Sylvia's Journal

Flying has been much on my mind since I first woke up at 2 AM and then slept fitfully until I could no longer sleep, anxous to finish the last details on my cross-county trip planning. There is much stuff about flying going through my mind, some re-living of trips made and some prayers of thankfulness. Today looks like a good day for a long trip: blue sky and no wind. Whether it will be like that in Rockland County in Maine is not clear yet.

Yesterday’s bad weather rolled in slowly after noon. It was a chores kind of day. Before heading out west to make music and see their friends Sita and Jim cleaned the downstairs and then took the porch windows off and brought them into the cellar. The windows are old and very heavy and it is such a treat to have someone else do the heavy lifting and hauling.

A large amount of dirt, 4 cubic yard, was dumped on our lawn at the same place where we dumped this amount last year and what became a spectacular weed forest after being neglected for most of the summer. This year’s load will go partially into the half full asparagus bed and provide the rest of the flower beds with some badly needed healthy topsoil. Everything looks a bit anemic.

Putting the porch windows in the cellar reminded me what a mess the place was. Sita and Jim’s stuff was put on top of what was already there and after the crash the cellar had become a workshop of sorts for projects to help us adjust to living in our temporary handicapped state. The cellar had been beckoning as a project for some time now and yesterday we bit the bullet (and lots of dust) and we went to work sorting stuff, throwing much out and organizing all the thousands of little and big things that clutter the place. I lost track of how many times I asked Axel “what’s this for?” or “what’s this called?” There is so much I don’t know about how things are made or what they are made of. I labelled boxes and tins and small drawers so we can actually know what is inside each without having to open everything up. I found proper names for most doohinkies except a few which got their own drawer with ‘dookinkies’ on the label.

Such intense work amidst much dust and mildew and for so many hours left us rather diminished by the end of the day. Axel was in considerable pain and walked like he used to last October. Such a regression is painful to watch but impossible to avoid after several hours of physical labor. It requires a half hour of painful exercises before he can go to bed and hope to wake up in less pain. We have to remember that it has only been 10 months and that such setbacks are to be expected.