help-less-ly hoping

Is moving forward on having surgery to fix my left hand... date not confirmed, but likely within a few weeks. While most tasks and care can be managed with one hand, albeit with difficulty, am not sure how best to arrange for the simple assistance that will be needed for the few basic tasks that do require two hands, (such as hair grooming/braiding etc) for at least the first week or two. This is, in some ways, more stressful than the actual operation. The helpful teenage girl of eighteen years ago is no longer available, as she is now the young mother of a toddler...

random Wednesday whatsits and wishfulness

Overall, life here at Acorn Cottage is good; compared to most of the US, it has been relatively cool here, though the past week has seen some unrelentingly sunshiney warm days. On Saturday last, G was visiting, and joined our trip up into the hills near Mt Hood. Was a fantastic July day, with woods-walking and exploration and suchlike...

the mountains were visible

a downed log marked like Ogham

there were various unfamiliar flowers

as well as bunchberry, (miniature dogwood)

unripe berries, (a variety of manzanita?)
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On Monday afternoon, went blueberry picking with N, and came home with five pounds of tasty local berries (from Sauvie Island) We ended up going to the same farm that I'd been to two years ago. Blueberries are one of my favorites for eating out of hand, and they are just about the easiest thing to prep for the freezer, requiring simply to be picked over to remove any detritus, then simply bagged up and frozen. Easy-peasy chicken-squeezy!

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After writing about the bed and the quilt, I decided to go back and re-read what I'd written in the past, about other resonant inanimate objects...
things seen in museums, or handed down from my own befores,
and a memoriam from my own younger days

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Last week I acquired a Japanese sickle/hoe, a very useful tool for dealing with the very overgrown grasses and weeds around the corners and edges of the yard here. Had been wanting something like this (at least until I can reconfigure the hen run to let the girls keep the edges around the fence nibble back) but was loath to simply order a tool at random of the internet. It looks like this, and does a bangup job of allowing me to hack away at weedy undergrowth/overgrowth. And there is apparently an entire martial art that uses these kind of tools:

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...have been jumping through so many hoops that it feels like I am now qualified to be a circus animal - and it isn't anywhere near over... have a potential date for hand surgery scheduled next month, but still no information about if the surgery will be covered by OHP... have spent the morning on the phone with multiple offices gathering and transmitting information... stay tuned for more news as it happens, am determined to have both hands functional... grrr arrrr

So, I guess my Wishful Wednesday is for a smooth progress to getting the left hand repaired, a sucessful outcome(eventually), and for help(as needed) during the recovery

making love that lasts

in which our plucky heroine continues to cogitate on the patient faithfulness of inanimate objects...

In the big bedroom of Acorn Cottage, the bedframe is made of wood, and manila rope; the two-by timbers salvaged from other lifetimes and other folks, the rope gathered in with a tale, the headboard and bedposts shaped by axe and knife, carved by hand and heart. If lucky, I'll sleep in it most every night 'till they carry me out feet first. In darkness I run my fingers across the horses and houses that are the carven headboard, and remember a younger self, who drew the images, and loved a man who made the bed, though that chapter, the one that brought the bed into being, is over. And when I rest in the ground, between the clay and the clover, instead of between flannel sheets and soft blankets, the bed will go on into an unknown future, carrying stories in silence, the patina of use, the marks of our hands...
On the bed, now, is a quilt. An old quilt, older than I, older than my parents. Longago there was a woman, that I never met; she took fabric and thread and the skill of her hands, and love, and made a thing of beauty. I'll never know her thoughts, or hopes, or what she wished for. Asleep under the quilt, ease and comfort hold me all the way to dreamland and back. When G passed the two quilts to me I looked up at him; filled with wordless emotion I asked "are you sure?" (thinking - you want me to have this!?). His reply was that it was made for use, not for storage.

Honor bright to have this piece of his befores in my daily life, honor bright to share the pieces of our time that life allows us. For in truth, the love made by our hands and the love made by our hearts, is made for use, and not for storage...