A Monday meander

Entering the woods.

A Night Full of Talking

A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.

~ Rumi, From “A Year With Rumi: Daily Readings”

Foggy morning in the woods.

The weather is crazy today.  There are wind and flood advisories, small craft advisories, and a gale warning in effect.  Do you get the impression it’s windy?  Just about every time I’ve checked the weather over the past week or two, there has been a small craft warning or advisory so I’m guessing this is not the time of year to be out on the water.  The ferries are not running today.  I haven’t checked but there are probably restrictions on the bridges that connect us to the mainlands north and south.  There usually are when it’s this windy.  The rain, heavy at times, has been coming at us sideways.

The softness of morning fog.

Since it is too wet and blustery to be out meandering around today, I brought you some photos from my weekend walks.  Yesterday the clouds came to visit the earth in the form of fog, and blanketed everything for much of the day.  I love the magical mystery of fog.  It changes the look of the landscape, and you never know what might appear from out of the mist.

Loblollies and oaks whispering their secrets to each other.

As you might recall, we are in the midst of another renovation project.  M and I have done our part (removing wallpaper, tearing out the old flooring, repairing or replacing drywall, installing new lighting, and a little painting), and today we have a couple of men here doing their part.  The heavy lifting, you might say.  They will be installing the new tub, the vanity, the walls around the tub, and work on the plumbing (some of which will have to be moved since the sink will be situated across the room from where the old sink was).  It is a day of noise and messiness as they remove the old tub and walls, and a day of making decisions.  Even though M and I made what we thought were all the decisions we needed to make regarding this remodel, something always comes up.  And it did, even before the guys got started.  A question regarding the shower fixtures we were hoping to use (something outside of the usual box and bathroom design).  It can’t be done.  So.  We have had to rethink and readjust our design.  It was a small thing, but those small things often make a difference.

An old wagon.

The bathroom guys won’t be able to do all they were scheduled to do today.  The material for the walls is on back order.  They should have it by Wednesday, and they will come back on Friday to take care of the walls.  The top for the vanity will not be installed for a few weeks.  You might remember that we were able to get a remnant piece of quartz for the top, and the guys will be making a template today so the top can be cut to accommodate the sink and faucets, and to fit the top of the cabinets that make up the vanity.

From Friday’s walk through the meadows.

After the bathroom guys complete their part, M and I will have to go back to work installing the flooring and the new toilet, and we will finish up the painting.  We didn’t do all of the painting because we figure the guys are going to be making a mess.  It can’t be helped when there is demolition involved.  Better to let them do what they need to do, and then we can clean up and fix everything later.

The grasses are making a comeback in the meadows.

I will bring you some before and after pictures once it’s all finished.  The bathroom, like the rest of the house when we began this adventure, was in bad shape.

Bowing in the light.

The great news is that the bathroom is the last of the major renovations.  Almost three years after moving in, we’ll have the worst of it done.  The rest is almost easy-peasy.  Clean up the office and master bedroom, remove some wallpaper in the foyer, do a little repair work on the walls, slap on some fresh paint in the office, master bedroom, and foyer, and voila!  The Big Renovation Project will finally be completed.   Then we can focus more on the great outdoors.  If you’ve been following me for a while, you know what a mess that was (more than 7 tons of trash hauled away to date).  Every winter we find more trash as the ground pushes it up.  We recently found some construction trash in the woods.  And there are the ubiquitous Coors Light cans.  We are still finding them just about everywhere.  Someone drank a lot of Coors Light beer, leaving a trail of cans everywhere.  I bet they’ll still be rising up from the ground twenty years from now.

Light and feathery.

I took a little time to meander around my blog neighborhood, so to speak.  Here are some great finds:

• Dawn writes about Respect (and brings us some wonderful images to go with her prose).
• I always find seagulls entertaining.  Daily Musings brings us some great images of them in her Seagull Sunday post.
• A few great posts about the Women’s March from different places and different perspectives:  Eliza, Corina, and Merril.
• #Sorrynotsorry.  Because.
• Something Graceful.
• Just for today.

Hanging over the pond.

I reckon that’s it for today’s meander.  Thank you for stopping by and rambling along with me.  It is highly unlikely we will see a sunset tonight, but if it should clear, I’ll race ya down to the Point.  All this wind and rain have probably left their mark on the beach and it will be interesting to see how the weather has redecorated.  Sunset is scheduled for 5:16 PM.  Arrive early so we can take a little walk before the sunset show.

Wind dancing in the meadow grasses.

Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just Be.  🙂

On the way out of the meadow.

A few of the 10,000 reasons to be happy:  96)  The howling, moaning, singing sounds of the wind.  97)  Raindrops racing down the windows.  98)  Another step towards finishing the Great Renovations.  99)  Interesting conversations with the interesting people who are here to help with the bathroom.  100)  The luxury of having a home, no matter how badly it was trashed when we bought it.