RECOVERING MY LIFE

JUST A QUICK POST...
I report myself to be in a time of transition somewhat difficult to explain.

Remember all those posts in my companion blog, TheHouseAccordingToRoberto?  From June last year to just last month, I seemed initially to be spending a good bit of every day knocking something down or working with Daniel, the contractor, to put up something new.  A large hole was dug in the ground, the potting room began to take form, doorways appeared where once were windows, the deck grew to extend the width of the house.

Then off I went to Australia where I repaired and painted more of my sister's house for a month or two.

In the New Year, back here in Corning once more, the real work began. Dry-walling, finishing off, painting, laying floors, re-grassing the area destroyed by the earth-moving machines, planting trees and bushes, and the like became my story of the 'live long day'.  The weary quotidium mill went round and round, steadily grinding me down.

Then, suddenly with the last lick of paint and the last plank laid, it was all done.

What to do with myself now? became the question.  Well, lots still to do of course: to clean-up, fix-up, tidy-up...but not a lot of energy for it.  The last month of finishing off, with the summer heat and humidity, seemed to have run me down.

I decided to take off the pressure to get things done...not to worry about it and just do things as I felt inclined.  Fortuitously the problem of all the weeds appearing in the lawn opened a  way through this, thanks to the abundance of crabgrass. 

As I remarked last posting, this is the year of the crabgrass.  The initial dry conditions of this Summer seemed to favor this species which has outdone even the dandelions (that intrepid and persistent race of plants that ever seem to be taking over the world).  And with nothing of the virtues of the dandelion, such as pretty flowers that make excellent wine, leaves that go into salads, and roots that make health-giving tea.  I am sure you have never tried , and most likely never will try, crabgrass salad or crabgrass tea.

Instantly, overnight it seemed, crabgrass appeared everywhere, in what appeared threatening thousands.  On my evening walks, I observed the successive stages of un-let crabgrass.  Over my dead body, not in my lawn, said I.

Surrounded by this horde, the question was, How to combat the pest?  Was I to spend hours each day weeding this stuff?  Allow another quotidium to take over?  In the face of the impossibility of it all, I gave up.  A still small voice told me, Just pull up the stuff you don't like the look of as you go about, as much as pleases you to do, and then go off to something else.

Taking the advice of my daemon, I adopted this course.  Magically, the burden has lifted, the crab grass is almost defeated.  I found I could transfer this same approach to all the other things clamoring for attention.  What is more, I am finding time for the library, meeting with my friends over coffee, and putting miles under the tires of my road bike.

Still lots of work to be done on rediscovering me, rather like a diver emerging at last from the depths, I am looking around and noticing how life abounds.

FIRST, A SMALL ADDENDUM that properly belongs, I suppose, in the HouseAccording blog.  A close friend gave me a TV stand in poor repair and painted an exciting black.  Having taken it apart prior to rebuilding it, it occurred to me that it could do with a more suitable paint job.  So here it is, in the colors of the living room area.  Of course, I could not stand it being about idle and unused.

So off I went to the local big electronics store (no free advertisements here) and acquired a nice 42 inch latest LED TV monitor, a special router for streaming video, and a sound system.

Plus a very effective wireless headphone set, not seen in this picture.  It is truly amazing how sharp are the pictures I now can see, and I love the headphones with their noise cancelling capacity.  In defense of this expenditure, I can only say that, were I to run the set five hours per day every day of the year, the cost would be about $14.  I reckon my cost will not exceed more than a third of that amount.

I love to watch movies and documentaries off the Internet on my computer.

The chair is ex-Wendy's restaurant, picked up for me for nix, along with three others by a good friend who is a celebrated scrounge artist.
 
This is the prelude to populating my home with necessary furniture.  I went off to Ithaca (home to Cornell University) to buy some Swedish style pieces, three for this room and two for my bedroom and these will turn up in a couple of weeks or so.  I have a list of stuff to buy and stuff to build, so this TV stand is the first of things that I will either build or rejuvenate.  Another dramatic step in the 'turn this house into my home' evolution is my outdoor clothes line so now, on a fine day with even the slightest breeze, my washing dries in a jiffy.

A significant event for me at the end of July was the 50th anniversary of the beginning of my first career, my ordination into the pastoral ministry of Baptist Churches in Australia; a status I still  possess.  A bit odd, you might think, if you are a reader of my latest blog.

In the garden, one might remark that this is the best season ever for crabgrass.  On the other hand, my tomatoes are going great guns.  I have a continual running war with crabgrass and appear to be winning as a result of random pulling up of the wretched stuff as I wander about the re-grassed areas in the back yard.