Pictures!

Hi!  It's a GORGEOUS day here in northeastern Minnesota but cool (10 degrees last I looked), but the sun promises to warm everything up and cause more melt-melt-melting today!

I am going to post pictures of the finches and some other stuff, but, first, I wanted to comment on something I received in my Inbox this morning from an old, automated calendar:  today is the 2 year anniversary of what I now term The Beginning of the End!

It was March 11, 2009 when the ex had his horrible bike (bicycle) accident while out visiting friends in Sedona, Arizona.  Five "shattered" ribs, a badly broken clavicle, and a collapsed lung.  But, why The Beginning of the End?

Well, that January, he'd expressed the need to go somewhere to "find himself".  He thought he might find the answers he needed among the red rocks of Sedona.  But, the second day there, he had this accident and I was flying out to help him through his 5-day hospital stay . . . followed by several days at the home of the friends' there who'd he'd been visiting . . . and then, when the doc approved him for travel, the slow, 5-day drive home through Colorado blizzards.  We arrived home on April 1st where we were greeted by an April's Fool late winter dumping of the heaviest, wettest snow you've ever seen . . . and were snowbound for 9 days until, on the 9th day, a friend rode a snowmobile in to take the ex out.


But, again, I digress.  I think that March marked the beginning of the final year of our marriage which wasn't really, a marriage at all.  At least, not the healthy kind.  Sure, we went to counseling, we thought we were working on it.  But, one of us wanted out.  In a big way.  Fast forward to the following January, and the ex left Swamp River Ridge.  As I've said before and will say again, we're both happier now that we ARE divorced, so maybe the ex deserves props for leaving?  (Well, that certainly doesn't sound right, but I think [hope] you know what I mean.  Everything in hindsight and all that rot.)

I was later told that some people expected that the ex's Sedona trip would result in him never coming home!  They thought that "trip to find himself" was his way of leaving.  I had no clue!  I knew he wasn't happy, but I thought it was just a particularly low "low" in his clinical depression.

And, who knows?  Without the accident, maybe it would have been (his way of leaving).  We certainly tried to work on things a lot during the long, quiet days of recuperation down there and then in the months to follow.

Anyway, today's date just struck me, that's all.  And I thought I'd share.  :)


IN OTHER NEWS (please, let's cheer us all up!) . . . pictures!

Here's a shot of the latest snowstorm from Monday when I was preparing to leave for an overnight shopping trip in the big city.  Doesn't Maisy look THRILLED?

The new snowmobile warning signs are there in the snow . . . so are a pair of snowshoes!  I grabbed them all out before the snow completely buried them.

The house Monday morning.  Hard to believe that this will all be a jungle of green in a few months!  I took all these shots at nearly high noon:  doesn't look too light-n-bright out, does it?!

Before I left that day, I had to unload 400# of grain from the 1-Ton into the garage before those sacks, too, were buried in snow.

Okay, I'd meant to get finch pictures up this AM, but my day's running away from me.  You'll just have to look forward to them come my next post!  :)