Fall is here at long last. We have been lashed by winds and soaked with rains. Every little thing from the plants on the ground, to the tall majestic cedars, to the air we breathe feels refreshed and new. I find myself in the evenings now drawing or knitting while watching favored television shows. I plan on doing this for the next many months on end. This is really just a check in and I will return with more paintings soon.

I
Today is my youngest son's 18th birthday and I have a few words to offer him. I do not want to bore or compound him with life's lessons, lessons I have learned, lost and won again but lessons that he can maybe, just remember in his young adult brain.
1. Be good - It is as simple as that. Just be good. You know the laws. Follow and obey them. Stay out of trouble because I can not think of a more boring and useless way to spend your life than behind bars.Stand up to injustice. Support causes you believe in. Love your fellow man and woman. Do good. Be helpful. Support charity. Look for the reason behind someone's behavior. Love your family and help them out whenever called upon. Feel good about yourself and know that you are a divine creature created by a power much bigger than yourself and put here in this time and place to do good, be good, love good, live good.( p.s. Love your mother earth too, she is the only one we all have. )

 wanted to post this on my blog but in the month since I last posted, everything has changed ( thank you Google ) and I can not even open my blog let alone post. So here is what I am thinking early on this Sunday morning, September 14th with the neighbor's rooster beginning his day long crowing now:

2. Be kind - Kind to your friends. Kind to your family, small children, big children, pets, animals, your fellow citizens. Small acts of kindness, a kind word, a greeting a helping hand - go a long way. Being kind will make you feel good and that goodness is something you should crave.

3, Be truthful - You are only as good as your word. caught in a tangle of deceit and lies and your integrity and your very soul is gone. You have one life, one word, one truth. Know it. Speak it. Live it.

4. Be free - All of the above conspires to give you a good life. One free to be who you are, one free to become who you want to be. Life is about choices, Take this path or that path and know that you will be free if you just follow your heart.

And finally, a special word here - don't be in a hurry to grow up. Remember the wonder of your childhood when everything was new and astounding and keep that wonder so very close to your heart. Never lose it. Delight in a good sunrise, a beautiful flower, a fine meal, a friendship. Life is a wondrous and brief thing, don't miss a moment of it. I love you. Now, go make the world a better place simply because you are living, loving, sharing and caring.

Like

Ah yes, I think, she is lovely and thin. Would I be the same way? Lovely that is if I were thin? Once, a lifetime ago I was and seeing this aging process is both a revelation and a sadness. I am my mother's hands, my mother's chin, my mother's body. When did this happen? Would I be better if I were not gray? Should I add hair color? The rebel in me says no, to enjoy what is, what I have become and waste not one moment more thinking of what could be, what was. I am this now. I am older. Life and I have moved at the speed of light. We are still moving, rounding Saturn and heading into deep space darkness looking for the proverbial sunlight of youth.

This is the latest doodle in what I refer to as my " television sketchbook. " I like to watch television in the evening as a way to unwind from a day of people, activity and noise. Television is like  white noise to me. I hear nothing. It vacates my mind. But I can not just sit in front of the noise machine. I have to keep my hands busy. All winter long, on cold, drafty evenings, I knit and work with wool yarn and felt. Summer, especially now on these hot, hot days I draw. I can not bear to think of wool laying on my lap and sliding through my hands. I make myself work with a limited palette of colors and materials because as much as I would love to have all the studio materials in the house - it is not possible. Not trying to create artwork with a capital A, I can roam freely in my mind and on the paper. I make happy places, I want to go to. I envision places that are peaceful, colorful, happy and inviting.

If I were in charge of the world, there would be no wars or famine, over population or extinction, climate change or horrid storms, no sickness that can not be cured, no love not returned. We would live amongst each other in colorful worlds of peace and harmony. We would live in my drawings, all of us together.

So in the evenings when it is too hot to knit with wool yarns, I draw in a little sketchbook kept on the end table next to my chair in the living room. 

Sometimes a title or theme will come to me but mostly it is mindlessly drawing, an absent brain doodle. It is relaxing and centering for me. A qay to remind myself that I am a painter who happens to craft her days away. G'night.

Normal in Time

It is the night time, as I  first lay down in bed that it comes to me. It with a large capital I. I have a heart problem. I am learning how to deal with it, examine it, let go of the fear. I can not live being afraid. I must trust that either I can handle this or that all will be eventually well. This is not what I expected. I did not plan for this but in all it's great wisdom, the universe has assigned me this challenge to what? Awaken me. Remind me of the short sweetness of life. To teach me patience and acceptance. This journey has begun and the possibility exists that it will be at the very least interesting. I can now say it out loud, I have a heart problem and I am dealing with it. I am loving myself. Being kind to myself. Passing along to myself the words of comfort and love I would extend to anyone else in the same situation. Fear shall not rule me.

Well, after a few frustrating moments trying to yet again remember another password, I have finally signed on to post on my poor unattended blog.

Summer, my least favorite time of the year is in full swing and we have literally suffered through some very hot, un air conditioned days. Not that summer doesn't have a basket full of great things. Some small, some big. I love the wild flowers blooming along the roadside and the daisies enchant me. Seeing the deer munch their way through my back yard makes me gasp in reverence. I think back to the summer of my youth and wish that those days of endless swimming and walking in the Neshaminy creek, hanging out on grandpop's big front porch and stringing horse chestnuts into necklaces, would revisit me. I remember those things all the adults said back then about not being in a rush to grow older, to slow down and enjoy being a kid, ringing ever so true now as I am rushing closer to the big 60. Me. I am the senior that my parents used to be. How did that happen? Who said that one day they would be gone, all the adults of my youth and I would be in their place? Ah, time. If we are lucky, she does not spare us and we get to live and love and learn and play for many summers.

The crazy patterned condensation on my plastic water glass today made me think of a world under the ocean. All cool and liquid green. I dreamed of floating through the water with my mermaid fish tail and finding treasure I would place about in my little octopus garden.

Listening to the music of the Beatles on my IPod in the shop has made me nostalgic for my last year of junior college when the world was all easy going and I floated on a mellow cloud of being no longer a kid yet not really an adult. Still adulthood beckoned to me with an overwhelming calling and I moved forward never really knowing what I was doing but accepting things as they came along. I think I am living that way again. I have just been accepting things as they come to me. The heat of a summer day. The full moon gracing an evening sky. My husband wanting dinner. My teenager getting ready to be 18, no longer my baby. Health issues. Acceptance is key and once again finding the soft, mellow cloud that lets me drift a bit in life taking each day, each single moment - as it comes along.