The Reluctant Widow

 Yesterday I finished reading The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer  , it was entertaining, adventure/mystery/romance with some twists and turns and nothing disgusting.  The Reluctant Widow is the story of a gentlewoman who has been forced to either live with her relatives as a dependant, or go to work as a governess.  She is on her way to begin work when a case of mistaken identity lands her in the middle of a inheritance dispute where a woman is needed to marry a man who is close to death so that his property will pass to her rather than a cousin.  The man dies the same day as the wedding and then important documents turn up missing and there's a lot of drama surrounding the funeral and the missing papers.  Everything works out in the end.  I found the story both implausible and predictable but still good enough to keep me reading.

paper cuts

Writing letters I won’t send
If I sent them the end of things would leave a bitter taste on my tongue and force me to curl up and be gone from this place
or it wouldn’t
But the end of things is invisible and always in question because of the means
If I write a letter it becomes set down on paper
Why is it paper cuts?
All I want to say is how much I miss a moment I never had but in my mind
If it’s on paper then it’s a bare shadow of the leaping grasping thing in my head
Shall I tie it to the page and force it to form to the surface in neat and tiny print?
it’s too heavy for paper
it’s too formless to fit within the strokes and bends of my written mind
On paper I can force it to burn and dance outside the confines of my own head
Inside my head it forces me on goading me with guilt or inspiring me with innocence
I never know which until it’s pressed into the page and my perspective can see it from somewhere other than the inside where I can only catch glimpses of it out of the corner of my mind’s eye.

Some Trials Seem So Heavy

I sat here thinking about what I wanted to say in this post and I started to type something about how a friend's baby with life-threatening birth defects makes my trials look small.  That's not exactly right.  My trials still seem large and take up so much space in my head and my life that I don't see around them sometimes.  It's different than that.  Thinking about my friend gets me past myself for a little while and gives me a clear opportunity to think of someone else and to pray for them and to love them a little bit more than I usually would.  See, Jamie Hoerler was a sweet girl I knew when I was a teenager in California.  She's younger than I am by about 5 years so she probably wouldn't have been on my radar very much if it hadn't been for her brother.  Jamie is married now and lives on the East Coast.  She just had a baby, Paul.  You can read more about Paul's challenges here - http://kjcarpenter.blogspot.com/  .  I've been fasting and praying for them.  I don't know what will happen with Paul, his condition is so serious that it's medically unlikely that he'll survive.  I can't even imagine what that's like for Jamie and her husband.  I know that they will have Paul as their son forever whether they have the opportunity to raise him in this life or will have to wait for when they are reunited in heaven.  God doesn't always give us what we want but he always gives us what we need.  It's hard to see God's perspective from where we are in life.  Trials break us down while at the same time giving us tremendous opportunity for growth.  I will keep praying for their miracle and I will keep asking God to give them comfort and peace, whatever he has in store for them.

Who knew findagrave would be this exciting?

I keep finding amazing information on http://www.findagrave.com/.  It's a site where people share cemetery information to help in family history research.  Just this weekend I found this amazing headstone with all these different names from Jared's family history carved into the base.  The person who took the pictures and posted the information has shared over 50,000 (!! wow !!) of these records.  It makes me wish I could do something in return.  The cemeteries in my area seem to be pretty well covered and I posted that I was willing to take pictures and search in them if anyone wants me too.  There are requests for information from cemeteries all over the world and if photography and helping people with family history appeal to you then consider joining this free site and possibly adding to the wealth of information available.

Euonymus

Mom calls these her "You-don't-want-a-mess" bushes.

Yesterday was the annual trimming.

I was SOOOOO happy Lynn didn't leave me to do it alone.



Lynn vs. Bush



These bushes are kind of massive and if we don't trim them back they tend to crawl up into the eaves of the house.

I had to do before and after shots this year.



I want to mention that I did the bottoms of the bushes before thinking to take the before shot so maybe next year I'll remember to get a before the before shot.

BEFORE



AFTER



There's also a kind-of-in-the-middle shot that I stopped to take when I got to the point where I had trimmed most of a what a six foot tall gal on a six foot tall ladder could reach.  It's also the point at which I went for a drink of water and considered asking for a raise.  It's the best point to ask for a raise because they can see I do good work and they don't want to risk offending me and having me leave it like that, right?  No dice on the raise btw, lucky for them I'll work for practically nothing, or even downright nothing, or no pay whatsoever...

Anyway, here's that picture -




We also planted onions and potatoes.

These are the onions.  The potatoes get buried so there's nothing to look at there.  There's also a rogue carrot in this row because the kids found one that was sprouting and we just had to put it in.

Then we sent in the irrigation team.

The irrigation team is a highly skilled, extremely motivated, and fiercely dedicated group.
They got into their work immediately.

 

My arms hurt too much to type yesterday.  Today was much better.  I have no idea what the caloric burn on trimming those bushes is but I know it was high, VERY high.  Lynn and I had a pretty good time and our version of Katy Perry's In Another Life is something to hear.  We also did a little Phantom and Lynn did songs from Chess, which she hopes makes a come back, but I'm not familiar enough with that one to have an opinion.