April 26,2017

This morning the Tiny Tyrant (Toby) had me up before 4 am. My mom was trying to silence him but I really don't want her to do that. Today he did indeed poop and pee when I took him out but even if he hadn't, I figure better safe than sorry. I've had to change the whole bed. It's not fun. I'd rather get up. She didn't look like she was feeling well yesterday and she still didn't today. She tells me she is fine, and she tells Bruce she and Toby have had a cold. I'm pretty worried about the amount of time she spends in bed, but on the other hand, it's her choice. I try to encourage her to get up and out.

I had an appointment with the CPA today at 10 am so I made early breakfast and got a much needed shower. This is the first time in my life my taxes have ever been late. I usually do them myself, but I had to import a lot of transactions from the bank and couldn't remember how to do it and I am completely fried. I wonder how much this is going to cost and I worry about penalties. I hate being late.  My days are too long and there's not enough time to rest and hardly any personal time. I've been walking around a hairsbreadth from anger and even explosion. I'm doing my best and I wonder if it is sufficient. Bruce and I are clashing more, he says I have expectations and that I don't communicate effectively. I say he lacks empathy. I'm trying to curb my negative feelings and behavior. I hope I can. He's somewhat angry at me for giving the landscaper my actual budgetary lines. He feels the price went up significantly as soon as I did that. I feel I want the job to be done at a certain level of quality and that it is reasonable to pay for that and pay fairly. In most of the work I am letting, or having Bruce deal with the people doing the work and he's doing an excellent job in many ways, better than I would. But in some ways he's making me crazy. Take the roofers. They asked for 60% down to purchase materials. They explained why they needed that much. Bruce has given them NOTHING and we haven't heard from them in awhile. He says I shouldn't be so anxious to part with money, but I want to get projects done. The landscaper, who finally submitted what I feel is a gorgeous plan for the backyard after I pushed him is now being evasive as to what exact date he can start. he answers "soon" and what amount of money he needs to start. He says he needs "something" down to pay for materials and labor. "Something" is not, in my opinion, a workable figure. I really like him and I like his work and I like the people he has assist, but I am getting tired of a lack of progress.

While my mom and I were having breakfast the other day, she asked about her old house. I've been checking to see if there are new pictures up. The one that WAS up made me physically ill to see. I never did like that house, but the condition it came to be in and the morass of horrible events and emotions just stupefied me. The buyer had promised to send pictures but he didn't. However the house was on Zillow and so I showed her. I was glad to see it looking much better than it was but they did a very stock job imo. Anyway, many friends on Facebook had been following the saga and I posted the Zillow information. To me, it was healing and I hoped the neighborhood and the house itself would be happier. Mostly I got positive comments but I found the Ghost still can hurt me. I'm sure not intentionally, but this person caused e the worst pain I will feel in this life and I will never get over it. My impulse was to spew a lot. I decided not to. Trying to let it go but OMFG. Besides the dynamics of that particular relationship I thought a lot about men. Men in my life and in the lives of others. They are, (I'm sorry if you're a man) incredibly privileged and see things in terms of their needs and desires at the expense of women. I could list examples all day. If we do reincarnate and I have any choice in the matter I do NOT want to be a man but I hope I''m a lesbian.

Well Toby is barking and I'm going to take him out. Ten I am going to rest awhile.

I would be venting so much right now except that I have literally been ordering myself not to (although this is my vent space) and I am so tired it's ridiculous. I won't forget a shred of it I am all too sure but perhaps implosion is better than explosion. Less victims I guess.

April 21,2016

The day was mostly random stuff. It sort of felt like driving and encountering the occasional speedbump. I got up at about 6, it was already getting light which meant that I would have to drive further out of town to relocate the latest bunch of mice. As always, I feel badly, but I really, for sure, do not want the critters in our house and they are there aplenty. So, a drive into the country. I took them to an alfalfa field that was being watered. Maybe not the best choice. It was full morning by the time I stopped.

My next stop was at Star Nursery where I picked up three hummingbird feeders. I think they are pretty, glass bottles, one a pale green (my favorite), ruby red and a gradiated blue. I made nectar and Bruce hung them for me. I need to modify my schedule book to make sure I change the nectar every 3 days. After getting the feeders I went to The Egg and I and got breakfast for my mom and I (Bruce was still asleep and he does not really eat breakfast. After I was done with all that I thought I'd take a nap, but nope, breakfast kept me from sleep.

My dog today, Angelo, was a very good boy and in my opinion looked much much better when he left. I listened to The Book of Joan as a was grooming him. It's a pretty depressing, dystopian book but I can see it. I've told my mom it takes me 2 hours from the time I start a dog until I bathe the dog and she is using that information effectively. She likes long, LONG hot baths. The water had been going on and off all those 2 hours and stopped when I turned on the water for the dog. I was glad it wasn't cold! I cut my mom's fingernails yesterday and checked her toenaisl, which didn't need a trim yet, but I did notice some edema in her feet. I should look at them again tonight. .

As I was starting Angelo I got a text from Crystal, which surprised and pleased me. She wouldn't know that I think about her, her sisters and her mom almost every day and more often recently. She said they (I think her, her husband and daughter) were planning to camp in Zion and she wondered if I would watch her dog. I said I've be glad to, but that if I did he would have to be crated because Jetty Lee is aggressive. I offered to board her dog if she didn't want to have him in a crate. She said she'd let me know. I'd love to see her. It's a pity the house isn't anything like company ready. I don't know when (or even IF it ever will be though I'm working on it as best I can.

I texted Dan, our landscape man last night to see what is going on. We hadn't heard from him in so long I didn't know if there was a problem. Easily there could be. I practically forced unfamiliar software on him because I want a good visual plan though I told him if the learning curve was too steep he could plan in his usual way. So I didn't know if there was software trouble, whether he felt he had bitten off more than he wanted to chew, Of if he was worried about budget- we haven't really discussed budget yet; I gave him a slew of wants and he may be agonizing over trying to make them affordable. I really want the back yard to be beautiful. I am prioritizing it over the house.I need to be outside more, Bruce and the dogs seem to be enjoying the backyard and I am hoping to tempt my mom out of her room and away from that omnipresent TV. Anyway, I was feeling bad and like I was being pushy. To my pleasant surprise, Dan said he had the plan almost ready- but that there wasn't a representation for a chicken coop (I can imagine that) He should be here Monday to show us the plan. I am very excited.

A hummingbird has seen the feeders and Bruce says has sipped from 2, but each time I see it, it flies up to the feeder but does not feed. I hope there's nothing wrong and it's just a matter of time.

Mu mom's dear friend, Lauralee called her this evening and told her another longtime friend died. She had had Alzheimer's. Her husband has taken very tender care of his wife. My mom was going to call them today because one's birthday was 4/20 and the other 4/22. I wonder how Daryl is doing.

I have a tax appointment on the 26th. It's going to be a lot of trouble and expense for the tiny bit of income I made. I hope he can fix it.

Today absolutely wiped me out. It was productive. I got my mom's taxes done and sent, we met with the financial advisor and we picked the new roofing material. But I didn't get MY taxes done and now I am panicking and will have to ask for help that I hope is possible. I haven't been updating Quickbooks and I couldn't figure out how to download past bank information. I am really crispy. I was all over the place today and I am looking forward to bed.

It may be up to 4 weeks before the roof is started. I guess I'm going to need to call the landscaper and there are other schtuffs. I was actually happy when a couple of grooming clients cancelled because I need the time.

Today there were updates in the case of a local man who was kidnapped and killed. Three people involved are being charged bother here in Utah and in AZ where his body was found. The victim had been at my house more than once because his mother's dog  is a grooming client. I felt so badly for her when I heard her son had been killed and even worse when I read the details of the case. I still hope I don't inadvertently say something to her that would increase her pain

The day after I dream of my friend Jaime, I learn he is in the hospital and is unresponsive. Do I believe he really visited me? I do. Jaime ends up in the hospital a lot and they are often long stays. He's paraplegic. He is funny, smart, unusual, loves his family and has had a lot of pain in his life. I honestly don't know what to wish for him here. I really do believe we are spiritual beings that continue after this life. Jaime and I were once discussing suicide and he admitted he has been tempted. Besides landing in wheelchair when he was about 20 and all the attendant indignities associated with that he was raised LDS, believed it intensely and then had to deal with the ideas and behaviors imposed on him when he realized then came to grips with being a gay man. He has been through a lot. He told me that he would not commit suicide because of his belief that if you take that way out of life you will have to come back to the same lessons and he for sure doesn't want to do that. His take tempers me in my suicidal moments. I have them. I was thinking about them from several perspectives the other day. One was from the position of financial insecurity. On the last financial planning meeting my mom spoke privately with the lawyer. She instructed him to take the house our of the trust which means I would never own it though she intends Bruce and I to be able to live there till we die. She had asked me what I would do with the house after I died. I told her I would leave it to Bruce if he didn't die first and then if he did I would direct it to a person who would not be expecting it. I gave her a little of the story of who and why but she was rather horrified. She had the idea of leaving the money from it's sale to the LDS church and the Humane Society. I told her that if it were in my hands I would never do that. Never ever ever. I'd rather it benefit a person. So, she took the choice out of my hands. When I learned this I told her I was very scared. I told her I have not made good financial choices and she understood my pov. I gave her more of that story. I also said that though it seems there is a significant amount of money in the trust, which would come to me, I could foresee not being able to afford to live in this house and that if I couldn't sell it that would be a big problem. I don't know what she will do but I have expressed myself and I've been honest. I will care for her to the best of my ability no matter what she does but I did say I'd like to know so that I can make decisions that are the best for Bruce and me. I pointed out that if we are spending significant money from the trust to fix up the house that I am less inclined to do that if I can't access that money by selling the house if need be. But really, I am feeling pretty mortal these days and I don't know how much longer I will be around. I'm trying to take a don't worry, be happy approach. I keep on running into some longstanding problems though. Often they are generated by the simplest acts. I like to listen to books as I groom or when I can't sleep. One author I enjoy is Lisa See. I recently finished her new book The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane and that left me with a taste for more. Some of her books I have liked a lot more than others. I started Peony in Love and was initially disappointed. Had I not been grooming I might have stopped the book and started something else but there s a rhythm to grooming and I listened on. I came to respect and care about the main character Peony who finds herself a Hungry Ghost. She explores the nature of that place honestly and with the intention of changing that state f she can find a way. The book explores different types of love, the things people in certain relationships owe to one another, spirituality and roles we play from birth and circumstance. The book ended ip being more personally relevant to me than I thought it would. I am very disheartened at the way I see the world going and the destructive, stupid choices I see people in my culture making. that sometimes includes me. I could be a lot more gentle and aware of the earth, the nets of beings who inhabit it and other people.  If I had children I think I would be wild with concern for how they will live. But, we may ourselves come back to this sphere. Even if we don't I cannot overcome my strong conviction thaat we are doing WRONG by the earth. Change is hard, but I try to make changes. Not sure how effective I am , but trying counts for something. And now, I am exploring my own Hungry Ghost tendencies. And I am thinking much of friends and famiy.

New Shed

The new shed went up yesterday. Antonio and Brock worked very hard, all day. It was impressive. The old shed got a new roof and I think that actually took longer than the whole assembly and roofing of the new shed! Slowly, things are taking shape. Bruce wants to take the massive excess of stuff out to stuff the shed. I don't want to do this because I foresee that it would just sit there and we need to go through all this stuff. I am gong to take 5 days in the first week of May off to start and I think I should repeat that process until all this horrendous amount of stuff is under control. Bruce is dead set on painting the sheds some monochromatic shade of brown or earth red. Since I consider the sheds his it's his call. We will be going to look at paint soon. we took a tour of the neighborhood for roofs yesterday. We like the look of tile best, but it seems, according to all the roofers we spoke with, to be very problematic. Metal is more enduring but has more potential for leaks and the edges are pretty ugly in both our opinions. So, looks like it's asphalt shingles,  not opulent but serviceable.

I took yesterday off to do my taxes and didn't touch them. Not good. I was one form short for my mom's taxes, but I took what I had to a CPA. The lawyer suggested we get a local CPA. I am certain she will end up paying much more this way, but t will never be so complicated again. However, the estimate made me gulp. He said perhaps she will over $35 THOUSAND. In my mind, completely without any substantiation, the figure $12,000 had been living. Huge adjustment.

I've been feeling a lot of stress and then the release of other stresses. I had hoped stress would just go away, but that's not what's happening.

I had strange dreams last night. In one, my friend Jaime came to take me to lunch. It took me a few seconds to realize he was walking (he's paraplegic) I was so happy for him! In the other, I had resumed school in a healing program. The classes I had taken before I dropped out IRL counted and there were a lot of rigorous science classes yet to go but I had already gotten though of some of them. but the surprise component in this dream was that a big part of te healing was DANCE. It is so out of myy range of abilities that I don't even have an accurate way to describe my lack of dancing ability. How did I, or anyone else, think I would be suited for this program? Yet people did and I was doing well in the program. I can only conclude that they had not yet seen my dancing.

April 6, 2017

Today I am relatively free. So I'm going to have lunch with a friend and try to get my mom's taxes done. Maybe my own if I don't run out of energy.

My phone went kaput, it would not charge or hold a charge. Verizon sent me a replacement yesterday (overnight) but I was too busy or too tired to even open the box. For some reason yesterday my phone charged to over 30%. Last night I turned it off and it's been plugged in all night. This morning it won't even turn on. Pretty sure I am going to lose all my contacts, AGAIN (and I never recovered some from the last time, numbers that were important to me.) But after the high stress point of throwing a fit at the Verizon store I am more sanely realizing that it IS possible to live without a phone. I haven't had it in my bedroom for at least a week and I am sleeping better. Perhaps it will not be allowed back in.

In other news Bruce's shed will be here on the 14th. My mom thought he'd spent THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS on a shed. I corrected the number to three thousand. These projects are expensive, but so much needs to be done. We've chosen roofers and they should be here today to iron out details of the roof. Every set of roofers we had here had negative input about tile roofs which we liked the look of best. I guess we'll be going with asphalt shingles. The roofers we picked said they have 30 year asphalt shingles on their own roofs. I asked Bruce to choose well as to warranty time (they go up to 50 years, but it's a limited warranty in any case and the roofers indicate there might be other roof problems than shingles.) I hope he picks a pretty color if I am not home when they come. He nixed my green. Ah well.

I haven't heard anything from Dan the landscaper. I don't know if he is working on previous projects or if he's trying to learn the software I sent and is working on design or what. Of course, his number is in my defunct phone. Bruce wants me to contact him because weeds are burgeoning, Especially foxtails.

As I am sitting her my nose has started running like a spigot. Must be some pollen I'm allergic to. Yay. Whoopie.

But I am looking forward to seeing my friend!

Super tired. I thrashed all night and could not sleep. When I finally did get to sleep I had a Ghost dream. We were in some kind of class together, I think Bernie Sanders was the professor. The class was high level and very interesting but had a math and science component, and I was really struggling with the math part which the Ghost thought I should be able to handle without problem. I was kind of touched the overestimation of my abilities there but in truth the math was far too advanced for me (Hell, that could be algebra, algebra made me literally cry) Anyway, not related to the class we had had some fight and we were not speaking. I don't remember the details. I do remember he brought an article printed in a newspaper that he wrote as a child. It was a short article. I remember being intrigued when it said it was continued on another page, but there was almost nothing there. The only line I can remember from the article was where he had written, "relationships are precious" which made me roll my eyes in regard to ours but then I thought, maybe he really does value his other relationships. There was a baggie stapled to the newspaper with two kinds of seeds, I recognized one kind which is large and star shaped (we misidentified this as walnut, but I have no idea what the other seeds were. Then Toby's barking impinged on my consciousness and I heaved up to take him out lest he pee on my mom's bed or something. I don't have a grooming dog until 2. After that I have 2 nail trims. I am bone tired. I am not scheduling myself any days "off" (there won't be any days off for me as long as I care for my mom) but no dogless days, and even though I can only do one or two dogs a day it takes a lot of time and energy. I still haven't taken care of either of our taxes and it's APRIL!!! Well. It's hotcake day, I'd best make them. Bruce has been listening to old Appalachian history, music and religious stuff. Love the music, but the religious stuff makes me sad and tense. This is General Conference weekend. I felt bad when I realized that I had contacted Dan yesterday.

April 1st

Today's been a nice day so far. I enjoyed the dog I groomed and the book I finished listening to (Hillbilly Elegy) I sat in the sunshine with my mom and Bruce and all 4 dogs for a pleasant time. I got some needed chores done and now I am making chicken in wine sauce (we shall see how THAT goes, I haven't made it in forever)

I texted the landscape guy I like to offer to buy landscaping software, if he felt comfortable trying it. He has done his work by hand heretofore, but I am concerned that Bruce and I are not visualizing the same things and I''d like some really good graphics. Since the project will be expensive I thought the software would be a good and relatively inexpensive venture if Dan likes it. And he would have it for his future projects, including our front yard when we get to that. I hope it is a good and useful tool.

Otherwise I am sleepy and would love a nap, or a siesta in the sun but since I am cooking that won't happen just now. I should make strawberry salad while I'm at it.