violetismycolor

who is really out on a limb???

I find it interesting that the 'daring' child was 'out on a limb'...how very much like me!  Of course, this is clearly what I feel that I am all about though that was not my intent when I thought of the illustration and what to do with it.  The little girl does have brown hair and green eyes, and so do I...How could I have missed it?

I am trying to figure out what to post for Photo Friday...Fancy...don't want to do something run of the mill or too cliche.  I guess I will have to sleep on it. 

I am also working on the 'ambition' prompt for IF...hope it won't take me a week; it shouldn't since I have the idea all worked out in my head already.  Check this space since I have a fairly free weekend.

Adam had 2 friends from Willamette (his ex-college) show up at St. Andrew's today and that was a lot of fun for him.  One of them was the girl who is studying abroad in Galway, Ireland and hosted him a couple of weeks back.  These kids are certainly lucky.  I never had the chance to do anything like that in college and I have to say, I am a little jealous...sometimes.

Bonnie is done with all her papers for the term and had a much easier time on the last 2 than she thought she would.  She was also thrilled to get an A on her Kant paper, though she claims she still doesn't 'get' him.  She is very happy, nonetheless.

Time for me to get ready for some shuteye, so I will sign off.  Happy weekend, all!

IF...daring...

Okay, so better late than never, right?  We are going to get a new IF prompt tomorrow and I am still on the OLD schedule...story of my life!

I have been so caught up in the little things around here...gardening (!!!...oh, my aching back!), working, reading, trying to keep all my family's balls in the air...that I have hardly written an entry and haven't gone around visiting my blogging friends at all!  I have been totally out of touch.  Sorry about that! 

I am a great believer in the universe bringing you people and situations to work through all the 'stuff' in your life and I have gotten a bit of that this week.  I was too tired to go to my coffee group this morning, and what happens?  My brother, Bill, calls to talk to John...then he and I have a 45-minute discussion about religion/spirituality.  Now, remember that he and most of my family are real right-wing, evangelical Catholics and I took the quiz on Beliefnet.com and scored as a 'Neo-Pagan', closely followed by 'Unitarian', so you have SOME idea of the disparity of our belief systems.  But I have been asking the universe (God and my angels, I guess) to help me to be less judgmental of my family (I have to admit that it is really hard for me not to see them as very one-sided) and to see them for the beautiful and loving beings that they are, even if we disagree on certain things.  Well, wouldn't you know it?  Right in my face!  Bill and I had a pretty good discussion, actually, and it made me see him in a new light.  I guess that is what was supposed to happen, though in the past we would have ended up in an argument.  Score one for tolerance!

crazyness...

Much, much crazyness this weekend...

First of all, right in the middle of the Symphony on Saturday night, my phone vibrated and it was Bonnie calling.  I spent the next hour and ten minutes talking her through a difficult problem she was having at school.  I was really enjoying the symphony (there was this cool Russian trio), but when someone you love needs you, you have to pick your priorities.

We are having roofing contractors giving us bids and we had some of those appointments.  We are also trying to find covered rain gutters to have installed.  The other projects for the summer are having the house painted and the decks restained.  The place will look like new!  What a lot of work to find the right person, though!

I have been trying to find a place to stay in Hamilton for this year's Parents' Weekend, too, but people are all booked.  I was, originally, planning to go to Colgate in conjunction with my Cousin's Weekend, which was supposed to be in Cleveland this year.  But on Friday, one of the cousins wrote that my Aunt Betty and Uncle Bert are having their 50th wedding anniversary party on the same weekend we were going to do our CW, so we have switched the CW to be in San Diego so that we can go to this celebration.  Hence, the last minute (if you can call 6 months in advance as last minute) calls to find a room in Hamilton, NY.  One owner of a local B and B said that she is booked for graduations up to 2008, since folks book so early. 

I am reconsidering going to Colgate on the PW and instead going some other time...

If anyone is interested in listening to Hayhouse Radio, they MOVED to

www.wsradio.com/hayhouseradio/

I kind of went nuts when I couldn't find it.  Don't these folks know that they should reroute the person going to their old website?

Photo Friday...soft...

***you know the drill...click on the photo for a larger version*** This picture was taken last year at the Colgate Parents' Weekend...the morning was all shrouded in a soft mist.  This is what came to mind when I saw that the Photo Friday prompt was 'soft'.  Kind of cool. Now, I have to come up with something good for the IF prompt for this week, 'Daring' ... this one is damn tough....

busy as a bee...

I'm not sure how I can feel as though I have been so busy, when I have gotten so little done!  But I am trying to manage the business things, the house, the garden, the sick dog...and all while I am trying not to get too much exercise cuz I am trying to baby my lungs.  Ah well...

The day was absolutely gorgeous, as was yesterday, and I could NOT go out walking...wah!!!  I am still feeling it in my chest and so I am putting off any real exercise just trying to get them back to normal.  I did do a little light (emphasis on the light) yardwork.  The front garden is gorgeous but the back...ach...really needs weeding and replanting and EVERYTHING! 

I have been spending most of my free time reading (instead of say, blogging)...I have to read The Kite Runner for my book group.  I am reading all sorts of metaphysical books and listening to Hayhouse Radio (and am actually meditating every day).  I have since been having very strange and powerful dreams.  I have these dreams and then there is this 'voice' that helps me to interpret them.  Okay, how weird is this? 

Here's the deal...I have been writing down and trying to interpret my dreams on and off for the past couple of years.  I am actually pretty good at doing this...getting the symbolism, etc.  I have gotten into the pattern of being sort of half-awake and going over the dream in my mind and actually re-dreaming it, all the while hearing myself interpret what is going on.  But for the past week or so, this voice has been telling me what they mean.  This is different from what happened before in that before I knew it was me talking to me...I would use the 'I' word.  But this voice says things like, "you need to be careful about..."   

I think this is cool, not scary...and I don't think I am moving to 'Crazy-land' or anything.  This just makes me want to delve further into my spiritual system et al...hence, the constant reading and thinking...

blogging software...

I am thinking of moving my blog to my own personal domain and have not yet decided whether I will keep the Typepad software or go with something else. 

Anyone out there have experience with other blogging software...not Blogger or one of those platforms but something that is a free download and easy to use? Like bBlog or something like that...

Am finally feeling that after this week of resting, I may have beaten back the nasty bug that attached itself to my lungs in Paris.  What WAS that thing, anyway?  I obviously didn't speak it's language...

The sun is out again in Oregon.  Yay!!!

coming out of the fog...

I picked up a nasty cold on my trip and then, apparently, didn't coddle my old, weak body enough and the cough that hung on has been trying to kill me.  The cough was just annoying and I was ignoring it, but by Friday afternoon, even with a 2-hour nap, my chest started feeling very heavy and sort of painful. 

We had tickets to go out and listen to Jim Wallis, who wrote the book "God's Politics...how the Right got it wrong and why the Left just doesn't get it"...and even though all I did was sit there, by the time I got home my chest felt like it was being sat upon by a big green monster. 

I spent all day Saturday in my pj's, just reading, watching tv, and napping.  We went out for dinner with my MIL, and just doing that totally exhausted me.  So, today I am just hanging out in my jammies again and doing nothing all day...maybe more napping, though.

The "God's Politics" thing was very interesting.   Jim Wallis is an evangelical minister and, though I don't agree with all of his beliefs, he is an adamant believer that abortion and gay marriage are not the only moral values one should be worried about.  He is much more interested in working with the poor than he is in trying to tell one how they should live their lives. 

Jim's wife is a Church of England priest, who was ordained with the first women in that church in 1992.  She was the consultant for the BBC comedy, The Vicar of Dibley, one of my alltime fave shows. John went to a workshop yesterday that featured both of them and talking about how to help make political change...

Ah well, though the weather is gorgeous outside and I would rather being taking a walk or working in my garden, it's naptime for me...

IF...reinvent...

***click on the image to enlarge it***

This thought...a robot with the guts sticking out...just popped into my head when I saw the prompt, reinvent.  I guess my mind goes to inventors.

I am still hanging onto the cough that came from the cold that I got in Europe.  I am susceptible to pneumonia and other lung ailments (not sure why), so I am very careful when these things come up.  I was doing some light work in the garden and things earlier in the week, but the cough just got worse.  So, I will lay off all activities besides the sitting and laying down variety.  How boring!!!

IF...alone...

***click on the illo for a larger view***

My IF interpretation of 'alone'...Nessie, floating in Loch Ness.  She seems pretty happy to me!

I was at Loch Ness years ago, and it is an incredibly beautiful and peaceful place...quite a cool place to float around being admired...

Aries, translated...

The wonderful Tine has translated the Aries poem:

You Aries people be aware
to take good care of your powers
for you have to use them wisely.

Don't let it end badly
when all too easily full of high spirits
the blood rushes to your head.

I may not have said this before, but I have a lifetime of close relationships with Aries people.  My husband in an Aries, and the other important man in my life (who I wanted to marry at the time) was also an Aries.  Scarily enough, he was not only also an Aries but he shares the same birthday (April 3)  as my husband, he grew up in the same town (Rochester, NY), and his father was a chemist for Eastman Kodak, just as my husband's father was.  How eerily weird is that?

In addition to these two, my closest friends have all been Aries...esp. my best-friend-in-high school, Darla (April 9) and my closest friend in college, Candee (April 7).  There have been many others, as well.  But I find it interesting that ALL the folks that had the greatest impact on my life were all have birthdays within a week's period. 

weekend garden warrior...

We had some gorgeous weather on Friday and Saturday, so I spent hours and hours working outside in my front garden.  The plum trees are pink puffs of fluffy flowers (I have 3 of them in my front yard).  Tulips are blooming, as are small anemomes, bleeding heart, pulmonaria, violets, azaleas, rhododendrons...it's just a riot of color and form.  Gorgeous.  That and my iPod make working outside less than a chore. 

The big problem is that I am allergic to every kind of mold possible.  Hence, digging around in the dirt and stirring up the molds makes this girl a stuffy mess.  I feel like crap with my stuffy sinuses and the post-nasal drip into my throat. Yuck and double yuck. 

My mother-in-law came for dinner tonight; the first time we have seen her since we returned.  She was too busy watching the Pope's funeral, Charles and Camilla's wedding, and the Master's Tournament to come over for dinner before tonight.  She just loves all that stuff. 

I made up a slide show of 100 of our vacation photos for her to see on my laptop.  That took me hours today, to put it together.  But now I can send the disk to Adam in Scotland, since he wanted all these pictures, too.  It turned out to be quite a nice slide show and MIL really enjoyed it, so all good.  It was too rainy to work outside anyway.

Now, time to settle in for some Desperate Housewives...which I have missed, what with being out of the country for 2 weeks...

Photo Friday...plastic

***click on photo for a better view***

I just had to photograph these cute little plastic figures from my office for this morning's photo challenge.  These were toys collected from KinderEggs, which I used to buy from the Dutch Store here in town.  You can no longer buy KinderEggs in the U.S. because our government fears that we are too stupid to know that we are not supposed to eat the chocolate from around the (hard-to-open) plastic egg inside, and we may therefor eat the chocolate, plastic egg, and toys inside and THAT would be a choking hazard.  Yes, Please Protect Us From Our Own Stupidity...do I sound bitter?  Well, yes I am.  I had to go 6000 miles away, to Britain, to again have the joy of a KinderEgg on my travels. 

normal life returns...

I am finally feeling like myself again.  I am back on my own time zone.  My cold is almost at it's end.  My girlfriends and I went out to a birthday lunch.  I did some 'work'...yeah, I actually did.  I am so glad to be getting back into the normal swing of my life.  I like my life...not that I didn't love my vacation.  It was great and all, but it is always so nice to get home and sleep in my own bed and have all my good friends around me. 

The picture here is of a lamp that hangs in Judith's garden in Wiltshire.  I loved the way it looked among the flowers and foliage. 

Has anyone noticed that there is almost nothing left on TV to watch?  I am actually watching Jake in Progress, which is pretty decent.  Otherwise, I like to watch Joan of Arcadia, Navy CIS, Medium, and Desperate Housewives.  These and some of Masterpiece Theatre are about the extent of my TV watching these days...  What about you?  What do you like to watch?  In the UK, they had a new show called 'Dr. Who", apparently a re-do of an old show...it was the rage in Britain but I thought it was just okay.

IF...travel

Okay, so how perfect is this week's prompt?  And I even took a photo from my vacation and used it... Okay, so the scale is a little off, but I like how dramatic my traveller looks standing there....lol!

This is the Red Lion Pub in Avebury, Wiltshire, England.  We spent a lovely afternoon here, eating fish and chips and then walking among the Standing Stones at Avebury.

What is Avebury?  And (my question) why is Stonehenge more famous? 

"This is an enormous circular earthwork, 400 m wide.  Inside is a 400-metre diameter circle of immense standing stones, and inside that there are two more stone circles each 100 metres in diameter.  Additional placed stones increase the complexity and world-wide appeal of this complex monument. From Avebury there run two stone avenues, each of which had about 100 megaliths. Altogether there were some 600 megaliths including those of the Sanctuary." says http://www.stonehenge-avebury.net/. 

And Stonehenge just has better press...

But Stonehenge is surrounded by a fence and you can only see it from a distance without paying.  At Avebury, you can walk around and climb on, all these stones.  Look at the pictures of my vacation at:  http://valentinois.typepad.com/photos/european_vacation/ to see just that.

I'm home, I'm home...

Wow.  After what seems like FOREVER, I am finally back in the tranquil sunshine of Portland, Oregon.  We had an absolutely fantastic vacation...lots of good weather, good food, family and friends, and just together time...but I have to admit, there's no place like home.

I am working at getting my photos off the camera and then putting them onto my photo album pages here.  I will also put little stories/captions there.  This make take a little time, so please be patient.

I have certainly missed all my blogger friends out there and have not been able to access ANY blogs while out of the country.  No, it's not because Europe doesn't have internet access, but because I didn't have any appreciable internet access while I was in Europe.  In fact, not being able to use my cell phone or my internet for 2 weeks was a very disturbing, though probably good-for-me, phenomenon. 

We luckily got to miss most of the Terry Schiavo hoo-ha (the Europeans seemed to be fairly uninterested in our traumas) but didn't miss the 24 hour-a-day trauma of the Pope's death.  As an ex-Catholic with a brother who is a priest and an incredibly conservative Catholic family, I know how sad many folks are over this.  My condolences for all of those out there who are hurting...