Hello my lovelies.

Hello my lovelies! Do you know, my dad used to call me that. When I saw him, he’d say ‘hello my lovely’. At the risk of sounding repetitive, it’s a really lovely thing to say and mean to someone. I miss my dad a lot.

Life here has been ongoing as usual, home ed’ing, `starting to finish up the gardening and tidying up a bit, attempting to sort the house out, baking, cooking, Chris working and making things of use as always, he’s very good at it and of course I’ve been sorting out the ducks and chickens.

Life seems to have gone really quickly this year, summer has flown, the growing is almost over, as in planting. We’ve got a few things to over winter – purple sprouting broccoli, cabbages, leeks, spring onions, but most things are at an end. I’ve just got rid of the last tomato plants out of the tunnel. The ducks are now in there for their winter home and were making a mess of the mats I have down to stop weeds, so everything is coming up and it’s being cleared. Since the ducks have been in the tunnel we’ve actually been having some eggs! The magpies and crows can’t get at them any more, so we have them. The chickens have stopped laying for the winter and the ducks have started! it’s only a couple a day, but they are so good for baking.

Isn’t grief weird? Going back to the comment about my dad. It comes and then it backs off and then flattens you again and then retreats and then punches you in the gut again and then ebbs again. It’s very strange and it’s very hard. It makes you (or me anyway) also think about different things in relation to that grief, such as the past/history, the future, how quickly life goes, how different it is from one decade to the other, or even from one day to another, how nothing is actually predictable and also about how much we value stuff and ways of being that actually mean nothing. You know, things that meant so much 10/20 years ago, opinions, feelings, things, actually mean so little now. People really do matter, God and then people.

I’m extremely grateful for my dad. I might not have always said that. In my younger days I could be extremely arrogant and extremely self centred and self pitying and there are times where I felt extreme resentment against my family for no good reason really, just for the fact that they were fallible and human. Just like all of us. I’m glad he saw what God did with me, that I was restored and made into a decent human being, that he saw me out of debt and married and with a larger family. That he saw me happy and in a better relationship with him and the rest of my family. I’m very grateful for that, and I am absolutely certain that I need to thank God for that. He is the one who redeems, no one and nothing else does.

So, I’m not sharing to facebook this time, I’m off it (and instagram) for November. I needed a break from all the information overload and I kept going on it repeatedly and just doing the scrolling thing. I have to say, life has been a lot better without it in most ways. I actually felt like I was withdrawing for a short time too! How bizarre is that?? Now I don’t, I feel quite ecstatic!

So goodbye! for now.

Cathy.