Yes I Am

another year older as of today.  I used to think that life would get easier as I got older and am still somewhat resentful that it seems to get more...er...challenging.

One solace I have found is in this relationship I have had with what Riley and I call our Wolf Head

which is a piece of drift wood in the beaver dam on our cottage lake.  For the last three years we regularly go and check on our wolf.  Early mornings in our kayaks with no other destination, we decide to check on our wolf.  This summer we found him with some moss growing on him which, to me, makes some of his features more pronounced.  I am now seeing more of coyote (hello Wile E.) than a wolf and laughing at myself for all that coyote brings in.

This turn around the sun finds me less aware of a kind of celebration to mark the change in my chronological year and more in a retrospective of how I have spent my last year and what I would like to be spending my precious time on in the coming year and beyond.

Which is why I can hardly believe that all I can tell you with certainty today is:

1)   I hate my computer.  I hate its tortoise-like processing, how I can ask it, very nicely, to do something and come back after making and eating a sandwich to find it still whirring away, despite cleaning out caches and the hard drive and desk top.  The green part of me hates it being five years old and obsolete, the practical side of me hates my debt load and poverty mindset that prevents me from upgrading;

2)  proudly, this past the weekend I, alone, hauled our pedal boat out of the lake, emptied the accumulated water inside and stood it up against a trio of trees for the winter;

3) in the last few days I allowed myself to be bullied by a nasty neighbour to fill in a trench dug on MY OWN PROPERTY with nothing but a snow shovel and bits of sand, to save my driveway from being washed away (again) after an expensive repair last year; the humiliation of this is still overwhelming.

The sum total of what I can declare for certain is sore muscles, a sense of a minor victory and crushing defeat.

What I wish during my next trip around the sun is finding the words to speak my truth always, to find more kindness for myself and others and so much more that defies words.