And Where, in God's name, have you been and What in God's name have you been doing?

Thus evoking some of the tone and word choice of my Mother, who somehow, strangely, shockingly, peacefully and completely, died about three months ago.  Somewhere smack in the middle of my absence from blogging (I miss you, I do, I do) the world has changed (doesn't it all the time?), but my little world has turned itself inside out, rolled itself around a few times and then spit me out, right back where I started.  A friend said to me, somewhere along the way, that she imagined I would gather a tremendous amount of learning, creativity, thought power and the world would probably be witness to my discoveries vis-a-vis the blog and other outlets.  Sure, I thought, but I'm wondering, still, what that might look like and when the urge might take hold.

Blogging seems to be a commitment that I seem to fall just shy of these days, so I'm going to chunk it down. Let's start with a commitment and an outline. Maybe it'll look a little like this, over the next period of days/weeks:
1.What was I doing in. say. November. December. (What was it about. Then?)
2. What happened to Mom? (Where'd you go? Why?)
3. What happened to Me? (in other words…Big Changes).
4. What's really hard? (Knot in my stomach)
5. What's really terrific? (where do I feel unencumbered?)
6. What makes me hurt a whole lot? (Why do I never cry anymore?)
7. What is this "Unencumbered" business, and where is this *brand* going…or…do we put it to bed, finally? (new avenues, avenues, avenues!)

-Seven Days of Blog Posts. Seven days of writing. Go figure.

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What was it about. Then?

 What was I doing in November and December? Barely hanging on.  I was exhausted at work, overcoming a bout of shingles, the weather was heading to a very bad place, and it was all I could do to enjoy sleep and some exercise.

I managed to craft a few nice things:

A gift for a Sixtieth Birthday

 And had some R&R in away towns...

Lazy Jane's, Madison

But now that I think about it, I kept on repeating the phrase, "If one more thing happens, I'll implode."  You know the place.  The place where your ears are ringing and you're hardly sleeping but you're not technically ill, insane, or even non-functioning.  So now that we're thinking in this fashion, we were at a steady clip in the fast lane and all we needed was a little water to hydroplane on and it would be over for me. For us (as in, the family), and certainly, for any pretense left of feeling Unencumbered.  Somewhere along the way, my spouse and I looked at each other and realized that it would be great to visit Oregon for a week following the major holiday celebrations.  We booked tickets, didn't give it a second thought, and started looking forward to a week on the Oregon Coast that would most likely deliver the quiet, rejuvenative energy we've come to expect from a visit home.

Night Swim. Nothing better. Outdoors.