I have a longtime friend…I’ll call her Betty. Betty is retired. She was a child and family counselor…and a darned good one. She is kind, gentle, tender in her approach. She was an intuitive therapist. She raised a beautiful family. She had struggles along the way, as we all do. Some of hers were really difficult. But, in the end, she is still with the same loving spouse, and her children are thriving.

I saw something yesterday that totally melted my heart. Daughter #1 is at Disney World with her family and her brother-in-law’s family. She was standing with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. There’s a long story why this was so touching for me.

I was a single mom with #1 by the time she was two years old. It was not easy. We lived in HUD housing. We got WIC and food stamps. There were roaches and the people downstairs abused their kids. I looked in the open door one day when I walked by and my neighbor yelled at me to keep moving or she’d “come up behind me and slit my $&@?ing throat!” It was NOT a healthy scenario and if I had been any brighter or bolder, I would have packed up my stuff and hightailed it back to West Virginia. But that wasn’t what I wanted for my little girl. I wanted her to have every opportunity that I didn’t have growing up and I knew if I worked hard enough, I’d get her out of there. We would have a good life.

This is the part I hate about home improvement projects…living through the mess till it gets finished. I have done this countless times in my life. You can’t avoid it if you are a homeowner. I did this and then some when my mom died and I prepared to sell her house. She wouldn’t let me do anything to her house when she was living because it meant she would have to throw something away. I completely redid the kitchen and bathroom, painted the whole house, and refinished the hardwood floors…all by myself. It’s ever so much more fun to do a project with someone…especially if you work well together as a team. We took yesterday off, went to church, then out to the farm to feed cats. And today we are back at it.

We survived the first day of painting…barely! It wasn’t a problem working together. That part was awesome! We put on ‘70s music and be-bopped around the living room, dancing and singing and having a grand time making each other laugh. Till we had to move the treadmill out of the corner and into the middle of the room to paint around it. The part you walk on folds up and you pull back on the entire thing to make it stand on two wheels. This allegedly makes it move easier. Well, not so on carpet. I bent down and grabbed the front legs and helped Mr. FixIt move this thing several feet. I’m not sure what happened, but when we set the front end down, it came down like a shot and the handles slammed me in the side of the head so hard it literally knocked me off my feet and sent me flying about six feet. It didn’t hurt as bad as it surprised me. And of course, scared Mr. FixIt to death. I laid there on the floor for a couple minutes to let the bells stop ringing in my head and got up. I’m fine, thank God!

Sometimes it’s hard to walk the talk. And sometimes it’s even more difficult to talk the walk. I shied away from Christianity for many, many years after being frightened by a little ol’ banty rooster of a man. He was a circuit preacher, all hellfire and brimstone. As an adult, I can appreciate where that style of preaching is coming from and what affect it has on my spirit. But, as a seven-year-old, it literally scared the pee out of me and I ran in the opposite direction. I walked a long journey away from Jesus. I couldn’t be an atheist because I knew God. It was this Jesus guy that gave me fits. I rectified that by becoming Jewish for 27 years. It wasn’t till I was 51 that I became a Christian. And, even then, I was a closet Christian.

Today is Veteran’s Day. Every Veteran’s Day, I sent Mr. Virgo a note thanking him for his service. His father was a veteran. His late daughter was a veteran. My dad, my uncle, my first husband, my niece, my late father-in-law…all veterans. Mr. Virgo had military honors at his funeral. I cannot hear taps without feeling a catch in my throat. This time of year brings him closer to the surface.

OMGosh! I broke my absolute cardinal rule yesterday and…gasp…bought a piece of furniture! I know, I know…you all were with me when I downsized and I absolutely SWORE I would never accumulate “stuff” again. BUT…things are different now. A lot different. I’m not living in a camper, for one thing. For the last three years, my desktop computer has been riding in my camper, under the bed, in an airtight plastic storage tub. There have been numerous times I’ve needed to use it and I have to go out, prop up the bed, haul it out, and put it away when I’m done. Ok, ok…I’m rationalizing. Here’s what happened.

I’ve always loved to sit in front of a nice fire with a cup of tea, a comforter, and a stack of magazines. I haven’t had a stove or fireplace to sit in front of since my youngest was a baby. She’s twenty-seven. We are fortunate to have free gas at the farm so we have a couple ventless gas stoves to ward off the chill in the far reaches of the house. But they don’t look like a wood stove and are situated where sitting near them is impossible. I was delighted when Mr. FixIt showed me his house for the first time. This gas stove sits in the family room and is perfect for getting cozy on a cold, wet November afternoon.

Mr. Fixit is doing some cleaning up and updating at his house. We make a really good team working on projects together and he is constantly amazed at the things I can do. I think it really shocked him at first when I did jobs around the farm that may have been labeled “men’s work” in an earlier time. He’ll still watch me do something and shake his head. I usually look at him and say “What?!” He’ll laugh and say, “You amaze me, that’s all. You’re a remarkable woman!” I love that. I love being considered a remarkable woman by a man I greatly admire. It makes me feel both feminine and empowered at the same time.

I watched the news last night and was reminded why I don’t watch the news. The sadness in my gut, the fear in the front of my mind, the sorrow for families of loved ones lost to senseless tragedy is unbearable. The news came through an alert on my cell phone as we left church yesterday. I grabbed Mr. Fixit’s hand and shared. His jaw clenched as he gripped my hand, silently taking it all in. Thinking…no doubt…that it could have been us.