life goes on...

despite my coughing. the health report for the day. getting better. the z-pack is working like a charm, my spit is now a nice clear colour. that is over 24 hours now. no vomit for 24 hours as well. fingers crossed. still hacking my hole off (as my friend sandra would say, perhaps some canadian catch phrase, but it seems to apply). yesterday i decided to venture into the trails of north bivouac. it wasn't my best hike of the week. it was beautiful, but i had a tickle in the throat incident that led to some trailside wretching and puking. very attractive. i also had another incident both embarrassing and uncomfortable. as you can see blossom struggles above to get out of the heavy wet snow. coughing makes ones need to void more urgent. i tried to get off trail to use the natural facilities. well the snow is like thigh deep. dropped my drawers and fell into the snow. i was a bit wet and cold post trailside pee and it made for a less than pleasant walk to the car. thank god for my skhoop, it's like the skirt when you kayak, a privacy zone. came home and took a shower, followed by a nap. have watched alot of "the big bang" reruns over the past week. they still make me laugh so that is helpful. it's the little things in life. took 2 more nights off. have given up for the week and will try again next week anew. i know i've complained all week about my bronchitis, but it's just boredom. really, i know i have a fabulous life and that my pets live better than a great percentage of people i share this earth with. my home, by american standards, is a pretty humble abode, but i know that in some countries 4 familes would happily share this small space with it's indoor plumbing, heat and electricity. it would be a dream. my friend marcia called today. can't recall how it came up but as we get older we begin to see our parents as the actual people that they are. love my mom, but i was recalling a conversation i'd had with her several times while talking to marcia. my mom was complaining about thier financial woes. somehow she seemed to believe that God should bless her financially. she was angry that despite her paying tithes and such, god wasn't blessing her.
in the church i grew up in, at least the wards we attended, it seemed there was a bit of this undercurrent that if you were good, god made you rich or i guess that if you were rich it was because you were good. this was not a religious doctrine, more of a social idea. i expressed to my mom that it seemed blasphemous to expect god to bless you in certain ways. she was blessed. she has 7 healthy kids. we are all doing reasonable well in our lives, hold jobs and all that. we were never homeless, we always had food and clothing. if you believe in a god then i think you should also accept that this god knows better than you what it is you need. god is who decides how you will be blessed, it is up to you to be grateful for whatever blessings come your way.
loved my mom, but in a few areas i found later in life, she could have improved. i think she had in her head at a young age how her life would play out and then lived with the disappointment of it not playing out that way. this disappointment in turn became anger at my dad for failing her. life changes and i believe a huge part of our growth on this earth is our ability to adapt to the changes. life doesn't always follow some set path. you could wallow in it or you could just adapt and find a new path to happiness. in my early teen years my mom complained to me alot about she and my dads marriage issues. i had a tough relationship with my dad as it was and i remember being in the car with her yet again when this started up. i recall i finally just looked at her and said something like, " if you are this unhappy, then get a divorce, but you have to stop talking to me about all this, he is my dad". my dad and i did have a rocky relationship. i eventually made my peace with it. i decided that he was an excellent father, but i would have liked having a daddy. i am jealous of girls who have the dads who dote on them. my father was perpetually critical. i never did anything right. eventually, i realized that even though he could never say how he felt he was actually happy with how i turned out and even a little proud. i'm so happy that he was able to visit me in alaska. i could totally tell that he loved his time here and i knew then that he was pretty excited about who i'd become. that i was independant and living a life that brought me happiness. of the two of them, he was ultimately the one who most accepted me for who i was. as for the father part, he worked very hard every day, set aside his dreams, in order to keep a family of 7 fed, clothed and housed. he never drank, smoked, gambled, slept around or beat us up. he was everything his father hadn't been able to be for him. his reality was just different than my moms. from where my dad came from in his life, he was a huge success. my mom had just came from such a different world. he never had a chance. funny how people end up together. i've decided much of love is luck. luck wasn't my friend when it came to love, but having watched my parents marriage...being alone seems a better choice than being in a marriage that brings unhappiness. not sure why i'm dwelling on the parents marriage tonight. people across the globe live these lives that look different to those outside than the reality is. i think my insight comes from being the youngest. the dynamics just change. i see pictures of them when they were younger, who were those people?
one day i decided to paint my bedroom. this was another day when i got insight into my mom and dads relationship. my mom constantly complained about our house and all the work it needed. i bought paint and supplies for less than $25 and the room was painted and looked much better after one day of painting. my mom never took that initiative to just do the little things to improve the house, she just waited for it to be done for her. when i realized how little effort it actually took, it changed how i viewed the dynamics of the relationship they had. before that i had blamed my dad for all, finally i saw that they both had flaws. probably opened the door for my dad to recover our relationship somewhat. my mom should have just taken some responsibilty for her own happiness. there was stuff she could have done, she just didn't think it was her responsibility. my parents are both gone now. no more chances to repair any relationships. i felt pretty good at the time of thier deaths that we were okay. my dad and i weren't to part with the warm, fuzzy relationship i had once hoped for, but we had come to understand each other and respect each other. they were just two people who met, married and had a family. they were dealing the best they knew how with what had been flung at them. overall, they did okay. we were raised with all that we needed. though my teens years were rough, the early years had more laughter and love. there are still questions that i come up with that i wish i would have asked them. i wish i could have heard more about my dads early days in life, but he never spoke freely about such things and i wasn't capable of asking. it occurs to me that it may be the hycodan taking me down memory lane. like truth serum.luckily for me my dogs do not have opposable thumbs, lord knows the things they have observed about me. living alone you don't get that check and balance that comes with living with others and being observed. the roads were supposedly icy today so i opted to stay close to home. the coughing is exhausting and i have slept more than usual. only woke once last night with a coughing spasm so it's all improving as i said. life with bronchitis. soon i will just have a dry nagging cough that will last another several weeks and then it will be gone too. rio joined us on a walk in the bog. in the picture above you can see the shine of the ice that is now the surface of everything. i about killed myself when i ventured out to check the mail tonight.
i am extremely grateful to whomever took a shovel to the entrance to the bog at the end of my street. before we had a mountain to climb over. a bit rough for rio i think. happily some kind soul cleared the path and put a few snow steps in. sweet! there are nice people everywhere. life does go on beyond my bronchitis. not always good stuff. just makes me simple life seem all the better. some guy in utah lost custody of his kids and proceeded to go after them with a hatchet before blowing up the house with him and them inside. the poor case worker who was there to supervise the visit had the door slammed in her face and stood helplessly by. those poor kids and that poor woman. it's just unfathomable that anyone could do that to thier own children. i mean how could you do that to anyone, but your kids?
more close to home a 3 year old is dead and the 1 year old sibling hospitalized due to severe neglect. they were apparently naked in a bedroom that had the window open to the severe weather outside. in barrow, where this occured, the temps were like -30 or something. obviously alot that nobody will know happening in that house. it always leaves me thinking...why do people like this have children at all? in other sad news, an 18 year old barista was taken from the stand she was working at. that was over a week ago with no apparent leads that i've heard reported. that can't be good. blossom with her kitty cat. she tries to act indifferent but i think secretly she really likes her miss breezy chatterbug. my hycodan is making me sleepy, soon i will be snoring away like miss rio catalina is right now...well hopefully not as loudly as she is. love watching the animals sleep. always makes me feel thier peace. they have a happy life and have no expectations. they are what they are, they live day by day, minute by minute. the other night rio was dreaming and her tail was wagging. love when they wag in thier dreams. makes me think i must be doing right by them. raising good dogs is much easier than kids, less at stake, but it's still fun in it's own way. my readers digest arrived today, as did my alaska magazine. don't think i'll get much read before i'm out. thanks for visiting. always fun checking my stats. peace...out...