Alone Again

I have a walking stick that I have a love/hate relationship with. I bought it on Amazon shortly after I moved to Washington. I was still experiencing a lot of arthritis and weakness in my left hip and a cane had me bent over too much. A walking stick is much better for posture. But the stick is bamboo, and shiny and obviously not hand-made. In my mind, a walking stick is something that is supposed to be personal. In my perfect made-up world, where my imagination lives, I would find a suitable stick lying in a forest and hand smooth and decorate it myself. Well, the sticks that fall in the forest belong to someone else, and I never go walking in forests anymore. 

While De was here, we came across two large piles of wood on the streets we were walking on. The recent storms have been hard on the trees. We looked through them to see if we could find a branch that would provide a reasonably long solid shaft to make a hand-made stick from. But the trees fell with the storms because they were unhealthy to begin with. And the couple of likely candidates were already rotting. De suggested that I might be able to find a natural shaft online and she was right. I don't know why I never thought of that. Of course someone will be selling something like that.

I was able to find a seller of shafts on Ebay. I want to say that it is more expensive that it should be. But after seeing the difficulty of finding acceptable limbs to make one out of, I do kind of understand the expense. I chose a hazel wood shaft. I don't know why that one spoke to me. I really wanted ash or birch, but the seller didn't have any, and hazel seemed appropriate for some reason.. I have also purchased a set of wood carving tools to make the stick something that is more personal to me. I have never done wood carving, and I have no idea of what I'm doing. I will have to watch YouTube videos to get a clue. But I am excited about the new project. I will move the "store-bought" stick to a less prominent location in the apartment. The love part of the relationship has me not wanting to get rid of it completely.

De left yesterday, and I feel adrift again. The aloneness seemed to close in on me last night and I ended up going to bed at 8:30 instead of dealing with my feelings about it. That decision, of course had me waking up at 0 dark-thirty this morning. Now, once again I don't know what to do with myself. I am not hungry enough to eat and it is too dark out to take a walk. I could clean, but it is pointless. The apartment is already clean. 

I will go to North Georgia to visit with De later in the summer. I'd really like to be there in the fall, because the town she lives in has very cool festivals in the fall. I'm sure that everyone wants to visit her then, but summer works.