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.

I am still here and intently and intensely working on things for my shop, knitting samples, making lots of jewelry and getting back into writing short missives in my journal. I try to go by the beach once a week for spiritual deep breaths. I will post more here shortly.

This day began in beauty. A warm bright sun, birds singing, the air smelling as sweet and fresh as I have ever noticed. Tulips bloomed in my front flower bed along with the long dormant heather nestled beside the alder tree. We strolled the beach on Marrowstone Island after a wonderful family breakfast, all three of us at the dining room table, something very difficult to do with our busy schedules.

A driftwood collection, soldiers at attention.

The beach.

One person's route from bluff top to beach.

Otter having lunch and play.

Ravens varnished, drying in the sun.

The late afternoon was spent in the studio making a few things for the shop and alternatively speaking with the neighbor about lawns and trees and dogs and other neighborhood things. After 17 years of living in this place, we only know most of the neighbors enough to wave a quick hello but Larry is our neighborhood sage, a wealth of local knowledge and story. A trip into the shop tonight to tidy things and then on the drive home stopping to watch the neighborhood deer walk off into the tall grass where they sleep at night. A full moon beckons to me, making me awake to all the sounds the night brings. It is difficult to call the day an end, wanting to stay up and do and make and knit but my body says sleep. An end it must be called and off to perhaps dream a plan for tomorrow's studio day.

Earrings made today.

So with most things, paint and beads must be put away. Sunshine is due tomorrow and I have plans, pretty firm plans to sit somewhere in the sun and knit.

Once the sheets of rain and fierce winds stopped blowing, the day turned itself around and became a sunny one, full of balmy spring like air. Propping open the front door brought a smile to my face and a hum in my heart. Although I really consider myself a fall -winter kind of person, I am looking forward to the longer days of spring and summer when the light extends further into the evening and I can be outside. Taking a walk, drawing on the porch, knitting in a lawn chair as evening descends from the sky. I already feel myself relaxing as warm airs becomes my comforter and I am so looking towards those days and evenings.

I am sitting here tonight, tired after a long day at the shop, particularly tired after the stressful day, first day back at the shop yesterday and thinking of my eyebrows. That they are nearly non existent. So many things going on in the world and all I can think of are my eyebrows. I used to have nice thick brown ones. In my high school graduation picture, they adorned my face like friendly caterpillars and by the time I was done with college, they were smaller, lighter in color, I thought maybe sun bleached. Honestly, I have not plucked an errant hair from them since high school. So tonight I sit and realize that in certain light, in spite of a soft brown eyebrow pencil, I really have no eyebrows. I miss them. My face misses them. Oh well, this aging thing does take us to places we never thought we might go.....