join me on the path

at the polls in the our river valley

Dina and I went to the polls today (because next Tuesday on Election Day I have to go to treatment and she's got her daughter home from school). Silly me asked her as we drank coffee and drove through the frosty morning to the Board of Elections, "Do you think we'll be the only two there?" The answer, my friends, is NO! The place was rocking; looked like election day. The workers said it was actually a slow morning and they've been doing a steady business with voters casting their early ballots.

I love voting. Makes me feel all blessed and patriotic at the same time. I hope y'all will educate yourself on the candidates and the issues, and then get out there and make a difference. Cast your vote and make your voices heard. These are toughs times and we all want the world to be a safer, calmer, more secure place.

I love this picture of us (taken with the timer). How amazing is it to be friends with someone who knew you before you could drive? We're in our late 40s now and behave like high-schoolers half the time. We were both excited to have cast our ballots!

No matter your politics, please get to the polls and vote. Election Day is Tuesday November 4, but early voting is happening now.

Peace be upon us all.

lions, tigers and bears ... oh, my

OK, so the photographer forgot to include the ruby red slippers (which were awseome!), but this is a great shot of my favorite goblins and me before the Halloween party last night. We sat around the bonfire, ate fried chicken and had an all-around wonderful time.

It was a gorgeous fall evening, the sunset was golden and the fire kept the chill away. There were at least 75 friends in attendance, kids were  running free among their extended family, and there was the blessed feeling of an abundance of peace and love.

This morning I awoke to the sound of my kids in the living room and there's hardly a better sound in the whole world. Megan and James will hang here until lunchtime and then head west to their home. Life is good.

peace & love

make a difference today

Will you  join me in practicing random acts of kindness today? We can make a difference in the world, one person at a time.

This week I received a book from a dear friend who saw it at Half Price Books and bought it for me.

This week I got calls every day from a variety of people making sure I had what I needed to recuperate from treatment.

This week my sister took time out of her day to troll through the grocery with me when I know she was eager to get home and rest her weary knee.

These are random acts of kindness in my book, and it's time for me to return the kindness. What can we do to make today easier for a friend, brighter for one who is struggling, happier for a child?

Go in peace, my friends.

love thursday - it is what it is

These two beautiful people are my friends Julian and Janelle. They're practically newlyweds though they're already the proud parents of two sweet babies. Love found them and they didn't hesitate!

Check out the love stories on the Shutter Sisters blog today. This line that goes with the photo made me laugh out loud:

Even my 4-year-old daughter starts jumping around like a banshee when the little boy across the street comes outside to play.

There's a guy who's stirring up my love feelings these days. But I'm cautious and, yes, I confess, afraid. It's a little complicated and I've not been so lucky in love in the past. But I'm giving myself permission to feel the love, and I'm not giving myself permission to wander off into the what-if's that tomorrow may bring. Call me crazy, but it is what it is ... and it feels like love ... and I want to jump around like a banshee for a little while.

Love is all there is.

follow the yellow brick road

So it's Wednesday evening already. I'm even getting a bit tired of hearing myself bemoan the rapid passage of time, but I swear it's speeding up every day. I was talking with a co-worker today about a project we're working on and the conversation went something like this: So Joan is out next week, you're out the following week and then we'll wrap it up in the couple weeks before Thanksgiving. THANKSGIVING!

Remember when all these holidays felt as if they were ages apart—Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve? When I was a kid I had no idea how they all just blur together. Speaking of Halloween and the yellow brick road, I'm going to a Halloween party this weekend and I'm FINALLY going to dress up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

Perhaps it's the reminder brought on by spending time back in the treatment suite with other cancer patients who may not live to see the new year, but there's no time like the present to make my dreams come true. I've always wanted to dress up like Dorothy, and since I bought the amazing ruby red slippers I'm set. I found an adorable (slightly sexy ;-) costume to wear, and on Saturday I will live the Dorothy dream!

What about your dreams? Are you doing what you can to make them come true? Tell me about one dream come true in your life.

Peace and love.

celebrate life

Happy Anniversary, Mr. & Mrs. Bull! It's been a year since the fairy-tale wedding of my daughter and son-in-law, and they're preparing to move into their first home next month. Life is good!

Tempus fugit! Where do the days and weeks and months go? If we're not careful, life has a way of passing us by while we're worrying about tomorrow or fretting over yesterday.

If there's room in your prayers today, will you please say a prayer for good help and good health in my direction? I'm beginning the next round of Rituxin today (the wonder drug that's working miracles at keeping cancer in remission).

In return I'm praying for good help and good health for all of you. Peace & love ...

it's been a wild turkey kind of weekend

Wow, what a weekend! Saturday dawned with that astounding blue October sky calling me out to play, and answer the call is what I did! Dina and I headed for the nature center but got sidetracked onto this old, one-lane country road. It runs along the river, twisting and turning past houses and fields. As we rounded a corner we startled a flock of turkeys! They run really fast when they want to get away. There were a dozen of them, but they ran down into the river bed and I only caught a few of them in this shot.

I still live in the same small town I did when I was a child. Grew up here, graduated from high school here and am blessed to have friends I've known since I was child. Dina and I graduated in the same class, and though we lost track of one another for years, we've recently reunited. It's a special connection we share with those who knew us before we grew up into the people we are today.

We keep discovering commonalities; little things and big things. For example, we like driving down old country roads just to see what we'll find. And we love walking through cemeteries, wondering about the lives of those gone before us.

And as we drove on down the twisty-turny country road we came upon a field of feed corn that had already been harvested. I said, Do those look like gravestones to you? Look out there in the middle of the field. So, of course, we had to stop and walk out into the field. In this shot (blue sky) you have to look toward the lower, right corner. They're hard to see and look like maybe they're just some rocks. But upon closer inspection we found they WERE graves! In the middle of a corn field! They were really old; one guy was born in the late 1700s.

We finally made it to the nature center and took a hike before hooking up later in the evening with friends around a bonfire. The full moon was waning and it was chilly — a perfect night to gather around a fire, listen to music and talk with friends. We had the makings for s'mores but no one wanted them. We'll have to just have another bonfire!

Dina had tickets to the Bengals vs. Steelers game so we headed downtown. The best part of the day was having lunch at a corner BBQ stand! The Bengals are 0 and 7; it's ugly. But Mother Nature was smiling on us again today and the weather was gorgeous.

I'm exhausted, but happy. Life is indeed good.

saturday babble

When I was in my late teens I worked at a clothing store that sold T-shirts with (now that I think about it) rather suggestive sayings. Things like: Love my peaches shake my tree, and So many men so little time. Reminds me of the Dar Williams song in which she says: Now I'm in a clothing store and the signs say less is more; more for them not more for me ... But before I digress into songs and words and the poetry of both, I want to babble a little bit about the so many men, so little time idea.

Every Friday I get together with a large group of men and women and we talk about the power of God in our lives (or what sometimes feels like the apparent absence of His hand). Often a sub-group of us, both women and men, go somewhere for a late dinner and fellowship (and btw, that word fellowship irks me, but if I go into why I REALLY will digress). Last night, though, it was looking like it was going to be all guys and just me for the after-meeting gathering. There was a day when those kind of odds would be quite appealing, but not last night. So I made sure my sister-friend Dina came along.

I'm just going to go on record here to say these things about guys:
1. I really don't understand the way their brains work, but I like 'em
2. I'm not sure why I like being around them (when I don't even understand them), but I do
3. They seem to be everywhere but a good one (one to call my own) seems to be really hard to find, but I never give up
4. They are funny and make me laugh so hard my head hurts (at least it did last night)
5. They can eat vast amounts of Mexican food in a blink of an eye without (seemingly) an iota of concern as to what all that fat and food will do to their thighs at the midnight hour on a Friday night

Anyway, one of the guys is recently divorced after an unhappy/unsuccessful marriage and he's all high on the idea that now he can go where he wants to go, when he wants to and with whomever he wishes, and that the woman of his dreams is just a heartbeat away (maybe he doesn't think that, because I don't think guys' brains work that way, but that's what it seemed like). His optimism that a woman/partner-in-crime will be ever so easy to find made my sarcastic mouth say something like, Let me know how this newfound freedom goes for you, and how easy it is to find that  someone to go with you wherever you want whenever you want. (i get bitchy like that sometimes) I guess I'm just a little jaded in the finding-that-someone-special department.

I mean, first of all, while there seem to be a lot of available guys (as evidenced by the gang that got together last night) finding someone I want to let into the secret garden of my heart and soul (or who I want to let shake my tree, if you want to get right down to the nitty gritty) hasn't been so hippy-skippy easy. (Did I mention this was going to be a lot of babble?) The guys I feel attracted to are most often unavailable in a variety of ways: shut down to intimacy, in need of time to heal from their last experience, legally obligated to another, blah, blah, blah.

Before this dissolves into a complete portrait of the insanity of my mind, I'm going to wrap it up and say that I no longer embrace the idea that so many men, so little time as a positive. I just want one good man to spend whatever time is left with me, going wherever we want whenever we want.

Wishing us all peace and love on the path today.

who would it be

If you could spend an evening with anyone—living or dead—who would it be? You could have dinner together, talk about their lives, tell them how their work/deeds/views have influenced the person you've become, simply BE in the presence of one who has inspired your life. Who would it be?

I don't even know who I'd pick, but Henry David Thoreau would be on my short list, as would these writers: Anne Lamott, Barbara Kingsolver and Stephen King.

I recently discovered this quote by Thoreau, and am blessed to feel as if (on most days) that I AM living in my dreams:

Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake. ~Thoreau

May you make a dream come true today. Peace & love.

help

Help me let go of yesterday's trials.
Help me dash the fears of tomorrow.
Help me open my eyes to the beauty that is now.
Help me allow my heart to love right where I am.
Help me know that I am never alone on the path.

Help me, please.

When I'm caught up in the drama of work, family and friends, I'm shut off to the light of the spirit. If I can stay in today my eyes see the the little things like the rays of the sun, and then my heart realizes what a miraculous gift this life truly is.

peace and love