Hi everyone,
A catchup post here. I think the last time I posted was on Friday evening, right? It feels like it was a terribly long time ago.
If I forgot to say it, Friday included a lunchtime trip to the Blood Bank. You know how much I love that sort of thing. It's hard to explain why: it's a feeling of giving everything away as a total freebie (1 Corinthians 13:3 may or may not be on point). Of course, it's not everything, Really it's only about a litre or so of fluid. I'm not even sure how one would give everything away. Still, better to do a part-job than none at all I guess.
Yesterday was a beautiful Spring-like day. Michael had come up on Thursday and Little Sister last night. Michael had procured several bags of insulation with the intention of installing same in the roof and so he and I spent most of the day doing just that.
I'm proud to say that I did the work well. Every time I get to exercise my inner Hank Hill I do feel a bit proud of it. I think perhaps because for much of the time we were together that was the sort of non-useless man that the ex wanted to be married to. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that she had to divorce me for me to become the man I think she wanted (needed?) her husband to be.
While I was up in the roof wrestling with insulation batts I had some time to think about that whole subject, and in particular whether I can or should re-partner some day. Truth is, I still take the idea of marriage-as-sacrament seriously enough to feel markedly uncomfortable about finding someone new: such a relationship can't help but be a betrayal of a promise I made and was part of. I don't think worse of someone who views things differently, but when it comes to my own actions I have to take my own conscience seriously. Moreover, the men in my life have tended to be pretty hopeless at relationships as well, and it seems a poor thing to inflict that on someone else. There's no point selling someone a Maserati when you know the motor came out of a Trabant, as it were.
Today was a cooler morning that warmed up to another beautiful day. I brought up another couple of barrows of firewood and also attended to other clean-up-straighten-up tasks about the place. Fran went to get Mum from the hospital at about 11am as she had day leave to go for lunch. I'm pleased to say that she's doing well. That is, her hand is still limited, but her leg is doing well (she could transition from car to wheelchair very effectively, for example) and her mind and humour are good. We (well, Michael) cooked up a barbeque lunch for her which went down really well. And, she was genuinely happy to see the cat and the dog again.
Me with a ring-tailed possum I rescues from the cat last night
Little Sister took her back to the Hospital about 3pm and she (Sister) continued on to Melbourne from there. I took the opportunity to head out for a long run: the Shepparton Half Marathon is next weekend and my preparation for it has been almost non existent, what with SES training, mum and the icy weather. Anyway, I bashed out 17kms at an average pace of under 6 mins/km which is much better than I'd hoped for. It was my first decent outdoors run in what felt like forever. It felt heavenly to have some alone time where my brain didn't have time to think much and to just enjoy the feeling of strength in my legs and the sun on my shoulders.
TV was a wasteland tonight, so I put on Master & Commander for Dad. I think it's the first time he's seen a Russell Crowe movie and I must say I think he enjoyed it. I certainly did: for one thing I'd forgotten just what a talented director Peter Weir really is. Weir seems to have the knack of making viewers forget the film is being directed. Baz Luhrmann, by contrast, seems to take a kind of pride in presenting movies where one can almost feel the director pulling the strings: the real star, you could say, is the puppet-master. Both approaches have their merit, but given a choice I'd prefer Weir over Luhrmann.
No more for now. Back to work tomorrow. Hope all is well with you!
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