What’s New

I seem to be on a blog streak lately: every two months on the 8th without fail I’ve managed to find some words to post. Perhaps bimonthly three times in a row isn’t much in the grand scheme of the world, the galaxy, the universe, but it’s a lot for me. I’m lucky in that there isn’t much to write about. I lead a quiet, sane life (at least it feels sane to me) without a lot of trauma or excitement, but that suits me well. I’ve had enough of both to last the rest of my life.

Oh, there are some things of concern, such as a couple of visitors of the small rodent kind and a crumbling corner of my foundation (for some reason, that particular corner decided it didn’t want to have anything to do with the rest of the house, so it went walkabout) but mostly, I (and my house) have been doing well.

So, what’s new? Snow! Lots and lots of snow. I haven’t seen so much snow in years. In fact, I think we’ve had more snow the past couple of days than all last winter. It’s been so warm that I’d been procrastinating on cleaning up my garden areas for fall, mowing one last time, readying the ground for planting wildflower seeds (which in previous years I did before the first snow) thinking I had plenty of time to do the work, but no. Snow!!

Luckily, they got the foundation concreted in before the snow started, but it will probably be a while before they can replace the dirt and redo the landscaping around the house. It’s ornamental rock, so it’s not much of a problem, and it’s out of the way so I won’t be putting myself in danger, but they might have to wait until the snow melts and the excavation area dries out. Or not. What do I know. And anyway, it’s not that cold, so I doubt the snow will be around for very long.

There isn’t much snow in the above picture of my ramp, but the snow that’s there is just from the early hours this morning. Yesterday, I shoveled the ramp twice. Each time the snow was about six or eight inches deep, so you can imagine how deep the snow would have been without all that work! And without the melt from late yesterday afternoon when the snow turned to rain.

After this storm passes, the days will warm up (though the nights will be colder than they have been), so I’m sure I’ll still be able to do the fall cleanup I’d planned, assuming, of course, I feel like it.

Right now, what I feel like is a cup of hot tea, a warm blanket, and a book to read, so goodbye for another couple of months! It was nice connecting with you.

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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.

Adventurous Spirit

A legacy of my grief for my life mate/soul mate is a sense of adventure. During the worst of my grief, this adventuresomeness was more of a need than a sense. I don’t know if the extra effort adventure took helped balance the pain, if doing something epic helped make me feel alive, or if I simply wanted to keep from drowning in loneliness, but for whatever reason, I sought adventure.

Now, after more than eight years, I don’t crave adventure in the same way but a sense of adventure has become part of me.

I’m on a road trip, and because of an unexpected snowstorm road trip, I had to stay an extra night at a motel rather than heading on down the road, which tickled me. And when the motel lost power for a few hours, I couldn’t help smiling. It all just seemed so . . . adventurous.

I can live with that.

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(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)