We are already 3 finished days into the new year and I have yet to wish all of you a very Happy, Healthy, Safe, Lovely, Fun, Creative, Loving, Busy New Year. Love to all and may all your dreams come true. As for me, I promise to stand up straight, meditate more and breathe deeply all the while being kind and loving, patient and creative. Let the good times and a new year begin!

Christmas 2015 - cold, wet, raining

Christmas Eve. If I go to bed, it is admitting that Christmas Eve is over and we have moved into Christmas Day. The hours move forward much faster than I would like. I am missing all that I had in the Christmases of my childhood. My grandparents. My family. Even the " relationships " I had with my sisters. It was a time of peace when we were little kids and all got along. The super fat trees my dad always picked. The ham mom made for Christmas dinner and the homemade chocolate chip cookies we would eat for breakfast after opening gifts. I miss so much.

Making new memories is always on my mind. It is the first time in 33 years there are no children in my house. My sons are grown, with lives of their own. No one wakes up at dawn's early light anymore to open gifts. There is not a mess all over the house as one gift is opened and played with before the next present is claimed.

Tonight, Abigail and Maia were here. A short few hours of company of the sweetest kind. Each and every Christmas now, I am going to make new stories to tell and keep close to my heart. Sing new songs. Wrap new gifts. Pass along kindness to everyone I meet. Happy Christmas and goodnight.

A Turn

I always figured that when I was well into my eighties, that my hands would limit the time I could do craft and art work and I would settle down and write. Be an old woman writer. There are stories in my head that I want to get down on paper. Experiences that have led me here and there that need a written record. If I do not write down things about the 1970's and on into these years, who is to say that anything will be remembered by anyone? I have made it a priority for 2016 that I will begin to write, in this blog, the stories and narrative that wake me in the small hours of the morning. The nighttime grope for pen and paper to scrawl the words upon clean lined pages as fast as they tumble forth from my sleep edged thoughts.

This blog is going to become, or rather I am hoping it becomes, not only a repository of my charms and artwork but of my days. Look out 2016, she is or I am - beginning.

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!