so little strength

It has been two weeks since I posted. I did try to post a few days ago, I wrote a long message, but when I hit "submit" the message was deleted and gone for good. I just haven't had the strength to rewrite it.

Our son came to visit us over the 4th of July and we enjoyed his visit so very much. He brought his fiance, whom we had not met yet. We found we liked her very much and together, they seem to make a good couple.

We drove about sightseeing each day. The first day when we came home, I laid down in our bedroom and fell asleep with a deep worry about not being able to keep up a conversation...finding something to talk about. I prayed about it and eventually fell asleep for an hour or so. The rest of the time our son was here, I did not have any problems with conversing!

As he and his wife-to-be drove out of the yard, tears poured forth from my eyes and I felt uncontrollably sad, even though my mind knows I will be seeing him in 2 months time. I simply could not control the sadness and I cried for two days. I believe this is from the brain injury I suffered.

I remember in later years going to visit my father, who had suffered several strokes. And one time, they picked me up at the regional airport and as I walked into the waiting area, my father sat in one of the hard, plastic chairs crying uncontrollably. It was a strange thing to see, my big, strong Dad with tears pouring down his cheeks. I asked my stepmother what was wrong, and she said simply, "He's happy you are here."

Later, I learned a bit more about the effects of a stroke on a patient, and how the controlling of emotions is so great affected. When I had a brain MRI after my injury, the radiologist reported that the lesions found on the brain were indicative of either MS, stroke or trauma. Obviously, they were due to trauma in my case, but this leads me to believe that some of the challenges I face can be compared to someone dealing with the after-effects of a stroke. Thus, the tears and deep sadness when my only child headed 900 miles south.

Above is a picture he took of Mt. Hood. We ended up exploring a few back, dirt roads at the northern base of Mt. Hood and got really close to the beautiful, snow covered mountain.

Last week, we spent some time getting ready to do a vendor table at a local Mounted Shooters show, to possibly sell some of my husband's handmade spurs. We just did that this weekend and though the weather was very hot, it all went well.

I am finding, for myself, that I am pretty weak all the time and that weakness shows up both physically and mentally. We were situated just at the base of the announcers booth and I knew I should go up to the announcer and show him the trophy spurs we'd made and give him one of our business cards to drum up some advertisement. But I just could not drum up any strength to do it!

I also knew that if I could take some photos of the cowgirls as they raced past balloons on poles, shooting them out with black powder charges, I could get some amazing photos I could sell to a few magazines. I have the contacts with the magazines, that is easy. But I just could not summon the energy even mentally to walk to the fence and concentrate on taking pictures, and also the thought of submitting them to my editor friends, the process of that seemed too daunting for me to handle. Although I took my nice camera with the long lens, I did not take a single photo, except of our sales table.

As we sat at our table today with an incredible, sweeping view of Mt. Adams to the northwest, we noted a small plume of smoke arising from the base of the mountain. As the day went along, we watched as the forest fire "blew up" into a large fire that now leads as the major headline in the Portland news. It will be one of those fires that will take a long time to put out, we can tell. The peculiar smoke came over our house this evening, dark in places and menacingly deep red in others. They said on the news that they believe the fire was caused by lightning that took place at the end of June!