life | Bertram's Blog

Pat’s Big Adventure

July 7, 2020 — Pat Bertram

For the past few months, I haven’t been more than a few miles from home. I probably wouldn’t even have gone that far except that I needed to drive my car to keep it working. It’s actually been nice, staying close to home, though I probably wouldn’t have gone so long without a visit to a larger town with larger stores despite The Bob if it hadn’t been for my knee. I wasn’t sure I could drive the fifty-mile round trip, but I was sure I wouldn’t be able to walk across the expanse of the parking lot and then maneuver my way around the store and then stand in the check-out line.

I’ve done well staying on top of the things I need, but the list of items I couldn’t get locally has been growing. Even more than that, I’m getting a feel for the areas in the yard that will need some kind of bush or shrub, and I wanted to see if there was anything I could pick up locally before I threw money down the black hole of mail order plants.

So today, after the workers finished up a stint on the garage, I took off. It kind of surprised me — I would have thought this first excursion in a long time would have taken more planning, but then, it’s something I’d often done, so it’s not like I was stepping off into the unknown.

Still, it was fun, just taking off like that. I thought the drive would feel interminably long, but it was over almost before I settled into trip mode.

The shopping itself was disappointing in a way — although I know this is long past planting time, I expected to find something to interest me, but I didn’t know what any of the plants were and didn’t want to grab indiscriminately. The more prosaic part of the trip — picking up such things as allergy medicines and ointments and cleaning products, as well as some food — was easy, and the drive home was nice. Hot but nice.

As soon as I got in the house, though, we were deluged. Not just with huge sheets of rain, but hail. Mothball size hail. Big enough to sound like rocks being flung against the house, but not big enough to do damage. I am looking forward to being able to put my car in the garage. Hail damage can be severe around here, and some insurance companies won’t insure against hail damage, and the ones that do insure demand a huge deductible. But that’s a worry for another time.

Today, the hail passed quickly. My garage is a bit nearer to completion.

And I went on an adventure.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in life. Tags: building a garage, buying plants, going shopping, hail storm, mail order plants, short road trip. 1 Comment »

Mélange

July 6, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I mentioned I hadn’t lived anyplace where fireworks were legal, and it shocked me to hear and see the neighbors’ almost incessant firework displays, especially the huge falls of sparks over my house and garage. I found out today that I still haven’t lived anyplace where fireworks are legal — all fireworks that leave the ground are illegal everywhere in Colorado. Surprisingly, no one issued citations for the firework setter-offers — it’s not as if they were hiding their crime.

But then, the one thing that I don’t like about living here is that the code enforcer only works during the day on weekdays, so the rest of the time, too many people feel free to break the laws they find inconvenient, such as leash laws and firework laws and trespassing laws.

I lucked out on the fourth because there was rain that night, so any sparks that landed would have immediately fizzled out, but I doubt the thought of rain being a safety measure played any part in the wrongdoers’ decisions to shoot off the fireworks because they would have had to stock up long before any rain was in sight. And until the rain, this whole area was so dry and desiccated that any spark could have set the whole town on fire.

People are still setting off fireworks — it’s been a nightly thing since the end of June — but eventually, they will have to run out of the blasted things, so I won’t have to worry until next year. I have no idea what I will do. Even if I spent the night in the yard, looking for fires, chances are any fire that was sparked would be slow to start and I’d miss it until the damage was done.

It makes me wonder — don’t other people think of these things? I’d blame my concern on my growing curmudgeonliness, but the truth is, fireworks are dangerous in ultra-dry climates. That’s why there are laws against them.

Oh, well, I’d be better off turning my thoughts to more important issues, such as what sort of climbing vine to plant along a portion of my fence. Climbing roses don’t do well here because of the frequent hot/cold temperature changes. (They do well as low bushes, not as climbing plants.) I’d love some wisteria, but it needs to be pruned every year, and in more feeble times, I won’t want to deal with that. Though I might not have to — apparently, wisteria grows slowly in Colorado. And anyway, so far I haven’t done well with purchased plants, so perhaps I should try to transplant a trumpet vine or two. One of the vines I would transplant is riddled with ants, so I wonder if the ants would come with it, or if they would stay in the original area. I guess I’ll find out.

Meantime, the work on the garage is progressing — today they insulated and walled one side of the inside of the building. Yay!

As for Dune — I spent several hours online yesterday looking at books that were published around the same time trying to find one that I might have confused with Dune, but I didn’t have any luck. The lists did remind me of some I liked, such as Malevil by Robert Merle, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, and Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. I thought of rereading these books, but decided, after the Dune fiasco, that I better not.

I read a mystery yesterday that takes place in a not-so-distant future, and the book itself mystified me. The future as the author had envisioned played absolutely no part in the story. The story could have been set in any age, any place, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It seems to me that if one is making a big deal about the time frame in a story, that time frame needs to play a part. Like a gun showing up in the first chapter of a book and then never mentioned again.

I’ve been picking a tarot card every day, asking the cards what I need to know that day, and so far, all the cards are telling me is that I need to learn what the day’s card means. It doesn’t seem to have any correlation to my life. I am keeping a sort of diary about my excursions into the tarot because I’m interested in knowing if they will show a pattern for the month. I did say I wanted to learn the tarot by osmosis rather than an in-depth study, and that seems to be the case. I am learning some cards — though mostly what I’m learning is that while some decks are based on a certain tradition, others eschew that tradition and make up their own meanings. I wonder if I were to create my own deck of cards, using whatever symbols I want, and giving those symbols any meaning I want, if it would work like a tarot deck.

I think that brings me up to date. If not, I’ll be here again tomorrow with another mélange of ideas and events.

***

Posted in life. Tags: building a garage, climbing vines, curmudgeon, Dune, growing wisteria in colorado, illegal fireworks, learning tarot, science fiction, setting off illegal fireworks. 7 Comments »

Nature’s Fireworks

July 5, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Last night I went outside for a bit to watch nature’s fireworks — the immense show of lightning that so often shows up on July fourth in Colorado. Standing there in the unearthly light, I was reminded of another time I watched the show. It was decades ago. I stood on the roof of the apartment building in Denver where I lived, and watched the far-off jagged lines of light.

It seems odd to think of that young woman and all she hadn’t yet experienced. All that she couldn’t even have imagined that would eventually happen to her. I think it was right before I met Jeff, so he wasn’t even in the picture. Our life together, our great cosmic connection, was on the horizon, but she hadn’t an inkling.

In fact, she didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. When she was young, she could project herself into the future, but that future always ended when she was twenty-five. No matter how she tried, she could never imagine her life after that. She thought it meant she would die that year, but instead, it meant she would come alive because that was the year she met Jeff. It makes sense to me now, that lack of any sense of the future, because how could she have projected herself into a future she couldn’t ever have imagined?

She couldn’t have imagined any of her life with Jeff. She couldn’t have imagined — though she dreamed — that she would learn to write and would become a published author. She couldn’t imagine how much something called a blog would mean to her (back then, there wasn’t even a hint of such a personal use for the computers that were just coming into renown).

She couldn’t have imagined Jeff’s death and the grief that would all but destroy her before it rebuilt her. She couldn’t have imagined that anything would ever get her to take care of her father when he got old — it was the one thing she was determined she would never do. (Even at a young age, I knew I was the “designated daughter,” and Jeff saved me from that. For a while, anyway. But fate came calling.) She couldn’t have imagined living in California and especially not in the desert — she never liked California, and she hated the heat. And she could never have imagined finding peace and hope in the desert, or taking dance classes, or making so many friends. She never imagined that two of her brothers and both parents would die. (Though logically, she knew her parents would die at some point, but they were still in their middle years and a long way from the end, so she never thought about it.)

She could never have imagined traveling by herself, camping by herself, hiking and backpacking by herself. She could never even imagine having the self-confidence and courage and boldness such adventures would demand.

And especially, she could never have imagined owning a house.

All that was in her future, and it seems so strange that the young woman standing on the roof watching the lightning storm hadn’t even a glimmer that any of those momentous things would occur.

And yet, there I was last night, on the other end of that life, looking at what seemed the same storm, and knowing all that the young woman would experience.

Suddenly, the sounds of a war zone brought that reverie to an end. I had never lived anyplace where fireworks were legal, and oh, my — hours and hours of the sound of gunfire all around me. At one point, I looked out the back door because it seemed to me as if the sounds were coming from my yard, and I was shocked to see huge falls of sparks landing on my garage and house from the fireworks nearby neighbors had set off. Luckily, the long dry months had come to an end a couple of hours earlier, so there was no danger, but it still made me nervous.

Today, although all is sodden, it’s quiet. The war is over. The lightning that brought the flash of memory has receded into the past.

Or into the future.

Next year, or the year after, or ten years from now, perhaps I will again watch nature’s fireworks on the fourth, and I will be marveling at happenings I can’t imagine today.

***

Posted in house, life. Tags: designated daughter, experiencing grief, imagining the future, in the future, life experiences, lightning, lightning show, remembering the past. 4 Comments »

The Joy of Fences

July 3, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I don’t like being fenced in by ideas, by people, by expectations, but I love being fenced in by . . . fences.

I had my whole property fenced in before we realized that the old garage was not much good for anything, not even a shed, and that it would have to come down.

Then, when the shock wore off, I reluctantly let go of my travel funds because I decided that a garage was more important than that one last epic road trip. So most of the fence along the alley had to be ripped out. Not that the fence did anything to keep out trespassers — one snowy morning I woke up to find shoe prints all over my yard. A lock on the gate took care of that problem, but then, so did the fence being gone. If there was no gate, of course there would be no gate for people to open. (A joke of sorts.)

For all these months of construction (or rather, non-construction), I used blue plastic fencing, similar to the blaze orange fencing used at some construction sites, to block off access. It was more of a psychological barrier (at least, I hoped so) rather than a physical barrier because the stuff is rather flimsy. Luckily, there have been no snow storms, so I didn’t have to be frantic about trespassers since I could see no sign of them, though dogs did worry me. Too many the people in the vicinity don’t walk their dogs — they just turn them loose to do their business. It’s bad enough when the dogs are ankle biters, but pit bulls? Yikes.

But yay! Today, the fence was reinstalled. Instead of the fence going straight across the alley as it once did, it now jogs in toward the garage, giving me a huge area to pull into my garage or even a parking space if necessary.

But sigh. I’m still not able to use the garage. It’s getting there, though. The attic insulation is in, the ceiling is up. Wall insulation and OSB boards have been delivered, as well as the garage door opener but have not yet been installed. (One guy has been doing most of the finishing work by himself, and there is no way he can install the opener without a helper.)

Meantime, I am grateful for the gift of this day and will enjoy being fenced in.

***

Posted in house, life. Tags: building a garage, fence me in, finding footprints in my yard, installed fence, letting dogs run loose, love of fences, temporary fence, trespassers. 4 Comments »

Justice

July 2, 2020 — Pat Bertram

The tarot card I picked today was “Justice.” According to various sources, it mostly refers to legal actions, such as contracts, will, settlements, but some sources also say “Justice” includes the outcome of quarrels and disagreements, the judgement of the dead, consequences of wrong actions, atonement and redress.

I kept digging and found that it is also the card of duality. Internal and outer. Conscious and subconscious. Creation and destruction. Gain and loss. Beginning and endings. Light and dark. Self and other. In other words, balance. To a certain extent, opposing forces are the same thing, or at least different facets of the same thing. Neither force can exist without the other. Each causes the other. Everything has consequences, and the consequence of having one side means there will be another side of equal force.

True justice is about putting things back in balance.

Although this card doesn’t seem to pertain to anything in my life today, it is an interesting starting point for a discussion. There is such a demand nowadays for everyone to accept a single side, the side of politicized justness. It seems as if the current attempt to balance out old injustices pretty much creates injustices for a different group of people. In addition, if you don’t think a certain way, you are considered flat-out wrong, but that is not possible. There are two sides to everything, and each side creates its opposite side. So if there is too great a disparity favoring one side, it would create a greater pendulum swing to the other side.

The world of The Wheel of Time was a world of balance. One character was so strong that his presence bent chance and altered what was probable, so all sorts of inexplicable events, both good and bad happened in equal proportion. When the Dark One’s hand started to be felt in the world, this character’s actions almost always had positive outcomes to balance out the evil. Which led to one character asking a wise woman that if good and evil are always balanced, then is there really any such thing as good. The wise woman had no answer. But it left me wondering.

As does this card denoting justice. And balance.

Of course, on a cosmic scale, I doubt there is good and bad because those are human value judgements. But even on a cosmic scale there is always the push and pull of opposites. (Except when it comes to matter and anti-matter — there seems to be an imbalance there, though the imbalance might come from an inability to see where the balance is.)

On a human level, then, even if good and evil are equally balanced, I would still always try to do the right thing for no other reason than that it is the right thing, whether anyone agreed with me or not.

***

Posted in life. Tags: balance, duality, good and bad balance each other, justice, opposing forces, putting things back in balance, redress, tarot card justice, Wheel of Time. 2 Comments »

The Reveries of a Solitary Walker

July 1, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’m reading The Reveries of a Solitary Walker, written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau between the years 1776 and 1778 when he was in exile. He had been considered a great thinker in his time, and had won a prize and much acclaim for his writing, but after the publication of what he considered to be his greatest work, Èmile, a novelized philosophy about education, he was condemned and his book burned because it was proclaimed to be destructive of the Christian religion and all government everywhere. He slipped out of Paris before he could be arrested, was ousted from Switzerland and other countries where he found asylum for a time, denounced from pulpits (which turned the common folk against him), and scorned by even his friends.

He was understandably bewildered by all this because he could see no great difference in his ideas that raised him to literary heights and those that buried him in contempt. And so he became a solitary walker as well as a solitary thinker, saving his “charming periods of contemplation” for himself alone. The essays in this book were written for himself, not for publication, and seem like the sort of thing one would write when one was trying to account for the vicissitudes of one’s life.

Although he came to accept his shunning, and perhaps even welcome the solitude, he never understood the forces that shaped his life. Or perhaps he did, and I have not yet gotten that far in the book. I’m still trying to come to terms with the horror of warrants being issued for his arrest because people didn’t like his book.

Sheesh, I get upset when people leave even mildly bad reviews or somewhat condemning remarks online. I can’t imagine having to deal with true condemnation, and not just from a few people, but from one’s whole world. I can’t even imagine writing anything that would garner a fraction of that reaction.

It’s strange to think that here I am, almost 250 years later, reading Rousseau’s anguished words. Who of us today will still be read 250 years from now? None of us, I would imagine. Words come too cheaply now. More than that, though, I doubt many people today would recognize a deep and abiding thought. We live in a world of opinion — untried opinion, often garnered not from considered thought and research but from an emotional response to the news and issues of the day. When everyone has an opinion, opinions have no value for anyone else except to affirm what one thinks one knows. True, people are being hushed if they don’t conform to the “right” opinions, so maybe things aren’t that much different today than they were in Rousseau’s time. The difference being, the “wrong” opinions (even if they are really right) don’t often get published, at least not in any epochal way.

It’s also strange to think that, divided by the centuries, Rousseau and I share a proclivity for solitary walking, as well as thinking and writing. For all the customs and costumes that have changed, some things abide.

***

Posted in books, life. Tags: a world of opinion, Èmile, book burned, condemning remarks, ideas and opinions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Solitary walker, the right opinion. 4 Comments »

That’s My Story

June 30, 2020 — Pat Bertram

In recent months, I’ve learned the backstories of some of my new friends, stories that are both horrifying and heartbreaking. That these people are leading normal lives, or what seem to be normal lives, make their stories all the more shocking. And they make me realize, that despite everything I have gone through, I have lived a rather privileged life. At least so far as I know. (One of the stories I was told rivals my book More Deaths Than One for mind control, manipulation, and abuse, which would make anyone question themselves and what they think they know. But I tend to think I do know what I think I know.)

I never felt as if my life was especially blessed — there was too much trauma and poverty, depression and some sort of instability in almost all the characters of my youth. And yet, I grew up, enjoyed mostly good health (meaning that I wasn’t often tormented by terrible pain, trauma, or illness). I loved and was loved in return. I’m settling into what might be a rather benign old age, and even with my extremely limited income, I doubt I will go hungry. Although I’ve never been strong physically, I’ve been strong enough to do what I needed to do. And I’ve been strong enough mentally to get through what I needed to get through.

Those are my realities right now. My privileges. Not everyone has those same privileges. Some people have different blessings — wealth, beauty, acclaim, athletic ability, robust health, great happiness, a fulfilling career, a living — and loving — spouse, cherished offspring.

And some people seem to have very little going for them, often through no fault of their own. Abuse. Disfiguration. Disability. Unending pain. Troubles that seem to multiply. Acute loneliness.

Nothing I can do will ever make a difference to those lives. I can be kind to people I meet, of course, because who knows what pain and horror they are hiding behind smiles or stoic expressions or even scowls. But that’s about all. Being miserable won’t offset their misery. Bleeding for them won’t erase a single moment of suffering. Making allowances for life’s injustices or trying to shoulder another’s mental or physical burdens only goes so far — we each have to live the life we are given.

There’s no way ever to truly understand another person’s point of view, and people who expect that are being unrealistic. We can always only see life through our own eyes, and that’s not a privilege but a reality.

Actually, now that I think of it, my greatest blessing is to be able to turn, in retrospect, a rather messy and traumatic life into one of privilege and good fortune. A nice bit of legerdemain, that.

But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

***

Posted in life, relationships. Tags: being kind to those we meet, making a difference, mind control, More Deaths Than One, privileged life, trauma and poverty, turning hard luck into good luck, what people are hiding behind their smiles. 1 Comment »

Insulation

June 29, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Insulation is the theme of this day. Insulation from problems. Insulation from the world. But especially, insulation for my garage.

When the workers tore down my old garage, we tried to save the materials I’d bought to upgrade the old building, including wall insulation. I suggested they throw the insulation down into the basement to protect it, but I spoke too late — they’d already taken it to the garage of one of the workers. It kind of surprised me that they went ahead and did that without asking. They’d told me they were taking the OSB board there so it would be out of the elements, but they mention their taking the insulation, too. I didn’t make a big deal about it — I figured they had their reasons.

As it turns out, it wasn’t a good decision. When they dug out the insulation from where it had been stored, they discovered it smelled of mice. As much as it pains me to throw away the insulation as well as the money spent for it, it’s not worth risking getting a dread disease. I’ve been insulating myself to keep from getting The Bob; I sure as heck don’t want to risk getting hantavirus.

We’ll have to deal with the wall insulation another day. Today was about getting the attic insulation. Since it wasn’t delivered until almost three o’clock, no work was done on the garage. Tomorrow, hopefully, the guy who has been working on the garage will come early to do the insulation before it gets too hot. Glad it’s him and not me!

I also got a text from the contractor saying that they hope to put in the back stoop and the sidewalk from the house to the garage, which would be wonderful. That steep step up into the house is way too treacherous for a bum knee, so I’ve had to use the front door exclusively.

I imagine someday it will all be finished, but that day isn’t today.

On a non-insulation note, today’s tarot card is the king of pentacles. The card is about steadiness and solidity, wealth shared, multifarious talents, being enterprising, and seeing things through to the end. I’m not sure how any of that applies to today, except perhaps as a prod for me to see things through to the end, even if I have to scrap the first batch of insulation and get new. What did strike me was the word — multifarious. I’d never heard that word before (too insulated, perhaps?), and somehow read it as nefarious. Nefarious did not at all fit with solidity and steadiness, so I had to look it up, and sure enough multifarious, meaning having many parts or aspects, does describe an enterprising individual.

I used to be enterprising — at least, I think I was — but nowadays, I’m too insulated from the world for such goings on. Midwifing the garage to completion is about all I can handle.

***

Posted in home, life. Tags: attic insulation, garage insulation, hantavirus, insalation from the virus, king of pentacles, multifarious, seeing things through to the end, wall insulation. 2 Comments »

Feeling Clunky

June 28, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I finished rererereading The Wheel of Time and resisted the urge to start over again, mostly because I have library books due and need to read them. I considered returning them unread, but the librarian was kind enough to deliver them and I didn’t think it proper to be so dismissive of her kind gesture.

The Wheel of Time has some hugely glaring faults, not the least being that Robert Jordan fell in love with his world and apparently didn’t want to waste even a single idea that crossed his mind, even if it didn’t fit with the story. He also had the annoying habit of creating characters for no apparent reason, pounding away at unimportant plot points and then simply dropping them, while at the same time, barely touching on some important issues. He seemed to like playing games with his readers and he especially seemed to like being mysterious for the sake of being mysterious, neither of which did anything to move the story along. He also seemed to change his mind about things he set up in early books, so that there are some awkward gear changes in later books.

But, that being said, the work really is brilliant. He is one of the few major writers I have heard about in the past few decades who actually spent years researching and building his world before he ever began writing. It’s fun trying to pick out all the symbolism and cultures, philosophies and costumes, influences and archetypes. But more than that, it’s a world of old-fashioned values such as honor and obligation, as well as being a world of less pleasant strictures such as compulsory obedience. But without the bad to push against, the good wouldn’t be as apparent. At times, the writing is almost lyrical, which helps lend an otherworldly air to the work.

I wondered how spending two months reading and rereading such a massive work would affect my interest in books taking place in today’s world, and as I feared, today’s world feels . . . clunky. It’s not just books that feel clunky, to be honest. Other things do too, such as modern methods of doctoring. In Jordan’s world, the “witches” can delve into people and heal them almost immediately instead of having them go through horrendous “therapies,” such as the cancer protocols of today. In some cases and places in The Wheel of Time, thought becomes real, so that one isn’t always battering against the solidity of this world. (Our world truly shouldn’t feel so solid, considering that things are made of atoms and atoms are comprised of a few particles, a bit of energy, and a lot of empty space.)

Still, it’s probably good for me to do something other than spend so much time in a fake world, especially one not of my own making. (Though oddly, my as yet unpublished book is a world of my own creation, which takes our world then breaks it and remakes it in a different way. I can honestly say that Jordan did not influence me in any way since my book was written — and the sequel planned — long before I discovered his works.)

Meantime, I’m still chiseling away at the tarot, picking a card every day and seeing what it means as well as how other tarot artists depict the symbol. (Today’s card is the hierophant, if you’re interested. The word hierophant means “revealer of sacred things,” and the card indicates someone who helps unravel mysteries. It’s also about intuition, i.e.: inner tuition — inner instruction or guidance.)

I almost started a tarot journal today, but who starts a new project on the 28th of the month? It is the beginning of the week, so there is that, but the first of the month is just a few days away, which seems even a better time to start. It also gives me plenty of time to change my mind. If I don’t change my mind, there is the decision of how to do it, whether in a long hand journal, or on line. Long hand is easier in some ways since there is the possibility of hand/brain connections, but online would be easier if I wanted to include images. I considered continuing my tarot studies as part of this blog, adding a bit of my tarot learnings to the bottom of the daily article as I did today, but I have a hunch I am alienating readers who see the tarot as something less than admirable. On the other hand, posting to two blogs every day is a bit much.

On a lighter note, I’ve had a surprise. I thought all the wildflower seeds I planted were defunct, but I think it’s more that our severe drought kept them from germinating, because I found a small patch of bachelor buttons below a gutter drainpipe. I didn’t plant it there, but there it is.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: bachelor buttons, hierophant, learning the tarot, revealer of sacred things, tarot journal, the wheel of time, wheel of time faults, wheel of time symbolism. 1 Comment »

Moving Along

June 27, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Today has been rather an exhausting day, so after I post a few words (or even a lot of words), I’m going to rest my knee.

I woke at first light as I have been doing the past couple of months. This early rising began with The Bob and resulting isolation, and it is still holding true, even if I wear a sleep mask to block the light in the hopes of sleeping later. What I did at the beginning of this early rising was lie in bed and scroll through Facebook looking for articles of interest, which, in retrospect, was so not a good thing to do — it started the day off with all sorts of crap in my head I didn’t want there. Now, I look at the weather, check my emails, pick a tarot card for the day and try to puzzle out how it refers to me, and then wander around the house a bit until the sun comes up.

I did all that today, then I went out and unlocked my garage. (What wonderful words those are!) I dragged out a ladder and reset the button on the light-sensitive and motion-activated light we installed over the walk-in door. (I thought we turned it on, but apparently, we turned it off because it didn’t come on last night.) Luckily, I only had to climb two rungs because I’m not sure how my knee would have held out if I had to climb higher.

Then I watered my baby bushes and the timid transplanted ones that have not yet settled into their new location.

And then . . . Ta dum!

I took a walk. It wasn’t anything to speak of, just a few blocks — maybe a half mile at most — but since my knee had prevented any sort of walking except some painful hobbling from room to room inside the house for the past several weeks, it was a real triumph. Oddly, my knees and legs don’t hurt from the exercise (though behind the knees ached for a while) but my arms are very sore. No, I didn’t walk on my hands, but the trekking poles I used take some of the weight off my knees and onto my arms. During all that time of healing, I didn’t do much of anything except rest, and I’m paying for it now. Or maybe, a better way of looking at it is that I’m now reaping the benefits of all the resting because I was able to take a walk today. Slowly. But I walked.

And yes, for all you who suggested it, I did use a brace. The brace I got didn’t fit, and since I couldn’t get around to shop for one that did fit, I cut up and rearranged the one I have so it does some good. What is helping even more is massaging the knee (though how manipulating a loose knee cap helps, I don’t know) and using an herbal poultice with frankincense and myrrh. And ice. And heat. (Heat seems to help more now than ice does, though to be honest, with as hot as it is, I’d prefer the ice.)

So, now I’m exhausted.

Time to rest.

As for the garage — the door is up and on track, the framework is finished, and the lock on the walk-in door is installed. Things are moving along!