"For unto us a child is born, for unto us a Son is given. And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6-7Heart felt wishes to all my blogging friends and family! Please take a moment to enjoy this Ode To Joy!
"Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" God of Glory, Lord of love; Hearts unfold like flow'rs before thee, Op'ning to the sun above. Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; Drive the dark of doubt away; Giver of immortal gladness, Fill us with the light of day!
All Thy works with joy surround Thee, Earth and heav'n reflect Thy rays, Stars and angels sing around Thee, Center of unbroken praise. Field and forest, vale and mountain. Flow'ry meadow, flashing sea, Singing bird and flowing fountain Call us to rejoice in Thee.
Thou are giving and forgiving, Ever blessing, ever blest, Wellspring of the joy of living, Ocean depth of happy rest! Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, All who live in love are Thine; Teach us how to love each other, Lift us to the joy divine.
Mortals, join the happy chorus, Which the morning stars began; Father love is reigning o'er us, Brother love binds man to man. Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife, Joyful music leads us Sunward In the triumph song of life. Henry J. Van Dyke 1907
Have a wonderful Christmas celebration! Blessings, Carolynn xoxo
In the coming week I will be linking with several of my favorite blogs. Many of them host weekly parties. I'd love for you to stop by my sidebar to linkup with them and say hi!
I have a habit of storing plastic bags, and, when I go to the supermarket to do my shopping, taking them along with me. This is to prevent myself receiving fifty gazillion more each and every time I shop which will carry my groceries for perhaps ten minutes between the store and my house and then go into a landfill somewhere to do their bit to clog up the biosphere for ten million years (do plastic bags ever break down?). This way, the idea goes, I will be doing my bit to save the environment and put a tiny finger in the very leaky dam that stands in the way of the flood of thousands and millions and trillions of plastic bags leaving supermarkets every day. Every day. Think of it. Think of how many they give you, then multiply that by how many people shop at your supermarket, and contemplate the staggering amount of plastic bag wastage that goes on at one supermarket alone. Then multiply that by all the stores in the world and, well—it's frightening.
I severely miss the supermarket I shopped at in Toronto, which charged you 5 cents per plastic bag. The bags were capacious and sturdy and if you had forgotten to bring some of your own, it was worthwhile buying a few because they could be stored up at home for the next trip or used as dandy garbage bags. Failing that, there was a helpful stash of empty cardboard boxes that produce and the like came in to be had for the taking, if you were driving or had the African habit of carrying things on your head. This served very nicely to keep to an absolute minimum the number of plastic bags leaving the store, and to encourage everyone to bring their own and to stuff them as fully as possible. It was a brilliant system. And since most of the people who shopped there were recent immigrants from India, Africa, the Middle East, China and the Caribbean, who knew about economy and whose cash flow was generally not overwhelming, people followed it scrupulously.
But, sadly, there is no supermarket like it, that I know of, in this area.
And so, at the checkout registers of the supermarkets, plastic bags flow as freely as water. Buying a pack of gum? Put it in a plastic bag. Bread? Has to go by itself in another plastic bag. Cans? Three of 'em will be put into a double-bagger. By the time it's over, fifty dollars' worth of groceries has procured you fifty bags to boot.
Most people are quite happy with this system. They stroll with their trollies stuffed full of bags to the car and take them home where presumably they keep some of them for cat litter and garbage bags and, I don't know, throw out the rest? I can't imagine one household creating a demand for that many plastic bags in one week, ever.
Cashiers and bag boys like giving you plastic bags. It is what they are used to. Your purchases can be swiftly and easily deposited into bags using the neat little hanging system they have by their counter and hoisted into your trolley for takeaway. They know by heart what things should go into what bags and how many things to put in each bag and what to double-bag and what needs to go by itself. They like their little system. It is safe, predictable, easy, quick, and they can do it without thinking. I don't blame them. It's their job.
And then along come I to put a monkey wrench into the works.
Because I politely request that they use the plastic bags that I've brought. Or if it's just one or two items I just say, "I don't need a bag, thanks." Most of the time they are in the midst of swift and automatic movement to deposit my purchases into a bag. And they have to stop, and re-calculate. And look at me as if either I've grown three heads and announced that I'll be commuting home in my spaceship, or as if they've had to take their brains out of park to deal with me and they are not very happy with the disruption to their routine.
Most of the time, they will politely comply. However, this is with varying degrees of success. Often, the bag boys don't realize that the giant canvas bag I carry my bags in is actually a BAG, and thus capable of stowing groceries in. So once I had a kind but befuddled bag boy give me new plastic bags in lieu of using the canvas one, which he folded neatly and returned to me. Once I told a cashier I didn't need the bag she'd put my purchase in, only for her to turn around and throw it out (I suppose it was unusable after holding a fleece jacket for all of three seconds).
Last time I went shopping, the cashier, who hadn't heard my request, swiftly stuffed the few remaining items the bag boy hadn't yet gotten to into three new plastic bags. Then, the bag boy, now having two of my original bags left over, kindly put them into ANOTHER plastic bag for me to take home! I was staggered. I don't know what kept me from saying anything because it lurched forward out of my protesting brain and then somehow got stopped at my tongue. I suppose it's fear of making a public scene, or being perceived as peculiar and idiosyncratic, or of annoying someone who is doing you a service by requesting them to do it in the manner you actually desire. Whatever it was, I didn't say anything, but I carefully and vengefully left those three or four extra bags in the trolley when I returned it. I don't know what happened to them. Probably they just got thrown out. But at least it wasn't me who did it.
We spent the day amongst the flowers as a group of new friends, talking, laughing and making. We became better acquainted and pledged to do it again. I hope that we do. That evening I went home, felt lucky to have new friends and put Fleetwood Mac on the record player. The perfume of the flowers still fills my home, nearly a week later, making me inhale deeply and smile each time I enter the room. Sunday past, Anna kindly invited us into her home where we sat in (what felt like) the early Spring sunshine and commented on how welcoming her home was; filled with the scent of delicious food cooking in the oven and her son's artwork adorning the walls. Anna is a warm and wonderful soul who I am so glad to have met since leaving London, making this town a little more friendly each day. Meanwhile Charlotte showed us how to work with flowers (in this case all British grown, from The Great British Florist) to produce some always pretty and undeniably feminine flower crowns. Charlotte is a natural teacher, I could listen to her for days while she creates and talks... funny, clever and talented. Michelle dutifully (and without complaint) took all our photos while we tried to pose and seem professional, although it mainly ended in awkward smiles and embarrassed expressions. Ok, that was just me, but still... The photos above of Anna (top right), Charlotte (top left) and myself are all taken by Michelle. I really think she is an incredible photographer. She did not lose her patience once, even when I was clearly unbearable in front of the camera. Michelle is one of those classically beautiful and charming women that I am so happy to call a friend (and she carried off a stack of flower crowns like no other as evidenced in the photo of her above, taken by Anna). (All other photos are mine, taken with my iPhone.) I truly loved meeting everyone else for the first time too. Jo, Natalie, Elena , Hannah & Katie; what a great bunch of ladies to spend a day with!
He's gone. The most beautiful, wonderful, happiest, most loving cat in the whole entire world, is gone.
"No longer with us." That's the phrase Julie, his owner used. She called me at work today to let me know. "I've got some bad news," she said. I immediately stiffened. "Are you ready?" "I don't know," I responded, holding tight to the phone. She went on to tell me anyway in a voice resigned with sorrow. "Mugsy's no longer with us," she said.
I knew when she said it was bad news it had to be one of the cats. Mugsy or Bruno, his brother, but I suspected it would be Bruno. With his more adventurous habits, we had more than once commented that he was in danger of being hit by a car as he crossed the road.
"You're joking," I said. She was not. She proceeded to relate the story. February 11, one day after her birthday, a woman came to the door crying and asking if they owned a gray cat because she had just hit one. It was Mugsy.
Julie said that he had looked perfect, completely unmangled, as if nothing had happened to him. They laid his still-warm body down on a grassy knoll and prayed over him for a long time, but he didn't revive.
Mugsy. "The joy of the farm, the most wonderful cat in the world," Julie called him, and it was true.
She hadn't wanted to tell me on Sunday when she saw me in church (I was in Canada the day that it happened). I had asked after Mugsy and she'd said, "He's fine, as ever," with a nervous laugh. And I'd asked how Bruno was. "With his habit of crossing the road, I keep being afraid I'll hear bad news about him," I remarked. I now wonder how she kept a straight face.
I can hardly believe that he's gone. I can hardly believe that when I go back to the farm (and I am afraid to now), I won't be able to call, "Here, kitty, kitty," and see his smiling gray face bounding toward me as he runs full tilt to throw himself at me, in the rapturous way he had that made you feel like the most special person in the world. I won't feel the gentle pressure of his wet nose and soft cheeks as he "kisses" me cat-style by rubbing his face against mine. I won't feel his sturdy squirming body cuddled in my arms, or hear his thunderous purr, or feel his ever-active claws pricking my skin as he kneads my arm. I won't feel the softness of his long fine gray fur, or watch as he jumps on his brother, tackles him, and bites his neck. I won't be able to see him crazily whirling and jumping after dragonflies or leaves, the former of which he rarely if ever caught. I won't hear his "miaow" from somewhere in the rafters as he wends his way through the tangle of the barn roof, or the scrabbling and thud as he falls off something. I won't hear his frantic and rapid paw-scratching on the glass door as he stretches himself up and works away in a desperate bid to be let in the house. I won't be able to watch the funny way he jumps off my lap and runs to investigate the sudden water stream released by the bathroom pipe outlet. I won't see his intense and love-filled green eyes staring into mine. He was always smiling, always happy, always totally in the moment, always the clown, always loving. The most wonderful cat in the world is no longer with us.
Julie said they kept him for a few days while they waited for warm weather to bury his body. She didn't want to burn him. She hasn't yet found a good stone to mark his grave.
Why is it always the best ones that go? And why did it have to be by car? Mugsy always (I thought) stuck close to the house. He was terrified of cars. If one started up while he was in the vicinity, he would run. If you were holding him and a car went by on the road, he'd tense to flee. If it was in the driveway, you'd have a very tough job holding him as he scrambled desperately to escape. Bruno, his gentle brother, was the one who crossed the road. If either of them got hit, we thought it would be Bruno. In fact (ironically now) I always consoled myself that at least if we lost one, it would be Bruno (not that I didn't love him but I had a fiercer affection for Mugsy).
In the end it doesn't matter. Mugsy's gone, I hope he did not suffer and never knew what hit him. He will never adorn the farm anymore as its liveliest and lovingest denizen. Its smiling sunny fields and (to him) endless possibilities for amusement and play will be emptier and sadder now.
And I have lost a dear and wonderful friend.
I do hope cats get to heaven. Because if they do, the first one I want to see there is Mugsy.
My Red Welsh Cupboard all dressed up for Valentine's Day
How I love red and white! I made this Valentines miniature quilt in 1995. I enjoy bringing it out each February.
My sweet sister, Sherry, gave me this darling tea set many years ago. Isn't it adorable?
Brrrr...It's cold outside!
Happy little Play Pals straight from the heart of my darling adopted daughter, Paula Thank you, dear. I love them!
Happy Heart Day!
Thank you for visiting me, my dearest friends and family. I hope and pray that each one of you have a wonderful Valentine's Day!
Blessings and Fond Affection, Carolynn xoxo "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.Love never fails." I Corinthians 13:4-8
I'm linking with all my favorite blogs and parties. I have listed them all on my sidebar. I hope you will stop by each one and say hello. I'm sure they would love to meet you!
I am so excited to be participating in Sandy's Easter-Spring SWAP at www.521lakestreet-sandy.blogspot.com The last day to sign up is February 18 Hurry...You don't want to miss this fun swap!
The mailman’s truck slides by in a dream Ridiculous little thing In the long bright happy cheerful afternoon sunshine Long tree-shadows and long pole-shadows and long house-shadows stretch across the road Like ghosts of their former selves Like inhabitants of the dream world. The sunlight smiles on all the houses And the whole afternoon sits in quiet reverie All is right with the world for now.
This is something I wrote on New Year's Day, 2006. I found it this new year, and could not believe what a difference a year has made. I could not write this anymore. I post it here just to show what my life and my thinking was like a year ago, what it was for years, and how profoundly changed it is now. This was not written for publication, obviously, but since I'm not living it anymore I can publish it without fear:
I’m sitting here alone, in my rented room, high on the second floor of the house. My housemate and her guests were gone all afternoon and came back in a whirl of snowy laughter and left again just as quickly. I’m eating my not-too-bad packaged pad thai, cooked up for my evening meal. I feel as if I’ve spent the whole day cooking, and cleaning up afterward. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. A significant portion of it more than usual, at least. . .
Alone. I’ve been alone all day, since coming home from church. I left early. It’s to be questioned if I really wasn’t alone there either. I went, took in the service, talked to a few people and said the expected “happy new years”. The profound sense of not belonging, not fitting in, finally became overwhelming enough to make me walk out, long before the social hour afterward ended.
The service was jubilant. The church was celebrating those who’d come to Christ in the previous year, and showed a video with highlights of 2005. The worship was exuberant, excited, and many people were dancing uninhibitedly, clearly enjoying God. I watched, the acute pain of feeling like an outsider in the midst of the celebration overridden in moments, but coming back with twisting sharpness just as inevitably. I watched with a smile on my face as Russell and his brother jumped, whirled, and clapped with fists raised in the air, totally abandoned to God’s worship at the front of the church, completely unconscious of what anybody thought. I watched as Megan worshipped God with arms spread outward and a smile of pure joy on her face. I watched as Seth received prayer from a group so large they were jockeying for position to lay hands on him. His hands were upheld and a peaceful smile of bliss was on his face as he received from God. How God must love that, I thought, and the whipping pain of realizing, “I’m not like that,” hit sharp as a fist. Why can’t I be like that? I wonder. How do some people sustain that? Why do some people have such tender hearts? Why do they have no problem allowing God to penetrate them? Why do they so easily bear fruit when I don’t? Hidden and shut away in loneliness and pain, I weep silently and nobody sees. I cry out to God but it seems to make no difference. Hidden from my sight, any prayers for help seem to be met with answers that cause only more pain and don’t bring the solution. Why, I wonder? Why?
And I know the answer is nothing. I don’t know what the answer is. I bear this pain with a silent grimace and cries inside too stifled to be heard or even felt. I buckle under my pain and settle for enduring it because it seems no help is to be found, no answer is to be had, no solution is at hand. Wretched and hopeless endurance of what I feel that I cannot endure is my life. No amount of prayer, no amount of prophecy, no amount of “inner healing” seems to make a difference. I know that the problem lies with my stubborn will and my refusing to allow God in. But even realizing that makes no difference. I can’t overcome it.
I live in pain. My days are spent in misery. I am eaten up with loneliness, with the longing for someone to see me inside as I am and care. I wish that someone could help me. I fear utter abandonment, total loneliness. My social encounters are meaningless and bored. I can’t recall the last real or memorable conversation I had with anyone. Glib exchanges focus on appearing as normal and happy as possible. Never do they dip beneath the surface because my highest value is self-preservation, my worst fear being found out. I keep polite conversations as short as possible, to minimize the length of time I have to make the effort to pretend. I hate parties, groups of people, and conversations where people ask about myself. Which is most of them, since all of us are polite enough to play that game.
Whatever. Even writing this provides no catharsis. I will go to bed alone, in sodden and sullen pain, and wake up in the morning, and go to work at my meaningless job, and come home and go through the routines of eating and cleaning and checking email and talking on the phone and getting ready for bed and going to bed and I’ll get up again the next morning and do it all the same. No light breaks into this darkness, no respite from the pain. Where this will go or I will go nobody knows. Stay tuned.
When I read this now, my only reaction is profound and absolute gratitude to Jesus. He broke in. He changed everything. That's the answer to anyone who wonders why I, or anyone else, would want to live for him?
I went out to dig up some carrots to have with our dinner on New Years Day. (They are keeping quite nicely under the maple leaves and I had to laugh...one carrot fed us for dinner!) That crazy carrot had me smiling as I peeled the monster because... I just plain love the color ORANGE.
It's really no secret... Orange boat size of small Volkswagen strapped to small Volkswagen.
I've been having the urge to paint something orange. A room...Something? It's been so dreary here...and cold. You'll be happy to know the bathroom FEELS ten degrees warmer now!
Then I really had to laugh. I think orange is going to my head. My new glasses: black on the outside - orange on the inside.
New cheery fabric for panels above our bed,with a splash of sun!
If I could find one...
... I would drive one.
Don't you just love seeing the world through orange colored glasses?
What a special time this is for our family. Yesterday I flew to San Diego for the birth of our son and dil's first child. I loved living in San Diego for many years! It's still our home away from home.
Looking north to Point Loma and the mouth of San Diego Harbor... Feeling the sand between my toes and relishing the sweet smell of salt air.
Looking south...Can you see Tijuana, Mexico in the distance?
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES, BOB! We had lunch at The Fish Market on San Diego Bay. The USS Midwaywhich is now a Naval Museum is located next door. I loved Bob Hope for the sacrifice he made every Christmas visiting the troops who were in harms way. When my husband was deployed to the Persian Gulf Bob Hope was seen in a red Santa suit riding in a helicopter high above the ships waving and wishing them all a Merry Christmas.
When our grandbaby arrives I will be posting the photos. Blessings, my dear blogging friends and family! Carolynn xoxo
"Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; If I make my bed on the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there our hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast." Psalm 139:7-10
This coming week I will be linking with many of my favorite blogs to join in their parties and giveaways. I invite you to visit my sidebar and link to these lovely blogs.
Who is the most interesting person you've ever met?
By far the most interesting person I've ever met is a friend of my ex-boyfriend's. We travelled to the town where he grew up, and Dave's house was a requisite stop. Of course his name wasn't Dave, but it will be for this story.
Dave lived way out in the middle of nowhere, in a dump of a house placed in the midst of fields and trees and woods and ponds and streams. His kitchen bore an incredibly exquisite pattern of blue-and-white linoleum, almost like Persian art, from the 70s. I told him that I wanted to take his linoleum. Though worn in spots, it was glorious.
When we arrived we were greeted by a fierce, barking, stiff-legged Chow dog who glared at us like he would like to take off our heads. Dave's friend Mike, who seemed to be perpetually there, showed off a nasty purple-and-red wound he'd received to the thigh from this dog. We walked a long circle around his chain.
The dog was only the firstfruits of the menagerie. All over Dave's house, all over his yard, chained or cooped or caged or roaming free, were an astonishing number of animals. Groups of semi-feral bunnies hopped and scattered as we approached, disturbing their grazing on the lawn. Another dog and two or three cats permitted us to pet them. Baby quails huddled under a heat lamp in their sawdust-bedded cage. Tom turkeys and guinea hens stalked the grounds. A peacock perched high up in a tree. A long snake curled sleepily in its cage. Overwhelmed, I gave up trying to count the species or number of the hoard. It was like Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom.
Dave himself was quite the character. Short and grey-bearded, with an almost perfectly round, swelling belly and long, hanging arms, he bore an uncanny resemblance to a gnome. In fact, he cheerfully informed us, that was his nickname. He wandered around shirtless, in only an aging pair of gray sweat-shorts and sneakers. He was undoubtedly the hairiest person I have ever seen. Great rugs of hair covered his shoulders, chest, and arms, blending in with the long gray beard that covered his face and the top of his chest. The beard crept over and obscured most of his face, like untrimmed ivy. He even had a tuft of hair sprouting from the end of his nose. None of this bothered Dave. He was one of the most laid-back characters I have ever encountered.
Dave hospitably welcomed us and offered us beer. Beer, marijuana, and home-made corncob tobacco pipes seemed to be the main occupations of the house. Dave and his friend Mike drank can after can of Budweiser and deposited the empties into a bulging garbage bag in the kitchen. Dave showed us his system of smoking: he rotated through about four or five handmade corncob pipes, smoking one and then laying it on the end of the line, then smoking the one at the other end of the line. In this way he always had a cool pipe to start with.
In a lone conversation with Dave when he took me upstairs to show me something, he earnestly extolled the virtues of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. “It’s natural,” he explained. “Plants. Perfectly natural. They’re good for you.”
Despite Dave’s eccentricities, or perhaps entwined with them, he was obviously an intelligent person. He had or once had, I’m not sure which, a good job in the city involving computer engineering or programming. He was something of a lay inventor, describing to us his latest creation. He was generous, open-hearted, warm, accepting, and supremely laid-back, even when referring to his ex-wife, who’d left him for another man. His lone daughter, who with her boyfriend operated a tattoo parlour and who demonstrated their art all over her person, obviously adored him. One couldn’t help but like Dave, once one got over the astonishment of his surroundings, his physical person, and some of his habits. He was truly one of kindest and most intriguing people I’ve ever met.
Entering and leaving Dave’s place felt almost like those stories where children accidentally stumble into a strange, alternate magical world, experience adventures, and come back to the real world. It was a time, space and reality warp, this crazy kingdom populated by dozens of animals and eccentric people, and ruled over by a gentle, hairy gnome who drank beer, smoked pot and homemade corncob pipes.
So that was Dave. Who is the most interesting person you’ve ever met?
Update: Happy Christmas to everybody who visits this blog! I'm off to visit the family for the week, so I will probably not be in Blogland for some time. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday.
I've been getting up before the sun since the time change and loving it. The rain is coming down on the dormer and I am thankful to have this little space. My desk has been moved back out here for the winter and it is where it belongs.
Found this little faux fern at Crate and Barrel yesterday and couldn't resist. I've been thinking about creating a new space... a creative space... but I am having a hard time letting go of my time here at the "Burbs". Maybe I can just keep on motoring here?
View of my desk wall in the dormer.I'll be here as the sun comes up. Wishing you a most wonderful weekand a very happy Thanksgiving.
