Icewind's Ramblings

Grief can have far reaching effects “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” - C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed Over the last several months my family has been going through some major changes to our lives due to an unexpected death in the family. It has brought with it many different feelings and thoughts about the short term future and long-time changes to things. Trying to be an observer has been hard in that I lost a lifelong best friend and seeing the interactions of my family has been hard on me and everyone else.  Grief can take many forms in all of us and there are some shared emotions but I have found that it is a very different and unique experience for each of us depending on the relationship within our family structure. Losing a husband, father, grandfather, brother-in-law, best friend, and so many other combinations is a complicated and sometimes trying thing for us to go through.  We each have a differ

My analogy of life through a backpacker eyes. Imagine yourself as a traveler walking through life with a backpack on your back. Your life is the journey, the road ahead is your future and the bag on your back is your past.  As you walk through your journey of life you pick up rocks of all shapes and sizes along the way which  symbolize  memories and experiences from your past. Now imagine you are walking forward on your journey with the bag on your back: it will be fine to have a couple of the rocks in the backpack, but if you carry too many heavy rocks around with you, eventually the backpack will get too heavy and you will no longer be able to continue moving forward. You become tired and overwhelmed with all the weight you carry around with you and can’t seem to want to move on with your life. After a bit of time you see that to move forward once again you have to take the backpack off, look at those memories from the past, acknowledge the past for what it was, bank

I've had several people recently ask me how long I have been blogging and how did it all start.  I searched back through the archives and found my second post (first real post) where it all started.  My inquisitive side (plus my office at the time was in the laundry room) so my imagination took over and many years later has taken me on many travels, thoughts about many subjects and just weird observations along the way.  If you have some free time go back through the archives and enjoy some good reads along the way. (Most are a great length for bathroom reading, lol). Did you ever wonder? A couple of nights ago after a really long week I was sitting in my washing machine trying to figure out how the  Downy Ball  works. The water was really cold until I hit the button for Hot/Cold water and changed the setting to “extra large” load. I like using the  Downy  “Enhancer” Ball for that clean fresh smell it gives all of my clothes and sheets. I especially like the “April Fresh” sce