Flapping, Flailing, Blundering, Failing

I've had a lot of blunders lately.  

I picked a huge bin of yellow peaches yesterday, that were 90% brown mush by this morning because they got too warm and I didn't tend to them fast enough.  I'm stalled out on a project I feel passionate-- and don't know how to move forward. I bungled a communication with a relative that seemed to me positive and warm, but was received by the recipient as, well, controlling. Sigh. And just now, I deleted an entire blog post that I'd worked hard on.  As if that isn't  enough, it is the SECOND one, in as many days, to vanish in the exact same way.   If I delete a photo on this program, it grabs all the text as well.  Poof!  Two hard-wrangled essays vanished into this air.  Dismay is the only work I can think of.  You'd think I'd have learned.  But no,  I did not. I've even failed at learning how to prevent failure.  Which is why these photos are floating here where I didn't want them.  

So, that  picture of me smiling?  That's not today.  That was me hiking a bluff trail with my husband recently, (when I wasn't having a string of failures.)  The second photo is of my mom and sons, exploring San Francisco earlier this year. I wanted a more recent photo, but I can't even make the wrong photo go into the right spot, and I'm no longer interested in trying.   

I'm not going to write any more about failure, though, because I don't know anything profound to say, except that it happens to me often, and it sucks, and I know the best thing to do is simply try again.  But I will try to tell you, in six sentences or less, what I was trying to say, in the vanished essay with the empty birdhouse picture.

Recently, the bluebird family in my back yard grew up and flew away.  The sight of the empty box makes me a little blue.  It reminds me of my own newly-emptied nest, which is now quieter than a library.  I'm happy for all of them, birds and boys, flying free, but I miss bustle and cheer of a growing families.  I'll be fine, I'm just adjusting.  End of story.  (Ok, seven sentences)

When my husband gets moody, he does Useful Things.  Rips out old carpets, paints a room, chops down a dead tree.  Me--I just wander around aimlessly, getting in his way.  Finally I remember; just go outside.   Somehow,  nature's complete disinterest in me is a relief.  Nature  doesn't care how many times I falter and fail,  what I want, or what I think.   Nature just does her work.   Birthing and growing, dying and composting, bringing new life up from the old.  Trees grow, birds sing, creeks flow.  Nature doesn't cling to the past  New seasons come, her forms and colors changes.  Nature is always creating, always evolving  towards the future.  I guess that's a pretty good role model for me.  Besides, I'm a terrible painter, and Joel won't let me help.

I'll make one more attempt to attach a photo--maybe one of my creek this time-even though I'm likely to fail once again. It won't land here at the end of this sentence, I'm pretty sure--but win or lose--in five minutes, I'm  headed downstream.  See!  Ya gotta scroll down, cause it won't come up here. Oh WELL!