Week 1

Being the first week of the New Year,  I've been thinking about time. The saying goes that 'time flies' but for me I see it as a river.   I often remind myself to just sit back and stay  afloat and  "keep your feet  pointed downstream."   Someday I  will  take my turn stepping outside time onto the bank of  eternity.  I hope I will then look back into the time of my life and see some choices that I made wisely. I know I've already made many not so wisely.  It's hard because often it seems easier to just not make any choice, but of course that's a choice too and there will be a consequence.  

Our 'river of time',  is broken into seasons and we then break those seasons into months, weeks, days and moments.  I decided to try and do a weekly post this year as my way of remembering the year and some of the choices made.    We will see how this little goal goes.  Being tired of coming up with titles to posts, I'm just going to number them, one through 52.  Original, I know.

Wow! One week of our year is almost done; never to be seen again.  Staggering thought. 

We began the New Year checking off something I've always wanted to do:  go to a fancy New Year's Eve Party. This was a 5 course, champagne paired, meal with dancing,  set  in a beautifully restored old mansion.  Our usual M.O.  for New Year's Eve is games and a movie, or nothing at all.  Which is fine, but I've always kind of wanted to go out.  We had a blast and we felt perfectly fine the next day, albeit a little sore from all the dancing. I may never stay home on New Year's Eve again.

On New Year's Day, Mark decided to split some firewood for a sweet, active, older lady and got the splitter all tuned up by replacing hoses, changing the oil, etc.  He split her up a half of cord and delivered it.  When he returned home, he decided to bring the splitter down to our house to split up an old oak that had fallen down.  About dark, he finished and he headed back up our steep driveway only to have the splitter try to commit suicide by sliding off of its trailer.  He hadn't thought to check the bolts and they had lost their nuts. (I wonder if that is a bit like losing your marbles?)  Auspicious beginning to the new year, but I have to say Mark kept his cool and the next day used the skid steer to pick it up and take it back to the shop and do another overhaul. 

 We got in a lot of  evening walks this week, which makes the week a winner in my eyes.

 We also got in two longer  hikes during the day.   The weather has been wonderful  (still dry, but I'm trying to make lemonade from lemons).  It is so warm that short sleeves are often all that is needed.  The falls are beautiful and tranquil, quite unusual for January. 

 
 The buckeye trees, at least, look like winter, standing naked on the hillsides.  I love telling people that I have a nude photo over our bed and see their eyes get wide, only to tell them it is a nude tree.  

Every other day has me, or Mark, or both of us (if we are being inefficient with our time) driving around feeding the cattle.  They all look great.  The balmy weather and hay deliveries are apparently agreeing with them.  Here is a group of youngsters.  They are  growing fast. 

Now, my post changes tone, and I feel the need to comment on a local tragedy you may have heard on  national news.  A local man allegedly bludgeoned a priest to death in Eureka.  No apparent motives, just an excess of drugs it seems.  I heard the news upon arising on  New Year's Day and my first feeling was rage.  I wanted to kill the man.  Seriously,  I felt rage.   I hate injustices.  I loathe people or animals being hurt by another, and yet my rage made it all too clear that I'm not cut from too different a cloth. 

All week, I kept thinking about choices and how they define us, shape us into who we are.  The choices I make today will make me who I will be tomorrow.  Often, one thinks, this little choice doesn't really matter, but I think it probably always does.

This eye belongs to the gentlest creature on the ranch.  Whenever she happens by, I give her head a big hug and her long ears seem to hug right back.  She is a comfort in this ragged world.  For me anyway.  I wonder perhaps what our world would like if we could all be a bit gentler and find time to give a hug.