1450 Changing Direction

Friday, August 24, 2007

This journal is going to change direction, from personal to ... something else. Maybe philosophical. I don't know.

When I started blogging, back in June of 2004, I was just coming out of the isolation I had gone into when Jay died. I had so much I had to say, but no one I could say it to. After the three isolating years of our battle with his brain cancer, and three years of my grief, there was no one I was close to. No one whose life intersected mine. (There was Daughter, but I couldn't dump all this on her - she was TOO close.)

The journal (which started on AOL, at http://journals.aol.com/jaykolb/Moraine/) helped me to deal with feelings I needed to look at and purge. Because it was all about my thoughts and feelings, I was very open (I am normally anyway), and that openness has continued.

But now my life is different. There are other people involved now. My feelings are now bound up in the actions of and intersections with others, and maybe it's not fair to involve them so much in my journal.

I don't know how to avoid that yet, but I'll have to learn.

Now, the past three days, without mentioning anyone else (difficult!): Wednesday I went to NJ. I had a very good time Wednesday night. Thursday afternoon I visited with Daughter. Got home in the evening and found several calls on my home machine. Returned calls. Today, Friday, I went to the county fair. Met a friend at noon, and we spent the next ten hours visiting every animal barn, every display tent, every retail kiosk, and every food stand. Must have walked many miles! I was wearing walking shoes, and my feet feel like they are about to fall off.

In the antique farm machinery area they have, among other machines, a huge burping saw that makes cedar shingles. Watching it, I mentioned to the friend that I had always wanted to take some of the cedar shreds, "useless" byproduct of the shingle process, to put in net bags in my drawers and closet. Well, purely by chance, at the end of the building they had huge 40-gallon bags of cedar shavings - one fine and one coarse - for $2 a bag! I bought the bag of fine.

Next year I'll have to send out a mental request for smaller bags. 40 gallons of cedar shreds is still wood, and a LOT of wood. The bag was heavy. Maybe 40 pounds. I was lucky to have a friend along to get it to the car.

This is the first year since 1999 that I have had company at the fair. I had always gone alone.
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