I took this photo heading to work last night. The sky mirrored how I felt. I caught a cold and had to leave work early last night. I called out today out of an abundance of caution. I have been giving myself reiki since last night and can talk again. Yea! I feel better with my coughing diminished.

The transition away from work has started. My replacement is doing amazingly well. She has really done well learning all the aspects of my job and handles herself with difficult customers. Michael and I have been planning and discussing the changes we anticipate will happen since I will not really be bringing in a steady paycheck. I still hope to find another part time job. Perhaps it will come through by the new year. This is a new thing for me being in a relationship that is mutually beneficial and understanding. We have been going down a bumpy road with the ptsd. Anger has been rising to the surface with the therapy. He has been given many tools to help manage his anger but at times it boils over. I am still learning to handle it. Sometimes I am quiet, other times I yell back and sometimes I just cry. The thing I think Michael forgets or loses sight of is just how far he has progressed. And he has made leaps and bounds since I first met him. One of the biggest things that we try to do every day is to sit down and talk and more specifically to find things to be grateful and thankful for in our life be it big or small. It helps to keep us grounded and focused on the good things in life.

Michael and I had a great time birding Sunday at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. The best was witnessing the many tundra swans coming in to land on the river. Michael is a great birder. He is much better at identifying the birds by their calls than I am. I am great at identifying birds of prey by their calls but songbirds stump me.

I look forward to sharing more time with Michael. We do great together. We share many interests but also have many things that we do on our own. Michael works on our tractors and his truck and he LOVES it. I am looking forward to reading, writing and photography as well as always expanding my mind with history and science. I am enjoying the app snapseed that Deb Glessner suggested to me. Sometimes I struggle with filters with my color blindness but other times the filters really help me to see things better.

So to wrap up this rambling post. I am eager to see what the next phase of my life bring.