Endings

Oh my goodness, it's been a crazy month!  I've hardly had time to think, let alone blog about what's been going on...Here's a short rundown of what I've been up to since I last checked in...funny how many of them are about endings of one sort or another:

• Quick trip to Oklahoma the first week of May to celebrate my baby brother's 50th birthday - the end of our youth...
• Many days and nights of worry about friends and loved ones in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri due to serious tornado outbreaks!  One of the towns we'd driven through on the way to my brother's was hit, and Joplin, Missouri is (was?) only 100 miles or so from the area I lived in before I came west. For over 100 people in SW Missouri it was truly the end...
• Graduation for all our Wilderness Awareness School students, ages 4-adult...the end of the school year makes me emotional - and our staff is changing quite a bit next fall.  It's going to be awesome, but different.  The end of an era, I suppose.
• I'm on the final part of a huge cross-stitch project that I brought out with me in 2006...it's for a friend, and I've worked (or not) on it for way too long...I'm taking off most of this coming week, and I'll complete the darned thing before week's end!  That one is the end of a chore I wish I'd not taken on.

That's the thing about endings...some are painful, others just make you face reality...and some free you to do other things...With the cross-stitch gone, I'll be able to enjoy the yarn and knitting needles friend Margaret sent me - boxes of the good stuff that I wouldn't buy for myself...After a series of endings, it's good to have a beginning to look forward to!

Late Summer Bounty

Lately it's seemed that I've only had bad news from friends and family - illness, job loss, the loss of a much-wanted pregnancy, and crazy disasters that defy explaination. I've been dealing with more car repairs. For the 1st time in about 10 months I have good brakes all around. Even my church has been under weird stresses that are worrisome. And yet, I've been feeling called to gratitude and celebration...
I live in a place that I love, work at a job that makes a difference in the world, and am surrounded by friends and by mountain vistas, forest, and fields...such a bounty of good things here!
Two weeks ago, I won a pound of produce at our local farmer's market! I chose 2 beautiful ripe peaches that were as good as any peaches I've ever had.
On Saturday, I spent a couple of hours hiking on a lovely trail with a new friend...and found the best tomatoes I've had since I left Missouri at Remlinger Farms in Carnation...then I took a long nap...we might have to rethink the idea we had about doing a 26 mile hike in one day...
The summer "heat wave" seems to have abated...it got all the way up to 93 one day! By Missouri standards, not so bad at all, and I'm really glad that summers here are short.
I had a week off work to enjoy good books, favorite old movies and I even got a fair amount of work done on a cross-stitch project I've been not working on for way longer than I care to reveal. In no particular order, the movies were, "Rio Bravo", "Stagecoach", "The Great Escape", "The Sound of Music", "Apollo 13", "The Stand", "Braveheart", "Men in Black", "The Hunt for Red October", and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". I still think John Wayne is the best ever...
Today, one friend got hired after 5 months of unemployment, another got good news (or so her FaceBook status implies), and I've heard a good prognosis for another. I'm overwhelmed by gratitude and thankfulness for all those things.

WARPed!

Here's what happens when you've been WARPed....I let fellow WARP07 grad Laura Hersh paint my face at graduation on Saturday. It was my first face-painting adventure.

Pretty cool, huh? Who would have expected such wild behavior from me? Nobody...that's who.

That's why I'm particularly happy to have taken the chance and changed my life. It's very empowering to do something that you don't think you can - and that no one expects. Change is good.

As I listened to WARP08 spokesperson Carolyn Temes tell of her adventures, I realized that it's neccessary to do wild and crazy things. She's about my age, and struggled with the program, as I did. She came through it with class and courage. I hope I did as well.

It's a grand thing to take on an adventure that some folks think is too risky, too wild, too crazy. It's a grander thing to come out the other side with the confidence that success brings.

As I watched Carolyn introduce her family to her clan, I saw that her sister, her husband, and both her children were looking at her with respect and awe. That's a good thing.

Life brings changes, challenges and opportunities. Take 'em on...

The Time, It Is A Changin'

I am fighting the time change with every fiber of my being...Haven't been able to drag myself out of bed to do my sit spot all week...



OK, so it's an excuse...and I am sticking to it. It seems like it's taking an awful lot of coffee to get me going this week. And I'm not going anywhere very fast. You'd think that would make sitting under a tree all the more inviting. But I'm cranky and sleepy, and I have not been sitting long under that tree. I haven't been writing every day, either. Those New Year's resolutions are quickly losing ground.

I have been walking in the evening, learning the new neighborhood. I often see deer, and have found the best place to stand and look out over the valley. It's beautiful with fog hanging in the low spots. It's more so when the sun breaks out over the ridges just before it sets. The sky turns all pink and purple and orange for a few minutes. I understand the meaning of the word "Awesome" on those evenings.

I'll adjust to the time change. I don't like it, even though I do get more evening light to explore. Change, even for the better, is hard for us humans. You'd think by now, I'd have learned to just relax into it, and not put up a fight. Apparently, that's a lesson I still have to learn.