Celebrate the Solstice

We're in a cleaning frenzy around here. I'm even helping Mommey wash the car.

I just met a girl (lady 52 years old) named Melina who climbed Mt. Everest.

My mouth dropped. I knew she hiked, biked, traveled extensively, and looking at her I would figure she weighed all of 110 pounds. How she could tackle the largest mountain on the planet is beyond me. “I didn’t get summit fever,” she said. “I had decided how far I would go, and I stopped.”

She climbed the South slope, but I’m not sure how high she climbed. She said she walked across a glacier called “The Miracle Highway.”

People get blown off that highway, but for her it was spectacular—oh, she fell through the ice a couple of times, but training and the rope crew were there to put her back on track. At higher elevations there is no life, she said, and then as one descends, life would begin to appear, lichens as first. It was as though she was observing creation.

She told me about altitude sickness. (You who have been following my blog know I experienced that in New Mexico—coming down from Colorado.) There are three different forms—brain, heart and eyes. She said I would have adapted to altitude better if I was walking, a car takes a person up and down too fast.

Another fact: “Climb high, sleep low.” The climbers would add 1000 feet to their daily climb, and then descend those 1000 feet to sleep. She said when she came off the mountain she had so many red blood cells she could run marathons easily.

She is back to normal now, so this year she kayaked at the North Pole.

Lordy! I’m just trying to get my garage clean.

And I am endeavoring to keep a positive attitude. Metaphysically I know that is important, realistically it can be a struggle. I once asked Patch Adams how he maintained his positive attitude when he saw such suffering in the world. He said “That’s when I need it the most.”

I believe as my garage becomes cleaner, I am becoming lighter. Right now it is the refrigerator cleaning syndrome. You know how it is, first you empty the refrigerator and spread it all over the kitchen. Once committed, however, you're stuck. The completion, though, how sweet it is! The Real Estate Brokers are giving a luncheon this coming Wednesday for other Brokers to view the house, so Neil and I and our friendly helper John, are in a fever. They replaced 6 posts on the deck railing.

I see as we prepare to sell the house, it is as though I am writing it out of our experience as I wrote it in originally. Some on you old-time readers remember my journal The Frog’s Song, and the on-going log home building phenomenon.)

I’m up early. Today is June 21, the longest day of the year, Father’s Day, a Sunday, and our Wedding Anniversary. It was Sunday when we were married, the Solstice, and Father’s Day. How often does that happen?

My quote for the day from It’s Hard To Stay On A Horse While You’re Unconscious:

You will notice as you read through this story that the chapter headings are as though we are winding through a canyon and have no inkling of what lies beyond that next turning of the walls. “Watch out for Bears, Be Prepared, Dodge Wildfires.” Isn’t that the way it is? We begin, we muddle through, and then we find ourselves sitting in places we never dreamed.

These pictures are a haven in the storm

Baby D is loosing hair and gaining muscle.

Our traveling dogs, and Bear's favorite pillow.

June 4, 2009

“If you want your child to learn new words,” says Daughter D, “have them present when you install an infant car seat.”

Not!

My words for the day: “You mean I have to keep my house clean all the time?”

As you probably know we are preparing the house for sale and I’m sure you’ve been there. In the past I found that I could keep the house in good order or write, but it was like the infamous circus performer spinning plates on poles routine. My plates kept crashing.

Right now it is not about simply keeping a clean house, it is about ridding it of 30 years of accumulated stuff. We had a house showing yesterday, and for two days Daughter D and I cleaned, loaded dump runs, took items to Good Will, and said, “Tomorrow we’ll celebrate.” The trouble was when tomorrow came we wanted to lie our weary bodies down. Instead we took ourselves to lunch and drove outside Eugene to look at a piece of property. En route a storm threw rain at our windshield with such force the wipers had a melt-down. That didn’t stop us though. A downed power-line did. Hardy souls that we are we drove back into town, down the freeway, circumvented that road block, and got to the property where we needed a helicopter to view it. We wondered if the universe was testing our resolve.

It wasn’t about us. It was about a tornado. A funnel cloud had formed, but didn’t touch down, so it was not classified as a tornado. (And I didn’t think we had tornadoes in Oregon.) Most of the Willamette Valley area got the wind, although we were oblivious to it until we came home to no electrical power, and the ground, the road, and the deck were absolutely littered with about two inch long Douglas fir branches. The winds or hail, yes we had hail too, shredded my flowers, and the blackberries down the hill look as though they have gone through a blender.
It smells like Christmas around here though.

We were lucky. No horses escaped when a limb downed the electric fence to a one foot high level, and no trees fell over the road or anything else. John said that driving over here this morning he could hear chain saws all over the valley.

And there is a dead mouse smell in the kitchen…

Normally my house smells sweet, but now that people are coming what happens? A mouse decides to commit suicide somewhere in the kitchen. Under the dishwasher? Could be, I've looked, cleanied, scrubbed everything else.

Lordy!

Now I understand the commercial for deodorant with their slogan “Don’t let them see you sweat!”

Ta Da!

P.S. Daughter D says I ought to quote my own book. I randomly opened it, what chapter popped up?

“Decide to be happy.”

“Does one wait until our nests are feathered to our satisfaction or decide to be happy whatever the circumstance? We have all been injured, sick, depressed, miserable, abused. So? There comes a moment when we can say, ‘Let’s decide right now, not matter the circumstances, to live a happy life.”

Yeah Joyce, easy for you to say.

From It’s Hard to Stay On A Horse While You’re Unconscious.