I thought I’d separate this out. I’m going to be cutting back on work, to allow myself more time to live. I can’t work my current job long term. The commute is too much. I came very close to getting injured on the 11th of this month, driving in freezing rain. It doesn’t make sense to me to do that. I’m eligible for widow’s benefits from Social Security this year. It’s not a lot, but it gives me the option to work a bit less. I am still sorting out what to do with that time. I want to garden. And I want to write, something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m also considering a class in silversmithing, which is another thing I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Because, you know, at some point you start to run out of time. If you don’t do those things that matter, you may not be able to do them. Is it worth putting in all those hours at work and miss out on the opportunity to live your life fully?

I’ve been thinking about how to shake up my blogging and I think I will be making some changes. I want to rewrite the code for my Spindlitis site and start putting my home life back onto that site. I’ve got to change the old page into something using CSS, so it will require a little work.

I will probably change this over to an html site as well, and ditch WordPress. It’s a good system. I just don’t like having my posts exist in a database. When I’ve transitioned it, I think this will become more of a philosophical blog, with more tech rants and thoughts on prepping and the Nourishing Traditions style of cooking. In sort, more about interests and things that interest me at the time. The Quinn’s Cove site will not see a lot of action for now. We’re holding onto that one, in case we decide to run a small business. I’ll have to do some design work and think about how I want this all to come together.

I was looking at the Wayback machine today, at how my spindlitis site used to look. I really loved the look of it and had a lot of fun changing the color schemes and putting in little ornaments. I changed it, because table based formats were outdated and I never managed to get a CSS version set up. So now, it’s basically a dead page. I used Tumblr, which has a great look, but doesn’t interest me the way the old system did. Even using Word Press for this blog is a bit boring, although you’d think the simplicity of it would make me blog more often. It doesn’t work out that way. I’m just not as engaged with it. What seems to be worse is that there is no way to make an online archive with these tools, the way that the old html pages were archived. It’s as though the site is gone.

I don’t have a good fix for this. I’m doing a long commute and don’t have the time on the weekends to mess with it the way that I used to do. Maybe I should make the time somehow. It’s a small record of my passage through life, even if no one cares very much about it.

Loretta doesn’t care where we go, as long as she gets to come along. We needed to do a bit of work on the dock today, so we drove down to the river. It was a beautiful day. By the time we got there, Quinn had already fixed the problem with the help of a couple of his friends. So we just got to enjoy the view.

The goats were out. One of them is not doing too well. I suspect it may be CL, but she is also the one that was hit by a car. They are sisters and starting to get up a bit in years. I am considering getting Nigerian Dwarf goats, when we move in. I think they would be good goats to start raising. And I’d like to have milk goats again some time.

The Aqua Home looks nice. In this new year, I plan to start working on the interior. I’d also like to get the engines working, maybe start to rewire the interior and replace the lights with LEDs. I really love sitting on the front deck, watching the river. I’d still love to live in the Aqua Home. I am hoping to have this as an option for us to live in while we rebuild the mobile on the place.

This is another boat I’d like to have going this year. It’s a wonderful boat and we now have a motor for it too. I want to repaint it and learn how to sail a bit. This was Kate’s boat and will one day be Quinn’s boat. He’s not using it and I find it sad to see it sit there year after year. Maybe this year it will be different.

The dock could use work. The houseboats are a mess, but they will have to wait until the lawsuit is over. I got my trunk out of the two story and brought it up to the house. We are starting to pack some of the things in the house to move to the river for storage. I have a nice trunk, rebuilt, that Jeffrey bought for me the last year of his life. It’s nice to have it in the house with me.

And so that was a bit of our day. I’ll miss living in this house, but I do enjoy being down at the river. There are so many ideas that I have for cleaning it up and making it a happy place for us to live. Maybe this will be the year we finally do it.