Say a Little Prayer for me, for you

I do not think that there is a woman out there that does not like to have her home, whatever it may be, to herself. It's not to say that you do not love your partner and kids or the big dog that lays around the living room but it is ever so nice to be by yourself in your own space. No one to answer to, no one needs anything or asks for anything, you don't need to cook or run the laundry. In the quiet of your own home you can just be there. Read, sew, knit, water plants, have a cup of hot chocolate, relax. Ah, the sweet company of one's self! Today, I had those hours in my home. Solitude in a space, a place, I wanted to be. Sweet.

So in my contemplative mood, in the loving solitude of my own home, I made rosaries today. I had new centers and crosses just cast in britanium and some new matted Czech glass beads that combined to make  pretty, yet unusual rosaries.

I love making rosaries. I love the meditation that comes over me as I turn bead after bead. The silence involved in the repetitive turning of loops, the silent counting of the beads in groups of ten, then three. I am not Catholic but I can appreciate prayer beads. There is prayer in making them. There is comfort in the turning and linking, the handling, the drape of the finished piece in your hands. The solace of a tangible connection to prayer. The technique is not complicated nor does it require any real skill but the intangible felt when beads are handled in prayerful thought, make the process a religious one.

While at the hospital with Phil today waiting for his surgery to be completed, I sat in a quiet waiting room with large windows that looked out over a lush green garden filled with native plants. The wind was really blowing but this garden was sheltered by several walls of the hospital. Flanked with iron gates made by a Port Townsend artist, I was able to find some peace from the anxieties that raced through my mind.

We have a small local hospital with views of the water from nearly every patient's room. It is quiet and clean and filled with local artwork. We were greeted by the staff, many of whom we knew from the shop and around town. What could have been a very unpleasant experience just wasn't. I sat and waited, looking at the garden and knitted, lost in my own revelry and grateful for the love I felt from my community. Grateful also for the care my husband was receiving and will continue to receive as he works his way through his recovery. Tonight, I feel blessed to have been a small part of something that works in my town.

Now, if we could all have medical insurance at an affordable rate so that we could get the care we need and not be consumed with worry. Fortunately, Phil is eligible for medicare and he has supplemental insurance. If I had needed to be in the hospital, I would be thinking of costs, bills and not thinking of healing.

Anyhow, I am so thankful for everyone's thoughts and prayers for Phil today. I am truly a blessed woman!

I spent a bit of time this morning adding more color to my blog header painting. I like the way it pops right now with the addition of the purple and intense blue. However, I can not seem to get it to be THE picture for my blog. I am working on this but geez, could Blogger not make things more simple? I will keep trying but until then, you have an advance peek!

So tonight

We have been in the hospital emergency room. Phil has a huge, really huge kidney stone that is causing him pain akin to childbirth. His urologist ( as a kid growing up, did you ever, EVER think you would have a urologist on your instant dial? ) is out of town so unless we want to go to a strange hospital over an hour away, instead of our little everyone knows everyone hospital, they doped him up and sent him home until Tuesday morning. Unless, the pain returns with relentless force and then we head back to the ER. This stone is 10 mm big! If you know anything about beads, you know that 10mm is a decent size and one that is extraordinarily painful in your little ureter tubes. So we sit at home tonight, no fluids for him, we do not want this stone to move, and I watch him sleep, toss, moan and wish that the pain would go away. Jacob is also sick tonight and has a fever. Poor boy is alternately sleeping and eating dry cheerios. My boys are definitely under the weather.

Two things I realized tonight. Little lessons learned in unexpected places: one, everyone knew me at the hospital as the bead lady and even as Phil was having an IV inserted, the nurse was telling me how much she liked my shop. That is why I like living in this town. I was worried and the staff made me feel known, comforted. Two, nothing matters but my family. Not bead shows, not how much money the shop took in today, not how much work was done in the studio or office, nothing matters but my family. I would be lost without them. Sometimes, the universe just needs to slap me up against the head to remind me of this. In the scheme and plans of life everything is small stuff, not worth worrying about but your family - now there is something that matters.

Waiting for our flight home from Tucson. 

This little window on the world opened up yesterday morning over the Olympic Mountains. This is the view I see from my side deck. The mountains make me feel strong, refreshed and clear my head as I look at them. It is not often during the month of February that the mountains lift their cloud skirts and let us see them in all their glory.

This has been my corner in the ballroom at the Windmill Inn at the Tucson Whole Bead Show. I think I have been in this spot for sixteen years? Maybe more. Now, a change has come and I will be moving myself to the True Bead True Blue show at the Doubletree Hotel at Reid Park in Tucson. This was a choice I did not want to make as I liked the show I was in but the promotor decided to move the event to a different hotel in a different part of downtown. Gone would be the light, bright venue that I was used to. I like doing Tucson and showing my charms and jewelry down there but a new show had to be found. I will make new friends there, ( I already know many of the vendors ) and I will be in a hotel that is beautiful, clean and bright. Lots of parking, a big park across the street, restaurants nearby,  and in a part of town that is just plan pretty. I will get used to new show rules, a new group of potential customers  and a new attitude. Energy will be revitalized and already, months away from the dates in 2013, I feel excited to be making a change.

Change is good even when it was not expected. I have always been a person that believes if a door closes, a window opens. I am a person who also believes that if you are unhappy in a situation or someone makes your life unhappy be it for a few days or longer, you can make a change. March to your own drummer, do what you love, send out your energies to those that appreciate them. In short, be the change you are wishing and hoping for! With love on this gray, wet Saturday night - Lois

Just a Quick Quote -

‎"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." ~Marcel Proust

Valentine's Day Again!

Valentine's Day has rolled around again and I am reminded of how much I love all that is in my life right now. Family, friends, work, love, joy and candy! I am so delighted at the romance that is in the air today. Jake took a single red rose to school for someone special, Phil made me chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and we bought a bag of foiled hearts to give to our employees and co workers. Love is in the air! The Beatles were right you know, all you need is love.

Quiet.... on the home front...

The house is so still at this moment that you could hear a spider crawl down a cobweb from the ceiling. Jake is at a friends' home, Phil is buried in paperwork both real and imagined and I am sitting here deciding what I next want to do with this day. Even the outside day is quiet, I can hear a small plane that is circling overhead down by the airport and not even the neighborhood trees are moving. If it were warm, I would say this is " earthquake " weather but it doesn't feel that way today.

I want to post a few pictures of Tucson. Amazingly, during my entire two weeks there, I did not take my camera out. I was so busy greeting customers, friends and other vendors and chatting when we could all squeeze in moments, that I did not take pictures. I lived in the moment rather than capturing the moment to savor in a picture later.

Glorious sunsets.

Blooming cactus.

The blooms - flowers or fruit?

When we had spare moments, Phil and I would often just sit together and marvel at the landscape that is so different and striking from the pacific northwest. We stared at the craggy mountains against the blue sky endlessly. I greeted each day with an exclamation of the beauty that was around me. As I threw open the curtains in our hotel in the Oro Valley, the peach, purple, pink of the mountains and foothills called to me and I answered by basking in their glory. I may not shout it from a mountain top, but I am glorified in His glory and thrilled to be alive and with those that I love, doing what I love! Happy Sunday to you. What are you doing that you love?

Home Now

Sigh, I am home now. Free of all the jumbles and jangles and noise and shopping excitement of Tucson. Two sleeping dogs lie at my feet, a gentle snoring fills the air. Rain is coming down softly, a breeze lifts the branches of the trees and I can hear the pat, pitter, pat of rain in the gutter running down the side of my house. It feels good to be here, attending to business, laundry and other matters at hand. Soon I will stop for a salad and then head to the studio where I am going to shut myself in and rummage in my creativity until I come up with something I so want to do. I have much to tell you about my adventures down south, much to say about the show, much to share on life lessons learned and the splendid time I had with my brother and his wife and visits with friends from Hawaii and Ohio. Right now I am just going to post the pictures of little origami creatures that my granddaughter Ashley made while she housesat for us and took care of Jake. She hid them around and I am so absolutely delighted in finding these sweet little birds and animals! What a beautiful young woman she is! What a pleasure, an absolutely astounding pleasure to have her in my life!