femina mosaic

2003-09-26T21:06:00.000-05:00

It's a ghost town here. Are any of you lovely ladies around?

2003-08-27T07:33:00.000-05:00

The hardest work a woman ever does is to smile when it's the last thing in the world she feels like doing.
--Stacey

2003-07-13T21:48:00.000-05:00

New post trial for today. Hope it works

2003-06-18T18:50:00.000-05:00

I cannot believe how quickly the time is passing lately. Every night I think I will get time to sit down and write, yet when I do, I am so tired I can't think.

2003-06-08T20:22:00.000-05:00

There is something so absolutely lovely about waking up slowly on a rainy Sunday morning. I love to watch the rain drops slide down the glass, I try to track one drop for as long as I can. This morning I was alone in the bed. I could hear O in the living room making morning breakfast sounds, the clank of his spoon on the counter, the tea kettle gurgling. Fidel, that traiter, had leaped out of bed the minute he heard the fridge door open. I heard O slip him a piece of something contraband, probably a piece of hotdog or something.

These moments of peace are so fragile, I am almost afraid to breath.

2003-06-05T21:43:00.000-05:00

I told my husband today that I was going to relax and catch up on some stuff I had meant to get to. After classes today, that is what I did. I know that he was hoping that meant I would help him sort through stuff in the garage, but to me it meant time in the garden. As penance (self imposed) I started by weeding the vegetable garden. Since it is one quarter the size of our old one, it was a quick and easy job with the saddle hoe. Storm clouds were piling up in the distance and thunder was rolling around but there wasn't lightning, so I stayed outside all afternoon.

I had a boat load (literally) of plants I had dug up from the other house, peonies, lillies and a few other varitieties of plants that needed to get in the ground. Around each clump of lillies were other bulbs that had already bloomed this year so I just threw them in with any leftover dirt. Next spring will be a hodgepodge of color. I had saved newspapers all winter, so spread them around the plants in a thick layer, watered heavily, then spread bark on top of the whole mess. Lasagna Gardening makes the work go quickly and is good for the soil too.

2003-06-03T20:08:00.000-05:00

It has been a busy two weeks. My family is back living with me again, and adjustments are having to be made. One of them is that I now have to share this computer, and my time. I miss writing though I am glad to have my family back.

link to CindyP A lovely lady died this week but she left these thoughts to share.

2003-05-20T22:08:00.000-05:00

I spent several hours today digging out dandilion roots from my flower beds. I had my pitch fork which I would stab underneath the soil and leverage back and forth in an attempt to get the entire tap root out without breaking it off. I am having to rehab my garden after long neglect. I will probably just let parts of it go back to grass, but remove as many of the plants as I can salvage. If I was going to stay here I would fight to bring it all back but since I am selling out, it is an expenditure of time and energy I can't afford.

2003-05-16T10:34:00.000-05:00

Only two days into summer break and I already feel like a bum. I have been snoozing (a lot) and running errands but not accomplishing anything. My sister was shocked to find me still in bed at 8:00 am. I am glad she woke me up though, I wanted to get outside and putter as much as I can today.

I spent yesterday afternoon with one of my friends from school. He is an International student, and will be returning to his home country within a few days. I wanted to spend our last time together, laughing, as we did so much this year. He tends to be so serious and intense (I was too 20 years ago) so thought that I would share bubbles with him. He didn't have a clue what I meant, it was so funny.

We came to my house here and played out in the yard with soap bubbles and a soap bubble gun. I had also stocked up on water pistals and had a big bowl full of them on the picnic table. The neighbor kids across the street joined us in our soap and water battles, the garden hoses were put into action too. All of us ended up soaked, and tired, but happy.

I hope that he understood me when I said he needed to learn his life lessons from bubbles.

2003-05-13T21:50:00.000-05:00

One more day! I can hang on just one more day! First Priority Is Survival

2003-05-09T20:40:00.000-05:00

Tonight is a strange kind of state for me, to uptight to relax, to tired to care about trying to regroup. It is a bit chilly and raining, of course that is traditional on the opening of fishing season. I always thought it was odd that they would have the fishing opener on Mothers Day. It seems like I could drum up a story idea out of that cundundrum, fishing, or mother? Who will win? Wait, Wait! Okay, Happy Moms day-I got you this wonderful trip out on the lake for your celebration..."

I am going to spend this weekend working on my papers that are part of my finals. I have been keeping notes for myself, just mulling over the approach I want to take. My family will be here tomorrow night, to spend the night and MD with me. We had intended to spread the dirt that was delivered this morning for the garden and putter at planting. We probably will have to settle for making mudpies though, the weather forcast is for rain all weekend. My mom is in Virginia so I will not see her, but I know she is happily visiting with my brother and his wife.

I am glad to be reaching the end of the school year. I know that I didn't do as well as I am capable of, but I did as well as I was capable of doing at this time. The things that I have learned and valued the most about my education have almost nothing to do with the usual measures of an education. For me it has been all about the journey, the things I have encountered, how I internalize my experiances and most of all it has been about the friendships I have made along the way. My world and my heart have both expanded. In a matter of days I will be saying goodbye to some of these friends, many I will not see again. I wish them well and will remember them always.

2003-05-07T22:28:00.000-05:00

Today was the last day of actual classes for the semester. Happy, happy, joy,joy, we have survived thus far.

I spent the day working on assorted projects for presentations in lieu of final exams over the next two weeks. It feels so good when you can look back to where you started and can see that progress has been made. One area that I intend to work on after school however, is the technical aspects of running this blog. This is what I envision for this site:

I want this to be a welcoming space, informal yet comforting. I want the women who participate in this Femina Mosaic to feel that they have a voice, a writing space or a forumn to speak of the things that are important to them. This is not unlike visiting at someone's kitchen table, as such, politeness and courtesy to the other participants is required. This is not up for debate.

2003-05-07T09:26:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to say Good Morning to all of you! I went to bed last night, still thinking of Stacey's question. I thought of the different women throughout my life that I thought of as beautiful and why I thought they were. Happily, this morning I noticed that one of my favorite beautiful women has been lurking and listening till she found her moment to shout out! Oh what a Babe;-) Another piece of the mosaic for your consideration Phenomenal Women Quilt

2003-05-07T00:03:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking about your question and I am still not sure how I want to respond. There are so many ways of interpreting your question.

My 2 cents worth is this-the older I get, the more I like myself. The more I like myself, the less I care about respect from others as validation as much as self respect. My body ages (and not well) but my spirit becomes more alive, more me, as the physical aging process accelerates. Still, it is a shock when my body betrays me, when the physical me doesn't cooperate with the spiritual me.

I have been married for almost twenty years. Those years have wrought many changes to our relationship and certainly to our bodies. Time and chance has left it's mark on us, but in my husbands arms I have always felt beautiful. The old saying that "love is blind" is I think somewhat misunderstood. I think that it is "loves see's all things and accepts them as they are."

In the eye of the beholder

Does this help?

2003-05-04T19:52:00.000-05:00

I'm hoping to get some input from you women who are more experienced at life than I. Does dealing with self & body image become easier as you mature?
I'll elaborate after I get some responses.

I hope you all know you are loved by someone this evening.

2003-05-03T22:52:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this earlier Center For Missing and Exploited Children .

My husband and I spent a lovely day togather. He brought another small load of furniture so my guests on Monday evening will not have to sit on the floor. We are having our last Monday night class at my home, celebrating the end of it with a potluck. Our daughter had emailed me and told me she was going to be participating in a double header softball game about 30 miles away from here. I didn't check my email till late, so my husband arrived a few minutes later and we unloaded the furniture and hopped in the truck to watch our daughters game. They lost again but had a good time.

When we returned home, O dug up a bunch of the orange daylilly's that needed to be thinned out of the big patch in the front yard. I loaded up the wheelbarrow with them and distributed them to my neighbors. We had a man come to till up our garden spot for us also, but the soil was so sod bound he couldn't do it. We sat and had coffee with him and shared some fresh smoked fish and sent him home with a jar of the smoked fish that O canned just yesterday. These days that are almost "normal" are more precious to us because they have been so few. It will be good to all be in the same home again.

2003-05-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning to the phone ringing. It was my sister that lives at the other end of the state. She wanted to share the happy news that her daughter and two grandchildren are coming for three weeks in August. This is a normal family event that inspires joy, but for ours, it is particularily poignant. My sister was seperated from her children when they were toddlers and the years of looking for them were terrible. A few years ago, her now adult daughter and her were reunited, and have been knitting a relationship out between them. It is still such a joy to share in my sisters happiness.

2003-05-01T16:23:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Femina Mosaic. I thank you for the kind words and encouragement and I am very happy to have you join. As you have probably noticed, I am not much into rules. So how about we make up guidlines as they are needed, perhaps as this blog grows. For now, I think the kichen table analogy works well, so the treat others as you would like to be treated, should work quite well.

I have had a lot of needs of hugs this semester, wouldn't have made it through without them. I think we should consider that a guideline for ourselves too, when we feel like hugging someone, go for it cause it seems to come back ten fold!

2003-05-01T12:35:00.000-05:00

Faith,

Your presentation yesterday was amazing. I was having an especially emotional day and felt like hugging you when you were done.

I'm a little unsure of how you envision this blog working. Perhaps you could touch on any "rules" or directives you may have? Are you filling sort of a moderator role? Should we just be replying to your posts? I'm so excited to be part of this and connecting in this way. Thank you so much for the invitation to join.

2003-04-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

This is for Old Friends those who are near and dear throughout all the years and the distance of miles.

I stopped into a Music and Arts school today to pick up some papers. The lady that came to my assistance was an older pleasant faced women, and led me to her office cubby. On the wall was the most magnificent piece of quilted artwork I think I have ever seen. I asked her if she was the artist and she replied that no she wasn't but shared the story of the piece with me. The quilt is almost like a painting only done with fabric and found objects. If you look closer though you can see that the quilt is actually telling a story. The artist is a local women that made the piece by incorporating things that belonged to her mother and grandmother and her own daughter. She will be leading a quilt making with found objects sometime in the next two weeks. I told the lady at the school about this project blog and about the other projects I am doing along the same kind of explorations of relationships and the ways that women communicate. We ended up forgetting what we were supposed to be doing, and I was invited to join them to observe or participate, my choice. What I want to do however is to photograph them at work and then perhaps write some pieces about the experiance. I think it would be a wonderful photodocumentary piece.

I gave my presentation today on my project. I think it went well even though I was nervous by the unaccustomed lengthy notes I had. I tend to do better with bare outlines and flying by the seat of my pants.

2003-04-30T00:45:00.000-05:00

I couldn't wait to share this women and friendship link to a study of how stress is handled completely differently for women. Extremely pertinent to the Femina Mosaic blog's underlying theme.

2003-04-29T22:44:00.000-05:00

I have been working on finishing up projects presentation of projects as this is the last stretch of school before the final exams. I am trying to get by, and find peace one day at a time. I came home today so wrung out I felt like a wet noodle. When school is finished for the semester, I am going to take a few days for myself to regroup. I will putter around the house, maybe rake the lawn and start making this house look like a home. My family soon will be with me, and we will need to nurture ourselves into a unit again.

2003-04-27T21:17:00.000-05:00

I came across this site by accident, GUTS and thought it might be of some use. The idea of mentoring young girls is a good one. I especially like the concept-girls understanding their strengths. I have been thinking a lot of what I wish I could instill in my own daughters value system. I think that one thing I would wish for her is tenacity. That may seem like an odd thing to wish for and maybe it is. In my life however, I have found that the ability to just hold on through all of the good, the bad, or the ugly, is a valuable attribute.

So this is what I wish for just for you baby girl, today and for all of your days, I wish for you to have tenacity.

I came across an envelope on my desk tonight that had this quote from Helen Keller written across the back of it.

"Faith is the stength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light."

2003-04-25T02:30:00.000-05:00

It is quite late now, long past time I should have gone to bed. I have been working on some projects though that are really starting to come together in my mind. My friend Joanne and my mother were both here last night. Joanne could only stay in town one night but mom will be here for several. We had a wonderful evening last night. We were all busy doing our own thing all day, so we met at my house at 5:00 pm. We shared a delicious meal and talked and laughed till we were sated in all of our hungers. Mom had to get some lightweight summer clothes for a trip to Virginia in May for my brother Aaron's graduation with a masters degree in English and Education. Congradulations to Aaron!

Now shopping has got to be if not the one thing, then certainly in the top five things, of things I don't like to do. And clothes shopping is the worst. I think it was because mom was so tickled at the outfits she found (on sale!) that I ended up sort of enjoying that part of our evening out. It took up the rest of the evening getting her outfits chosen and then she wanted to model all of the outfits for us after we got home.

There isn't hardly any furniture in this house so we had to "camp out" and it was like a slumber party for grownups. We sat up late looking at quilting magazines that Joanne had brought, art books that mom had and gardening books that I contributed. We giggled over hot flashes, and men, husbands and old boyfriends, sex (or lack thereof!) and drank strong coffee and ate bannana cream pie (and had it for breakfast too!).

It did us all a world of good!

2003-04-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I daydream about having nothing to worry about but going to school and focusing on my education. It is so diffcult not to get tired and discouraged. Why does the people and relationships that give our lives such richness and meaning, also bring us so much pain?

2003-04-21T22:28:00.000-05:00

It is well past time I should put my mind to rest. The neighbors dog is howling though, so I doubt that sleep will come easly despite my fatigue. I spent the morning in laughter and good cheer with our wonderful volunteer crew at the television station. They come and help mail out the monthly guides or statements and other bulk mailings. As a small public television station, we would not be able to function without our volunteers. I came home at noon and did some homework and then back to ethics class and focus on terrorism. I had to run back home again at 5:00 to find copies of text for a group project that we are working on. My partners computer crashed and she had all the documentation on hers so we were in trouble tonight for our computer assisted reporting class. We were trying to reformat everything on the fly and that is not very pleasant or effective. Mondays are hectic days and I am always completely wiped out by the time my last class ends. I truely have no idea how some of the younger students manage to go to school and work so much as well.

2003-04-19T22:02:00.000-05:00

I have come north for the Easter weekend. This will be the last holiday meal in this house and I think that everyone is feeling sad about all the changes within the fabric of the greater family structure that our moving away will cause. The two youngest are 16 and 17 years old and are anxious to leave behind the old fogies and start on their own path's. No Easter baskets or dyed and decorating eggs this year, no one was interested. One tradition is the same however, the weather is yucky! The first Easter in this house, we had ice storms and lost all power. We had to finish cooking the ham on the BBQ grill. I borrowed some whiskey from next door and mixed it with apple cider and used it to baste the ham with so it wouldn't dry out. It turned out to be the best ham I ever made. We were able to keep the rest of the meal relatively warm by placing upon the soapstone woodstove which with the power out was our only source of heat. The kids made sloppy wet "easter bunny, snowman" while I stood outside cooking the ham with sloshy wet snow half way to my knees.

My wonderful niece wanted to know if it was okay to pass along the URL for this blog. It would make me very happy to have it passed along. Anyone who would like to participate in this femina mosaic, please click on the email or shout out and I will add you to the participants list.

2003-04-17T14:13:00.000-05:00

This young woman is a very eloquant and heartfelt writer. Her blog never fails to make me laugh, though I enjoy her more serious postings the most. At a Loss 4 Words

2003-04-17T04:25:00.000-05:00

I am a big fan of Wally Lamb. His books, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True made a big impression on me and they have been read and reread many times. I came across this on the National Endowment for the Arts web site. I should have been sleeping hours ago, but at least there was a payoff in the way of this discovery. Wally Lamb Speech I especially was intrigued by his comments about working with female prisoners with writing and leading a writers group. This is a good read, it will make you think.

2003-04-16T23:57:00.000-05:00

I am really getting quite irritated with myself. I have been worried, and crabby, and heartsick and so so sad about something that is completely out of my control. I know that I can't do anything and I am quite distressed that I can't "accept the things I cannot change."

I have always loved the Serenity Prayer. History of the Serenity Prayer and often chant it like a mantra of meditation to soothe myself. That would probably suprise some of my sisters, I think. Even the rebellious ones need a little help sometimes.

The weather has done a rapid turn and it is snowy and cold and windy out. I had to drive North last night after my classes and the weather was nice and hot. I wore a summer shirt and sandles and drove with the air conditioner on. This morning I had to borrow my husbands spare red plaid wool jacket and heavy socks and a pair of his boots (thankfully I never had to use them) just in case of a problem on the drive back here. I was able to make it back for classes after a quick stop at home to clean up. Now I am sitting here in my heavy winter robe with a sore throat, runny nose and achy all over. I will take "two asprin, go to bed and call MYSELF OUT in the morning!" Taa Taa! Hip Hip and Cheerio! I also have sixteen Tuberose Begonia bulbs sitting on my kichen counter. If I
am good tomorrow I will reward myself by potting them up because spring will arrive.

2003-04-13T16:49:00.000-05:00

This is a link that might be useful for generic medical information. Medical Information . I often turn to my mother for advice when I am not sure what to do or to trusted friends. Not all of us are lucky enough to "reach out and touch someone," so I thought that I would pass along this link.

2003-04-12T00:54:00.000-05:00

Good Lord! I just read the last entry and realized we sound like Ma and Pa Kettle.

2003-04-12T00:46:00.000-05:00

Today is my husbands birthday. O and our daughter will both come to this house to spend the night. I feel a bit silly how excited I feel about it. We have plans to spend the day working on putting in a vegetable garden. It will be a big job since the only location where we can put it is in tall grass right now. It is to dry to burn it off so we will weed whack it, mow it and see what we can manage from that point. I am going to be spending some time raking up the carpet of pine needles from all of the jack pine in our yard. We are going to grill something, and just enjoy the sun and each other.

I look around this place and I can see little signs of ownership growing. Not the we bought it so it is ours kind of ownership, but the mental leap of ownership by making your mark on it, settling in. I almost wept when I looked out through the kichen window last week and saw that my husband was organizing his shed and had a chair sitting outside the entrance to it. I call it "the I am the king of all I survey" chair, no self respecting farmer would be without one, even if he is without the farm.

Today I spent an hour or so in a local store picking out fishing tackle for O's birthday gift. And a tackle box. I don't know much about fishing so I asked an older fellow looking at tackle if he could recommend something. He was most obliging and even told me where some of the good spots were and where I could find the best bait. It was actually quite fun. O lent his tackle box to someone a few years ago and forgot to whom. He has been fretting every spring about not having any tackle and goes on this hunt all over the property for where it could have been left then refuses to buy another. It must be a guy thing. I don't even remember the last time he went fishing. He is looking foreward to going this summer though and I will make sure he does!

2003-04-10T00:44:00.000-05:00

Many of us have been distressed about the war in Iraq and the things that are happening in our country today. It is so easy to become overwhelmed and to feel hopeless. If you need to feel that there is SOMETHING you can do, whatever your politics, then this link is for you. Red Cross . Tonight I soothed myself by planting two roses and sorting through my many packets of seeds. My gardens are barely created, and the vegetable garden must wait for a couple more weeks for the ground to thaw. Planting and helping to create beauty helps me to fight back and know that LIFE is precious and not to be squandered.

2003-04-10T00:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I opened my email and there was an attachment to one of the posts. It was pictures of the ultrasound of my newest niece or nephew. Wow! What a wonderful way to start the day! My sister is older, so an amniocentices was advised. I am happy to report to the world that mama and baby are doing fine! I also appreciate the modern technology that made this pregnancy possible and the pictures of the baby.

resource for genetic counseling and March of Dimes

2003-04-05T01:15:00.000-06:00

Today in ethics class we had a discussion about the war. Feelings on all sides of the issue ran high. It reminded me however, that I wanted to link in a wonderful site my friend Sharon created Waiting For Daddy the first time I read it I cried. The young man in class today who said that anyone who didn't support this war was unpatriotic and should leave this country, should look to history for some understanding of the "cost" of war. Being patriotic and loving your country and not agreeing with the president's decisions are not mutually exclusive ideals.

2003-04-05T01:07:00.000-06:00

This is my friend Machelles project for one of our classes. Machelle's Pickled Peppers It was her first web project and I thought it was very well done. I am going to try making her hot peppers this summer.

2003-04-05T00:54:00.000-06:00

I decided to be kind to myself and not commute back up north for the weekend. What luxery, a weekend to do nothing but catch up on homework and putter around the house. I am thumbing my nose at the awful weather.

Tonight I moved some of my seedlings out of the warming trays and started some more seeds. I haven't any tables or anything to set them on so I put some scraps of carpeting down on the floor in the dining room (which is empty) and placed the flats on the floor. I have wonderful southern and eastern exposure coming in so it should be good temporarily.

Tonight I planted some heirloom tomatoes. They are indeterminate varieties, Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter. They will take a little extra care since we have a shorter growing season then they need but they are so delicious they are worth the effort. I also started some leeks and some Martha Washington asparagus. We do not have the garden dug up yet but it will get done ASAP! I am also going to buy some garden stakes and rabbit fencing this weekend. The deer and the rabbits are a serious problem for gardeners around here. I don't mind sharing a bit with the wildlife but we have to have some left for us!

I need to take some cuttings off of my rose bushes from the other house before it is sold. I also want to get some small divisions of various perennials also. I have already made some future trade agreements with some of the gardeners I have sniffed out at the school. I also visited a well recommended nursery (family owned) near my home and had a delightful gab session with the owner. I mentioned that I had seen the advertisement for the garden club meeting for Thursday night and was thinking of going. He said they would be thrilled to get some "new, younger" blood in the group. He said the club was down to less then a dozen members, and most of them were getting quite elderly. It was the same with my other garden group. At one point it was down to about seven members, four of them to frail to garden any longer. They were still just as valued however, for their accumulated wisdom and experiance.

So many organizations are facing the problem of their members and volunteers not being "replenished" by younger members. The seniors are finding that there is fewer people all of the time to pass their skills onto. I know that I would like to do more then I do but I am not able to.

2003-04-03T23:51:00.000-06:00

I was a very lucky women today. I was just heading home from work this afternoon with the weather deteriorating quickly into a late winter storm, when I smelled burning rubber. I couldn't tell if it was my car until I heard something in the engine compartment give way and then this horrible grinding sound. I was trying to calculate where the nearest garage was that I might have a chance of getting to. I pulled into the Wall Mart store about two blocks away but there shop was just for changing tires and stuff like that. This nice young fellow though came out in the nasty weather to see what he could do and discovered what the problem was. He helped me get the car started again though and pointed me over to a place across the street that could help. If he hadn't helped me I would have had to call a tow truck and no way could I afford that on top of car repairs. The other shop was able to get me right in though and get it fixed within a couple of hours. And best of all it only cost $150.00, so I was able to juggle things around and get it taken care of. I settled into an uncomfortable chair (you ever know a mechanics shop to have anything but?) and was wondering how I was going to fill the time. I did leave for a bit though. When I came back there was this small wiry black guy with dreadlocks, a rainbow colored crochet tam and the thickest heaviest carribian accent I think I have ever heard. He was talking a mile a minute and he was talking with his whole body. Apparently he was well known in the shop cause the b.s. and the laughter was moving faster then the sleet outside the door. Here I was upset about my car and missing out on my plans for the evening and instead of being miserable and grumpy about it, I was having a good time. I don't think I have stopped grinning all night.

2003-04-02T22:50:00.000-06:00

My husband was here with me last night in this house. It was so lovely just to see each other. It is funny how for just a few moments it is easy to forget everything and it is just the way it always has been with the two of us. How can you explain to a newly wed that though the passion will change over time, the tender regard becomes sweeter with time?

I love to watch older married couples. It would be fun to do a series of black and white photo's of them and try to capture the non-verbal communication that they seem to have. My grandparents were married for well over fifty years and though I never saw them be openly affectionate with each other, not once did I doubt that they were deeply in love. The air between them shimmered with it.

2003-04-02T08:23:00.000-06:00

This is Renee, trying to post but showing up under Faith's name?

2003-04-01T20:41:00.000-06:00

I was trying to remember the name of this film An American Quilt for the last couple of days. Mosaics, quilts, weaving all of these "activities" have been on my mind lately. The "fabric" of our lives as we experiance it from a female perspective is what I am trying to explore. Amidst all the other stuff I am trying to juggle and "make fit" somehow is the aggravation of an erratic memory!

This movie was not particularily good, though it had some wonderful actors in it. I remember when I was watching it though being impressed with the writers exploration of the relationships between the women. I didn't know until tonight that it is actually based on a novel, so that will go on my list of things to look up.

There are a couple of scenes in this movie that struck a chord with me, probably why I still remembered the film at all. One scene is in the kichen where one of the characters has a wall of mosaic work created from everytime she was mad at her hubby she would break something. It was quite funny.

Mosaic as a saving grace. What are yours?

2003-04-01T20:06:00.000-06:00

I thought this was very funny. I was telling a young women I work with about my Femina Mosaic blog and asking what she thought she would be interested in reading about. That got us off on a hysterical conversation about her favorite way of thawing a turkey (by way of discussing what to do with baby plants when you have to remove them temporarily from the house) any way, her cooking (or about to be cooking) tip is this: place the frozen turkey in the trunk of your car, that way it won't take up room on the counter, and in our Northern climate it will thaw slowly. I wondered if she had been in Northern Minnesota long, that turkey might not thaw till April or May! Thawing a turkey in the trunk of your car seems as reasonable as my pasta cooking tip is silly. Someone told me that if you are cooking spaggetti and want to know if it is cooked enough, you should pull out a strand and throw it at the refridgerator door. If it sticks it is perfectly cooked, if it doesn't it isn't cooked long enough. How could I resist a tip like that? The best part though is that it works!

2003-03-27T22:30:00.000-06:00

I am missing my daughter tonight, sweet dreams to Bella from her mom!

2003-03-27T22:27:00.000-06:00

I wanted to post this URL before I forgot. This is a wonderful magazine for young girls, I wish there had been something around like this when I was a young girl. New Moon For Girls

2003-03-27T01:50:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost

ROBERT FROST
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

2003-03-27T01:08:00.000-06:00

I have started two flats of plants in my seedling nursery beds. They are sitting in my empty living room, on the floor. It is a happy reminder that life goes on. Tomorrow is another poetry day, I wonder what we will discuss. The thing that I like most about poetry is how you can read a poem over and over through the years, and at different times it will have completely different impact. I was thumbing through our text and was suprised how many of the poems I knew or had read at one time or another. I guess buying all those used textbooks in garage sales paid off. I think that reading has been one of my most enduring pleasures throughout my life. It astounds me still that there are people who hate to read. Goodnight World.

2003-03-25T22:20:00.000-06:00

Another link to explore when it isn't so late. Coping admirably

2003-03-25T21:44:00.000-06:00

I was cruising through the world of blogs site and came across this link that looks like fun. The Red Kitchen It was actually the title of the blog that caught my eye. I enjoy cooking and red is my favorite color. I always wanted a kitchen with a ruby red floor. I have no idea why, I just think it would be fun!

2003-03-24T23:58:00.000-06:00

I forgot to post the link so here goes Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2003-03-24T23:31:00.000-06:00

Eleanor Roosevelt is my idea of someone to emulate. This is one of my favorite quotes of hers:

Eleanor Roosevelt

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

Eleanor Roosevelt

I was talking tonight with a young student from another country. We were talking of the concept of justice, what it means to each of us personally as filtered through out cultural heritage, sex and age (I am twice as old as he is) and life experiances. Our discussions can get quite lively on occasion though tonight was a little more somber then usuall. He was kind of upset because I was trying to explain why I choose to fight some battles and let others go. At this stage of my life, I may have to pick my battles but that in no way diminishes my passion for what I believe in.

In any event our discussion made me think of Mrs. Roosevelt. She had thought her contributions to the public were in the past, to connected with the life and death of her husband. Yet Eleanor Roosevelt helped to create this wonderful Declaration of Human Rights and exempified for all of her life the passionate convictions that she held most dear.

2003-03-23T02:54:00.000-06:00

Where does your creative self come from and what does it look like?

My creative self comes from hours spent under bed sheets with a contraband flashlight needing, reading words of worlds not my own! I feel my sisters warm backside and her snuffy breathing snores as I try to keep my eyes open for just one more line… no, just one more line.
My creative self looks like bleary gray blue shadows under my eyes as my thoughts race like crazy and sleep, well it’s just an illusion.
Sleeping, dreaming, it’s all the same to me. The breathless stillness of the night incubates my thoughts, protecting then from the harshness of the days light.
I am the sleepwalker, eyes closed to the world, turned to inward to be aware of anything but the quickening of my blood as neurons collide.
I reach again for a cigarette. Oh that’s right, I no longer smoke.
“Oh shit,” I think as I pace.
I hug myself to ward off my chill.

2003-03-22T20:32:00.000-06:00

This morning I woke up and watched a fox throwing field mice in the air and then chase them when they landed. At the far edge of the field was a group of five deer. The grass is greening up in sections of the yard already and all the trees have swollen leave buds waiting just a bit more to blossom out with the warmth of the sun. The river has rivers of ice water flowing across the layers of ice, there won't be a dramatic ice out this year, the ice will go out with a whimper. The first spring we lived here the river was groaning and rumbling for several hours before it started to break apart. Like a rumble of thunder within the earth. Then the ice started to crack and heave with and awesome roar and the water started to flow faster and faster as the ice shattered. Whole trees uprooted by the pressure of the ice went crashing by, caught in the heaving mass of ice. It kept up for hours, sometimes moving quickly, throwing chuncks of ice as big as cars up on the shore, other times stopped by icejams so that the water would back up sometimes rising within a few feet of the rivers edge and then suddenly dropping as the pressure would ease. There were huge chunks of ice caught in the tree limbs for several days after the water way was finally clear.

I worked out in the yard today, cleaning up the worst of the winter debris in the gardens and the yard. It is a task that every year gives me great pleasure. Even today knowing that I am not going to be here to see my gardens come to life again, it still gives me pleasure to care for them while I can.

Tears hover so close to the surface for me these days and yet I know that grief will gradually give way to acceptance and acceptence will find a way to joy.

Already I have planted the seeds of a new life, a new beginning, and I take with me the knowledge that I can begin again.

2003-03-22T20:05:00.000-06:00

Let Us Have Faith
(1940)

by Helen Keller
(1880 - 1968)

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and
behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

Apparently my link was not working

2003-03-21T16:42:00.000-06:00

Let Us Have Faith by Helen Keller This is a poem I wanted to post before I head out to what is soon to be a place I used to live.

2003-03-21T10:25:00.000-06:00

I have been uplifted and upheld by the voices and strength of the women in my life. I want to explore this extrordinary gift.