I put off a lot of things until after Jet left. There was a two-fold madness to this plan. The first was to pay as much attention to Jet while I had him as I could, and then, when he was gone, to be too busy dealing with all the things I'd put off to miss him too much.
It worked pretty well.
Monday was pretty much a blur, and I got to do a lot of emotional processing while I was too tired to be defensive about it. I also got in a full session at 911, with over 35 reports, which is an extraordinarily large number, and the management and Joe, my favorite IT guy for all of dispatch, was profusely thankful for my work. I even went and got boba tea after, which was something I'd done all summer, getting Jet his while I got me mine, and it was good to just think of him.
Tuesday I went into constructive mode, and was super busy. The biggest thing was that John and I started going through all our shelves and pulling out books that we'd never read again. We pulled over six boxes of books, and fed them to our local used bookstores and our library. I had a whole box of Fruits Basket and the librarian was ecstatic, it seems that it's one of the series that the teenagers wear out constantly. I wasn't reading it anymore, so it seemed fair to put them where they would be read again. We recycled a ton of stuff John had found in the office shelves, and I finished darning a sweater I'd had for more than a year, thinking I could fix the holes in it. The main reason for clearing off book shelves was so that I might, once again, actually find the surfaces of the table and desks in my office by putting all the things on them in a place that was actually for them. The first step was just making room.
Wednesday I made dill pickles for the first time, canned three jars of them, and had half of one left over. Both the CSA and our neighbors keep dropping off cucumbers on us (it was that or zucchini and my little zucchini patch was overachieving with honey bees camped out in the flowers) and while I'd made a batch of bread and butter pickles, John doesn't eat the sweet ones. I also had a massage and I went over to Mimi's to help her out with her cell phone. I was so tired from all of that, that after dinner, John and I went to Lake Macintosh to walk and finish my 10,000 steps.
It was a beautiful walk. And before Jet left, I'd been neglecting my steps pretty significantly. It was a good thing to pick that back up again and a wonderful place to do it. We ate peaches for our dessert because we'd bought a box of seconds at the Farmer's Market and it was our second of the summer. That night I dreamed of my days slipping through my fingers like beads, but each bead was unique, textured, shaped, and colored by all that had happened. A rosary of memories...
Thursday was lunch with Linda, who had three kids and watched them all go out of the house, nearly at once, and we talked a bit about grief and loss and coping and figuring things out as everything changes. It was a pleasant place to do it, on the outside patio of the Longmont Public House. Expensive, but good, and the sliders were really tasty and had these funny little pickles.
That afternoon, John and I headed into Boulder to give the last few boxes of books, including technical ones, to the Boulder Bookstore, which has the wonderful service of donating any books they don't want or don't think they can sell. And for the evening, John persuaded me that I might like to meet with the One Anothering small group at church. It's about the whole passage of treating one another as we would treat ourselves... getting to know each other more deeply than we do in the polished surfaces of the services and learn more about being human together. And after THAT John and I made all the photos I had of my art into art cards!! *laughs*
On Friday I got up and went to our neighborhood pool and did laps until I couldn't breathe, which wasn't that long and it's not 'cause I hadn't been swimming. It was because the smoke from the Seattle and California fires had come here... and it was so bad we couldn't see the mountains, which nearly never happens here. The haze was thick enough to make breathing difficult.
Difficult enough that we decided to take the afternoon "off", but still rode our bikes to the movie theater just barely a mile away. We watched the latest Mission Impossible, and it was fun so long as we suspended a great amount of disbelief. Still... I'll admit that I loved it when Hunt kept saying, "I'm sorry" and then doing badass things. John looked at me when I said that and said, "Hm. Does that remind you of anyone?" I coughed.
Saturday was the Farmer's Market, processing the green beans we got there, and then dealing with the eggplants we'd gotten from neighbors and CSA. John and Jet don't like them, so I usually get them to myself, but I have to cook them the way I love 'em, which is fried with pork, scallions, and hoisin sauce. It just takes a while for them cook through. Then I had two frozen dinners from it all and one more dinner or lunch later in the week. I watched some Rainbow Six Siege content and suddenly realized that I really do like playing the game... and ended up playing with two of Jet's friends for a couple of matches before DocStef of the European contingent caught up with me, and I played with him for a couple of matches. Each of them were about twenty minutes, so I kept under my limit, but it was so much fun I'll have to keep doing that come the weekends.
After dinner, I walked with John, and then we packed up the van with all the things I needed to close down the church Art Show. It included all the cards, some 8x10 prints, and some boxes of cards that I'd liked a lot more because there was significantly less packaging for the cards.
Sunday was crazy busy. I sold an eighth painting, people from the Taiko show showed up to talk with me and see the other paintings, and I also had to give an invitation to Generosity before the offering. It was part of our Stewardship campaign, letting people know what they were contributing to if they actually gave to our church.
Lots of people asked us about how Jet was doing, and we didn't really know, yet. *laughs* But it all went well. People liked what I said, and we were able to send most of the bought paintings home with their new owners. The few that we couldn't, we took home to give them another day, and a lady who was part of our Second Chance program, which helps people newly out of prison land in real housing and a good start with a job and stuff, helped us pack all the paintings into the van. She needed a ride to and from church, and lives across the street from us, so we were really happy to do so. She loved the new blue heron painting, and is going to save up for it. That made me very happy to be additional motivation.
In case anyone wants to buy thing online, I now have an Etsy Store.
After collapsing at home after all the social stuff, Jet messaged us at about 5, to tell us that he'd landed in his host home, which had connectivity and could talk with us sometime in the next week. It would be a week before he started high school, and his siblings were already in school, so while they were gone, it would be easy to talk with us. Five here was eight am there, and that made it really easy. So after 911 and lunch and an afternoon where I was nervously waiting by sitting and talking with one of the gaming guys, Jet called John on WhatsApp and we had a video call that was amazing.
Jet showed us around where he was living, including shots out the balcony and he explained a lot about all he'd learned; and it was like having him in the room with us. It was just him, and he was so eager and interested in everything and how it all worked, and fascinated by the differences and the necessities and new capabilities all around him. It was wonderful. And so cool to get as a gift of just a little time with him. We love him, we miss him, but not too much. *laughs* It's so good to see him in the midst of his adventure and just working and enjoying what he's in the midst of.
And then he started updating his blog. THAT was really cool, as he'd said he was going to do that for a while. And all our family and friends now have the link. *laughs*
Today I had lunch with several friends, and it was good to just talk about it all. It's an adventure all around, and we're all learning. Jet's messaging us more often now that he has connectivity in the house, and he's very conscientious about learning the language as fast as possible, as a courtesy to his host family. It's fun watching him respect them greatly. So happy he landed in a good place.
We also stumbled into a friend trying to make a go of a cleaning service, where she mentors other women into making their own businesses, and with Jet gone, I have no real motivation to do the cleaning of the house ourselves. *laughs* We get to go back to hiring people who love doing the job and who need the money, and getting back the time for ourselves. Now that I can actually see the glass of the coffee table in my office (after days and days of finding homes for things that we now have the shelves for after getting rid of books) it's a far more feasible thing.
After seeing the spartan simplicity of the home Jet's now in, John and I are even more motivated to make our lives less about stuff and more about action or experience. And I'm actually looking into applying for the local Restorative Justice program to see what I can do for them.
It worked pretty well.
Monday was pretty much a blur, and I got to do a lot of emotional processing while I was too tired to be defensive about it. I also got in a full session at 911, with over 35 reports, which is an extraordinarily large number, and the management and Joe, my favorite IT guy for all of dispatch, was profusely thankful for my work. I even went and got boba tea after, which was something I'd done all summer, getting Jet his while I got me mine, and it was good to just think of him.
Tuesday I went into constructive mode, and was super busy. The biggest thing was that John and I started going through all our shelves and pulling out books that we'd never read again. We pulled over six boxes of books, and fed them to our local used bookstores and our library. I had a whole box of Fruits Basket and the librarian was ecstatic, it seems that it's one of the series that the teenagers wear out constantly. I wasn't reading it anymore, so it seemed fair to put them where they would be read again. We recycled a ton of stuff John had found in the office shelves, and I finished darning a sweater I'd had for more than a year, thinking I could fix the holes in it. The main reason for clearing off book shelves was so that I might, once again, actually find the surfaces of the table and desks in my office by putting all the things on them in a place that was actually for them. The first step was just making room.
It was a beautiful walk. And before Jet left, I'd been neglecting my steps pretty significantly. It was a good thing to pick that back up again and a wonderful place to do it. We ate peaches for our dessert because we'd bought a box of seconds at the Farmer's Market and it was our second of the summer. That night I dreamed of my days slipping through my fingers like beads, but each bead was unique, textured, shaped, and colored by all that had happened. A rosary of memories...
That afternoon, John and I headed into Boulder to give the last few boxes of books, including technical ones, to the Boulder Bookstore, which has the wonderful service of donating any books they don't want or don't think they can sell. And for the evening, John persuaded me that I might like to meet with the One Anothering small group at church. It's about the whole passage of treating one another as we would treat ourselves... getting to know each other more deeply than we do in the polished surfaces of the services and learn more about being human together. And after THAT John and I made all the photos I had of my art into art cards!! *laughs*
On Friday I got up and went to our neighborhood pool and did laps until I couldn't breathe, which wasn't that long and it's not 'cause I hadn't been swimming. It was because the smoke from the Seattle and California fires had come here... and it was so bad we couldn't see the mountains, which nearly never happens here. The haze was thick enough to make breathing difficult.Difficult enough that we decided to take the afternoon "off", but still rode our bikes to the movie theater just barely a mile away. We watched the latest Mission Impossible, and it was fun so long as we suspended a great amount of disbelief. Still... I'll admit that I loved it when Hunt kept saying, "I'm sorry" and then doing badass things. John looked at me when I said that and said, "Hm. Does that remind you of anyone?" I coughed.
Saturday was the Farmer's Market, processing the green beans we got there, and then dealing with the eggplants we'd gotten from neighbors and CSA. John and Jet don't like them, so I usually get them to myself, but I have to cook them the way I love 'em, which is fried with pork, scallions, and hoisin sauce. It just takes a while for them cook through. Then I had two frozen dinners from it all and one more dinner or lunch later in the week. I watched some Rainbow Six Siege content and suddenly realized that I really do like playing the game... and ended up playing with two of Jet's friends for a couple of matches before DocStef of the European contingent caught up with me, and I played with him for a couple of matches. Each of them were about twenty minutes, so I kept under my limit, but it was so much fun I'll have to keep doing that come the weekends.
After dinner, I walked with John, and then we packed up the van with all the things I needed to close down the church Art Show. It included all the cards, some 8x10 prints, and some boxes of cards that I'd liked a lot more because there was significantly less packaging for the cards.
Sunday was crazy busy. I sold an eighth painting, people from the Taiko show showed up to talk with me and see the other paintings, and I also had to give an invitation to Generosity before the offering. It was part of our Stewardship campaign, letting people know what they were contributing to if they actually gave to our church.Lots of people asked us about how Jet was doing, and we didn't really know, yet. *laughs* But it all went well. People liked what I said, and we were able to send most of the bought paintings home with their new owners. The few that we couldn't, we took home to give them another day, and a lady who was part of our Second Chance program, which helps people newly out of prison land in real housing and a good start with a job and stuff, helped us pack all the paintings into the van. She needed a ride to and from church, and lives across the street from us, so we were really happy to do so. She loved the new blue heron painting, and is going to save up for it. That made me very happy to be additional motivation.
In case anyone wants to buy thing online, I now have an Etsy Store.
After collapsing at home after all the social stuff, Jet messaged us at about 5, to tell us that he'd landed in his host home, which had connectivity and could talk with us sometime in the next week. It would be a week before he started high school, and his siblings were already in school, so while they were gone, it would be easy to talk with us. Five here was eight am there, and that made it really easy. So after 911 and lunch and an afternoon where I was nervously waiting by sitting and talking with one of the gaming guys, Jet called John on WhatsApp and we had a video call that was amazing.
Jet showed us around where he was living, including shots out the balcony and he explained a lot about all he'd learned; and it was like having him in the room with us. It was just him, and he was so eager and interested in everything and how it all worked, and fascinated by the differences and the necessities and new capabilities all around him. It was wonderful. And so cool to get as a gift of just a little time with him. We love him, we miss him, but not too much. *laughs* It's so good to see him in the midst of his adventure and just working and enjoying what he's in the midst of.
And then he started updating his blog. THAT was really cool, as he'd said he was going to do that for a while. And all our family and friends now have the link. *laughs*
Today I had lunch with several friends, and it was good to just talk about it all. It's an adventure all around, and we're all learning. Jet's messaging us more often now that he has connectivity in the house, and he's very conscientious about learning the language as fast as possible, as a courtesy to his host family. It's fun watching him respect them greatly. So happy he landed in a good place.
We also stumbled into a friend trying to make a go of a cleaning service, where she mentors other women into making their own businesses, and with Jet gone, I have no real motivation to do the cleaning of the house ourselves. *laughs* We get to go back to hiring people who love doing the job and who need the money, and getting back the time for ourselves. Now that I can actually see the glass of the coffee table in my office (after days and days of finding homes for things that we now have the shelves for after getting rid of books) it's a far more feasible thing.
After seeing the spartan simplicity of the home Jet's now in, John and I are even more motivated to make our lives less about stuff and more about action or experience. And I'm actually looking into applying for the local Restorative Justice program to see what I can do for them.
Comments
Post a Comment