I am her, and she is me.

The birds in the video above are Purple Martins, aren't they fabulous?!

Happy Saturday friends!

I was driving home from the farm Friday morning as a red cardinal flew by. I said, "Hi Mom!" and started crying (this is me lately, crying at the drop of a hat.) Out of the ether I heard, "I am her and she is me."

This spring has been filled with memories of Mom. I mean, I think of her every day but whew, there are just so many things that make me think of her right now. Maybe it's because it's spring and every flower or bird is one of her favorites, so of course they are my favorites too—because I am her, and she is me. 

Maybe it's also because there are so many changes happening in the house and I know how much she would have enjoyed being a part of figuring out paint, floors, carpet, tile, and redecorating eventually. My brother and I got our love of decorating from her. She was always changing things around, creating new spaces full of beauty.

I was listening to the podcast called Breakdown and the guest was a neuroanatomist who had had a stroke years before. She was talking about recognizing how her brain (during the stroke) wasn’t behaving normally while also experiencing herself as a beautiful ball of energy, feeling at peace and at one with the universe. And for some reason it made me think of the guilt that has been slithering around in the back of my mind ever since Mom died in November of 2022.

I think about that last week of her life, when she was on liquid morphine and had stopped being able to verbally communicate, and I still kick myself for not speaking more to her. Not that I did it on purpose, just everything was so overwhelming that I couldn’t. I didn't even think of it. I didn’t just sit and talk to her and tell her stories about all the good things that we’ve been through together. It just makes me cry thinking about it but listening to this neuroanatomist talk about what her body was doing as her brain was starting to shut down from the stroke while she was also experiencing peace and harmony and feeling so incredible…I can’t help but think that Mom was experiencing the same.

And...I didn’t need to speak to her with my voice. I was communicating with her telepathically as we often did. She was having this amazing soul experience (and telling me about it telepathically), her body letting go and her soul expanding into a huge energy ball until she was so big she just POPPED right out of her body.

She told me years ago that when her dad died she talked to him about happy memories. That has stuck with me. But for us, in reality, there was never anything left unsaid. She knew how much I loved her, I knew how much she loved me. We talked almost every day and on the weekends (particularly during the 18 years I lived in Colorado and she was in North Carolina) we talked for several hours (and by "several" I mean 4-5!) often while cleaning our houses. We talked about life, great memories, whitewater kayaking, laughing our heads off, sometimes crying, but just getting it all out. No one could understand how we could talk that much but I guess we needed to get all those words out because someday, there wasn’t going to be any more time to do it. By the time she died, we were complete.

THE RANCH:

One of my favorite things about leaving the horses and donkeys in the upper pasture is that I can let the goats out while we do chores:

They are so happy to wander and eat weeds and trees:

Baby Parsley (who will be a year April 18th so I'll have to stop calling her a baby) now somehow thinks that she and the Polar Bear are the same species and everytime we call her to the fence to be let out to wander, Parsley comes running along with her! She is such a funny goat, full of personality and so much mischief. Case in point 👇🏽 here is B-Rad surveying her handy work when she snuck past and tossed a bunch of stuff around while we were doctoring her sister Rosemary:

Parsley lives her life by the "no holds barred and no fucks given" mantra:

And she has so much to teach us, particularly us women ;-)

I Love Lucy is also marching to the beat of her own drummer:

I aspire to be like these two girls!

•••

And then there are the peaceful bits:

•••

Every spring I exclaim over all the flowers that pop up in my "lawn." This year I'm learning that almost all of them have medicinal properties! Here are three:

Field Pansy (eczema, itchy skin, cough):

Ground ivy aka Creeping Charlie (tinnitus, ear ache, headache):

Grape hyacinth (rheumatism, skin infections, wound healing, antiseptic, pain relieving):

My pretty old Japenese Maple is leafing out:

And the rental has a gorgeous Dogwood:

As the flowers mature, they will turn white.

ART STUFF:

I've moved the art portion of my life over to Substack recently, you can find that here. Loving the ink fairy drawings so much!

 •••

I read this article about multitasking (reiterating how bad it is for us) and there was something that really stuck with me—from Peter Sokołowski, an editor for Merrian-Webster: 

"Multitasking is from the mid-1960s meaning, 'The concurrent performance of several jobs by a computer.'" And somehow that just settled the issue in my brain—it was never meant for me to be that way. 

FIRE UPDATE:

So happy that our general contractor was able to get the flooring guys out today to sand a patch and put down some color options. We will know what we are going to do by the end of the weekend! My hope was for the floor to look something like this:

This is what the floor looks like unstained:

I really want it to look more like bare wood! It's the prettiest to me :-) 

They came and put a different stain on each and then a few hours later came back and put a satin sealer on them. After just the stain we were thinking maybe the two middle ones. After the sealer we are thinking the two bottom ones. The upper left and middle left have a fair amount of grey in them and it seems the heavily grained parts of the red oak really pick up that grey. I think I like the lower right the most right now but will have to see it in other light. I like how the heavily grained parts of the wood look more white. This is as close to bare white oak floors (what everyone wants right now) as you can get I think—the white stain really takes the red, pink, yellow, orange tinges out of the wood as much as possible. I wanted to lighten up the house and that would for sure do it! 

THE MEMES:

Still my most favorite, Mom and I laughed and laughed over this one:

The pine pollen has arrived:

The pond at the rental (and we are only at the beginning):

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