having a new roomie soon. A dear Burning Man friend who needs a soft place to land after a relationship uncoupling. I hope we can be that soft place and I think living with her is going to be a lot of fun. A former roomie may be coming back also, but we’ll see how that goes. Also needing a soft place to land, I hope we can be that for him too. It feels good and maybe more authentic now that I’ve helped the humans I raised to help others. The ones I raised didn’t seem to appreciate it all that much, here’s hoping this next chapter at least has better defined boundaries eh?

A tradition I have with some friends, one of who’s birthday is December 12th is that we always go out to look at Christmas lights. There are a few neighborhoods here that have a competition and the lights can be really amazing. We thought this tree looked like it had jewelry on, it was so pretty:

A commitment that I made to myself in doing all this work on my house, was that I would be proud to have people in my house again. I think I have reached that point. There are an amazingly hard working group of humans I volunteer with and amongst all of us, we help administer a program to protect a beautiful, picturesque piece of land and delicate ecosystem with “geysers” (put in parenthesis because they aren’t actually geysers but are amazing none-the-less). They were almost the first to come to my house, and the first “formal” gathering I had at my house. One of them even flew down from Portland and stayed with us and told me he was very comfortable, slept well, and I enjoyed so much the way he just pitched in and helped, whenever he could. The entire weekend had some self-imposed stress for me, but overall, seemed to be a smashing success and I got to be proud of my house. Here’s the group pic we took for posterity:

The place where I live is a magical place. There is a town that I often refer to as “the town that time forgot”. It’s called Virginia City and in some ways, it’s changed a lot, and in some ways, not at all. At any rate, I made this fun little collage. The pic on the left is myself, my baby sister and my cousin Tony. That same railway car is still in Virginia City, and though it has a fresh coat of paint, I think you can tell it’s the same place, same colors and everything. I took the guy who stayed with me up there because he’d never been and he’s kind of a nerdy guy who loves history and likes to learn stuff too, so I figured he’d enjoy it. He seemed to. This was fun!

Then, last week was the Solstice. I went to a sound bath and then did a labyrinth walk with my best friend. It was awesome. Sound baths are so much fun! The relaxation is tangible. Here’s a pic of the walk….truly magickal on the longest night….

Ya know, I’ve been accused a lot of being a perfectionist. I own that. I used to hold other people to that standard too, but a long time ago, one of my kids pointed it out to me, and from that time on, I’ve made a conscious effort to not be that way. And, the child who pointed it out called me a narcissist last year. That hurt really badly and I think with a lot of the people who know me, they’d say that isn’t true. Regardless, I try to always do better when I know better, and this has been a recurring theme this year:

I hope for those who find joy in holidays, that it was filled with joy, and family, and happiness and love. For those that struggle this time of year, I hope you survived, and came through it with a minimum of trauma, or trauma re-visited.

I am trying to be more kind to myself, to forgive myself for my transgressions and to focus on my own happiness and well-being, maybe for the first time event. What a concept.

Peace.