Finally...

A bit of peace.  Most of the equipment work from next door seems to have ended.  The hideous mounds of concrete pieces and garbage have been mostly hauled off.  The awful and intrusive sport court lights have been off by 10:30 each night.  My stress and tension levels have reduced.  It feels so much better.

That doesn't mean I'm not still a cranky old lady.  But I'm trying hard not to be.

My wrist has been acting up again, which makes me anxious.  I've been asked to accompany a couple singers for the 18th of December Sacrament meeting.  It's a familiar song in an unfamiliar key.  This morning I slathered my wrist with some blue emu.  And this evening slapped a (four years expired) SalonPas patch on it for several hours.  Right now it feels ok, but that's the way of it - hurts at unexpected times, like when I'm trying to lift something (like a pot or mildly heavy box or twist my curling iron).  I'm going to baby it for a while.  I've begun to suspect it's how I'm sleeping on it at night.  Now I have to be aware during my sleep of how I hold my hand and remain alert enough to change position.  That'll be interesting.

The mums are gone.  😔  We've had several nights in a row of temps in the teens.  And while the color was still mostly that lovely vibrant yellow we've loved, bedraggled is the best word for how they looked.  Bending over almost flat on the ground they weren't looking their best.  But this year we had them for several weeks and I loved seeing them every time I drove past, or went out for the mail.  We need to get some pine needles from the back all raked up so we can use that as mulch for the over-wintering and hope it works as well this next season as it did the last.  Those mums were an impulse buy that we never placed huge amounts of expectations in, but have thoroughly enjoyed them. 

The front yard has been raked.  It looks great.  Until the last of the leaves and cones fall.  The hawthorne tree hasn't shed a single leaf it seems, and those are tiny leaves that are hard to remove.  The tricolor beech dropped all of its leaves in a single day.  It was the funniest thing to watch.  That stairwell area is the most challenging of our yard to clean up.  But I've learned that doing it in the fall is much better than waiting until spring.  Though the lazy part of me always wants to wait until spring, even though it's a harder task then.

And I came across this article that I loved.  (I've discovered several pictures of articles over the last couple months that I meant to reference here but somehow when so much time has passed I no longer have the inclination.) Gratitude  

Plans are in full swing for Thanksgiving.  I think there'll be nine of us. Which is manageable, though I know I'll be knackered by the end of the day.  I'm grateful to be doing dinner and not breakfast, also.  We did that to be able to see more of our family, but that time has passed.  I'm no longer up for doing that much work, the dinner has me working plenty.  So grateful for thoughtful children - all three of the ones coming instantly asked what they could bring.  It'll be a more low-key day than in the recent years and I'm ready for that, it means more just "hanging out" than pressure to put on some fabulous event - something I'm truly incapable of doing.  I'm hoping everyone is ok with that.

We've had something going every day this week.  It's a decent amount of busy.  Not overwhelming.  Hoping for just the right amount of busy for a while.  

And grateful today for some of the yard work behind us.  The Husband says he doesn't mind it (and it surely seems to not bother his back as much as it bothers mine) but I dislike leaving it all to him.  Raking outside in the 40 degree (or so) sunshine was good for both of us, our souls enjoyed it.