Indian Summer -- We're Back in Portland
Well, we headed back to Portland today. The cats were amazingly good on the ride home, not crying as much as usual, thankfully.
We had to get home so Marilyn could get to a 4:00 p.m. meeting for PSSCA. We were both a bit resentful of that, but she makes her commitments (of course). Right now it's not festival work that's kicking our asses -- it's the extra stuff with both PSSCA and RHSAA. She needs to quit both and get back some much-needed free time. It's not that we don't care -- we very much do. But there's only so much time in life, and we need to spend some of it on us.
We want to focus on our health -- especially on getting more exercise and more sleep. We want to spend more time writing. We want to spend more time reading. We want to clean and organize our house more and play more games and relax more. It's not selfish -- it's essential. We can do everything in life better if we focus part of our time on making ourselves better.
Somehow life got too busy -- and we're at the point we're we just don't have much free time at all.
I was saying recently that I just want to spend more time praying again. Prayer makes me feel better and more centered -- but it takes TIME. I pray regularly for a lot of reasons and a lot of people. View it any way you want. I don't know that my prayer can be seen as entirely traditional. Part of it is just focusing my thoughts and love and good wishes on people I care about. Sometimes I pray for people I barely know, as well. I feel an active prayer life makes me happier and healthier. I'm not pushing a Christian agenda here, just so you know. I identify myself as Christian, yes. But I don't expect others to be Christian -- and in fact enjoy religious/spiritual diversity in life. There's a large part of me that remains Pagan (I am, after all, part American Indian). In fact, I'm surprised all women aren't at least partly Pagan, because the religion is such a positive one for females.
Now I'm rambling. And I'm discussing religion, which I generally avoid! (grin) I don't like to upset others and I know religion is a sensitive and very personal issue. I don't want to tell others what to believe. And I like hearing about what others believe. My friends have a variety of beliefs and I frequently embrace this diversity. It certainly makes life fuller, after all...
Anyway, Marilyn and I plan to make some life changes. We want to spend more time enjoying our beach house, for example. We haven't spent nearly as much time there this year as we'd expected we would. We're still exploring the change of having two homes and what it means to us. Yes, the beach house is a financial investment for us -- and we need it for that. But we'd like to use it to make our lives happier. We actually relax so much when we're there. Even our cats seem to relax more! It's fascinating...
Again, I'm rambling. I'm just in that sort of mood tonight, I guess.
Wednesday I'm meeting with Taylor (Mitch's brother) to go by Mitch's house. I'm nervous about this and unsure how it will go -- BUT I really feel it's something I need to do. I don't know if it's going to be gross or not (Taylor told me the smell of death in the house was BAD), but I still need to go, even so. I don't know what Taylor will feel comfortable letting me have, but even if it's not much it will matter very much to Marilyn and me...
No dentist appointment this week, which is why I'm free to spend Wednesday on this. Taylor will also be picking up Mitch's ashes and turning them over to us. Part will stay here at our Portland home, part will go to the beach -- the rest we plan to scatter at some point, probably at the beach...
Well, that's it for now. This blog entry is all over the place, but so is my head and my heart right now.