Home Is Where the Habits Are/Finding Change

Back in Homer at last! So much familiarity, so much change with the swinging seasons here.
In some ways, taking care of oneself is more challenging here than it is on the road. When you're traveling, you can try things out as an exception because circumstances are abnormal. But home is where the habits are. On the road, I was getting along with a loose, adapted version of the meal plan from treatment, which if nothing else provided a reality check if I thought something was 'too much'. But back home, in my own kitchen, with all the history of portion sizing and specific ingredients written on the atmosphere, there's a strong pull toward "No way! That's way too much! You can't eat x item!..." 
And so, the inner struggle to achieve balance continues. 

These huge cabbages on the stoop were just at the dicotyledon stage when I left.

On the other end of that inertial pull, it's going to take a few days to unearth things of mine that got put away here, and a few more to go through the mounds of paperwork from the treatment centers and from the residency. Even as my kitchen and writing space habits are written on the atmosphere, the fact that so much physical paraphernalia of my writing space have been put away in places yet to be discovered makes me feel a little lost, a little unsure of my place here. Push and pull...

But as it turns out, being home and coping isn't about me at all. (I've been surprised, pleasantly so, by how little anyone's said or asked, aside from 'welcome back'.) Phil is having a hard time, partly because of elbow surgery a few days ago, with the pain and frustration over incapacitation and projected slow rehabilitation. 

I need to be there for him and to be very sensitive about how I do that. These past few months I've learned so much about communication and received a whole new level of awareness. Never thought I'd say this, but it all seems due to lithium. The other thing, of course, is that if I need to be there for someone and be sensitive about it, I need to be functioning well myself. 

And thus I find myself praising the paradox once again--all the behaviors associated with home are waiting like clothes to step into, but the environment has changed, the banks of the pond are carved wider so the center appears to have moved; magnetic irregularities skew my compass.

A few still lifes from the perpetual motion:

The view from the stoop is about the most colorful it gets, with blooming mustard, clover, fireweed. I think the last photo I posted from this position featured a pile of snow.

I was telling some people recently about how I habitually find in the freezer feathers, animal hides, and more, that Phil has preserved for their beauty. This still life on our counter with peony, fruit, and binoculars also features a mummified salamander (no I don't know why it got put right there)!! There's also a piece of mammoth tooth behind the binocs.

I hope that's not too far beyond the pale...

We went for a longish beach hike from the Diamond Creek trail this afternoon. Again, more change, more tumbling ground. Erosion seems too light a name for the half acres just wrecked like that.

Meanwhile, this shell of sea urchin is beautiful, and is one of the smallest and most perfect I've seen.

 And...the beach is the place where you find the one-of-a-kind toys you'll never get elsewhere!

Is this a non-magnifying non-glass? Or is it a telephone receiver?
All to say, I'm back. More soon.