Taking Responsibility Part 4

Downtime

So the last few days have seen me being busy caring for my sick partner who has been laid up in bed with her back. She's a good patient for the first day or so, and then she has had enough and wants to be up and about so it's a fight to make her rest and get better :-)

I in turn have injured my knee. I must have twisted it working on the gully behind the cottage, and then on a dog walk Hector the whippet collided with it at top speed when he came back to Frankie's whistle but couldn't stop in time. Hector is fine apparently; my knee is not. I am investigating turmeric as an anti-inflammatory agent, and a good supporting sports bandage.

Fun and games too dealing with another blizzard snowing us in - that's the second one in as many weeks. Not quite as bad as the last one when Storm Emma met the Beast from the East, but it was enough to shut most things down here. I spent an entire morning just ferrying hay out to the animals in the fields, all the time enjoying it because it is happy work feeding the grateful animals, but always aware that I am playing at this and in all previous history this was life and death work. Also: falling over in the snowdrifts while carrying bales of hay is good fun if a little painful on the bad knee.

Chores. 'A man may work from sun to sun; A woman's work is never done.' So many chores to do. So I guess for a couple of days I get to play at being both Judy and I and do almost (but not quite) all of our combined chores. It's a grind, but now I feel that I know everything there is to know about our house and land, and I have a strangely different sense of stewardship of it now. I wonder if Judy feels something similar whenever I am laid up in bed and she has to do my list of chores? Probably not.

As well as dealing with all of the animals there are also repairs due to the storms - snow and wind create problems that we don't usually get. The snow is powdery so it manages to blow in everywhere - into the hen house; into the nesting boxes; into the loft; in the door when the dogs go in or out; into the porch and into all of the boots we store there... Things almost immediately need repairing - the guttering bends under the weight of the snow; the spring water flows fast past the cottage and needs keeping within its channel; some trees and branches are downed; the drive/lane up to the main road needs digging out so that we can get out by car if we need to.

Then there is travel time to pick up our son from camp. The roads are shut and the bridge over the estuary into England is down to one lane due to high winds and so is jammed with traffic, but by the time I have done all of the chores, the roads are open and the bridge is flowing nicely when we head over. It's a winter wonderland once more, and we all talk about how late the snow was one time in our youths too. He has had a brilliant time on camp and rates the activities as among the best he has ever done. He gets home and has a warm bath before winding down with a book and then bedtime. He and I have a great father and son chat about questions he now has about some of the things he has experienced. I feel ever more validated as a dad.

Judy is back on her feet now, and Frankie is home again. The animals are fed and the dogs have been walked. I am a couple of hours into a major repair and maintenance of a part of the house that we haven't touched for several years. It feels good to be this busy, even though I want to be posting about my other work goals to Steemit. I feel disappointed that I am not accomplishing my stated goals yet. But I feel grounded and calm in the midst of being so busy. That has to rate highly, right? Especially in the light of the things that are coming, starting off calm and grounded, and determined to just do it and get the jobs completed, feels like a good place to be.

The Daily will start up tomorrow, Tuesday 20th March 2018. My motto is going to be 'Just do all of the jobs'. ;-) I've set myself a hefty set of goals and tasks, and now it's all about the fun I will have trying to get them all done.