Short post as it’s late and I need to get to sleep. Today was a very ‘public’ kind of day .I ended up walking around work more often than usual which brought me into contact with many folks I hadn’t seen in a while…. Likewise the family and I went  to a play at the high school after work. In both cases  I absolutely loved seeing everyone.. I just wish they couldn’t see me.. or rather.. I sometimes wish that they wouldn’t see me as somehow different and changed. I guess I don’t get to choose that right now.   It’s just such a strange change for me being the social person I was… and still somehow am.

   Another thing that happened to me several times today was ”bloglog’… That’s  when I meet people and they start   asking me questions about stuff in my life that I just  can’t figure out how they know.. E.g. I had 20 people ask me if I was feeling better..   (how’d they know I was sick ?) .. or  people asking about my trip.. or about something the kids did .. The first few times it happens I get one of those weird ‘twilight zone’ feelings.. . then I realize they’re picking up pieces of my life through this blog.  My wonderful friend and admin Jleigh actually  read the blog to figure out how much work I can shoulder and adjusts my schedule accordingly.. It took me a long time to catch on how my workload seemed to automatically adjust to my mood (Thank you Jleigh !)  I love that people care to read this.. at the same time,  it’s a weird skew where folks know all sorts of tiny details of my life.. yet I’m completely out of touch with their lives.. Maybe everyone should send me a really newsy letter every so often with things that are going on in their lives so I can stay even with  everyone..

   If you are curious, between 200 and 500 people read this blog every day.. Tonight is pretty typical with abut 300 hits so far.  I noticed last night that I’d gotten over 40,000 total hits on this blog since I started keeping it..That’s amazing to me.

   I  get asked very often about why I’m even doing this blog. I’ve given this a bunch of thought the last few days….  as writing is actually something I really don’t normally enjoy  doing at all. (to be truthful.. I hate it). The best I can say is that it forces a discipline on me to take time at the end of everyday to stitch together what has happened to me over the past day and make sense of it. In the early days after Sam’s death this was an essential part of my sanity.. everything was so jumbled together that blogging gave em a chance to tease out the meaning in everything that was happening.. Now it’s more of a healing process.. sort of like knitting.. or knife throwing.. something to unwind with at the end of each day.  If  I’m lucky, I can also use it  to  help tease some lesson out of each day. 

   Ack.. I’ve just  written about writing.. one of the most lame literary  devices one can use.. Ackkkkk I’ve just written about writing about writing… Oh no… now I’ve written about writing abut writing about writi………..  oh.. Gnite sam !

-jc 

ps. Our friend Karey drew this picture a few years back. She sent it to us becuase it reminded her of Sam and the SamStones.. Thanks Karey… (did I already post this ?)

I smell Spring.. I woke today to sunshine for the first time in weeks. (Everywhere I went on my trip was cloudy). Everything felt somehow lighter. I got Gabe to school then spent an hour working on the SamStones.org web site. Working on the web site is one of those narcotics for me. When I’m deep in it, coding, restructuring, experimenting I feel like I’m  doing something positive for Sam’s memory.. This morning I was working on a photo gallery for the site. That will allow me to display photo sets from my Flickr  account. (check it out… http://samstones.org/WordPress1/index.php/Gallery/ it’s not all there yet.. but then again.. neither am I) The coding part is fun… looking at all these great Sam pictures is also wonderful… and hard at the same time. I had to stop several times because the pictures were too beautiful for me to look at.. do you know what I mean ?

   Around 9 I started my work day..   I was still feeling a bit under the weather so I decided to work at home again..  I had one of my most productive days this year.   When I work at home I have almost no distractions… which give me almost no sense of time passing. The first time I stood up I found that it was time for lunch. Chai was staring at me all morning so I decided to take her out for a walk/snowshoe. Given the warm  weather.. I figured this might be the last chance for a decent snowshoe romp. While the yard had many bare spots.. the woods were still had snow so deep that Chai was falling in up to her belly in places.

We managed to slog our way up to our favorite rock in high pasture and look out over our part of the valley.

It was beautiful to see the change of seasons coming on. Hard to believe that this time next month (or so)  it will all be turning green.  We looped back down to the road just in time for my snowshoe strap to come loose.. it must have been a sign that the season was over. Chai and I walked back on the road.. the mud was ankle deep in places. Ahh Spring.

     We got back to the house to streaming sunshine .. I managed to catch a great rainbow shadow from one of our window prisms 

I worked the rest of the day until Diane and Chai dragged me outside for another walk around 6 PM..

This is more outdoor time than I’ve had in several weeks and it felt great..    You know.. I can feel Spring everywhere.. even in my heart, Sam.

-jc

I first woke today around 6:30  just as it was starting to get light..  I lay in bed dozing for several minutes  going in and out of a really nice dream.   I had a real sense of well being and peace in the dream and didn’t want to let go of it. I had to tell people this story. As I started to become more awake I tried to find something to hang on to that I could remember… I came up with the name  the forest people… gotta remember forest people, forest people, forest people… I got out of bed and went and brushed my teeth.. forest people, forest people.. gotta remember forest people.. I went down stairs to see Diane and Gabe..  forest people, forest people can’t forget.. forest people. Finally it was bugging me so much I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down forest people . There.. I’d captured it! I new it was important and I needed to tell the story in my blog….

   OK.. that was at 6:30 this morning.. Now it’s 9 at night and this is what I remember of this story that seemed so important to me this morning.  there were a bunch of  very nice people  all wearing  plaid shirts and pants  floating around on big plastic mushrooms in the basement of a big building..  They were all being chased by people on backhoes.. but the backhoes wouldn’t fit into the basement so everyone felt safe. So all the people had to do was bob around on their floating mushrooms and wave at each other all day. . Isn’t that bizzare  ?  Why forest people ?  Does anyone out there do dream analysis ? Isn’t it strange what seems so important to you when you’re asleep ? I think my brain is broken.

     Well my real day was considerably less surreal than my dream. I took Gabe to school then worked at home till mid morning then went into work. It was raining/misting this morning and the snow is melting quickly.. We still have as much as a foot in some places of the yard… but there are bare spots showing all around. The melting snow reveals all sorts of things that had been covered up… tools, sleds… and if you’re a dog owner…… Let’s don’t go there..     With all this snow still on the ground It’s hard imagining that 5 days ago I was in 80 degree weather in Sydney..   I can see spring on the way, though. Check it out !

I got home just before six in time to catch Chai red-pawed napping on one of the couches upstairs… Chai.. you have some ‘splaining to do  !

I wandered around until I found some people..  Four of Sam’s old band  buddies were practicing in the barn. Around 7 they all came in and joined us for dinner. Dinner conversation consisted mostly of them comparing mostly homemade piercings..  We were treated to a cell phone video of our friend Brad putting a safety pin through his lip in our upstairs bathroom.. a few hours ago I was going to post the video.. but after watching it once I decided I’d spare you  (ewwwwww) .

Sam’s friend Pucket was here from Sam’s old band Black Night Vengance. They just finished recording some songs which they’re dedicating to Sam..    You can check out 4 of the cuts here..  They sound great.. Sam .. you’d be proud !

-jc

ps. watch out for the backhoes !

My jetlag physically and mentally caught up with me last night and I found my self completely awake and staring at the ceiling at 3 AM.. I lay there for a bit.. then resigned that I was not going  back to sleep.. I got up and did a sort of walking meditation that I do for about the next 3 hours.. This is a big, dark, quite house at those hours so it was an lonely/solemn/peaceful kind of thing to do.   It reminded me very much about the times I walked all three baby’s in the middle of the night to put them to sleep. One of the things that came to me in my long meditation last night was the understanding that I need to start changing  the way I interact with Max and Gabe a little bit..   In many ways I find that the time I spend with them lately always has an element of Sam in it.. .. (everything  I do has an element of Sam in it).  The thing is, that reference sometimes gets in the way  of our own natural relationship.  I’m trying to center my relationship with Sam on Sam… and sort of reconnect with Max and Gabe.  I still have room in my heart for all three boys. Each in his turn.   It seems like one of those things you wouldn’t have to think out… but I’m finding the need to relearn many things that came natural to me ones. Anyway, It felt good to be thinking about the boys  like that on this dark early morning..   at about 6 I managed to fall asleep for a few hours until my first meeting.. I woke up without a fever for the first time in 5 and a half days. Whoo-hoo !   I’m definitely on the mend.

.   Even though I was away for 2 weeks.. the time difference allowed me to keep up with most of my day job meetings, email and phone calls at night… so I’m not even that behind. I think I would be if I were being more productive. I did a full day of work and actually made more progress than I expected.  Even so.. I still feel like I’m stuck in low gear..
    One thing I was thinking about today was how other stuff  like the weather, health, amount of sleep etc.. effect our outlook so much more now..  A sunny day and I can imagine traveling the planet with my family spreading SamStones everywhere.. A  drizzly day like today and I can barely imagine next week.   I consider myself as moody as anyone else.. yet I’ve never had these kind of swings.. I wonder if this Is how someone who’s bipolar feels ?
     I knocked off exactly at quitting time to spend some more time with Gabe.. Diane figured I was too sick still to expose the other folks in yoga to my germs.. so Gabe and I decided to go expose the good folks in BestBuy and iParty  instead.. We had a fun mini-night out working on Gabe’s idea for the Bolton pond skimming  contest which is in two weeks..  Last year Sam  and I dragged a kayak up there…  which was a funny disaster.. this year I’m not telling what Gabe and I are doing..  come see.Gabe was kind enough to wash my car windows tonight.. I caught him through the window here hard at work.

   We got back just in time to join the mandatory pre-garbage day house cleaning ‘party’.   It’s amazing how fast we can clean this place up when all five of us are focused.. Five is because of Scott… our rental relative..  Scott is totally awesome.. he cleans , he brings in wood.. he makes noise to simulate activity in the house.. if you don’t have a Scott of your own,… let me suggest that you get one..

As we cleaned.. Max related that during his Reiki session today Marci  said that from his energy she sensed he  needed more time with his dad (me) ..  which I thought tied in exactly with my insomniac-al thoughts of earlier this morning..  Max also told me that he was able to start his stalled car with Reiki today.. I don’t believe in this stuff.. but it  sure works !  And so does Max …Here he is  hard at work on Light Color and Design.. pretty stuff. !

   OK.. I need to get some sleep Gnite all.. gnite Sam.

-jc

ps Several folks have commented about the bed jumping scene I posted from Shanghai.. I’m starting to be surprised just how many people don’t  jump on their hotel beds.  As you can see here you’re in a  rapidly shrinking minority.