My photo program is fixed, thanks to the good folks at Apple, something I still count on, thank you Steve Jobs.

This morning, I walked into the living room of my new home, collided with two men on the floor fixing wires and outlets, and moved to my office, where Ben was sanding and spackling the walls, and went to the bathroom and the plumber was on the floor snaking out the clogged bathtub and sink.  Someone was outside in a big truck, rolling wire out to the barn. Someone else was in the pantry putting in outlets for the washing machine, and someone else was outside lying under the sill of the backside of the house, trying to tell me about rot and crawl space and galvanized pipes and frost-free faucets. Don’t they know I don’t understand them, that I can only nod in agreement? I know the names, have heard them before, but my mind does not remember these things, I am a stranger among these big and smart men. They were joking, talking in their special language of wires and pipes and crawl spaces and wrenches.

Back inside, the plumber has just put in a new toilet bowl. I had nowhere to go in my new house, nowhere to work,  Red tagging along behind me, lying on the floor.

I threw off my fleece and picked up my camera, Rich, the plumber lying in the tub next to me. Was it today or tomorrow? Did I live here or there? Was I a writer or a project coordinator? Did I live in one farm or another? Was I moving, or had I moved? My mind was spinning, spinning, a wheel that kept turning. I felt like laughing, crying, hiding, running. I tried to imagine a quiet morning, chores done, writing, editing, blogging,  thinking, and it would not come back to me, it seemed so long ago. It was so wonderful, how had I lost it? When? I felt tired, spent, assaulted, bombarded by good and hard-working people doing what I wanted them to do.

It seemed I had lost my life, perhaps to gain my life, I wasn’t sure, caught between one and the other, I could not yet see the end or remember the beginning.

I wanted to shout out, to laugh, to dance in the pasture. I was lost, lost in my life. I wanted to be somewhere else, to come back when it was over. I looked out the window at the sun peering through the clouds, at the donkeys and sheep grazing in the pasture, at the lush green and brown of the rolling farms and hills, at the angels napping in my barn, at the sheep out in their pasture, my dog staring them down, at my love back in her studio making her magic potholders and pillows and quilts, at the rich smells of the pasture, the timeless red of the barns, the road glistening in the mist, the wilting grass, and I wondered who I was, where I was, where I was going. I went outside and inhaled the rich and moist air of a damp farm, the mist coming off the loam,  a smell richer than anything else. I am lost, I wanted to shout, lost in my life. Then I picked up the camera and took a photo of our new toilet, our unclogged sink, our restored bathtub and I remembered who I was, who I would be again, and how life always begins, again and again and again.