It's a Fashion Accessory

The Pack Leader can't come to the blog right now.  She and that girl with the long hair went out (and the girl was wearing those muddy boots that smell like horses, yum!) and left me here with this stupid thing on my head.

It all started at Christmastime.  Even though I'm still youthful and active, my doctor told my mom that the reason I was limping from time to time was that active, athletic dogs like me can have arthritic changes starting in their knees.  I was doing fine, with the occasional special treat and rest on my comfy bed next to the fireplace.  But then at Christmas, my pack treated me to two nights at the doggie spa.  And THAT would have been fab, but for a mouthy, uncouth bully dog in an adjoining area.  He provoked me so that I had to tell him a thing or two, which involved a whole lot of barking and some jumping and lunging at the gates to scare him good.  Turns out that did in the ligament in my knee, so I had surgery to stabilize my knee last week.

I came home with this lovely blue wrapping (which beautifully matched my collar, I might add.).

It was kind of comfy, actually.  But once the vet took that wrapping off, boy, does my leg ITCH!  I can't wait to get at it for some serious nibbly scratching and licking.   So now I have this thing on my head. I'm not sure if I'll have to wear it forever, or what.  But dang, I can't reach my leg to give that incision a good clean-and-scratch.

 I heard the vet tell the Pack Leader about something she can slip into my treats to make me drowsy and relaxed.  All I know is that after I had the last treat, all I wanted to do was look at all these COLORs.  I can stand there all afternoon.  Psychedelic, dude.

I'm going to nap now.  And I'll be dreaming of racing around the backyard to get those irritating birds off of the lawn.

Joy in Tahoe

We have officially entered the travel portion of our summer, which has been preceded by a crazy combination of rushing and planning and doing and accomplishing and checking things off of lists.  But last week we flung our lists aside and drove up to Lake Tahoe for the annual family week.


And it was lovely.  But the highlight of the week this year was spending time with our 4 year old niece Boitumelo.  She was born in southern Africa, and her name means "Joy" which is fitting as she is a very happy, bouncy kid.

 As little kids do, she took to her big cousin Caroline with rapt fascination and wanted to emulate everything she did.

But the memory I'll hold close was the morning we took Boitumelo for her first pony ride.  Despite not having seen many horses in her native Lesotho, Boitumelo decided early on that she is going to be a "horse rider" when she grows up.  When asked what horse riders DO for work, she will fix you a serious look with her dark eyes and say "Ride horses!"  Well, duh.

So the first pony ride was a Big Big Deal.  Boitumelo promptly fell in love with her lovely white pony "Merrylegs" (who, by the way, seemed to have very tired legs and didn't seem very merry except when she was headed back toward her hitching post).

 

Her ride consisted of her being led several times in a big circle around a field, accompanied by me (aka Auntie Diane), Uncle Roger, and her moms.  We made quite a procession and I kept thinking that she looked like a princess being escorted by her servants.

I loved seeing the amazed concentration on her face the whole time.  And all four of us grown-ups just grinned the whole morning, too.

We have a few days at home before we head off on our next adventure -- to England! 

Who was that little kid?

I think I mentioned here recently that my parents are in the process of moving out of the house they've lived in for the past forty years.  As they are going through everything, my brother and sister and I end up bringing home stuff we can't bear to see go.  My brother is currently having fun going through old family photos, and every few days I get another batch of them in email -- it's like instant flash to childhood.

So here you see the three of us kids -- my sister Laura, the oldest, there on the left, my brother Gregg, the youngest, in the middle, and me on the right.  Don't you just love the angle of the bangs?!  And there, in the background -- all that midcentury modern furniture, some of which still lives in my parents' house and will go with them (long upholstered into something different from that orange, thank goodness) to the new house.

And here's me and Laura posing for what I think is an Easter picture. I can remember how it felt to sit on that brick planter edge to pose, and I remember that jeweled pin that seemed like the height of elegance (Laura and I both had them but I don't remember where we got them).


I wonder what Gregg will send next...

Elusive but Beautiful

Shhhh.  Keep very still.  There's a smiling teenager nearby. 

This is sort of like spying a gorgeous butterfly in the garden -- if you move toward it too fast, it'll fly away.

I moved cautiously,and after a moment of consternation...

she relaxed and let me take some pictures. 

I think she even liked it.

Such a lovely creature.

Wanna Play?

Happy Mother's Day to my mom, and to all of the great moms out there -- and of course to the great kids who've made us the mothers we are!

And because I'm celebrating Mother's Day by, among other things, NOT doing the tidying and house stuff I would normally do, I thought I'd share a scene from the dining room yesterday.  When I came home from the quilt retreat, I piled the two quilts I'd machine quilted on the dining room table -- and Willow immediately made herself right at home.
 

And Willow up on the table meant that Gemma, our black lab mix, was circling the table, thinking that Willow might want to play.  NOT.

"I said, NO."

Wait, where'd she go?

Is she over there?

 

She's down there again.  NO, I don't want to play.

I think it'll be a stand-off.  Or make that "sleep-off."  (Excuse the blur.)

Quilt, Christened

Willow is usually first to find a new quilt and take a nap on it.  And she's done it again.

Mean!

I've mentioned here that my teenaged daughter, Miss C, has had her own difficult experiences with bullying at school. I should not have been surprised -- but I was -- when she showed me the latest computer animation she was working on. Digital animation is her passion, and she has taught herself to do incredible stop-motion animations, using imagery from a game she likes and using a variety of software including Photoshop. I love seeing her explore her creative passion and how she continues to learn new techniques and try different things. But most of all, I'm so impressed at how she's use her creative expression to tackle subject matter that is so personal and has been so difficult for her.

So, to Taylor Swift's song "Mean,", here's her newest animation:

Blooming and Growing

A friend called me the other day to ask if I was okay, because I've been so quiet here.  Rest assured that I am fine -- I have just been immersed in daily life and family stuff.  Which, I'm afraid, does not make for interesting blog content.  You don't really want to hear how I struggle with removing stains from clothing and what I made for dinner, do you?

We did have two birthdays in the past week, mine and Miss C's.  Thank you to all who sent birthday wishes -- I had a lovely day and my birthday gift will be to spend a few quilting retreat days at my favorite retreat site, Bishop's Ranch, next week.  And Miss C turned 15, which has us in shock.  But we had an action-packed weekend with birthday events, seeing friends and family and celebrating with lemon cake AND chocolate cupcakes.  Guess which ones were for me!

And I fell down a big homeschooling hole this past week, as Miss C and I worked on adjusting the new biology and world history curricula to make them more fun and interesting.  I am pleased -- you have no idea how pleased I am -- to report that we have settled on an online Biology curriculum that is not only interesting but wildly entertaining, and that I'm finding great history resources to liven things up along the way.  I have discovered that Miss C is a visual/auditory learner so I've had fun hunting down videos from the library and Netflix and other places to keep us stimulated.  I get so excited when I start cruising the websites at the History Channel and the Biography Channel and PBS.org -- there are wonderful, wonderful educational tools out there to make things interesting.  For the current ancient China unit, for example, along with textbook reading and some written projects, we'll watch "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo," and another video that tours the inside of the Forbidden City and another video about the emperor who had the terra cotta warriors and the great wall made.   I can hardly wait, actually.

So, nothing dire here going on, just school and paperwork and laundry and grocery shopping and all that sort of thing... not to mention the occasional bit of time outside, as it has been in the 70's here and everything in the yard is starting to bloom.

Happy February!

One Tired Dog

This is one tired dog.  Romping in the snow will do that to a girl.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow

 

We decided a few days ago to take advantage of Husband's extended winter vacation, and Daughter's flexible and portable home-school work to come up to the family house up in Lake Tahoe.  So we gathered up our winter gear, I packed up my sewing machine and supplies (imagining a winter quilting retreat sort of thing), we wedged a space for the dog in the back of the car, and away we went.  Cleverly, we came up before the start of the long weekend and managed to avoid active snow fall and traffic.

I started grinning from ear to ear as soon as I saw snow on the side of the road.  I loved living in the snow when I lived in New Hampshire.  I know it sounds ridiculous to those of you digging out from yet another blizzard, but I miss it and wish I lived in a snowy climate. (Sadly, I can't persuade Roger.) At least I get my fix up here and can then go back home and put away the boots and down jacket for another year.

Gemma had a tense first night, barking at every creak in the house and strange sound.  I suppose we can be grateful that she is such an alert watchdog, but there is such a thing as TOO alert.  Today, after a lot of wild romping in the snow, she is flopped on her side in front of the wood stove and she hasn't emitted a single woof.  

I must confess that I did more photo taking than sledding.  It's dryer that way.  But I loved watching Gemma dash and then claim the sled from Caroline after she'd rolled off.  She's smart enough to know it's more comfortable sitting on plastic than on bare snow.

When we're not flailing around in the snow, we're indoors being cozy.  I finished "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" which I adored.  I set up my sewing machine and worked on the machine quilting for a bed quilt (only to discover I left the free motion foot at home!  Ack!  So I did the in-the-ditch part and will have to wait to do the free motion part later.)  I baked brownies.  Caroline is drawing and working on a new animation video, and Roger is napping and reading and helping his sister by doing odd jobs here in the house. 

And that was only the first 24 hours.  More snowy fun to come!   

Tahoe Torpor

I am just back from a last-minute trip to Lake Tahoe.  My sister-in-law has a house there, which we visit a few times a year for our breathe-the-amazing-pine-scented-Tahoe-air fix.  Last week, my SIL called and was going to be there alone unexpectedly, so she invited me to join her.  R was getting ready to start school, and Miss C, just having returned from a week in San Diego, was not willing to abandon her cat and friends for another week away.  So, I zipped up my suitcase without unpacking it from San Diego, threw it into the back of the car, and away I went.

I wasn't joking about the incomparable Tahoe air.  There is a scent there that causes my blood pressure to drop and my whole body to flood with a sense of relaxed well-being.  My favorite time of day in Tahoe is early in the morning.  I make coffee, and I sit outside on the back deck in the silence... well, it's not silent for the twittering birds and jabbering blue jays and squirrels skittering across tree branches.  But it's peaceful and sitting out to sip coffee and read my book is the ultimate vacation heaven.  Here's one of my early morning companions:

My SIL Diane and I had a very nice time for all of 24 hours, and then she got a call from home requiring her departure...so there I was all alone.  Usually, we're up there with a full family contingent, so it was distinctly strange to be up there all by myself -- no people, no dogs to keep me company.  Thank goodness I had overpacked my "fun supplies" to a ridiculous extent, so I had my laptop, my Kindle loaded with great reading, a basket full of home-schooling materials with which I planned to organize lesson plans, several magazines, watercolor painting supplies, and my Nintendo DS for game-play.  I made good use of all  of those supplies.

Oh, but before I forget, I had some fun time with Diane's new puppy Cassidy, a rambunctious golden retriever.

One day, I did something I've been wanting to do for ages: I hopped in the car and set off to drive around the entire lake.  Someone told me that if you drive straight along without stopping, it's a 2 1/2 hour trip.  Me, I stopped whenever I felt like it.  One of the most interesting stops was at a gorgeous old mansion right on the edge of the lake.  It's Ehrman Mansion, in a state park, where the grounds and beach and even the house are open to the public for a glimpse of what it would have been like to be up there in the early 1900's.  It was a lovely setting.  I took this shot from the wide, old porch of the house -- it was one of those places I'd love to just sit for a day or three.

Of course I found a quilt shop along the way, Quilting Tahoe, and had a fun time perusing the wares there.  I stumbled onto an arts and crafts festival, and wandered around there for an hour or so.  When I crossed into Nevada (those of you non-Westerners may not know that Lake Tahoe straddles the line between California and Nevada so part of the shoreline is in California and part is in Nevada) I couldn't resist stopping at a casino (Montbleu! So elegant sounding!) where I lost a few dollars but had fun anyway. I even wound through the area of Tahoe my family vacationed in when I was a little kid, and going through there always brings back memories of feeling sunburned and reading Dennis the Menace comic books and licking drippy ice cream cones.

At the end of the week, my BFF Beth arrived to play with me.  As we were getting ready to head out for a hike, we realized it was raining!  Quite unexpected, and especially odd as the sky was predominantly blue!  (It is oddly disconcerting to be standing out in the rain and looking up at blue sky.  Someone there said it's something to do with the mountain effect and coolness somewhere and warmth somewhere else...but whatever the reason, it's weird.)  So, we stayed inside and tried to remind ourselves how to play cribbage.  Hardly exciting, but we had a grand old time.

So that was my last-hurrah vacation, and I have come home to the realities of legal work to get done, school to get started, and all the stuff that goes along with real day to day life.  It feels great to be home... but I do miss those quiet piney mornings...

Summer Scattered

I'm feeling more scattered than usual today, so here's a random assortment of thoughts rolling around in my head:

R and I are celebrating our 17th anniversary today.  Hardly seems like that many years!  We will celebrate in lavish style this week with a nice dinner out with friends in San Diego, but today is the actual day and we have had a lovely time.  Our celebration dinner tonight was take-out Chinese food.  Yum.

I am totally smitten with Gareth Malone.  You don't know him?  Check out BBC America's show "The Choir," in which a young and charmingly enthusiastic choir master sets out to bring choral singing to some of Britain's low-income comprehensive schools.  It's entertaining and fascinating and actually uplifting.    

Aren't puppies the best?  Our nextdoor neighbors have a brand new puppy, a cattle-dog mix from a rescue organization, and she is adorable.  Floppy ears, loose wobbly tail, black freckles on her white muzzle...just adorable.  Makes me want another dog, much to R's chagrin.  Gemma would love it, though.

Miss C and I have had some lovely time this weekend playing with our Nintendo DS's together...Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver to be precise. Yes, I'm a cool mom with my own Nintendo and an understanding of what makes Pokemon so interesting.  It really is very multi-leveled and amusing.  (I've been wondering whether I can find an original version in Japanese so Miss C can play for Japanese language practice.  Hmmm.)  I'm glad to report that the Nintendo developers must be aging because they've made the new version with a much bigger screen and much clearer visibility.

I just finished a lovely lovely novel, called The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek.  Wonderful reading, makes me want to read The Great Gatsby again.  I loved that book.

We are thinking sad and loving thoughts for our dear friends Diane, Eric and Abby this week as they have had to say goodbye to their beautiful yellow lab Molly.  They are the dog-lovingest family I know, and Molly had a wonderful life with them.  I know she is romping in a big field in dog heaven.

We are packing to head off on a trip to San Diego for a few days.  Another reason I prefer car travel to air travel?  You can take as many pairs of shoes as you like, and then some.  Deciding which shoes to bring is always the hardest.  I have reduced my assortment to 3 pair but I am planning on a shopping excursion to get those perfect flats I don't yet own.

I told you...Random.  Here's hoping the week ahead is full of summery fun for all!  (By the way, if you have applied to the Artful Quilters Blog Ring just lately, I won't be around to deal with it so don't worry.  I'll catch up when I'm back.)

Charming

I've mentioned here before that I've been playing with small quilts that incorporate old photographs.  In part, that is due to family matters presenting me with scads of old photos... and in part, it's because just when the pictures presented themselves to me I was charged with the task of identifying a series I wanted to explore this year in my Practical Design Workshop.  In January, when it came time to designate what my series would be, I didn't want to take on any big series idea.  And the idea of making a small quilt each month as a) my series work and b) an ongoing exploration of how to transfer photos to fabric and use them in a whimsical, non-sentimental way in quilts fit my mood.

My July project involved a photo I fell in love with. 

As I was sorting through a box of photos from my recently deceased mother-in-law, I came across this near the top.  It's my husband's brother Ron when he was about 10 years old.  Their next door neighbor was a professional photographer who did photos for catalogs and magazines, and apparently he enlisted Roger's family members as models from time to time.  This one?  Who knows what the point was -- selling the air-filled plastic snake?

In any event, it needed to be a quilt.  So, here's my piece for this month, titled "Charmer":

It's about 14" x 16".  I had a great time making it.  I printed the photo onto fabric with my inkjet printer, and added color with colored pencils.  I was happy to find the green snakeskin-like fabric in my stash.  I used Markal painstiks to stencil the word "Charmer" onto the background fabric, and then I added square spirals from a stamped I carved.

Here's a detail shot:

I inset a flange of the green fabric -- it needed the inner border to my eye and I liked the raised texture of the flap.  The dense stipple quilting gives a snaky texture to the background, too.

All in all, a fun project.  It's heading off to Ron for his birthday -- I wouldn't be surprised if he has totally forgotten he ever posed for this picture.

Quiet Time

Listen, can you hear that?

It's quiet.  Very quiet.  I'm here alone in the house, except for a dog who pads around the house after me and two cats who can be found napping in various comfy spots.  Husband and daughter have gone off to Lake Tahoe for the annual stay with R's siblings.  This year, due to work deadlines and a severe need for some time at home alone to just get things done, I've stayed here.

It's not like my little family is rowdy or constantly blaring noise.  But I am so struck by the silence, and how it makes the day stretch out in a lovely, empty way.  I've been getting up early, taking care of the dog and cat needs, and then sitting outside on the patio for a bit with my coffee and a magazine or a book.  Then I discipline myself and head upstairs to work for a few hours.  By lunchtime, I figure I've paid my work dues and I can play.  Or nap.  Or do whatever I darn well please.

I spent one happy afternoon gathering up all of the terra cotta pots I could find around the yard, then  headed off to the nursery and picked out flowers.  In the early evening, I planted flowers and scattered the pots around the patio -- so nice to have some fresh color!  I've watched a silly movie (Leap Year with Amy Adams, which was so-so and predictable but a pleasant accompaniment to sitting and cutting pretty pictures out of magazines.)  I've organized my work files.  I've sorted out some books to donate for the library book sale, and several bags of stuff for the Salvation Army.  Amazing what I can accomplish when there are no interruptions. 

I've made luscious salads for dinner each night, enjoying the freedom to eat when I feel hungry and without worrying about family dinner.  It's funny -- I love having dinner with R and C, and our having dinner together each night is an important family time for all of us -- but it's so nice to have the change.  I can eat while reading, or watching Rachel Maddow, or just sitting outside while watching the hummingbirds at the feeder.

This afternoon might involve some sewing, a new art quilt project in the works.  We'll see.  I'm commitment-free this week, even with myself.

Dad and the '49 Mercury

We're back from our various family adventures (Miss C at camp, R and me in SF) and we all had fun and are dragging ourselves around here with contented exhaustion.  It was good to get away and have some fun, and now it's good to be home.  I'll post on what we did later.

BUT... seeing as how quilt-related posts have been few and far between here lately, I thought I'd show you something I made a while back and gave to my dad last week for father's day.

I've been wanting to experiment some with different photo transfer methods.  And when I came across a great photo of my dad sitting on a beloved car (his 1949 Mercury, which he lovingly customized), I knew it'd be fun to play with.  When I asked my dad about what the car was -- because, to my dad, what the car IS is a vital piece of information -- he replied with the details about the car, and then went on to say that after my mom gave birth to my sister, he had to sell the car to get her out of the hospital and pay the bill!

So that was the seed of this little collage.  The picture below shows my mom holding up my sister Laura, who has a very funny tongue-sticking-out look on her face.  The text says "He traded the '49 Mercury Custom for the baby ... and never looked back."   My dad tells me he was wearing actual blue suede shoes, with a matching blue suede jacket.  Pretty cute guy, huh?  Not to mention a WONderful dad. 

This was a big hit for father's day and I was delighted.

It's a backpack, baby

Fourteen years ago, when Roger and I were preparing to travel to China to bring our baby daughter home, I looked far and wide for some practical travel diaper bag.  I finally settled on a wonderful black backpack from Eddie Bauer, with zillions of pockets, and it was perfect.  It looked like a backpack, so I didn't have to haul around a cutsie blue and pink bag with ducks and bunnies, and it held all of the requisite baby supplies PLUS all of the gear I'd have had in a purse.  It really was the ideal traveling bag.  (Eddie Bauer doesn't make it any more, and the one above is the closest picture I could find to what I carried.)

In the years since I carried that bag around China, it's doubled as the vacation bag to hold books and magazines and sketchbook on vacations.  It sits with me at the beach at Tahoe every summer.  And the dang things shows virtually no wear.  It's amazing.

I pulled it out of the closet today because Caroline has been packing for her first overnight summer camp, this coming week.  (She's headed off to a week-long camp to learn all about 3-D modeling for computer animation.)  She needed a pack she could carry around to hold her journal and her cell phone and her sketchbook and maybe a beach towel if they're going swimming.  She didn't want to bring a school backpack, and it occurred to me that "the China pack" is the ideal solution.  We've loaded it with her necessities, and it will be ideal.

So everything is perfect, except that Mommy is getting a little teary-eyed at the the thought of my BABY heading off for a week (her first time staying more than a night without mom and dad!), carrying the very bag we hauled around China to hold her diapers and bottles.  She's so grown up.  She'll be there with the other computer graphic obsessed kids, strolling around a university campus and learning new exciting things with other teens and even eating dinner without being burped afterwards.

Roger and I are taking the opportunity to have some kid (oops, I mean TEEN) free fun together with a list of things we've been wanting to do in San Francisco.  But I think the week will be harder on us than on her.  

That sound you don't hear

Shhhh.  Hear that?

That NOTHING sound?  That would be SILENCE.  And I've been basking in it for 24 solid hours.

Roger took Miss C off to the city (as in The City.  San Francisco.) to see Wicked (a second viewing for her, first for him) and to stay overnight.  Ever the thoughtful wife and mother, I encouraged them to stay as long as they wanted.  Another few nights even.  I'd manage here alone..... somehow.

I've been craving solitude.  What with C doing school at home for the last year and a half, and with Roger on school vacation for the summer now, I'm -- shall we say -- crazed.  And that's putting it nicely.  Not getting alone time makes me sort of cranky.

So what have I done?  I've finished THREE City and Guilds activities, which included creating painted papers, creating a box pattern, making two boxes, sketching and coloring an object to give a 3D look, drafting a 3d block design.  I prepared some dye paste base, mixed some dyes, and made a screen in preparation for a screen printing session.  I dyed a graduated batch of fabrics.  I sketched out two quilt designs.  I scanned some old family photos and experimented with inket transfers using inkjet transparencies and gel medium.  I watched a Jane Dunnewold DVD on screen printing.  I sat quietly (uninterrupted!) and leisurely read the newest issues of Studio magazine and Somerset Digital Studio.

And if that mini art-retreat time wasn't enough, I spent an hour sitting on the patio in the early morning with coffee and my current novel (A Tale of Two Sisters by Anna Maxted, quite good).  I blanched asparagus  and made lemon vinaigrette dressing for a fresh salad with field greens and toasted almonds, I made a batch of deviled eggs (Roger's favorite treat), and I did two loads of laundry.

It's amazing what I can do when I'm not interrupted. 

My family is now home, the dog is relaxed now that all of her pack is in sight again, and life is returning to normal.  I love my family -- but a day without them has done me a world of good.

The rose and its thorns

I sure have been a neglectful blogger lately, but once again life is getting in the way.  We've had a few weeks of more ups and downs, but I'm hoping that this week we'll get back to some semblance of normalcy around here.  This photo -- taken in the garden last summer -- seemed appropriate to life recently.  The beauty of roses, and some painful thorns, too.

The thorns?  My dear uncle, among my favorite relatives, died last week.  We knew it was coming, and in reality we'd lost him a few years ago as the result of  Alzheimer's.  Still, his passing has been sad, and I will miss him.  He had a big impact on me, and I'll always treasure how proud he was that I became a lawyer.  We spent this past weekend visiting with my aunt and cousins, attending a memorial service for him, and generally gaining some solace from being together.  On the heels of my mother-in-law's death, this has plunged me into a lot of thinking about what it means to be at this stage of my life.  I am grateful every day for my parents' good health.

But the roses have been sweet!  My sister has just moved into a new home, an adorable house in a great neighborhood with beautiful hillside views.  I've spent a few days driving between her old place and new place with carloads of her stuff.  It has made me remember that delicious feeling of moving into a new space and organizing everything tidily -- and that has caused me to engage in a few closet-cleaning and purging binges.  It's always satisfying to get more STUFF out of the house!

And, after bringing stuff out, I'm going to bring something new in -- I've been in the process of buying a new sewing machine!  Gosh, they sure make fancy machines nowadays, and the machine I think of as my "new" Bernina is well out of date, not to mention the fact that there are things about it that I've always been dissatisfied with.  So I've been exploring and trying machines and reading online and I've made a purchase -- but more on that soon!  Very exciting! I swear, it's like buying a car -- there are so many choices and features.

So, this week is about getting my sewing room organized, and catching up on household stuff, and doing a few City and Guilds exercises, and doing some fun stuff with Caroline.  I'm ready for a boring, no drama week!

Oh, I forgot to add: I had a nice surprise today!  I was out running errands today, and stopped into a store and came across this lovely little book, Spirit Animals:

This is just the sort of thing Caroline loves, so I grabbed it (thinking Christmas stocking) and as I flipped through it, I came across illustrations by the talented Lisa Congdon, my friend and daughter of my friend Gerrie Congdon!  What a delightful surprise!

Too Much, All the Time

Many of you know that my daughter has Asperger's Syndrome.  This was diagnosed when she was about 10 years old, and although we've had some years to learn and understand how this affects her, we are always seeking ways to understand how she experiences the world and how we can help her learn to negotiate the world in a way that is comfortable for her.  We know that Miss C has some extreme sensitivities -- super-sensitive hearing, so that someone grating a fork against a plate in a restaurant will make her jump, or the high pitched, dog-whistle like ping of fluorescent lights will make a setting unbearable; high sensitivity to smells, so that eating in a cafeteria and smelling everyone's lunch smells mixed together could make her gag; extreme reactions to light flashes, so that someone taking flash pictures across the room in a restaurant can bring on a migraine... It's got to make the world a pretty unfriendly place at times.  When Miss C was younger (and we didn't know better), we thought that she was being sulky or rude or just tantrumy about being somewhere she didn't want to be.  Now we understand that certain settings -- which might seem perfectly lovely and tolerable to everyone else -- can be extremely overwhelming and/or downright painful for her.

You may well know someone who is on the autistic spectrum, and chances are they experience the world with some of those sorts of sensory sensitivities.  This short video provides an interesting example of what sensory overload feels like to someone on the autistic spectrum.



 Now, when I see a kid acting tantrum-y in a store (knowing, now, how malls with all of their smells and lights and sounds and echoy noises, are torture for Miss C) I think that maybe the child is just overwhelmed and can't cope.

It makes you wonder how you would cope if you had to experience the world this way, doesn't it?

Saying Goodbye and Letting Go

We are having a family excursion, mainly to come to Southern California to attend a memorial service honoring my mother-in-law Beverly who died in February.  Her passing was sudden, although not unexpected, and we have all found great comfort in knowing that she went exactly as she wanted to -- very quickly, with no pain.  What more can one ask, really?

So.  We headed south from our home and stopped about half-way, in San Luis Obispo.  We stayed at an amazing and famous old hotel called The Madonna Inn.  It's built in an over-the-top victorian style, and until recently the whole building was painted a vivid pink, with tons of white gingerbread trim.  We were surprised to find that it is all white now, looking a touch more sedate than it used to.  Each room has its own theme --we stayed in the China Flower room, which was decorated with a lot of (shall we say, tacky?) asian furniture and the walls and ceilings were painted gold.  The heart of the place is its restaurant featuring steaks.  The whole place was vivid, vivid, pink.  Pink floral patterned carpets.  Lush banquette seating upholstered in pepto-bismal pink naugahyde.  Fake flowers and sparkly lights everywhere.  A lot of pink food, in fact.  We were fascinated by their Madonna Cake (which we couldn't bring ourselves to eat but boy, was it PINK) -- white cake with pink tinted bavarian cream inside, we were told.  The restaurant was also full of old photographs from the place's hey-day-- John Wayne was apparently a business partner with the Madonna owner in the cattle business (hence the steak house, I guess) so his face was evident in lots of pictures.  If you are passing along highway 101 in California and want a kitschy but fun stop, this is THE place.

So, now we are with Roger's siblings and going through those mixed emotions of dealing with my mother in law's house and belongings.  Much laughter as old photos are found and stories are told, and of course tears as she is missed.  I am hearing stories that I've never heard about her.  This makes me think that we should have life celebrations for our loved ones while they are alive and can join in --- I've learned so many things about Beverly this week that I wish I'd known and could have talked to her about.

In the midst of this sad time, we are entertained by our new niece Buitumelo (from South Africa, you might recall).  She is thriving and growing and her english is highly entertaining.  She's quite insistent on shaking your hand and whispering "Pleased to meet you" each time you enter the room.  Buitumelo came into the family just after a nephew died suddenly, and her presence at Christmas boosted everyone over what could have been a very hard holiday.  Once again, her being here has given all of us a reason to laugh and chase balls around the backyard.  You should of seen all of us run outside when we heard the tinkling music of the ice cream truck approaching up the street!

There is a definite strangeness to sorting through someone's belongings after they are gone.  It makes me wonder what someone would think looking through my closets and drawers.

I think I'd better do some cleaning when I get home.