Old Mine, New Purpose: Part 2

    Hi, all! I'm running rather late with this update today, but it's for a good reason I promise :)
    I got to volunteer at my kids' school this morning, helping out at their Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser activities. Talk about a super fun morning! The classes each came through two or three at a time, and us volunteers had stations all around the gym for different skip rope games and challenges. 

Click to learn more about the Heart and Stroke Foundation, what they do, and symptoms and prevention for heart disease and stroke

This FAST acronym can help you remember the signs of a stroke

    We got to do everything from teaching kindergarteners how to jump rope, all the way to trying to turn a double dutch fast enough to keep up with kids who skip waaaaay better than I remember being able to lol. There was even a hula hoop station for attempting to skip that way! (Fairly certain I'd be in the group who just bonked themselves on the back of the head with the hoops, though.)
    For me it was a really fun morning, but for the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada it's an annual fundraiser and a great way to spread information to classrooms and families about health and prevention. Heart disease symptoms, risk factors, and stroke warning signs become common knowledge around our house at least once a year through the Jump Rope for Heart event. It's great info to know; you never know when you'll need it or if knowing will help save a life.
    Signs of a stroke using the FAST acronym:
        F for Face: is it drooping?
        A for Arms: can both be raised?
        S for Speech: is it slurred or jumbled?
        T for Time: call emergency services right away!

    As for the rest of my week, well... I've had a chronic repetitive strain injury in both my right and left forearms and wrists for getting close to thirty years now. Since leaving my day job and becoming an at-home mom and full-time writer two years ago, which means being able to dictate my own schedule and activities most hours of the day, my pain levels have dropped significantly. So significantly, I started to wonder if I might just be able to get pain-free one day and still have full use of both (or at least one) of my hands.
    My doctor took my confession of pain seriously and, after some encouraging tests (x-rays showed no visible joint deterioration, and nerve test results came back as fully functioning in both arms), I started physiotherapy two weeks ago. I've had three appointments so far, and I have to say: OUCH! Yes, this stuff hurts lol. It's not as awful as I expected so far, however, and the awesome physiotherapist I'm seeing listens to what I'm saying. We use the exercise log I'm keeping to adjust and modify my at-home exercises as needed, and I make sure I do my exercises so I have progress to use for adjustments and modifications. I don't know if this will help (previous attempts had negative impacts), but if it does there's hope of recovering at least partially, and if it doesn't I have record of why not. 
    It's so foreign to dream about one day not having pain, but what an amazing thing to ponder. Hope you have a great weekend!

2. The Best for Last

        The prints that described the rest of the mine were impressive. The area that had been rented for filing, the top section of rooms, was the smallest square footage. Looking down through the earth, with the main shaft at the center and imagining the mine’s levels fit into four equal quadrants of a circle, the top level wouldn’t have filled one quadrant. The second level, at a lower elevation, was about one and a half quadrants. The lowest level filled the remaining almost-half of the circle. Due to maintaining structural integrity, none of the levels overlapped. Dillan’s initial description for the levels as being ‘stairs’ made sense in how they stepped in dropping elevations around the central shaft. Ventilation tunnels and other points of access for regular use and emergencies were all noted on each level on the blueprints.
        “Okay, so you bought a really nice hole,” Terry finally admitted. “Why am I down here though? I don’t see any diamonds.”
        “This was a mine for stone or some kind of ore, not diamonds. And you’re here because of this,” Dillan said, leading her to the next table that was full of paperwork… for a spa?
        Per the plan that he’d come up with, the entire top level would be a dedicated health and beauty spa, complete with hiking trails and a picnic area outside. So far, he’d already garnered interest from three wellness companies who wanted more information about the location and development progress.
        The second level was being billed as a hotel. Dillan had been in and out of the hospitality industry for the past twenty years, so the spa and hotel plans were detailed, smart, and – even Terry had to note – surprisingly good. The hotel would also boast a unique banquet and event hall in the largest room, making the hotel and spa an interesting destination for both corporate and personal occasions.
        “This part is a joke, right?” Terry asked, squinting at the plan for the third and lowest level as she tried to find a reason for it even existing.
        “Nope. This is actually the part I’m most proud of. I got the idea when I stumbled onto subterranean farming articles while I was researching.”
        Dillan proudly showed off the stack of blueprints for water recycling, rain capturing, walking paths… the whole third level was intended to be a greenhouse. Due to another large entryway to that level from outside, and the majority of worker facilities being there so already having the necessary plumbing to begin from, more than half of the third level was redesigned in the plans to become a working hydroponics farm for strawberries and spices. There was a necessary partition – complete with sound dampening – that would be built between the working farm and the rooms nearest to the hotel. Those rooms would be converted into public gardens and parks, accessible to hotel guests or through certain spa packages, and available individually as rental event destinations or mock-outdoor exercise class locations.
        The hotel portion included the gardens on the third level and had five interested chains, and one interested private party. The farm already had fourteen interested clients and the mining company’s investment came in the form of onboarding and overseeing the corporation selected to run the commercial farm – the partnership with Dillan providing them a low-risk way to experiment with converting closed mines into more profitable options than file storage sites, as well as a potentially large public image boost.
        Terry straightened and stretched her back. She looked around the room they were in through the ideas Dillan had about it and found herself seeing much too easily what he wanted to create. Her career contracting in commercial development, however, left a heavy sigh waiting in the center of her chest. What he wanted to do wasn’t possible on her half of the inheritance from their dad passing away. After liquidating assets, the numbers looked big in personal bank accounts, but they were very small numbers in the development world.
        “I knew you were going to get that look, so I saved the best for last,” Dillan said. He was almost skipping (something her fifty-five year old eyes didn’t need to see) on his way to a lonely file cabinet standing against the nearest wall. The blue folder in his hands when he came back to where she was waiting had taken on his trembling excitement as he held it out to her.
        The sigh inside her chest hissed out between her teeth as she took the folder. She expected to read a lot of not much in the pages it contained. Dillan often used her to review his contracts because she was better at the legal wording than he’d ever practiced to become, and often the first draft contracts he procured based on ‘interest’ were awful; lots of fancy wording that amounted to him footing all the cost and them receiving all the profits. After her reviews and provision of counter offers, ninety percent of the ‘interest’ would disappear. Dillan had scraped by on the ten percent of his ideas that got funded.
        Inside the folder was not what she expected. At all.