Today I was talking to Bob at the end of Caregiver Chat and giving him some probably unwanted advice. The main theme was: "suck it up". It is okay to vent, regret what was, refuse to believe that what is is probably your new normal, like it or not. It is just human to go into denial, want to go back to before (whatever the event that is causing all the angst is) but in the end it is learning to cope, moving forward and developing some new skills and yes, acceptance comes in the end. Given that time frame can be years not days or months that is what we all do, or have done. We've learned to accept what is and deal with it.

I did a few jobs and came back inside and wham! I was feeling sorry for myself again. It is wet, it is cold, I am all alone, what I want is to go back to when... you get the picture. So what to do? For me one of the things I do is list things. So what do I want? Company, well no, I will go out tonight to Bible study and I have work to do around the house. One of the reasons I don't go visit Ray on Wednesdays is because of chat, another because it enables me to be home and get some of the small jobs out of the way. I've got a pile of things to do, sorting correspondence, folding clothes, fixing the curtains in the bedroom my guest will sleep in when she comes in July among them.

Suddenly I smell smoke and know my next door neighbour has lit his fire. I want a fire, to sit by the fire, to read a book. I don't have a fire. With an old fashioned open plan house built to be comfortable in summer when you need to move air around all I usually use in winter is a small fan heater directed at my feet at night. Well I must be crazy because I went outside and gathered some twigs that were sheltered and still dry and lit a fire in an old old round tray, formerly the bottom of a bird cage. Out in my back yard, I sat by it and read my book until the rain fell down again. And do I feel better? Yes I do.

In our modern life we do so little that is elemental. Our ancestors hunted, ploughed, fished and trapped,all in the great outdoors. Their womenfolk probably did some of that and also sewed and cooked, educated children and nursed their loved ones. They had small houses or cabins and while the weather was good they used the verandah to do most of their hand-work, using natural daylight. They didn't enclose themselves in house and car and office, they didn't spend time on iphones and computers and didn't sit and mope. They didn't have time. Their whole lives were engaged in scraping a living and fighting the elements, flood, fire, drought and famine. And I am not sure we have skills to live life the way we do now without losing something in the process - a kinship with the earth.

So for me lighting a fire is elemental. I also cooked some sweet potato and potato in the coals. Okay so they are a bit burnt but they are okay, I cooked them, I'll eat them. When we were kids we cooked potatoes in clay, now we cook in foil but the result is the same. A potato without artificial coloring, or flavouring, no fat, no added anything and yet it tastes just wonderful. And connects us back to something we have lost, eating unprocessed food, full of flavor and goodness.

Fire, water, air all around us, all available to us. We walk in the fresh air and feel great, we go for a swim and feel refreshed, we cook over an open fire and realise some things we had forgotten. I know all of this is a bit theoretical and hard to achieve for the city dweller so maybe your open fire is a gas BBQ but that is okay, as long as you are out in the fresh air and you are filling your lungs with it and have a more care free kind of feeling that is good to feel. Hey spring, summer and fall are good times to be outside so go find somewhere to experience it for yourself. You'll feel better, somehow more joined into life. I know I do.

It is so easy to start a routine that suits you at first but then becomes a burden. If it is the same thing day by day then it becomes mundane, boring, likely to set up frustration and become something you wish you could get out of. I go to see Mum in her nursing home, I go to see Ray in his, I shop, I come home and do the housework. It is not as full on as when I was a full-time, hands on caregiver so I do have too much time to think about things sometimes and that is not always good. I need to keep busy but I do not need that busyness to become a trap, a prison, a way of avoiding life.

But however busy I am I always have some free choice. I can go one of several ways between Mum and Ray's nursing homes. I can go the highway, the lesser roads, the road along the Lake. I can shop at a couple of different places. I don't have to do the same things day in and day out. There used to be a saying that went something like: "A rut is the same as a grave, only the depth varies." We don't want to be digging our own graves we want to be digging a garden and planting something pretty for our neighbours to admire, or digging in sand and building sand castles for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.

I think that is why I want to sit in the courtyard in the sun at Ray's nursing home as often as we can. Of course there is the benfit of sunshine to lift our mood and vitamin D adsorbed from sunlight through the skin. There is the chat we have with the other friendly folk we share the courtyard with, and passing staff who use it as a shortcut from one wing to another. But we are out in the fresh air, we can see and hear the birds who flutter down to search for crumbs or chase each other through the trees. The smells of leaves and in summer flowers is so much nicer than the smell of bodies and vinyl in the lounge rooms. It is closer to nature than anywhere else in that situation and we are able to go back inside somewhat wind blow but refreshed.

When I was five I lived in England so my 4th June birthday was in summer not winter. My mother often took us for a picnic on my birthday but when I was five it rained. No she wasn't going to take me out on a picnic, it was raining. Well I must have had the devil in me and flew into a paddy. So grimly she packed up some sandwiches, some boiled egggs and a few sweets, put my sister and I into wet weather gear and off we went, in the rain. We settled under a tree and ate our lunch, then picnic over, home we went, faster than we had come. I'm guessing my mother was trying to teach me that it is foolish to picnic in the rain. That wasn't the lesson I learned. I learned that you can picnic in the rain if you feel the need to.

Today I needed to become comfortable with myself even when it is cold and raining. I think my cookout, however foolish it may have seemed, achieved that.