12 Reasons

1. Saw lots of family at Thanksgiving.
2. Celebrated my dad's 90th birthday with pumpkin pie.
3. Caught up with a friend by phone tonight.
4. Found some Christmas lights.
5. Got my printer working again.
6. Replaced a much needed tool.
7. Making another fabric heart tonight.
8. Took a two mile walk in the sun (brrr...) this afternoon.
9. Saw a group of snow geese floating near the shore this morning.
10. Found a new fun coffee place.
11. Looking forward to two friends coming to visit on Tuesday.
12. One piece of pecan pie left...but not for long!

Tonight is for knitting

Picked up some yarn today: yummy red for some "hope threads" tonight. Simple little bracelets and maybe a few beads. Soft reminders of someone thinking of you during difficult times. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. These are a good example of the truth of that statement. Difficult days call for simple tasks that bring comfort and can be passed on.

a time of re-shaping or reinvention...

I am in a time of rethinking what I want and need out of this blog. I am getting tired of the comment moderation  that has become necessary due to some spam and other problems. It may simply be time for the Dresser Drawer to close and reinvent itself. I am not sure. I ask your prayers and patience.

The Partners in Hope will continue -if I can figure out how to separate it without losing it. Here's Hoping! Thanks, kj

You Capture--Color

Visiting the prayer garden at the church --yes, it was cold down on my hands and knees taking these pictures--it was worth it. Up close each of these showed that pristine new color that new growth does...even on a dark northwest day.

Partners in HOPE

Well, dear friends, here is what I am thinking. I think for the next while I need

to focus what little time and energy I have for blogging to my HOPE blog.

So I invite and encourage you to meet me there. To add comments and

encouragement as you are able. Just click this link for Partners in Hope

--either right here in this post or off to the right side of your screen and

you will be transported through cyberspace to...well, to right next door.

Have no fear, when it is time for Mr. Sole Monkey to visit me...

he will help spread hope in some way...I am sure of it.

Home Again

At long last I was able to bring my sweet guy home on December 22. Not all has gone well. It is hard to regain strength--harder still when you have more treatment to endure and some of the meds you must take make it difficult to take in required calories and ample liquid.

It feels precarious some moments. We live in that well known land of 1 step forward and 2 steps back.

I read a lot while he was in the hospital and I carried books around with me. One very nice and very helpful doctor even brought me a book--I kept showing up with books she had read and loved so we determined that we had similar tastes in authors. She brought me a book of short stories by Amy Hempel--who is now a favorite author I now love.

On Christmas Day I began the next book on my list for our book club, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. Yes, everyone else has already read this but I am glad I have it to read now. Reading the letters is perfect for a time such as this. A time when my I have short stretches of attention for it. It is a book that makes me thing of many things and many people. Among them is Mrs. Carter, the mother of one of my best friends. Back in college days I house sat for Mrs. C and then later lived with her during my  last year of school. I would have loved to discuss this book with her. We used to have the greatest talks. We'd leave the library after the fire had died down, put the dog to bed, start up the stairs--still in conversation--and end up sitting on the top stair--or both leaning on the door jam to our rooms across the hall, talking and talking.

One line in the book that spoke to me today:
      "The bright day is done, and we are for the dark."  -Shakespeare
The man who spoke these words in the book was saying he wished he'd known them on the day the Germans invaded their island (Guernsey) because he could have thought these words and been consoled somehow, and able to contend with circumstances better--'without my heart sinking into my shoes.'

I think that is what reading and prayer do for me.

From Pink to Purple

October is "Purple Lights" month--to build awareness of Domestic Abuse and show support for those who are victims of it. I was made aware of "Purple Lights" month by someone and went to find my own string of lights. As far as I know, my city didn't specifically sponsored these lights this year, but my neighboring city has and I would let them shine anyway. People ask about them, are they for Halloween so early? Are they Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness? And it gives me a chance to speak up and bring little light of awareness about Domestic Abuse. It takes all of us shedding light on this all too real issue. For some of us it is very personal. Unfortunately just like cancer there are not many who have not met the face of this violence in some form in our own small circle of life: our own life, a loved one, friend, neighbor.
If you or someone you know needs help right now please take this step to get it: National Domestic Violence Hotline.

The long and the short of it...

You know how it is when the days just seems to slip through your fingers...
I have spent a lot of time on the phone and writing letters lately.
It saddens me when one comes back unexpectedly--and hope it is only a USPS mistake.

My dad was in a car accident the last week. He is okay, but his car is totaled and it certainly rattled him. Not a good way for a trip to have coffee with friends to end--but we are so mindful it could have been much worse.
After all the paperwork, the waiting to see what the insurance would do, then the looking for a new-to-him car, he called tonight to say he is in possession of his second "the-last-car-I-will-own." All this while I am reading the wonderful book, "Drive: Women's True Stories from the Open Road" a truly awesome book full of life, questions, relationship of oneself to the adventure of the road.

Tomorrow we have a family/friend group walking in Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk in Bellevue WA. We each walk with a variety of names and faces imprinted in our hearts. And, we pray for good weather! Never stop hoping. More soon.

Carved in my heart

I walk daily with the names and faces of many friends and loved ones, and their friends and loved ones--all who have been or are being treated for breast cancer.

This beautifully carved totem pole is taller than I am and is housed on the 3rd floor of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance where many come in hope. It certainly isn't the only place in Seattle but it is where I spend a fair amount of time with my husband and the Docs and nurses have all walked with us for many years, giving us hope and giving him many more days than ever expected. Among many of the things I love about the place-the art throughout the clinic is in itself life giving and engaging.

Great Quote from Studs Terkel

Hope dies last---

"La esperanza muere ultima." Without hope, you can't make it.

And so long as you have that hope, we'll be okay.

Once you become active helping others, you feel alive.

You don't feel, "It's my fault." You become a different person.

And others are changed, too.

I read this in an AARP article today as I sat in the waiting room at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. It was a good article and from an interview that took place not long before he died. In the article he talked about his book Hard Times and related much of what was learned during the time of the depression and related to what we need now. I will be picking up a copy of the book to take a new look. I am certainly one for hope.

Good Hot Tea--Please!

It has been one of those weeks. I said this first on Tuesday, and then Wednesday--and yet it has just kept building. Where do you go when everything feels too much? I retreat to my breath prayer:

breathe in HOPE......

breathe out fear....

And a good hot cuppa tea...it is late afternoon or evening...by then tea is my thing. The warmth of the cup extends the gift of the prayer. It keeps me in place.

And I knit. Knitting also keeps me from jumping up too many times...to stay in one place and see the relaxation through. Knitting takes me deeper into myself--just like the prayer. I can shed layer after layer of 'what if' or 'why' or 'what now.' I can listen to my heart--and that is important because it takes me out of a worry mode--worry does nothing for you.

"Doing something with you hands, rather than your

head, is often the best route to clarity." (Joan Erikson in A Walk on the Beach)

Here's to our world

Here's to all my dear friends

Here's to all our loved ones

Here's to the stranger in need

Have a cuppa good hot tea.

small spaces

Well, one thing that being without heat for 2 weeks will do for you is give you a fair lesson in what it will be like to downsize. We have an awesome gas fireplace in our family room--which is attached to the kitchen....so obviously this is where we live because the fireplace is our main source of heat. Upstairs in our bedroom we have a very efficient standing heater...this is where Wilbur lives. He and the heater are having the longest standing affair I have seen. (I have lived in the islands with no heat before and the cat in that lifetime loved the standing fireplace...but despite his name, Kitty-Kitty, he was a heartier cat than Wilbur chooses to be at this point in his life, and therefore Kitty-Kitty only warmed up and then would saunter off to other regions of the house or outdoors. Wilbur just inches ever closer to the heater.)

But back to my musing....living essentially in these two spaces gives me a good idea what it will be like to downsize to a condo (though I expect we will hold out for a condo with heat.) The difference is on the way back and forth and in carrying on the rest of life--like I still leave to go to work, we do shop for groceries, etc....we pass the rest of the house. I miss our living room morning time--I am used to rocking in the beach rocker and doing my morning reading and prayers there--in that rooms light. As it is now, we have all the shades shut to keep in whatever heat we manage to muster up. Of course, someday when the house goes back on the market, and miraculously someone in this current economy buys the house and we move it will not be a matter of living in a small space in the midst of a larger space. It will be a whole new space smaller than here. Wilbur is likely to not be pleased, less corners and cubby holes to squish into. But he'll like the heat!

Rescueing Candles

A bit of water in the garage led to repacking a box of candles, which in turn led to unpacking a few of said candles. Not that there aren't enough candles in the house but those do decrease daily because let it be said here if nowhere else, I am a fan of candles. I burn them regularly and not because I am feeling particularly romantic--rather candles are a sign of hope for me and these days signs of hope are needed. When someone calls and asks me to pray for them or tells me of a situation that is in need of prayer I offer that and always include that I will light a candle for them.

A candle on top of a TAB can is an unusual sight for some. This was on my desk in my office during a difficult time for a friend that I have know since 5th grade. We went all through high school together--drinking TAB and so it was a very fitting place to put my candle for her. With every flicker of that little candle I held my friend in prayer.

I have loved making candles too. I pour them in all shapes and sizes. It is a great project for rainy winter days...but I'll warn you--once you do it your mind goes wild with possibilities and soon even your most distant aunt will be receiving one for her birthday or Christmas.