In my mind, I’m an artist.  Outside of my mind, I am somewhat less than an artist.  I have a relentless desire to create that sometimes drives me to attempt things, like painting, about which I know nothing.  It’s so much harder than it looks. 

I picked up the framed canvas that I bought two years ago and got out my acrylic paints bought with a groupon and decided to paint a cat (inspired by the cat hair stuck on the canvas).  I love my cat and have always wanted to paint something to remind me of her – she is gray.  I mixed what I thought might be black paint with white paint which should have been gray, except the black was really thalo blue.  So I have a blue cat.  But she looked kind of funny sitting in the middle of a large white canvas and I didn’t really have a plan for any blue cat environment. Hmmm… 

I like yellow with blue, but because I didn’t rinse the blue out of the brush well enough I got a bunch of green too.  Grass maybe? Did I mention that the blue cat has no features? I decided I was painting her from the back.  I added some red. I don’t know why I did that – maybe hoping for a miracle discovery.

At that point, to avoid total disappointment, I changed the focus of my painting session.  New goal: cover the canvas and learn how these paints mix with each other and what textures they produce.  Realistically, I didn’t have my heart set on creating a masterpiece and that was wise. I learned that colors look better not mixed, but separate.  I learned that it’s better to have a general plan in mind if you don’t want to waste a lot of paint.  I developed a new appreciation for painting lessons, which I might actually seek out.  I’m just sayin’, it’s not that easy.  Will I try again? Probably. I have a lot of paint to use up.

Notice this is not a signed painting.

from my single serving birthday cake

This is the fourth day of birthweek, over the halfway mark and closing in fast on the finish line.  This is also the first free day I’ve had from work and perhaps my expectations of it were a bit high.  Or maybe I have in some strange way met those expectations already but don’t realize it. I haven’t been idle by any means.

Backing up a bit, Tuesday I did have a birthday adventure worth mentioning. I had asked a friend who has a large fruit/vegetable farm if I could have some of their post-season strawberry plants. Down here they plant large fields of them every fall and when they have fruited and been picked, they plow them under.  However, being from a different climate originally, I am well aware that you can keep strawberries growing and they will make new plants for the next season.  It’s a lot hotter here and they need proper protection and watering but the plants can survive the heat – I have done it successfully before, once.  I haven’t done it since because I haven’t had a place to plant them and the initial cost has been too much. Strawberry plants in the garden stores cost up to $3 each.  But my friend said to get all the plants I wanted, so I did. I got a couple helpers and we dug up close to 100 plants and brought them home.  I planted 50 that afternoon and have given some away and have a few still to plant.

my strawberry plants in the back of my car – on their way to a new home

Wednesday was an interesting day but only two of the happenings related to my birthday.  I got a present of two pieces of gum from a friend AND I found a birthday card from my parents under a stack of mail that had been lying around for a few days. It was a great card and definitely worth finding. It made me want to go look for other cards. Who knows? It happened once, it can happen again. 

And today, Thursday, was time for Boone coffee hour Florida style, at my house.  I had done a lot of the preparing Wednesday night and finished cooking some pancakes and making some potato hash while the crew gathered.  We had such a good time of eating and talking and sharing our lives and experiences.  I am thankful we have a family where up to four generations of people all value the times together enough to make sure they happen regularly, even at a cost.  Wendell and Lois drove down from Brooksville (which they have done three times this winter). They represent the oldest generation. And Gracie Lapointe is our youngest member of the family who was present.


Our four generation photo op




Just try getting this many heads in the picture when you’re taking it yourself.

Jerry brought me my only birthday cake so far – cute, small and chocolate. Gracie and I ate it. Rich was missing because he had to work and Dennis is not in the pictures because he left early. There were seven of us. 

I was left with a bit more than half the day to spend. I finished a book that I think God wanted me to read. I feel like I’m getting my next assignment, but more on that later.  I had a good talk on the phone with my Mom.  Now I’m going into my room with my art supplies and I’m not coming out until I create something.

If you have to go to work on your birthday, I hope you have as good a day on the job as I did today. It started at the same tedious hour in the dark of early morning, but the bright spot was that the husband came out to the kitchen with a card for me.  He had warned me that he had a lot of trouble picking out a card, and he told me about the one he didn’t get because although the front was complimentary, the inside wasn’t – we all know the kind he was talking about. I like the words on the front of the one he gave me “A friend is someone who reaches for your hand but touches your heart.” I think he was probably a little uncertain about the pic with it,  two little girls holding hands and skipping… oh well. And it did say happy birthday inside.  There are men for whom this kind of task is agonizingly difficult and I hold no ill feelings about being married to one. 



one “to do” and one to undo


I came in to the workplace (my client’s kitchen) and found this sweet little combo.  The card and gift balanced nicely with the to-do list and I felt quite celebrated. The night nurse left me a little birthday note on a paper towel and the housekeeper came by later with ingredients for a pie, which she put together and put in the oven. I have birthday berry pie! She had also seen my birthday come up on her facebook page and had left me a whole flat of strawberries on Saturday.  Her  teen-age daughter gave me some already shelled speckled butter beans to cook. They are amazingly good, I have discovered.  I love my friends at work!

clockwise from top: speckled butter beans, three berry pie, paper towel birthday greeting



As I recall, the flight up there would cost about the same as the haircut. But it was a nice cut.

So now I’m home blogging, cooking the beans and getting ready for the rest of the afternoon and evening.  Birthday week – bring it on!

A cold caught me last weekend.  (Why would anyone want to catch a cold?) I haven’t had one for a while so the experience is making me aware of how much I’ve been missing.  A cold virus does awful things to the body, and I don’t want to go into details because we all know what a cold is like, probably.  I have extra concerns because I work with someone who cannot cope with a respiratory virus in the same way most of us do.  If you can’t really cough when your body wants to, can’t really blow your own nose, and can’t move yourself in bed at night you don’t want to get a cold.

Today I’ve been able to stay at home and do things to boost my immune system and help it fight, but the first couple of days I had to go to work.  I mostly had a terrible headache and scratchy throat and didn’t have a lot of coughing to deal with yet so I worked and wore a mask.  Try covering your head up with a blanket and breathing for a while. It results in feeling a bit oxygen deprived and that’s what a mask feels like, especially when you’re huffing and puffing with exertion. The only thing good about a mask is that no one can see when your nose is dripping. But that is gross.

I am praying to get past the worst parts of this malady quickly.  One experiment I’m working on is trying to avoid taking OTC cold medicines.  My theory is that they dry me up too much and since I’m not a big water drinker anyway, I dry up easily. And then I get laryngitis, or borderline pneumonia. So far, so good.  I’m hoping to be able to sing this weekend and not be so toxic that I have to stay away from all the fun things that I was going to do.  So… out to the kitchen for a vitamin C cocktail and then to bed for a good night’s sleep. Flooding my mind with optimism….

It was a short trip – we were there about 24 hours.  We didn’t do unusual or special things, but we did spend time being family.  I made supper for Julie while she finally got time to update her resume. She gave up her room and bed for us and slept on the couch.  She had to go early to do rounds at the vet hospital so I got to spend time turning out the animals and cleaning the barn in the morning.  We cooked breakfast together and rushed off a bit late to church. We spent time again in the afternoon cooking in the kitchen. Short conversations about work, school, graduation, friends and roommates, summer plans…  And then her need to get some things done that we couldn’t really help her with, and our need to not be traveling late led to the mutual decision to be on our way.

It is just a blessing to be able to spend time with someone you love, looking at a once familiar face, seeing the small things in demeanor and function that tell you whether they are holding up well or not, experiencing the small kindnesses and give/take moments, a bit of teasing and joking, all in love. I feel this way whenever I’m able to be with my daughters, my parents, my siblings and their families. And it isn’t that every visit is always trouble free and 100% comfortable. That isn’t the most important thing. I am thankful because I know everyone does not have family in their life. I choose to thank God that I do.

There are moments when I am just so tired of me and the things I do that I want to just sit and cry.  If I’m not any better at doing things by now, simple things, what hope is there that I will improve in the future?

It’s no wonder that I get anxiety when I sit down at a desk.  It is there that my worst times occur.  It used to be in school and I thank God regularly that I no longer am putting myself in that environment. Now it is my desk at home, my desk where papers flock to taunt me, where the cubbies are black holes of disappearance, and where the only things easily found are the things I don’t need at the moment.  So what could possibly have caused all this angst, you wonder? I couldn’t find an address. 

I ordered a book that I wanted to give my brother and his wife.  After ordering, I realized I hadn’t changed the mailing address – I wanted it to go directly to them and not to me.  So off to the edit page I went, thankfully there was one, and began filling in the blanks, but I couldn’t remember their house number.  I had been in the same situation not six weeks ago and had gotten their address at that time but to my amazement, it was not listed in my phone contacts.  I remember that I wrote it down somewhere. Could it have been only on the package I was mailing?  I remember remarking that it was only one number different than my parents address, but was that one number higher or lower?  I had just called my sister-in-law to make sure they didn’t already have the book so I was not in the mood to call again and totally embarrass myself.  I looked in my address book which reminded me of the address where they used to live four years ago.  I looked in my planner where nothing was listed except phone numbers.  I called my mother who wasn’t available at the time. I looked for the postal receipt for the last package I had mailed to them –  and it is really a joke that I would think I could find that.

So I put my parent’s address in the blank.  At least the book will get to someone who knows where it really goes. I have this same type of crisis every time I see the word “password”.  I do exactly what they say not to do – I write all my passwords down in one place, hard copy, so I can look them up.  But invariably the one I’m looking for is one that isn’t recorded.  Another scary phrase, “income tax report”, makes me want to go hide in a motel somewhere until April 15th is past. And I don’t even do the filing.  Where are all those W2’s and 1099’s and UFO’s and whatever else? Where did last year’s report go after we were done with it? Why on earth do we need that?  Help me.

Because I love the exercise of trying to be organized I will not give up. I’m going to celebrate (inwardly) every time I find something in the place I think it’s supposed to be. But ultimately, I am grateful that I’m not defined by my ability to be organized and that I am loved in spite of all the things I lose track of.  Sick of myself but in hope of getting well soon.

for several reasons.  For one, I made progress in the garage.  I just took a garbage can out for pickup tomorrow and it weighed a ton. A ton of old, rusty nails and screws and bolts are no longer taking up space on the shelf. Feels wonderful.
A bonus; I also found a couple of things we were looking for, again. My only regretful thought is that maybe I could have recycled some of the metal – but it would have been hard to sort out the different kinds.

I’m not a rabid fan of classical music but the right piece can really mean a lot to me.  I have always liked a song from Mendelsohn’s “Elijah” oratorio called “Lift Thine Eyes” and today I got to sing it along with two of my friends.  It is acapella and somewhat challenging but I was happy with the way we did it.  My friends are seasoned singers and there were no nervous snags or goof-ups. It doesn’t always happen but our voices blended really well, and this is the first time we’ve ever sung together.  The music itself is really beautiful – the kind you want to shut your eyes and listen to. Lots of people have heard this song before and many came up to us and said it brought back memories of their times in college chorales and similar venues. And the message in the words make it even more meaningful when you believe them, as I do. The words are from Psalm 121. 

I lift up my eyes to the hills –
where does my help come from
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip –
he who watches over you will not slumber;
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

And here is one of the most interesting You-tube performances that I found of it – a British group called All Angels.  They have young voices and ours were more mature sounding but we did it very much like they did as far as the interpretation.  It was sooo much fun to do something I loved and do it well.

All Angels “Lift Thine Eyes”

I know I haven’t posted in a while but honestly, I am thinking.  I have some important things on my mind but sometimes I want to try them out privately and see if I like the way I’ve said it. Sometimes I don’t even know what I think exactly until I try to write it. Especially when I’m writing about something more important than how the garden is doing or my silly clothes, I like to wait for inspiration too.  Inspiration can produce something relevant in words or it can also prompt me to shut up. Believe me, there are lots of things I’m glad I didn’t write or say. 

Tonight we had a dinner guest – Carroll brought a friend who was staying at his house for a couple days after visiting relatives on the other coast. We enjoyed her visit, her lovely smile and interesting stories. We met her service dog, a beautiful Doberman she had trained herself. The whole evening there was no mention of her two bouts of cancer that had nearly done her in, her time spent in a coma near death, having to relearn walking and talking. There was enough to talk about without any of that coming up because she loves to ride horses, train dogs and travel.  Her speech was a little different but her obvious intelligence and her expressive ways and enthusiasm more than made up for the deliberateness and slowness. She didn’t have a lot of hair, but like I said, she had a gorgeous smile and pretty face. She wears a scarf.  She enjoys her life. She’s going on. Good woman.

And I’m getting ready for another week to go whizzing by at work.  A new nurse is training tomorrow and that is always interesting. Monday will go fast. There is music to practice this week. (As long as I’m on trivia – my garden is doing great.) I’m still working on the garage, sorting bolts and nails. And every day I’m thinking.

I just noticed that I’ve worn smooth the textured surface of my alphabet keys on my computer. I can tell which ones I use most. I like to write (type). But I also like to get some sleep at night so, good night.  

I am here in my favorite place, home, at my favorite time of day, morning. I’ve just been outside to tweak the irrigation system which is running today. It is cool – 52 degrees – which is rare and lovely. I am wearing my favorite long sleeved shirt and my favorite sweatshirt which I hardly ever get to wear because it is usually too hot. Yesterday Joe the Mexican and I raked leaves and trimmed bushes and trees leaving a peacefulness and order in the oneacrewoods that is almost painfully sweet to look at. I know I’ll have to leave this place someday but it’s too hard to think about, so at least for today, I won’t think about it.

After working yesterday I did one of my favorite things for supper.  I started a fire in the backyard and had the men (Dennis and Carroll) roast hot dogs for us.  Joe stayed to eat with us – me and the guys, one of my favorite small crowds.  (I say this because I can pretty much count on them never complaining about any food that is served. Well, because I like them too.) And this morning I’m having my early cup of coffee in my favorite mug, accompanied by my favorite toasted cranberry walnut bread from Publix. I’ve just read a few chapters in my favorite book. My life is filled with favorites. I am favored and thankful.



Newly trimmed orange tree, and the rose and rosemary garden




Shade shed – didn’t really clean up here but I like it a little messy



Tuesday morning – I’m the only one up. It’s still dark. Feed the cat. Off to work
Tuesday noon – check emails, delete 20 ads, nothing personal.
Tuesday 4 pm – finally home, pet cat, no notes or voice mails.
Tuesday 8 pm – wondering if someone has kidnapped my husband, should I expect ransom note?

He did eventually show up at 9:30, having gone straight to band after work. I probably wouldn’t have been so aware of the empty house if I had known he wouldn’t be there for supper. We usually know where the other is. This leads me down several thought paths but specifically thoughts about waiting. And interestingly, my Bible study course last week had some good insights into the subject that I think are worth sharing.

“Waiting provides the excitement of anticipation and pleasure of curiousity.” I remember a time that we planned to visit St. Augustine for an anniversary (or maybe it was a business trip – more likely). I checked out a couple books from the library and learned a lot about the city. I even saw pictures of a bed and breakfast place that I wanted to stay in and restaurants that I wanted to check out. We never went but I feel almost like it happened and the learning and anticipation was sweet.

“Waiting provides time for productivity” and I know about this one for sure.  The first few years of our marriage I always carried needlework with me everywhere I went with my husband. He was always getting involved in conversations with people while I waited, and waited,… I finished a quilt top in that time.  And every morning my commute of 13 miles takes at least half an hour – half that time is spent waiting for the light to change. I have things I do during that time that help me wait patiently because I’m not wasting the time.  What do you do while you’re stopped in traffic?

“Planning and waiting heightens appreciation”. Yes, take, for instance, waiting for one’s day off from work. I make plans how I’m going to spend it and am thinking about it a lot. When it comes I am so aware of it and much appreciative. Like today, my plans to see a friend for lunch have been in my thoughs all week. I am loving today.

“Waiting can be a protection.” The lesson highlighted waiting in relationships. The present culture scoffs at waiting for anything and tells us in every imaginable way that if it feels good, do it and do it now. I see that to be a proven, direct path to trouble.  Waiting allows time to check what we think to be true. Waiting gives time for error to become apparent. Waiting lets the red light runner get through the intersection without having to go through your car (and you).

“Waiting patiently indicates maturity”.  Waiting is practicing patience and you can get better at it with practice. You can even start to enjoy waiting when it used to annoy. It is a way to tell God that you trust his timing and thank him for it. And it can produce peace in the middle of very trying wait experiences. My new favorite phrase “hey, wait a minute…”