The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

It’s been a week of ups and downs, a bit of a roller coaster ride of emotions. Let’s start with the good, the ups.

After mostly failing at a do-nothing day (link here to blog post), I listened to some of the advice received (thank you!) and tried again. No, not a completely do-nothing day, not a full day in PJ-s, not vegging out watching mindless TV.  But a few easier to-dos checked off and then an afternoon indulging in a mystery, the kind you know will be solved by the end of the book. Plus, it has a strong female investigator, a character I’m enjoying learning about. It was book 6 in an 18-book series, so I hope to continue to enjoy her. And the day felt both calming and replenishing.

Another good was I spent lots of time doing my garden club’s Big Plant Sale fundraiser. Yes, a distraction from thinking about the house, but it’s also something I do enjoy doing, even though it’s extremely tiring. It involved lots of hours with plants from the sale prep to the actual sale itself. Prepping was about 8 hours – naming, pruning, pricing, placing on display, and even some repotting. The sale day was also about 8 hours – finishing the pre-sale prep, talking about plants and helping people pick what might work best in their yards, then cleaning it all up. I’m surprised sometimes how much I have learned about our local plants.

Another good moment, but a bit bad as well. That picture in the header is the pile-driving equipment on our house site. It showed up (good) and immediately broke down (bad).  It felt like, “Really? Something else going wrong, out of my control? Will we ever get a good break?” It took two days for them to fix the equipment; yes, on site with lots of trucks and the equipment in pieces all over the yard. But as of yesterday, we had 19 of the 24 pilings driven in. So, we are officially started on the build, in the middle of step one. And very much hoping step one will be complete soon!

The ugly. We had an early morning ICE “police” raid on our apartment complex.  It started with repeated pounding on the door with men yelling, “Open up, come out, open the door, you need to open the door.” Is it our door?  The neighbor’s door?  I can’t tell. But there’s multiple very loud voices echoing in the entry way. I peek out the front window and there are 5 unmarked cars blocking the parking area and 10 people in tactical gear with guns wandering about. They are not in uniforms (jeans and t-shirts, not a police uniform in sight) and have lots of guns – I’m no gun expert but it looks like each person has both an automatic machine gun and hip holster gun. I simply cower in our apartment, window shades down, doors locked. There have been too many reports of the wrong apartment being targeted, shootings made before questions asked. No, I do not know if/who they might have taken; I hid inside, shaking in fear. And yes, I feel guilty for hiding in fear, as I think about the phrase, “and then they came for me.”

So, there was this week. The good, the bad, the ugly. I know many people have much more trying things to be dealing with. I’m certainly not the target for ICE (as an old white woman), we will have a new house built (eventually), and I have a strong support group to lean on. And, I believe acting on the advice I received about replenishing myself has definitely helped. Again, thank you.

How was your week? Hopefully good and not bad or ugly.

Picture Credit: me. As mentioned, pile-driving equipment on site. Yay.

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