I woke today feeling very low .. . no particular reason.. just one of those times that happen now. It took all the energy I had to pry myself out of bed.
I walked into Sam’s room as I sometimes do in the morning and looked at the pictures in there… I realized I was wearing the same shirt as I was in this great picture..  Cool and sad at the same time

I went downstairs and had a great talk with Diane.. she’s so wise.. Her advise is always to just be with whatever your feeling.. and she’s right.. It didn’t make me feel any better.. I just stopped feeling bad about feeling bad.. if you understand what I mean.
I did my best to throw myself into my work today.. and by the time afternoon came I was feeling pretty ‘normal’ again.   Around 12:30 I took a break and took the Prius to RoadResQ to get it’s snows swapped out.. It was good to see Phil and Shawn.. I always like talking to them. I found a sunny spot out of the wind next to the garage and took work calls while they worked on the car..

I got home around 2. I had planned to take the 2nd half of the day off to work with Diane . We’re takign advantage of Gabe being in S. Carolina to do some major house projects. Last Sunday we cleaned the old lab.. Today we tackled the pantry…  A huge job.. First we took everything out.. We found some amazing stuff hiding in there…

About 30 bottles of wine including some that were 22 years old from our wedding ,

15 year old seaweed, a whole crate of Indian pickle…

One of the less pleasant surprises was to find the entrance/exit to our friend ‘Raticus’s basement condo. Whatever is living here is either very big.. or owns a chainsaw. I spent an hour rebuilding the wall.. I boarded the whole thing over with 3/4″  lumber.. hopefully that will slow him/her down for at least a night.

We also found many signs of our past year odyssey.. including bags of dishes and trays from neighbors and friends who dropped off food after Sam’s passing.. These are actually warm memories attached to these trays.  Cookies. brownies, … all made with love.

We also found bag after bag of colored lights from Halloween parties past. I can nly guess that each year we couldn’t find the previous stash and bought more. There must be 30 of them.. I tested them all.. which was kinda fun.

Finally, by about 7:30 we had tossed out a ton of stuff, put a bunch aside for good will and stacked what was left back in the tiny room..This morning.. it was hard to even walk into the room.. now it’s mostly empty. We both felt great about getting this done.

The dogs were looking at us pretty funny at that point. they were adamant about taking a walk.   So out we went to the rivershore.. Diane’s daf’s have really sprung to life over the last couple of days. they were so bright and pretty in the fading light..

The woods were actually full of flowers too. We were really surprised to see Trillium in bloom .. they usually don’t appear until mother’s day. They are my favorite wild flower.

Actually, Diane is my favorite wild flower…

On the way back we stopped by to admire neighbor Jinny’s fairy house.. Her sister Elly has one jsut down the yard.. Notice the SamStone !

On the way home we stopped to chat with our long time neighbor.. She was telling us some wild stories about the tunnels beneath the old Huntington Lodge where she used to work.

As she told the story, I saw a huge raccoon jump off of her front porch> the big guy waddled back to a nearby tree.. climbed up a few feet and turned and watched us. The dogs were going nuts.. but the ‘coon just sat their quietly.

It was getting dark at that point, so we scooted home and drove down to Waterbury to pick up the Subaru.. We found it in the lot looking $600 happier.. It was cool to see the Sam buttons reflecting the street light…

OK.. I need to get in a couple more hours of work tonight.. So I’ll end here.

Oh, We also heard from both Gabe and Max tonight. Gabe is having a really good time at Hilton Head with Alex et. al.   He told us that he ran into Avery on the beach today !.. (Ave called us and told us too !) …Max called to tell us that he may have found another apartment … I hope it works out for him.. he’s been working really hard on finding a place to live next semester. I miss those 2 boys  so much… You too Sam.
-me