Gettin' 'er Done!

I've started my part of the work on the cabin addition. First thing I did was build the little deck to cover the odd shaped area by the chimney. This will make it easier to skirt and also helps tie the addition to the cabin. Once I finished the deck I immediately dismantled it. WHAT!!!!! I know but I wanted to give the AC/electrical guys more room to get in the crawl space. The duct work ends right near this space. It's a tight fit under there and this is the easiest way in. I numbered all the boards and stacked them on the front porch. I'll reassemble as soon as I can. I have a center support board cut for the front edge that's not in the photo and some trim pieces that run along the side. I'll probably spray the chimney with some deck cleaner once I finish. We intended to let the cabin gray but the boards there have grayed more than the rest of the cabin. Just want to clean it up a bit.

Before I dismantled it I sat quietly on the deck for a while. It makes a great wildlife viewing blind! The deer walked all around the yard without noticing me. I'll have to take the binoculars out there and sit a while once it's finished.

Yesterday I finished the insulation except for the bathroom walls. I'm waiting on the plumber to do the rough-in first. Then I can wrap that up. I don't mind doing insulation. It's a perfect DIY job because it's pretty simple. But it's a messy job and I'm glad to be finished with it. I wasn't sure I could do the ceiling but I gave it a try and got it done, slowly and carefully. I've found that if you just concentrate on one piece at a time and not think about the whole thing it usually gets you through it.

Before I did the ceiling insulation I had to move some lumber out of the way. I had enough tongue and groove left over from the cabin to do almost one whole wall. I decided instead of moving that around again and again I'd just put it on the wall and be done with it. So I did that first. It was actually the first time I've used a nail gun. That was always Rick's job. Because I'm a little scared of the air compressor I had bought a cordless nail gun. I love it and recommend it! I put the nails into the tongue of the boards so they don't show, just the way Rickie did the cabin walls. I've learned how to do a lot of things since we worked on the cabin. You can learn a lot just by being a helper.

I'm going to paint the walls. I have a white/cream color of HGTV Sherwin-Williams paint from Lowe's. It's imaginatively called Creamy. For the trim I'm using a white called Marshmallow in the same line of paint. I'm going to clear coat the ceiling and leave it natural.

Several people have asked me if I was going to use drywall on the walls. I'm not, for several reasons. First off, I don't think it goes well with a cedar cabin. Second, it's not something I can do myself. It's very heavy and has to be finished well to look good. Third, and as important as the second reason, or maybe more important, is that Rickie hated drywall. He was always annoyed trying to hang stuff on the walls, making sure there was a stud where it needed to be. Which there usually wasn't. He swore (literally) many times that if he ever had a choice he would never have drywall in his house. Personally, I kind of like it. It is the closest modern thing to adobe walls which is about my favorite kind of house. Adobe has a peaceful look to me. If I was living in Santa Fe or Taos that's the kind of house I would want. I'm living in the Texas Hill Country and we always thought the house ought to match the location. Here it's a cedar cabin.

I've tried to think of different wall coverings to kind of mix it up and save money. But nothing saved enough to make it worth the extra work of using something else. The beaded board paneling we used in the bunkhouse and the kitchen and bath in the cabin is a real pain to handle on your own, especially trying to cut it and cut outlets.

I love corrugated metal but being concerned about creepy crawlies, it would require a lot of sealing along edges and some trim work. It also involves a bit of extra work for the outlets since it doesn't lay flat. And again, anything big is hard for one person to handle.

We used reproduction tin squares in our cabin bathroom ceiling. But that requires plywood to be put up first. I considered fish scale shingles for the gables but they are very costly and should have plywood first also. So, in the end, I've decided to do the whole thing with the 6" tongue and groove lumber. It's easy to install and with some painted and some natural I'll have a bit of a mix.

I got all the fixtures for the bathroom. I was able to offload most of them from the truck to the Mule and then to the front porch. The bathtub presented a problem. It was too long and big to offload to the Mule. So I cleared things out and was able to drive around to the side of the front porch, back up, and "walk" it off onto the porch. That worked great! Except for the two screws I picked up in my tire. I had tried to find all the screws and nails from the shell construction but I missed these two. I had to make two trips to the tire store. One to repair the holes and a second to get a new tire when the repairs didn't hold.

I'm happy with how it's coming along and proud of each thing I accomplish. It's peaceful working there and I both spend time thinking of Rickie and time keeping occupied so I don't dwell on it. I have a couple of tool belts but I've been using a shotgun shell bag Rickie got long ago when he took a couple of trips to Mexico to go dove hunting. It's lighter and keeps him close. Not that he's ever far.

I'm going to town tomorrow to order the lumber. The price is a little higher there but it's local and they will deliver, saving me many trips to Kerrville. While I wait on the lumber I'll go ahead and paint the one wall I have done. And do some things in the yard I've neglected. I've got a leaking float valve on one of the water tanks and I need to tend the garden. John and Zac are coming out this weekend to help build frames for the skirting and we've got a new deer blind being delivered. But that's a whole 'nother story!

Posted with Blogsy

The Pink Door

I'm not sure why I decided to paint the back door to the bedroom addition pink, but about three weeks ago I had a notion to do just that.

Usually I stay in the subtle nature color scheme on things like this - the front door to the cabin was black for 11 years - and add color with accessories and fabrics. Yellow, orange, red, and green are the colors I usually go to. I've never painted anything pink before.

Rickie and I love the Southwest and after working in San Antonio for a couple of years we found ourselves drawn to color. The formerly adobe colored pump house got a coat of terra cotta paint. The door on it has been purple, blue, and is now a yellow gold. Rickie actually liked the purple and wanted to keep that color but it didn't make me happy when I saw it so I changed it.

So why pink? Maybe it's because without Rickie I feel I'm a fainter shade of the red I like. Maybe because it's a softer version of the warm colors I go to, and without Rickie I've faded a bit. Maybe, although we don't do boy-girl colors in our family, it's because with me working on this project without Rickie it's a nod to girl power.

Maybe I just tired of other colors and wanted a change.

Originally I brought home a hot pink color and tried a sample. But it was too jarring when I saw it each time. So I mixed a bit of it with some white I had and got the color I used. Maybe I'll later step up to a darker shade but maybe not. This is a peaceful color and changes with the light, sometimes looking purple. And that's a nod to the pump house door Rickie liked, if not the bright purple it was.

I need a bench for the small new deck. Maybe I'll paint it the hot pink.

 

(Though I mixed this color by adding Hot Gossip to Marshmallow, it almost perfectly matches a Behr color called Youth Blush.)

 

Posted with Blogsy

From Tiny House To Small House

There's no changing my mind now. For better or worse, the tiny house now has a 344 sq ft addition!

The carpenters from Spring Branch Trading Post got the job done in 5 days, working late most days to finish. Spring Branch built the original cabin shell, plus the bunkhouse shell, and a couple of sheds we have.  They're very reasonably priced and the people are great. 

The first night the foundation was done and most of the stud walls were up. It was a few days before the full blue moon and from the window by my bed it glowed with moonlight. It's been my plan that, though I will move our bed into the addition, I will probably keep sleeping on a twin bed I plan to use in place of a sofa in the cabin. I've always slept here and it's by the fireplace, which is nice in the winter. If you've ever lost a loved one you know there is a tendency not to want to change things. But when I saw the room lit with moonlight, I wanted to move the bed right then. And dance in the moonlight again. (Dancin' In The Moonlight 2014)

Then the next night as I looked out the window, I started to cry. What had I done? Why did I add this? It changes things. I wanted to just tear it all down and go back. As if going back would make things like they were before. When I was happy. When I had Rickie.

By the third day, my swing high, swing low moods were pretty much passed and I settled down to dealing with the here and now. I could not have asked for a better team, a father and son, to put the shell up. Not only did they get the job done, they had an appreciation for the wildlife and natural world we have here. Most people living this way do, or else they go somewhere else. 

This country, more so than hospitable moderate places, requires a certain toughness of the people that live here. It requires and deserves to be inhabited by people that love it deeply. It's not the kind of country that can get along with indifferent caretakers. I try to live up to its expectations.

I'm waiting now on contractors to do the things I can't. Extend the AC duct work, electrical, and plumbing. I'm back and forth on whether to finish the bathroom. Yesterday I was definitely not going to do it and today I am going to. So, we'll see. I can't begin most of my work until these things are done.

In the meantime I've replaced the doorknobs with ones I like better. I have an old glass set we bought years ago that I've been holding for the right time. I'm using it on the door to the addition. Right now I'm waiting on some missing set screws I had to order online. Modern ones at the hardware store don't have the right thread size. I need to decide what to do with the door. It's kind of boring as it is but I don't want it to compete with the mesquite fireplace mantel we have.

The way I asked them to add the room gives an odd shaped little area outside by the chimney. It's a little place with several turns. I'm going to put a little ledge/deck there to fill the space in and make it easier to skirt. Yesterday I knocked down the stone skirting that was there. I have my lumber so I'm getting ready to do that project. 

I'm going to skirt the addition with corrugated metal. Rickie and I used that to skirt the bunkhouse. We weren't sure how to add it so we created our own method but I was trying to find a better way. So I asked the carpenter and he told me to make some frames and attach to the underside of the room. This gives support to the bottom and sides of the metal. I got the pressure treated lumber and as soon as the contractors finish I can do that. John and Zac said they are going to come help me when it's time. They are both good carpenters so the work should go fast!

Several times a day I have doubts about working without Rickie. I say to myself what the hell was I thinking!! But then I hear his voice in my head telling me I can do it, as he always did. He never doubted we could do something, even when we didn't know what we were doing! 

I've told you before about the little injured doe that I call Tougher Than Leather. She's been disappearing for long periods of time these months since Rickie died. Every time I think she is a goner, she shows back up. She gives me courage. A few day ago, after missing for many weeks and presumed dead, she showed up right outside the yard fence. And she had a little fawn with her! 

This morning out the back door I saw a picture of what courage is. She was walking her slow, painful (and heartbreaking to watch) limp across the back pasture. A few feet behind her, matching her pace, was her baby. When she paused the baby paused. It broke my heart at the same time it made me happy. 

This country requires a certain toughness of the people - and the animals and plants - that live here. I'm trying to live up to its expectations.

The Walls Came Tumbling Down

The builder is coming out this week to get the shell for the addition started. He said it should take a week to ten days so I'll soon have my project going! I've worried some that I'm changing the feel of the cabin. This place has always been so different from the houses in the city we lived in and I don't want to lose that. It's always been a cozy comforting place. Hopefully, by using similar materials and only adding the one bedroom it will stay that way. I've also tried to position it and the windows so that I can still see the wildlife walking by and see Orion in the night sky. When I can't sleep now it sometimes helps to raise the shade and see the stars.

Week before last, after I finished the screen porch/door project, I tackled knocking down 15' of the stone skirting. It's going to be covered with the addition and I didn't want to have a stone wall in the middle of the crawl space. Plus the HVAC contractor needed room to work so he can extend the duct work to the new bedroom and bathroom.

Being petrified of spiders, respectful of rattlesnakes, and just generally scared to death of crawl spaces, I had to reach deep inside myself for courage! Armed with bug spray for spiders, scorpions, and centipedes and my little 410 for rattlesnakes, and leaving plenty of room to run, I was ready in case anything came out of there. I began with a masonry chisel and small sledgehammer but saw right away that was pointless. So I got the big sledgehammer and that worked great. I just swung it like a croquet mallet, not trying to lift it up like John Henry driving steel spikes. Once I knocked the stones loose I took the hoe and pulled them out.

I cleaned the area up, set a bug bomb off under the cabin, and then temporarily closed the opening using the corrugated metal I took off the screen porch the week before. I'll take that down when they start the addition. As with the cabin build there will be a period when the crawl space is not closed in. I have to wait on the duct work to be done before I can do that. I'm hoping no varmints go under there and tear up the ductwork I already have. I've been at war with raccoons the last few days over whether the peaches, cantaloupes, and grapes in the garden belong to them or me. They won. I'm hoping they take the victory and have the grace to leave me in peace but that's mostly wishful thinking.

I took a break from the country life and joined my family in Houston to celebrate the birthdays of my sister Kathy and her husband Derald. We had a fish fry, as we've done all our lives in my family, continuing the tradition when we left Louisiana for Houston. My brother Andy is the fisherman and the cook. Kathy's daughter-in-law Esther is the exceptional cake decorator. We caught up on what is happening in everyone's life, told stories of days past and loved ones gone, and yes, we laughed plenty. There is no comfort like that of family and old friends.

One of those old friends, in a conversation before I left town, told me something that made me smile, while breaking my heart at the same time. He said "Sue, you and Rickie had something special. You did your own thing and you didn't care what people thought. Not in a rude way, you just didn't need other people's approval to be happy and you didn't have a need to impress others."

Back here at our place, the addition that changes the tiny cabin to a small cabin wouldn't be considered impressive by anyone's standards. But it impresses me and Rickie would be impressed too. Not at the room itself, but at the years and sacrifices that led to it happening. I hope he'll be impressed with my work on it.

The heat of summer has dried the grass up and I'm seeing more deer as food gets scarce. They come into the yard and they eat the alfalfa I'm having to buy again for Woodrow and Gus. My little halfway tame cottontail, Little Bunny, has disappeared after 3 years. She would hop up to me and follow me to the shed waiting for a treat of birdseed. I watched a fox chase her one day and I guess he caught her, although she was giving it all she had. Today I saw a baby bunny by the bunkhouse and I wonder if it was one of hers. We have three baby turkeys hanging around, not as many as some years where we've had over a dozen. Life goes on.

I haven't seen Tougher Than Leather in weeks now. That's happened several times these last months since Rickie died. Then just as I think something must have happened to her she shows up, so I hope she does again. Sarah said she appears when I need her and maybe that is so. The sight of her carrying on has lifted me out of a hole several times.

These friends, family, and wildlife move in and out of my world as I do theirs. We all touch each other's lives, sometimes just for a moment, and never give it much thought. But the little things we do - hugs from loved ones, kind words from friends, a wild animal with many enemies accepting you as part of their world, fish caught and shared with the family, a little injured doe that shows up when you have given up - now those things are impressive.

And on an extremely smaller scale, I'm kind of impressed that I knocked that stone wall down!

Posted with Blogsy

Addition Phase 1 - A Screen Door To Nowhere

I finished some work on the back screened in porch this week. The new addition will have a small 10' x 6' deck that connects it to the screen porch. I decided it would be nice to have a screen door in that end of the porch so the deck could be accessed from there and vice versa. The addition is not going to butt up right next to the cabin but be connected by a short 6' hallway. The hallway will include a door to the deck, which will fill the space between the addition and the screen porch. (The part of the plan labeled Living Area is actually the bedroom. The room across the back will be a bathroom/utility room, although I probably won't finish that now but will use it for storage. The door from the hallway to the cabin will replace a current window by the fireplace.)

Our screen porch is 8' x 12' and two sides of it are formed by walls of the cabin, with two sides screened. Sarah and Rickie did the original screening 11 years ago when we built the cabin. A couple of years ago Rickie and I closed in one section on the side of the porch with corrugated metal to keep the hot West sun from coming in. This also allowed me to add more decorations to the little cedar Christmas tree we put up out there every year. Gave it more protection. With the addition I'll have room to put the tree inside.

The addition will shade the porch from that hot sun in the afternoon - I hope! - so I decided to take the metal panels off and put screen back up. And add a door to that side. Once I have the shell built I'll be plenty busy trying to finish it so I thought now would be a good time to do all this.

I bought a small wooden screen door for $22, a 4 x 4 cedar post, some new screen, and cedar trim boards. I got the smallest door Home Depot had, 30" wide. 

The only worry I had was that the 4 x 4 post might fall on my head when I was trying to install it! But I cut it so it fit tight - I had to hammer it in place with a mallet - so there was no danger of that!

Once I got the new screen in all the old screen looked dirty and had a few small holes. You know how one thing leads to another. So I ended up re-screening the whole porch and putting all new cedar trim on the outside. I only had two 1/8" short cuts that I didn't like and redid and was short one piece of trim (unrelated to the miscuts). So, back to Home Depot for that and the hardware I had forgotten to buy. I salute the young Home Depot employee in Kerrville that knew what a turnbuckle tension rod for the wooden door was and took me right to it! Also the employee who saw me in the parking lot and came over and helped me load the original trim and door. I've never had anybody, except other customers, help in the Houston store I used to go to.

Years ago I collected  a few old rim lock door knob sets. I used one of the rim lock parts - the part the dead bolt fits into - for the screen door handle. If I ever need it for a door, I'll just replace it with another type of handle. I have yardsticks all over the porch so I added one to the door. I'll add a few more as I get some. Helps to beef up the door and give little hands a place to push it open instead of pushing on the screen!

Phase 1 of the addition is complete. 

  

Those Healing Hands of Time

I've started on a new project. I've been back and forth on whether to do this or not for several months. I decided last week to move forward with it. I'm going to add on to the little cabin. In a few weeks this space in the photo will be a bedroom and bathroom, connected to the cabin by a hallway and a small deck.

I've decided to do it for several reasons, none of which have anything to do with needing more room for myself. I don't. We've downsized and haven't missed anything we let go of. We didn't feel a need to conform to the norm, and we have been proud to identify ourselves as tiny house owners.

It would be nice to have more room when more than one of the kids comes, but that doesn't happen often enough to justify doing it. We've had some good times with air mattresses wall to wall in the cabin and we could do it again. 

I've been happy in the tiny cabin and Rickie and I would have been even happier. We spent a lot of our time outdoors and we liked each other's company. The comment most often made to me when people learned we were planning to retire in a 464 sq ft cabin was "How will y'all stand it with all that togetherness and no place to get away from each other?" I never understood why people asked me that. I guess for people that stay indoors a lot, and have indoor hobbies, space to do that would be important. We had 54 acres and liked to be outside, so it never even came up. One day Rickie was talking to a friend of his also approaching retirement and moving away from the city. He remarked that when you do that the key thing is that each of you like each other. And we did.

But it had been our original intention to add a bedroom on to the cabin. When we built it we had a certain amount of money and we decided rather than just building with a bedroom, and everything being smaller that we would build the part we could afford as we wanted it and add on later if we were able. And if we weren't, we would make it work. 

As we approached retirement we decided not to do it, at least not at that time. We liked the little cabin and we made adjustments, such as adding the closet and building the bunkhouse, that made it all work for us. Because the one room is square, 20 x 20, and had a fireplace centered on one wall and the kitchen all along the other there wasn't a logical way to create a bedroom out of it. But we liked sleeping by the fireplace in the winter and we liked being together. We had spent enough time apart. 

We never totally gave up on adding on though. A couple of days before Rickie died, he was putting his boots on and looking around the cabin and he said to me that if he had money to spare, he would add the bedroom. He left unfinished business, as we all will when we are gone, and we've all been trying to take care of some of that for him. Larry and Lisa have taken our camper, Bernie Ann, and promised to only go West to the places Rickie loved. Sarah and Justin are keeping chickens, the one thing Rickie wanted to do as soon as he retired. John and Zac are going to help me set up a new deer stand and John is going to be the hunting mentor now. I've talked to someone about clearing cedar and doing some fence work, and I hired someone to finish the window replacement project Rickie and I started. The uncles, aunts, and cousins are going to have to help with the most important unfinished business, which is teaching Bixby to fish. And I'm going to add the room.

But an equally important reason I'm doing it is because I need a project. The healing hands of time work better if you stay busy, or at least, that is what I've found has helped me. I find comfort in the peacefulness here but I find comfort in working also. Most days I cry as I work but I work just the same, and I don't cry all day, and to me that's the important thing. To keep going.

The same company that built the cabin and the bunkhouse shell for us, Spring Branch Trading Post, is going to build the shell for the addition. I'll get someone to do the electrical and extend the AC duct work. I'm adding a bathroom also but I don't plan to finish it right away and I may never; it's just a lot easier to add the space now than for someone to come back down the road and try to add it. 

I'm going to finish everything else that I can. Rickie and I worked together on both the cabin and the bunkhouse and there are a lot of things I can do. And I intend to do them. 

And next week I'm going to start. I'm going to remove the corrugated metal Rickie and I added to the screen porch and replace with screen as it was before. We added that because the West sun was so hot there. The addition will shade the back porch and we don't need the metal and the breeze will be nice. I'm also going to remove the stone skirting in that area so the AC ducts can be extended. I have a plan for that and I hope that plan doesn't include spiders and snakes. I've had two rattlesnake encounters the last couple of weeks and I don't want another one. 

Rickie was a driving force in our projects. He never doubted that we could do whatever we had decided on. Since I decided to go ahead with this, I've been tossing and turning and wondering what in the hell was I thinking. But he taught me to have faith in myself and if a plan doesn't work out, well, just get another plan. 

And so, this is my plan. To continue trying, to find joy when I can, to build on what we started here, to cherish my family and friends. And to trust in the hands of time to carry me forward.

They'll lead me safely through the night, and I'll follow as though blind, my future tightly clutched within, those healing hands of time.........


Spring Branch Trading Post link

Waiting For Signs

Nine years ago on our 25th anniversary, Rickie and I bought this Thompson's Yucca and planted it in the center section of the driveway. It was only about knee high when we bought it. We had paid $75 for it and were hoping it would make it. The main concern was that the deer would destroy it. They eat the heart out of the native yuccas we have and if we ever get any to bloom in the yard we have to cage them as soon as the blooms come out. But this one thrived. 

About 4 or 5 years ago it started blooming and has had a bloom stalk on it every year. By the time it first bloomed it was too tall for the deer to get to it. Three years ago we noticed the tiny beginning of another branch coming off it. This year, for the first time, it has two blooms, one on each of the "arms". I took these pictures this morning.

A quote from Craig Johnson's Longmire book series I love is "Stay calm, have courage, and wait for signs". I've had that posted on my fridge since the week of Rick's death. I take the two blooms as a sign, as I do the explosion of poppies, larkspurs, and Engelmann's daisies his garden has given me this year. 

Today would be 34 years that Rick and I were married. I found this in his writings; he wrote it a few months before he died. 

"Since Sue has retired from working in the school system and started living at the ranch, she has once again adapted to a situation different from what she was doing. She has become a local in a rural community. She has earned the respect of her neighbors. She has learned to deal with and understand 1500 pound beasts (Gus and Woodrow). She has immersed herself in the natural way of things at the ranch. She pays attention and notices the little things nature has to offer. These things she missed before but now she doesn't. She knows the names of the birds, plants, and animals. She notices the little nuances in the weather before it changes. She has dealt with her fear of darkness and spiders. She has satisfied her hunger to be a part time carpenter. It has been a joy watching her metamorphosis. Not many women or men could do this. 
It is wonderful to keep getting something new from someone when you have lived with them over a long period of time, in our case 33 years. Yes, there are a lot of things I know about Sue by now but she keeps giving me surprises."

I've thought a lot about whether my coming out here these last 4 years to live mostly by myself was the right decision. Whether, as things turned out, I should have stayed in Houston until Rick could retire and we could come out together. We talked about it a couple of times but both agreed it was to our benefit as a family that this place be considered our home and that me being here to keep things going, the garden, the longhorns, just all the things that need someone around to keep a place in shape, was the best option. 

But my own main reason for coming, and Rick knew this, was I worried that if I waited for him, it was always possible that I could die before he retired and never get to live out here and live the life I do. As a fan of Thoreau since childhood I, like him, wanted to see if I could go to the woods and learn what it had to teach, "and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." My mother had just passed away after a tough fight with Alzheimer's and it was on my mind that realistically, at my age, I had only so many productive years left. 

So, as Charlie Robison says, I packed my bags a little heavy that time and headed home to the 54 acres, the cabin, the longhorns, the garden, and the wildlife. And the longer I stayed the less I ever wanted to return to the city. When we scattered Rick's ashes back on the ridge I told family and friends that we had struggled and sacrificed to keep this place all these 27 years; that sometimes we thought we should have just waited until we retired and then bought a place. But I feel that the place a person calls home and spends time and loves defines that person. And this place defined Rick and it defines me. It allowed Rick to stay the country boy he always was while working in the city and it made a country girl out of me. I have become a different person living here and I like this person better than any other person I have been. 

And I'm thankful for the words Rick left me, his affirmation that the decision was right. I doubt I would be here now if I hadn't spent these last 4 years here. I don't know if I would have the courage to remake myself all on my own. I find comfort here that I could never find in the city and the life I lived before I came here; I would be floundering there. 

The second year we had our place we brought the deer camp style travel trailer out. I never told anyone, not even Rick, but when that happened, I said to myself "that's good because if I ever lose anyone I love I'm gonna need to come out here to stay, away from the noise and craziness of the city, close to nature, if I have any hope of surviving such a thing.

I was here when I got the call that my dad had a heart attack and died. I was here when my brother David, and Justin's mom Miriam both ended their battles with cancer the same week. It was here I came when my sister Deb slipped away and when my mom found peace at last. It was here I sat on the back porch floor and held Rickie's hand as we waited together for the coroner to come. 

And it's here I wake each morning and try to honor him and those I love by staying calm, having courage, and waiting for signs, though it's not always easy.

Happy anniversary, Rickie. I miss you.