its raining its a soft quiet steady rain one in which I can sit on the porch and hold my feet out into and only my feet get washed its the kind of rain where the ground says yea! thanx for showing up and the little plants say drink! drink! drink!
I am grateful for the rain
this morning getting out of bed was hard so hard in fact that once I had gotten up and done the feeding and cleaning chores for the beautiful animals that I went back to bed I was painful terribly so my wrists and shoulders my head and lungs and body were painful I was hot so hot infact that I felt cold all over
part of me wanted to stay in bed and rest part of me said stay in bed and sleep the entire day and part of me wanted me to push through to keep going and to hurry up and finish the living room even though I felt like I was on the tip top of the tipping point dangling over the abyss of pain and headed the wrong way my brain had plenty of examples for me of others who had worked through pain myself included but my tired hot head just swept them all aside and i brought in the Sticky Wicket and Marshall Valentine to watch over me while i rested and I went back to bed it was comforting to have their silence under the bed it was comforting to be held in the love they so freely share with me I love them also
so we slept and slept and finally this afternoon I woke up with a start and thought Oh! I feel better
not finished yet though healing and repairing but much better
it was amazing to work on the living room this week each day I did a little more than the day before each day ripping out plaster and lathe and old sheet rock and wallpaper sweeping up as I went on wednesday the menards guy brought two pieces of fire board to go behind the steel in the corner where the woodstove will be installed in case there was rain or a heavy dew I cut them in half so I could carry them and brought them inside to protect their $13.00 value its funny how some things are costing more than others 8x4 fire board 6.50 each its very dense like rock and very heavy it prevents any heat from penetrating into the depth of the wall and thus decreases the likely hood of a fire from the stove how cool is that for about the cost of a hot chocolate and a biscuit that board will hold that corner for 100 years cool huh?
the next day i put up the board and finished taking out the lath and plaster that I could get without a major rearrangement of the room then the final day on friday i dragged the canisters of insulating spray foam out into the sun to heat up and measured cut and installed the steel in the corner over the fire board then sprayed the foam then trimmed some of it till my hands just said enough
it was last night that I realized I had forgotten to wear my respirator when spraying the foam my lungs were very unhappy and i think that is part of why I was so painful this morning i breathed in the fumes of the foam and I think I was bit over ambitious in doing so much the last day it is exciting to actually redo this room it is like a magnet of change drawing me out beyond the borders of my ability
I took some pictures for you although the camera is wonderful to have and easy to transfer they do not capture the sense of joy or of change or of beauty that the house is once again moving into bit by bit
but not today today we are all resting and the rain is supporting that choice to be gentle and to take a break
its not so much the cause and effect of actions as it is the internal impetus that I learn to listen to or not
its not so much overdoing as underlistening perhaps thinking that hurry will bring what I believe I will be pleased by
rushing more or rushing less hurrying down the road with never a glance left or right or a picnic on a rock or a venture into the meadow because when i was young my set point was set to rush more to the end to the goal to the accomplishement which more often than not felt empty once reached until i would find a new rushing
now that I am older and have decided that taking a look at who and how and why I am matters like the bones of this old house exposed and debrided the original intentions and care and work which was magnificently done and best available at its time 1910, it was good for then but not so much for now, along the way of it doing its work it also collected all the dirt and debris and smoke that passed through the walls through the house now we have better ways to insulate to prevent dirt from accumulating in the walls to hold back and out the moisture and the sound now like me looking at what it is that brought me to today I am able to debride what was put in early on and change it
but I had to learn what to change it to I had to learn that replacing rushing more with rushing less is not change at all
it has at times been painful to make the transition from the old to the now differently and sometimes it has not been pretty or easy for me or those who are around me I look at the great pile of rubble that covers the slope of the mountain under the faces of the monument in South Dakota and I wonder why we are so surprised that there is rubble and risk of injury when we look inside ourselves to bring out of our rock the monument that we will leave behind us
one thing I will try and remember and one thing perhaps you might is that rather than seeing the negative of the work to be amazed that it is being done at all
how many people carved the mountain? why not more
the rain encourages me to be pleased by the foam and the change the bones of the house because once they are covered over they will fade into the whole of the accomplishment without the anymore singular opportunity to be standing fully present in their presence in the gift of their being ness
perhaps today is a thought about the joy of me as I am the letting go of how I was before I wasn't and the letting go of who I will be when this was is wasn't
best to you my friends best to me best to the board and the foam and the beautiful dogs who are so good at sleeping
mb
