I know I need to get after it and start writing them. As I was blown away that my cousin Jamie came all the way out here from Illinois to attend my aunt's funeral. What makes his sacrifice so meaningful to me is my cousin Jamie is very successful as a professor and he has a wife and three kids. YET he took time out of his busy schedule to fly across country at his expense to bum arround at our house which is in the sticks.
THAT man deserves much more than a thank you note. Will probably send $200 in cash so he can take his family out for a nice dinner on my dime.
My younger cousin Jeff took time to come out and hang out with us for the weekend too following Denny's funeral. Jeff is the youngest of our four cousins. Currenlty he live in Colorado with his wife and two kids. Jeff is a lot of fun to be around, when we were at Saltwater State Park and hunting for rock crab, Jeff was like an overactive little kid flipping all the rock and fearless going after those rock crabs before they had a chance to escape.
For his sacrifice, Jeff deserves much more than just a thank you card. He's going to get a Portillo's gift pack.
My aunt Annette and her husband Jim never fail to amaze. Jim is in his 70s now. When I was younger I was kind of afraid of him, as I vaguely remember him sitting in a recliner chair drinking coke after coke wating TV in the mid-70s. Now, having followed his youngest son to Colorado and been retired for 15+ years Jim is much, much happier than I vaguely remember him from my youth. While he was out here Jim went out of his way to talk to me and try to build up a repore, which he did.
My aunt Annette was very moved my me crying a few times at the funeral. Later she came up to me and said that she would be my aunt Denny now. THAT'S a big heart on display. The big sister who wants to make everything alright. I really admire that about Annette. She has a very big and caring heart. Annette is my mom and Denny's older sister.
For slumming along with us hillers for four days, Annette and Jim deserve much more than a thank you note. They too will be getting a Portillo's Italian beef gift pack.
So its been about four weeks since Denny died, how am I doing? Well, I'm not crying anymore. That's a plus. We JUST had Denny's celebration of life service this past Saturday, and I think Denny would have been pleased by the showing of her friends and goodwill that was in the air that day. My dad even started to patch things up with an old friend of his. We're even invited to his house on Sunday for a barbeque. Opportunity for growth: I USED to avoid social interactions with my dad's friends, but now I think I'll go for it and tag along and TRY to be social.
I'm changing a lot these day. Trying to be more active arround the house doing stuff. When my dad retired I honestly thought that we would go bonkers and take it upon himself to really fix up the rural five acre plot we live on. I was VERY WRONG about that. My dad does little else then mow the grass. He is not interested in doing much if any changes arround the house. So... I gotta take the bull by the horns and get after it, or everthing is going to turn to shit. Wish I had more help, but I gotta do something. I can't just idley sit by and let my dad's place go to shit.
Lately, I've been focusing my efforts on wood cutting. And wouldn't ya know it, I almoast got the bin in the garage completely full of wood. We still have a lot more wood to chainsaw, split and putaway, BUT I've almoast got a key section cleared off, and once's that's done I'm going to call in for a load of gravel to get dumped so I can maintain our 1/4 mile driveway to the main road and keep it free of potholes.
This next weekend I'm going to sit down with my brother and his wife and see where they're at finacially. In the past my brother has gotten behind on his bill and actually had a car repossessed that I had to come up with several thousand dollars to bail him out. Don't ever wanna go through that again. Hence, the proactive step of sitting down and having pizza and disucssing money, and saving for emergencies. My brother has some serioius health concerns. We're lucky he's still alive, so I realy hafta watch myself, I can't stress him out, because he can't handle it and he easily gets overwhelmmed and blows up in mini tanturums. I love my brother, but we are very different people.
While being busy and spending more time outside, I have learned something about myself--I like the sun! Yep, I'm a chlld of son (the Son of God that is), and I love being out in the sun, and trust me that wasn't always the case. But now a days I just can't get enough sun, and when the suns out I feel a burning desire to be outside basking in God's goodness!
I know I need to get back to more intense, content rich, posts. And I hope to do so in the near future. It's just right now I'm experiencing a new birth of sorts. A new E.C. is emerging if you will. He's a more social guy, and more of an outdoorsy typel Sorry, it's just my lot in life dictates that's what I need to being doing right now. Still writing, still ediiting the novel. That's not going to change. Too far in now to quit. Just got approved to take three days off work, next Thursday thorugh the following Tuesday, and I'm planning on going back to the coast and working on the novel there. Really wanna redeem myself and prove that I can go to a writer's retreat and be highly productive. So now I need to fire up my labtop computer and make sure it still works and that Final Draft on it works as well.
Getting kinda late. Gotta go to bed now. Talk to you again soon.
Sincerly,
E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
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