MISS MOOX: beauty

Pink, lilac, sky blue, sunny yellow & minty green...
Yes...Spring is almost here!

Eggs are everyday reminders of new life.
Little Baby Chicks
Even our gardens are showing new signs of life...
Sunny yellow daffodils
Purple Crocus
Golden Forsythia

The sweet little girl is my husband's Mother, Anne . The photo was taken in the 1930s.
She is such a loving and wonderful Mother-in-love.
My bedroom is a peaceful respite decorated in powder blue, soft pink and buttery yellow.


I love sewing.
One of my favorite things to make are Heirloom baby garments.
I, especially, love Christening Gowns.
Soft white batiste, dainty pin tucks and embroidery.
What treasured keepsakes they make.

"Desert Rose" from my sweet Gramma.
I have many fond memories of family gathered around Gramma and Grampa's table on Easter Sunday.
She always served us on her beautiful Franciscan Ware.




A pretty little Rose teacup and saucer from my Mother.

Vintage touches...
Lace that my Gramma crocheted
Vintage plates from my thrifting adventures.

This pretty little cream and sugar are thrifted.
I love the feminine touch they give my cottage shelf.

A tiny little tea cup
Yes...Another thrifted treasure!

And now for a
SNEAK PEEK!

I've been having fun working on something special
for the Easter Swap.
Can you guess what I'm making?

[I've removed these photos but posted them to my new Flickr account. If anyone is interested in viewing my photos, I'll be posting new ones there reasonably often.]

My new favourite item is Hanes men's tank tops ("vests", as the British call them). They are simple but brilliant, for several reasons:

1. Cheap. $6.97 at Walmart for a packet of three. Normally I wouldn't darken the door of the place, but for this, I make an exception.

2. Exceptionally comfy. Soft, body-hugging, feel-good.

3. High neckline. No cleavage-skimming with these bad boys.

4. Veeeery long. Making them great for layering under anything else, and effectively solving the crack/large gap between shirt bottom and pants top problem completely. Brilliant!

5. Chic. Somehow with the slightly see-through fabric, the fine wale, the slightly-visible printed label on the back, they have a naive simplicity that is almost artistic.

These are my winners for this week. I'm hooked.

This article questions, "Should God bless America?"

Some day I will go
Far away
To where dreams lie alive
And walk by day

I'll go with a glory in my eyes
And a brightness held in my hands
Past where the stars are burning
Past where the earth stands
Past where the seas are turning

No matter how long and weary
I travel upon my quest
I know that I'll reach that land someday
And lay myself to rest.

(A poem I wrote when I was about 13 or 14. It just "came", like a muse. I'm still not sure entirely what it's about, though I have an idea).

At a tea shop:

Two nerdy-looking, very pale young guys, sampling tea:

Nerd #1: "You have to try [Company name] Tea Shop. They have the best tea."

Nerd #2, completely seriously: "Yes, but why should I believe you? You also think that you have magic powers, so you'd believe anything."

I had to try to stop laughing.

For lack of better things to blog about, I am going to include some snippets of older writings, things hammered out on a whim when something struck me and worked its way round in my mind till it demanded to be spilled out on paper, or computer at least. Before I had a blog, they lived as miscellaneous and unrelated snippets on my computer's hard drive. Now, they exist as miscellaneous and unrelated snippets on Blogger's servers' hard drives, for all the world to see, or at least those bits of it that happen upon them.

Upon meeting a fat white cat in the dark

The cat “mrrp”ed at me loudly and in a friendly manner, staring full into my face with wondering and pleading eyes, so I bent down and talked to it gently. It approached, and I moved to stroke its head, but with the ingenuity that un-introduced cats have it ducked and managed to keep its nose just barely touching my hand, like a security guard frisking a suspicious-looking customer. After it had satisfactorily sniffed me it pushed its head against my hand in a very warmly accepting way; then in the sudden way such cats have turned and began nosing around the foliage again as if on urgent business.

I spoke softly to it again, and in the sensuous and tantalizing manner of a cat it turned its back and began winding its way slowly, tail up, back into the gate leading to its home. I stopped and stood up, explaining to it that I couldn’t follow it, much as it seemed to be indicating to me it would like me to. I left it there, stroking its head on the gate and waving its tail pensively, to go about its fat-white-cat ways unhindered.

Written on a dreamy summer day

Beebles was granted a reprieve.

She is still firmly and happily ensconced at the farm, along with another of her female friends who was deemed too small for the slaughterhouse. Their comrades are all frozen corpses awaiting their destined purpose in life: to be eaten.

I have two weeks to find Beebles a home. So think of her: and if you have any suggestions, let me know.

Update: Beebles, Part 3

Lyrics by Kendall Payne

Boy know your place, lies do not become us
Real is more attractive than a slick and polished mask
Girl dig down deep, I know there's more between us
There's bound to be a question you're just dying for me to ask

If you can be honest, I can be too
If you'll take the first step, I'll follow you through
But no one wants to bleed, no one wants to hide
No one wants to hurt, alone inside
Child, don't close your eyes the truth contains much beauty
And though it scars your soul, it can heal the wounds it makes
You've been deceived to think the pain is to be dreaded
When you've got nothing left, it'll give more than it takes

If you can't find the peace, I'll help find it for you
I don't know how, but one thing
that's sure is I won't leave you now

It is very strange. If you had asked me, when I lived in Toronto, where "home" was, I would have told you quite honestly, nowhere. I didn't view any place on earth as belonging to me or me to it. I felt like a wanderer, a nomad, stuck temporarily in this city that I loved but with no place to call my home.

Now, I look at photographs of Toronto (some I just stumbled upon tonight on another blog site of the area where I lived and ran), and I nearly cry with a fierce longing of homesickness that sweeps over me in a wave that I can't explain. Why this sudden captivation with a city that I didn't even think I belonged in? Why the joy when I came back to it a month or so ago after being away only three months?

I almost don't even dare to hope it could be "home" for me. For now, I will only say that I love it, with an intensity that I don't even understand.

There he is. . .

No, it's not mine. . .I am not even that fond of dogs. . .if it were mine it would be The Best Cat In The World. . . :-)

I was tickled pink this morning to discover a post about my blog on David Cho's blog, The Best Dog In The World. I've just discovered his blog and it is already one of my favourites and definitely going to be a continuing read. He is insightful, clever, very funny, and a talented writer. His posts about faith are particularly worth reading. His humorous posts about everyday life have had me laughing aloud more than once, and that's not that easy to do! Please check it out--you'll be glad you did.

Thanks David!

As soon as I write that last post, God proves himself again. Breaks in in a way that proves he cares, that he is still pursuing me, that he is still committed to my good and to healing me. No "answer" yet to the Question. But maybe there will be, and it will be swallowed and swept away in the rushing eddy of his love. For now, all I know is that there is a light shining at the end of the tunnel. And it is good.

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate... .
—William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29
The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron.
Deuteronomy 28:23, NIV

I have never felt so like God wasn't listening, didn't care, wasn't interested, didn't hear, wasn't going to answer me, that my prayers were pointless and simply troubling deaf Heaven, as I do now. I have heard people say this and I've tasted somewhat of it myself, but I am living in the reality of it right now. It's a bewildering seeming complete lack of interest, care, or knowledge of the one particular issue that is weighing on me in constant pain. . .

I don't know, honestly, right now, if God cares about this, knows about it, is listening. Or if my feelings are so wrong and unworthy that God simply is not even going to acknowledge it... or if I am going to emerge at the end of this tunnel stronger, wiser, and with a knowledge of why I had to go through it, and even be able to thank him for it... I just do not know.

This morning I went outside early to do some chores, and I am glad I did. It was something renewing and refreshing to be outside in the clear still cold alive morning air. The crows were raucously calling all about in the distant fields. The pond lay muted and silent in its bed of weeds and grass, mysteriously going down into winter death. The horses stood quietly about the hillside in the back field, going about the business of grazing. The sun was a muted blaze through curtaining clouds.

I cleaned the horse stalls, then the chicken coop, as Mugsy the cat ran to and from and about me. I was his epicentre as he rushed off to investigate first one and then another of the fascinating morning smells and sights and sounds, then rushed back for some rapturous hugging and kissing, love shining out of his devoted eyes. He was my companion as I went to the manure pile to dump my wheelbarrow load, as I went to a new stall, as I went to the chicken coop. As I shoveled out chicken poop and shavings, the chickens sat on their roosts and watched and muttered fussy, half-alarmed, complaining remarks on what I was doing all the while.

In the horse barn, I cuddled Beebles the turkey, the half-formed, feeble one with one blind eye and another that can barely see, visibly underdeveloped compared to all the others. The biggest tom stalked about, tail fanned, feathers standing straight out all over like a bristly pinecone, his absurd and solemn face framed in his magnificence of feathers, watching me carefully. The whole earth lay still and silent. Winter is imminent.

You know the feeling you get when something that has bothered you for so long once again presses itself fresh on your brain through something happening to remind you and you want to SCREAM and cry and kick and throw a colossal-size temper tantrum just like a little kid and then you press yourself down and quit because you know, like that little kid doesn't, that it won't do any good and nothing will have changed at the end.

That's how I feel right now. . .