Drats, No Watercolor Trees Here :)

Of course, not everything is just peachy keen here at Hobbit Cottage. Wouldn't want you to get any false impressions.

Tom is still not well. Still not sleeping, still dealing with an irritable bowel kind of thing and various pains keeping him awake. 

And of course, it's hard for me not to worry about him so that does darken these days, days already dark outside because nearly all have been cloudy since our arrival. But finally I've convinced Tom to go see his general doctor on Monday. 

And we still don't have a refrigerator for various reasons, some having to do with Tom's being sick. So this means lots of running up and down the basement stairs to the freezer down there, and defrosting things in little bowls of water and coming up with new ideas and not being able to bake, really, because we can't keep eggs and eating out of cans and- -

Well, you know.

And I keep getting up around 3:30 a.m. (or earlier) because, not being used to actual hard labor, I fall into bed at 7:30 each night. 

Also, one of the main reasons I wanted to leave the farm was that every time a bit of wind blew through the yard I'd have to drag myself around to pick up hundreds of branches (oh, my back). Well, when we lived in the suburbs before, our yard had no large trees so my silly head made a sort of  "in the suburbs, branches do not fall out of trees" connection.

Ha. 

On our second night here? Thunder, lightning, wind shook us and guess what I discovered out the back door? Tons of downed twigs and branches. Alas. 

But you know? Overall, my life is simpler here at Hobbit Cottage and I am re-learning to concentrate on what is going right. And finding creative solutions to problems I can fix, learning to live with the ones I can't--and knowing the difference.

I mean, at least Tom isn't having to go to work while feeling this way and thankfully, our house and yard are small enough for me to tackle alone when the need arises. And I can easily shop for food just down the street and I've lost a little weight and--

We all have trials. Problems. But what matters most? It's what we do about them. How we view them and speak about them. What matters is that we keep our joy and not become big whiners. 

I'm sure God's already got His quota filled with those. ツ


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Something else nifty? We can see a river from our front porch. Well, a couple tiny bits of it (the cars in this photo are in the way right now), but hey. I'll take it. 

Always, I've wished to live near a river and someday when I stop wearing myself out around the house I'll take walks down there.


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"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."    ... Robert Louis Stevenson 

"The joy of the Lord is my strength..."  Nehemiah 8:10


"And be ye thankful..."
 
 
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