It's like this...

Hello Blog. Long time no see. No visit. No write. It's not you, it's me. It's always me. Always and forever me. So much of my life is... I was wrong. I don't have anything to say at the moment.

I'm waiting for some crinkly fries to come out of the oven so I can dip them into tartar sauce and fill the void within. Only it never does, does it? Fill that void. Food is my drug of choice, but then anyone that looks at me can see that. What they don't realize most of the time is that it's not the whole story. However no one actually wants to know the whole story, do they? We're all bound to ourselves, our lives, our problems, issues, pains. The world revolves around us. Us. Me. You. Not them. Not sure where I'm going with this.... The other night I couldn't sleep and I felt this enormous urge to write. Write and write and write and then write some more. To wring every last word from myself, pour it onto a page and set it afloat. At the time I wasn't quite certain just what it was that aching to be set free from my head. I still don't. Write about my children? My work with the homeless? My depression and anxiety? My fading vision a...

It's funny how things go sometimes. Well, actually most of the time. You make plans. You think things ought to go a certain way, in a particular direction and then....they don't. What's that saying? Man proposes, God disposes. Life is what happens when ...something something. Life does take strange turns and twists. I was having that conversation today with a friend as we waited for her radiation appointment. We spoke of life, of parental expectations, of cruelty, change, life altering events, disappointments..... life. Life. Just...life. We spoke of parents that didn't accept or embrace the choices their children have made. How it causes pain, emotional, physical and all around creates plain ole stinky feelings. That it takes time to get over those things. To be all right with the person YOU are, the choices you've made, and the life you live. She spoke of things she'd like to do, but was so very tired from chemo and radiation. I tried mostl...

This is the 12th Mother's Day without my mom. I miss her very much and as most children, I probably didn't appreciate her and the sacrifices she made for her children as much as I should have while she was here on this earth. I always treated her with respect, she knew I loved her and I cared for her in the last few months of her life. I've learned a lot about mother hood since her death. This is a picture of her holding my last baby. She held Ashley Rose before I did, because I'd had a crash c-section to save Ashley's life. I never actually saw my baby for two days. Mom never let me forget that she held her first. It's not a great picture of my mom because she'd been crying an awful lot that night, not knowing if the baby or I would survive. My mom was and is beautiful. She taught ME how to a be mom. But the baby below is the one who made me a mom for the very first time. Stephanie Ann. You were the light and the life in my worl...

This is our cat Bobo. Yes, I'm aware that Bobo means 'stupid' in Spanish. Thankfully, Bobo does not speak Spanish. This is another shot of our beloved Bobo. My dear husband is his human. Bobo sleeps with him each night, curled into the crook of his arm. When Lance goes to work. Bobo comes and sleeps ON TOP OF ME. Apparently I make a comfortable pillow. This is Tubby, or Professor Tubbington. He is fluffy and very vocal. He talks and chitters and it's adorable. He also races through the house all night, which is somewhat less adorable. Look at the fluffy!!! This is my Baby Twitch. Sadly, we lost our Titchy. We think the coyotes got him and I may be the only one in the house with a broken heart over his loss. He did not endear himself to the other members of the family because he had toileting issues---and he peed on each girls bed. So outside he went and now....he's gone. I've looked and called shelters and the only thing I can think is th...

Catchy title, eh? Yeah, ok. Not really. We spent the week in Tucson, with a day trip here. To Sedona. Magical and wonderful and oh so breathtakingly beautiful. Lance and I hiked up a few trails and I filled our new camera with desert images. It was an amazing time. The number of large cacti....oh the number! Huge and spikey and alien to those of us with webbed-feet from living in the Land of the Green and the Rain. Seattle does not prepare you for dry desert air, or the prevalence of the brown, relived only by cactus. Birds carve holes in these giants and build their nests. I'm not sure I saw one cactus that had not suffered some damage. But to me it is beautiful damage and only added to the joy. So many varieties of spikey danger. This is a beautiful specimen. I shant bore you with the entire 850 photographs we took while in Arizona. We fully intend to return. Soon.

There's a meme going around the Interwebs that shows a stick figure on a bicycle, moving from left to right and from down to up in a smooth arc. Right below that there is another stick figure on a bike, but the path from left to right is not a smooth down-to-up transition. There are enormous valleys, huge dips, crevasses and although the upward motion continues, it is visibly a slower and more difficult route. The first one is labeled My Plan for My Life and the other is labeled, God's Plan . And old Yiddish Proverb says, Man Proposes, God Disposes. Is it really God that shakes our snowglobe and causes the downpour? Or is it the choices we make in life that take us in certain directions where there is bound to be bitter storms and dangerous paths? And how can we remain calm in the face of such furious winds that threaten to, if not destroy us physically, mortally wound us spiritually and emotionally? I do not believe that God's plan for us is to be miserabl...