The only constant is said to be change and I can definitely feel change in the air.  It’s not all something I can see or explain, although some of it is.  It’s more like a balloon that is being filled with more and more air, putting pressure onto everything around it before it explodes.

There was a story I heard when I was young about an old  man who was married to an old woman who always fussed about how small their house was.  He couldn’t afford to build her a new one or add onto the current one, so he went to the [insert wise creature here, I don't remember what it was] and said wise creature told him to bring the cow into the house.  He thought wise creature was nuts, but he brought the cow into the house.  Needless to say, old woman fussed even more, so old man went back to wise creature and did a little fussing himself and wise creature told him to bring the goat into the house.  This went on for a while and pretty soon, every animal they owned lived in the house with them.  I also vaguely remember something about them draping noodles she was making all over the house, but I might have dreamed that.

Anyway, the last time old man went to bitch at wise creature and ask wise creature what to do, wise creature told him to now take all of the extraneous animals OUT of the house.  He did and presumably after a dedicated clean up process, the house seemed much bigger to them both (because of the absence of the animals) and she didn’t fuss any more and was perfectly happy.

The end.

The past year has been so formative and challenging I can’t even get started.  I feel like a totally different person than I was at the beginning of 2009.  Some is good; some maybe not.  I am humbled, that is for certain, but at the same time, I feel stronger in many ways.  I am more forgiving and more gentle, but at the same time, I am less willing to take shit from people on an ongoing basis.  I am thinner than I was back then and getting more so all of the time.  I am stronger physically.  I am stronger emotionally.  I am smarter intellectually and academically, thanks to the home schooling.  My left brain is more wired for sound after years of sleeping.  I feel much more balanced. 

I am no longer in any way in the public life in my “real life,” although I am more public on the internet now than I was then.  I have stepped completely out of community work, closed my door and remained completely private for almost a year now.  I have no regrets about spending the years I did in community service, but I also have no regrets about leaving.  It was time.  

It was around that same time a year ago that I started working again.  It moved into far more than full time and then has gradually eased out of it again into part time.  The greatest reduction of work hours occurred on the exact day that my son, Nathan (10) began being home schooled.  That lasted for almost 3 months and he will go to middle school in August.  As long as it had been since I learned the concepts he had to be taught, I saw no way I could do it, but we did.  We learned a lot of things together in tandem and I believe the results will all be positive.  We will get our report card on Thursday. We turned in our last set of assignments on Friday, so he gets a week off while the other two kids finalize their school years this week.

Eric has returned to college and is doing well.  He also works part time for the Veteran’s Administration in Placerville.  He loves what he does and it is good, sacred work helping armed forces veterans learn about their benefits and get them rolling.  He works through El Dorado County and the pay is very, very minimal and irregular.  He submits his hours and might get paid the next week or a month later.  There is no rhyme or reason.

Delena had her senior prom on Saturday and graduates this coming Saturday.  She is registered for college to start in August and will take the summer off to travel and relax.  Eric will continue college through the summer.  Dylan (12) grew about a foot this year and his voice changed over Christmas vacation. 

Time marches on.

We had hail and snow Saturday night, but it was gone by yesterday mid-day.  Each time, I think it is our last. We have rain scheduled for the foreseeable future every day except today.  It is still quite chilly out with highs in the low 60′s.

Joe, my oldest son, comes to visit tomorrow for a week, which is just wonderful.  I wish we could have seen Sandra (his wife) as well.  He will be here for Delena’s graduation and a good visit.  It is always wonderful to see him.

My third son, Joshua, and his wife broke up a week or so ago under the absolute worst circumstances.  It’s ugly and doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.  It’s always hard when there are children involved and even harder when people go for the all out selfish approach and fail to take into account how their decisions and actions will affect everyone involved.  I feel bad for Josh.  He’s tremendously hurt, but is trying to set up his life without her as best as he can.  It all happened around his 28th birthday.  There are some things that people just ought not ever have to experience.  I have gone through something very similar to what is going on with him and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.   Mostly, now, he just misses living with his kids.

That was the first external drama that has hit us in a very long time.  I spent the last several months burning the candle and both ends and down the middle.  Nathan’s home schooling took 6-9 hours a day of constant attention.   It wasn’t a matter of handing him a worksheet and sending him to the dining room table to get it done.  It was side by side, moving him through each part of the process.  Toward the end, he finally started getting confident enough that he could do some things on his own. I believe he will do great in middle school next school year. 

On top of that, I was doing my jobs of giving people psychic readings by phone, plus managing and building websites for people and taking care of the house.  Eric helped out a lot and with the minimal time I had to devote to cleaning it would have been in very sorry shape if he had not stepped up.  There is a lot of underlying clean that needs to be done.  Right now, I very much want to clean my back room where the whole world happens for me.  It’s a combo dog room, laundry room, office.  I need to clean out the sheds as soon as it’s dry enough and find my summer clothes just in case the weather ever warms up.  Walls need to be washed, what grass we have mowed and carpets cleaned. 

The kids and I made an enclosure outside for the baby hens, inside the regular chicken fence, but with a secondary fence dividing them.  Younger chickens do no fare well when they are tossed in with older chickens right away, so this lets them get more used to each other until they are of comparable size in a few months.  All 7 of the remaining smalls have made it so far and after a week outside in some pretty chilly temperatures, they all seem to be thriving.  It is so great to not have them in my living room any more and you can bet I won’t be doing THAT again… ever.  The eggs, however, will be nice.  The three laying hens we have now keep us at about 2/3 of our usage, so when these start laying, we’ll have plenty of eggs.

Eric is eager to put in a garden for the year, but up here, you have to wait until mid-June to be sure the snow is done.  He took great care of last year’s garden and I am eager to see what he puts in this year.  Our grow season is so short here, we are quite limited on what can survive, plus the altitude also affects what we can plant.

There won’t be much alone time for me in the weeks to come, so I plan to try and do a little traveling and spend time in my “shuttle,” the renovated motor home that is my sanctuary.  It will be great to sleep in as late as I want in the mornings and not have to get up at 5:40 every week day.  I can’t imagine what the fall brings.  Will I be back to having the days to myself with everyone else in school or will I have some new activity come into play that takes up all of my time?  I am still eager to work on the book I started, “Stories I’ll Tell When I’m Old,” and to get back into candlemaking and exploring the energies around me to their fullest. 

I had that alone time once and then, like the cow and the goat and the other animals, situations kept pushing their way into my schedule until it was too tight to move.  Now that a lot of the situations have gone, I feel more comfortable with my schedule and look forward to future adjustments. 

I am 24 days into my 60 day health and fitness challenge.  I have been faithful in writing down everything I eat, staying pretty much within my 1200-1500 calorie goals (I have trouble getting over 1000 calories some days and need that much to lose) and have exercised every day.  I am down 8 pounds and a dress size and when David came up on Sunday, he told me I looked thinner.  He is not given to saying such things and had just seen me on Mother’s Day, so it meant a lot. I can feel a difference in and on my body and that means a lot as well.  Tomorrow, the next step in my exercising arrives and I am eager to give it a try.  Details are at www.katrinarasbold.com/60. 

Today is my first “free” day with no lessons or real work to do.   Eric and I cleaned the house yesterday, so there isn’t much to do in that respect. I am spending my day doing nothing for the most part.  I don’t even know what’s for dinner.  Meh.  I’ll figure something out.

My bones are vibrating with things that are changing and I look forward to what the future brings.  May 1st heralded the shift into the active time of the year as opposed to the “dark of the year” and boy, did I ever feel it!  I can’t imagine how life will be by November 1st when we begin to ease back down into the darkness again.  I am sure it will be challenging and exciting and scary and delicious all rolled up into one.