I'm Back...

... and taking this weekend to get reoriented. The Laguna cottage is just barely livable. We came down here yesterday, after a night in Los Angeles, to find it--who'd have guessed?--less far along than we had hoped. We created a small space for ourselves in the living room...


... surrounded by stacked furniture and boxes.


Of course, we can't remember exactly what we put in which boxes, and the scrawled notes on the side--"Kitchen," say--don't help us to locate the box where we keep the tea bags. It's trial and error--and mostly the latter. The kitchen is nowhere near completion, as you can see...




... but we have a tiny fridge in what was once the dining room...



... and have hooked up the microwave. No stove, no tea kettle. In a few minutes, I'll be trying to make a decent cup of tea in the microwave--a new adventure.

Meantime, more serious and much more distressing, Ellie's injured ribs have started to cause her terrible pain. Her work yesterday at the cottage to make it slightly habitable--lifting and moving things--may have contributed, but the pain last night was such that I had to help her into bed. This morning, then, when she wakes, it's a trip to Kaiser for x-rays and examination. We did manage to sleep some during the night, having cleared a space for ourselves on the bed--it was piled high with clothes and linens, and covered with a plastic sheet to protect it from the dust--and rigged up a temporary bedside electrical supply with the aid of industrial sized extension cords left by the contractor.

In a word, all is not yet right on the home front in Laguna. Today, Saturday, after that Kaiser visit, we will likely return to Los Angeles and leave the cottage to the contractor for the next couple of weeks. The Buddhist teaching, of course, is the practice of equanimity--and for Ellie, the difficult art of non-attachment to the physical sensation. Much harder for her than for me, when the pain is so intense. It's annoyingly easy for me to exhort her to breathe and focus the attention elsewhere. And next to impossible for her.

I'll probably be slow in getting back to The Buddha Diaries, given all this distraction. A big thank you to those who joined me on Travels With George. I hope you enjoyed the trip. I'm planning to tidy up that site and beef it up a bit with more recollections and reflections, with a thought to publishing it in book form, if I can ferret out a more coherent "story" and its meaning. Apologies for not having responded to comments, and for not having visited other sites this past month. As I've said before, I do very much appreciate this community of bloggers, and look forward to getting back in touch. I personally have some thoughts about politics...