TUESDAY

It has taken spending a lot of time away from this place to see life from a totally different perspective. Totally!

Every day off for ages has been spent dealing with family matters, ie. Marks mother and the difficulties in her remaining in the home as the Altzeimers takes an even stronger hold and then her move to the nursing home. It has been tiring, emotional on so many levels, stressful to the nth degree and at times we feel we've been trudging through mud! In these situations so often all the responsibility falls on just one person and their family.

In the midst of all of the craziness I began to lose sight of the joy of our dream here. Everything just seemed so much trouble; I'd come home and just want easy! I didn't want to muck out the chook pen or water the gardens or any other job. I wanted to eat some sort of take-away crap and not have to go into the kitchen at all. Even making bread or writing a blog :) was too much trouble. It was just too hard.

And then this morning........................! As I sat here in the office writing the next round of appointments in my diary I heard a familiar sound. My window looks out into the portico area at the front of the house. Above the front door were 5 little swallows. You may remember they had a nest on the wall when we first moved here and once the babies left it we knocked it down. They make an awful mess and it wasn't exactly what we wanted at the front door! Now swallows return every year to nest in the same place so we were advised to keep knocking down any nest they built and they would have to go elsewhere. Today they visited and when I  looked out I marvelled at their persistence and resilience. They may have had to move to have their babies but their instincts brought them back again to what they know and what is familiar. Of course they can't stay above the door; a big fake owl hanging in the portico for a week or so puts paid to that; but I enjoyed watching them this morning. They reminded me that even when something interrupts the flow of life, with persistence and resilience you can still revisit what you know, what is familiar, what is a comfort. I enjoy that, the security of it, of not having to over-think but simply enjoy. So thank you for reminding me of the joy of the familiar, you mucky little sweeties that mess up my front porch. Thank you............ now bugger off. :)