It is just miserable to be in pain. My arm has hurt, like muscular hurt, for just over a month now. Ow. I hurt it, it got better. I hurt it again, it got better. I hurt it big time, the third time and now I am stuck in radiating to the neck, back and shoulder pain. Sigh. This getting older sure happened faster than I thought it would. I guess next week I'll make it a priority to get checked out. Ick. I hate having to be at a doctor's. Time to grow up and face the music, I guess.

On Monday, I spent much of the day in the hospital emergency room with Phil. Normally I would be a bit of a basket case, stressed, nervous, tightly wound. The emergency room is NOT my favorite place to be although our hospital here is very local, small and dang nice.

Anyhow, just as I was getting ready to drive to the ER, I posted on my FB page that I needed my friends to send white healing light to us. Amazingly, I was calm in the ER. I felt as if someone was lifting me up, keeping me company and making me feel safe and reassured. I have never felt this before in an emergency situation. I was embraced by an unimagined feeling of love and safety and comfort. I felt scooped in the palm of protection's hands.

Today when describing the feeling to the only person I have spoken to of this; she said, " Of course. It was all the healing energy and light and love sent by all your friends on FB. "

Wow, just wow.  I am not alone. I am loved. I am blessed. I will pass this lesson and love on and on....
On this Thanksgiving Eve, I am so very grateful for this knowledge, this surrounding feeling of love. Gratitude. Gracious gratitude.

Often, when I sit down during a quiet part of the evening, after a busy and bustling day; I doodle in a sketchbook. One of the things I find myself drawing a lot are self portraits. I've always thought they added insight into myself, a sort of self exploration, counseling session, that I could look back upon and see where I was on a particular date, a moment in time.

I have been adding color to this image and I'll do an update later but I drew this while thinking of all the lost children and families from Syria. Escaping their homes, leaving behind any semblance of normal, seeking freedom from bombing and repression, I feel their lost dreams. I feel lost for them. I feel powerless to assist them. I am heartbroken over such hatred I see in the world. As Thanksgiving approaches this week, I will be ten thousand times more grateful for the life I have and the world I was lucky enough to be born into. I will pray for peace. I will meditate on the tolerance the world needs and I will try to find in my prayers and meditation, a brief enlightenment, a guidance for the world, a bigger sense of compassion, a direction to help.

Do you know what has made me deliriously happy this week? It is having my oldest son, Michael home after a 10 year gap in seeing him and spending some time just hanging in the studio. 

Of course, Daisy was delighted to meet Michael!

Falling into Fall Love

Fall is moving in for its' months long visit and I am loving the warn, sometimes clear days that slide into a cool night. In early evening, fog rises up from the fields near the county airport and I feel as if I have been transported to another time and place. The darker early evenings now allow me to plug in my blue and white Christmas lights outside that wrap my front porch. The steady glow and color of the lights makes me feel warm, happy, content.

This past weekend was one of surprise visits from friends and family. Mike and Julie were up from the Tacoma area in their RV and stayed at Point Hudson where the water provides days of rest, relaxation and entertainment. Julie made apple cake with cream cheese frosting for us that just filled our souls and bellies with the flavors of fall.

We went to a wedding reception tea party at the beautifully remodeled boy scout log cabin house. The venue was filled with music, food, joy, flowers and white tea candles. Lita had driven over from east of the mountains and we needled her into spending the night at our house so we could visit and chat and watch ghost stories on television. Jacob and his girlfriend stopped in to greet Lita and we all spoke of our weekend adventures into the mid Sunday evening.

Finally, today, after much nagging and barking, Clementine was able to convince me to head to the studio where she happily slept the day away while I made jewelry. Finishing up the evening was a pot of homemade chicken noodle soup and as a friend posted on Facebook about her grandmother wearing aprons; I realized I too had on an apron. That apron brought me around to my own grandmom and the aprons she wore as she cooked and baked and for the briefest of time; I was transported back to her  kitchen and the smells of her applesauce spice raisin cake. The circle was completed today and I go to bed tonight in the embrace of friendship, family and love.

Fall is here and I am reveling in the warm, sunny and shorter days. This area is desperate for more rain and lots of trees will continue dying, as the summer was just too hot and dry, but the colors on the leaves are stunning! Just stunning. Fall makes me feel alive, happy and makes this workaholic studio babe want to be outside. There are simply not enough hours in the day to do all that I want to do! I plan on a writing a longer blog post later but for now I am leaving you with some fall color!

My grandfather was right all those years ago when, after hearing me wish for the umpteenth time that I was 18, he said that after I turned 18, life would fly by. Well, it certainly has and he was ever so right! I could never tell you how much I miss him because there are just no words.

Now I find myself married with no children living in this house. Suddenly it seems big, empty although it really is not. Phil is here. Clementine is here. I am here. We are cat-less for the first time in my life and that feels very odd. Empty. No purring, furry kitty but it is just as well now. Phil is so allergic to them.

I worked a lot in the shop this summer, more than I thought I would. I love it there but hated the heat and all the dryness of this now past summer. I bought air conditioning for the house not being able to stand the heat. I could not handle colored pencils or yarn with all the heat trapped in these walls.

I made tons of jewelry this summer and was totally blessed and a bit dizzy with delight when I realized most of it sold. I did not get to my bench to do much metal smithing but oh, did I design and make earrings, string necklaces, bang out bracelets. I dipped into my years and years of stash and collecting and made fresh, wonderful things with some very old and delightful beads. What fun!

I read into the wee hours of the morning under the ceiling fan in the bedroom turned on high spin. Dizzying high spin. I read of Chicago in the late 1800's, Missoula's current headlines, bear attacks, mountain climbing, People

 magazine and Vanity Fair. I fell in love again with the writing in Vanity Fair and took mental vacations with People.

I lived on cherries for about two intense weeks mid summer. I love cherries! The color, the shape the feel of the little colored balls of firmness and sweetness in my hands could send me over the rainbow!

Dreaming, I didn't forget. Planning, I didn't forget. Wishing away the days longing for fall, I didn't forget and now, my absolute passion for all that is fall begins on Wednesday as the season officially changes. I'll have to write updates on fall for my blog. I'll make lists of all I like to do during the cooler, wet days of fall.

For the rest of this half moon night, now very early morning on the 22nd, I'll go to bed and read. Transport myself here and then into my dreams.