Baby crow who knows he is so totally cute!

If you know anything about me, it is that I have a deep, crazy love for crows. I think they are smart, humorous and a kinship seems to have formed with them on my part. I make crow sounds back to them when I hear them deep in conversation with each other. They will carry on and speak back to me as if we are sharing all the deepest, darkest secrets of our souls or at the very least, of our day. I can not totally explain it but I accept them as some kind of friendship and mutual admiration society. I have only begin to explore my crow lust.

So on this cold, wet and occasionally clear day,  here I sit  in bed humming the " I'm so miserable I can't do anything blues ". I need a Thing One or a Thing Two to come and inspire my stomach flu to leave, leave, leave.

Thank goodness I have this week's Port Townsend Leader to read and a couple episodes of my guilty pleasure, Dancing with the Stars to watch. Sigh.... maybe more to follow later but if I have along bout of blog silence, you'll know where I am.

In forty five short minutes I will have moved forward into another year. I am turning 56 on this birthday. This golden birthday of being born in 1956 and turning 56. I am so many things all at once at the beginning of this fifty sixth year. I am fat. My chin is double, my hair much more gray, my feet less achy and my skin a little more lived in. I am delighted as I see the changes in myself both physical and mental. I like being older. I see wisdom in my gray hair, vision in my wrinkles, growth in the way I move through this lifetime. I am blessed because even as my body marches forth into my older years, I am still doing exactly what I love, being with the people I love and creating something from parts. I still am blessed to be able to draw and paint, knit and sew, craft and bead, silversmith and write. I am all that creativity brings me. All the joy that creativity inspires in me. I am a strong, visionary, fifty six year old woman ( 41 minutes and counting ) moving with love into my age. The things I have done are now the blessings in my life. My children are the jewels in the crown of my days, my artwork the velvet robes I drape myself in. Happy birthday me. I wonder what the twenty year old Lois would think of this Lois on her birthday. If only I knew then, what I know now... I'd be exactly here.

Growth as in solid, fantasy inspired trees.

Not quite fifty six and not wearing glasses.

Oh my! I almost missed my blogoversary today! Happy blog anniversary! I used to write all the time in journals, filling page after page of life as it lived me. Now, with this on line blog-journal, I write here. Maybe it is not as blunt as the writing would be if only I was reading my story but it is written nonetheless. Once in awhile, I even think about what I am going to write before I sit at the computer. It is amazing to me, this journey we all take from birth to death and all the days in between. I am a blessed and grateful woman that does what she loves to do and loves to pieces her family and friends. Here's to another year of adventures in life, a journey to self. Damn girl, let's have fun1

Lovely picture

Yes! Obama is president for four more years! Amazing! This night has been just amazing and I can breathe again! Thank you! Now, let's get to work and make our elected officials, all of them, work together for the betterment of ALL of us. America is good!

Some days I have more mojo than other days. Today the mojo flowed freely! Although sleep and I are not the best of friends right now, I did get up early on this fall back day and launched into the studio. I had the whole house, office, studio and warehouse to myself. I could run from here to there and no one stopped me or put a curve in the tracks I was making. I beaded, painted, drew and made chicken soup. I watched a couple of recorded TV shows, went to the grocery and worked in the flower bed in front of the studio. ( Oh please tell me why it is only the weeds growing, still growing, at this time of the year. ) I napped briefly during the news and then drove to the shop to fuss around and place out the three concrete crows I recently finished painting.

I had a great day. Now, don't get me wrong universe. I do not want to be alone every day, without my family here but it certainly was luscious to indulge myself and move only at my pace.

Here are a few of my latest sketchbook entries. You know, the little book I draw in while watching the telly. I am learning to embrace the illustrative side of myself. The part of me that my art school teachers said to abandon. Well, now I am abandoning it - abandoning that part of me with joy!

No words have come to me the last little bit of time. Days have gone by. Then weeks. Still no words. Perhaps after all is said and done with my evening postings on all things internet I have reached a dry well of words.  Nothing but dust at the bottom of that wordless well. In place of writing tonight, I am just going to leave a drawing from my sketchbook, the one I keep by my wine colored leather chair in the living room and draw in as I watch television. My mind wanders, my brain is absorbed in conversations not of my own making and my hands are free to draw. Absentmindedly, I travel from this chair, this soft cushioned spot and begin a nightly journey to other places that exist solely in the interior of my mind.