Experience.

The years teach much which the days never know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Because I care much about the impression I make on all of you, I do not want you to get the idea that I am a heartless person when I say that I am over the worst of my sadness and basically function like a "normal" person again. My natural optimism got the better of me and prevented me from staying too sad for too long a time. I was unhappy and not functioning well for 24 hours, but when I got up yesterday morning, I was ready to grab the bull by the proverbial horns. 

I got all the little jobs done that I had not been able to do the day before and felt like I was very competent and that gave a boost to my ego. I needed to feel that I had most of my life back on the rails again. It is good to know that you can feel infinitely sad, but that it is a temporary condition that you need not get stuck in, and that you can move on from there and participate in life again. 

I still think about Marianne and always will. I doubt she will ever be far from my mind, but I am more at peace with her death now. Or at least as far as that will ever be possible. It is the same with the death of my son, which is now more than 8 years ago. You learn to live with it, but it is always a sore spot in your heart. That does not mean you have to sacrifice your life to it and suffer forever. 

The Exfactor came by yesterday and fixed the flat tire on my bike. It turned out that I needed a brand new inner tube and once that was bought, the problem was quickly solved. Of course, you do have to have the know how  to remove the back tire from a bike with several gears, and luckily, the Exfactor does have that. 

I made a shopping list keeping my new and lower budget in mind. I did want all the food on it to be nutritious for the animals and me and it had to be filling enough too. I did not want to be stingy and put all of us on a diet. The Exfactor offered to do the groceries for me and I was very curious how much money he would spend. When he came back with them, it turned out to be about half of what I normally would have spent. 

Now, I misjudged a few things and will have to go to the store on Monday to buy another package or two of sliced goat cheese, for example, because I obviously will not have enough of that, and I think I will also run out of cat food before the week is over, because Gandhi is eating more than I expected. Now that she is off the dried kibbles, it turns out that she has quite an appetite and she has put on some weight, which she needed to. 

And so life goes on...