Busy as a Beaver

Busy as a Beaver

I managed to catch this image last fall as the pesky thing was storing up branches for winter food. I took over twenty shots to get one good one, which is pretty standard for my photographs. And as good a place as any for me to start. This is my very first post. I've been reading and occasionally commenting on other people's efforts for a while, wondering if I really wanted or needed to do this. The best blogs I've found have been those of mothers with very young children (and I'm about to turn sixty-five with a three year old granddaughter), science fiction aficionadas (I'm an addict) and custom carpenters. What in heaven's name does that range of interests tell anyone. It's taken me a while to decide to stick my prose out.

I have also decided to omit all references to my husband except for the most superficial, because he is a very private man and it would both hurt and horrify him to find himself discussed on line. I've been following the debate on several blogs about how much to reveal about family, especially husbands and minor children (see a garden of nna mmoy), and I've found some really excellent discussion and thinking about it. Tentative conclusion is that my daughters will have to take their chances, and the granddaughter can be disguised. But what this space needs to do is give me a voice of my own as I cope with becoming a certified senior, a far too busy volunteer, an on-call grama and, I am very much afraid, a senior with increasing health issues.

Back to Mary the beaver and her pile of sticks. I do a small graphics business out of a home office, and the whole office is strewn with piles of stuff to be filed, sorted and rationalized. Four or five binders from the board of directors of a local organization where I'm vice chair (and the chair is in Arizona, sniff) balance precariously on top of the first stratum. The basement is full of laundry. I have a ToDo list headed "Find the ToDo lists". I need to clean the freezer before I run out of cold weather. My kitchen drawers would not impress Martha. I have lived in this house for twelve years and I still do not have doors or trim on most of the rooms. I need to paint this spring; bedroom, bathrooms, two porches, one huge deck, half of which appears here. I want a vacation. All of the above are irrelevant and can be ignored, except the vacation. I'm tired. It would be a lot simpler to pile up some books and branches and take to the den.

Books have always been my best friends, therapy, indulgence. I'll give anything in print a try and I read over and over again favourites like Tolkien, Jane Austen, Dorothy Sayers. I read all of the display ads in the two daily papers we take. I read signs along the highway. Finding the blogging community is just a new form of that addiction. I'm not sure what writing a blog myself is going to be about, but this form of reading is not a one way street. I find myself writing very differently when what I write could be read and responded to. I think this is what I need right now. Whether the blogging world needs me is quite a different matter. Time to get brave, publish this and get on with the next thing.

Note: May edit

I have just removed some references to my husband from this post. I have done this because I have decided to take the blog public and he may ask to read it.