I just stepped backwards about 3 steps emotionally. On Thursday I received a letter on behalf of the eldest child inquiring as to the assets of the Bear's estate. This is the same first born, Daddy's favourite, overachiever, perky and helpful 27 year old who was with me when the Bear died and helped me clean up his bedroom. I feel like I have been stabbed in the back by the one person in that part of the world I could trust. If the inquiry had come from the 3 adult children, I would have known where the origin was, but this just blew me out of the water. She had already sworn in front of the entire family including her dying father that she would trust me to allocate benefits for the children and now I get a letter from a probate lawyer. There is no estate in terms of vast pools of liquid funds. There's the house I am sitting in, the mortgaged land in Victoria, and his super (pension) funds. That's it. Being on a disability pension, I don't earn enough to pay all my bills as it is. I can only pray that the lawyer tells her there's no point in trying to find more money and that any reasonable judge would rule in favour of a disabled and cash-strapped widow over adult children who are capable of supporting themselves. At any rate, a black cloud has descended as this churns away inside. I had better watch every penny from here on. I have also taken the advice of another widow at work and booked myself in for counseling beginning on Monday.

I was sufficiently tired and depressed to take a nap at 6 PM which lasted until 10, which I didn't anticipate. I got up and read my email and surfed the net a bit and went back to bed at 1AM. Woke at 9, ate breakfast and went back to bed. This is classic depression behaviour for me--sleep until it all goes away. I decided I must get some exercise and take advantage of the lovely weather so I went out to the garden and cleaned out one raised bed of its winter weeds and then dared the ladder to prune some of the worst of the plumcot back. I eliminated one whole main branch that had no flower buds and was aiming at the back fence. Even though the rear neighbours made great strides in restraining their shrubs, I want the tree to grow in our direction not theirs. I have lots of Earlicheer narcissus and the original plum is in full bloom and full of bees. I was chastised severely by the male of the fairy wrens I had seen about the place and I think they have nested in the Cecile Brunner rose bush at the corner of the back yard.

I began some comfort spinning last week grabbing some hand dyed Masham roving from All the Pretty Fibers. Masham isn't particularly soft, but it is long stapled and I am spinning it super fine. It is very pretty soft rose pinks ranging from bright to dusty rose.

The senior cat's coughing is getting worse. I worry but there aren't any options especially after the last trip to the vet left me with a 4 figure bill.