June 25^th, 2026

I had to remind myself what year this is before I typed that. Just a small window into the mess that my brain has become this last while. And not only my brain.

 I found and brought forward this photo of my, as a much younger and stronger woman, bringing pails of sap in to boil into syrup. There should be a title, something to do with life making you lug things around. Suggestions?

I am surrounded, today as I sit at my computer, by: stacks of paper; minutes to go into the minute book, requests for money from charities we favour; medical reports; financial records for the file; a pile or two for my husband; all the rest.  And goodness knows what ‘all the rest’ will turn out to be. I have to clear this up and sort it before I can sort what I am prepared to lose of all my precious ‘stuff’. You never know, right, when you will need a gold-edged certificate page or quick-finish glue or a mid-sized manila envelope.

I have done a first and less than drastic sort of the basement storage, my clothes and the china cabinet. It is time to hit the bookshelves and drawers and storage in this, my office. Well, at least it now has a door.

It was just a year ago that JG informed me that he had hired a finish carpenter to finish the carpenting in the house. Since we moved in, only my bathroom has had ‘finishing’ and so I have been looking, for over a quarter century now, at structural wood in the doorways, pipes and wires in the downstairs ceiling, subfloor on the stair landing, more but you can envision the level. This slow and patient carpenter framed in and built the hall downstairs and put in the ceiling. He put doors on my office and my storage cupboard (I cheered) and finished the stairway  floor. Then, sadly, he got sick and had to leave and we still have some cleanup to do.

Another extreme cleanup is underway this morning. My neighbour who is doing this is, she tells me, a ‘detail’ person. There is a lot of detail on that porch, pollen and dust carried in by the wind. It settles, sticks and is in crevices and cracks everywhere. She started right after breakfast and as I write this, just short of noon, she is tackling the worst of the accreted dirt on her hands and knees. She is worth her weight in shiny gold coins.

The two things I am doing for a peaceful future are these – divesting myself of things and locating people who can take over the things I no longer am able to do. JG is doing the same. We are considering divesting ourselves of some of the land, but that is a story all on itself.

And writing this is not getting anything sorted.