Thoughts of approaching summer 2018

On this Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, spring is definitely giving way to summer. I sit reading a book in my shady living room, with the doors and windows open and the sound of my husband chopping kindling fills the air, even though it has been too warm to use the woodstove much lately. We use more kindling on these days with only a brief fire to take the chill off the morning, than on the bitter cold days when we never let the fire go out.



Life has been fairly consistent for us for a couple decades, and the changes of aging have been slow enough to mostly ignore. Our children grew up but grandchildren appeared to fill our rooms once more with a jumble of toys and our laps with snuggly
hugs.


In three weeks my husband stops being a music teacher, after 29 years. But he goes year round teaching at the big prison down the road. GED prep classes instead of music. Sadly working in a prison he will get paid a lot more and be a lot more secure that working with children in a public school. It reminds me of the medical insurance willing to pay to treat diseases but not for the much smaller preventative care.

Speaking of medical care, I am still trying to get a diagnosis on the degenerative issues I have been having health wise. It seems to be hard to get an answer but the loss of simple little abilities continues. So my goal for summer is to keep moving, develop enough coping strategies to regain some flexibility and strength while also keeping up on Dr visits. I also want to de clutter the house, turning what was once a playroom but became storage as my kids grew up and moved out, back into a playroom for my three grandchildren and their cousins. And the last big goal is to become more active as a writer again, not just writing on Facebook but finishing my eighth book and getting back into the marketing of the ones I have already published.

But when Fall rolls around, the only goal I will feel like a failure for not achieving is the goal to be there for my boys turned men, and their children. Grandma time is more important than everything else

Passing On The Stories

 I have a long, love affair with stories. From the real life stories and the picture books shared with my Grandma Grace and the bedtime stories read by Mom and Dad. Now I'm the grandmother and Ive never loved anything more than being Grandma.

 When my boys were little we went to the library to Storytime, and now that they are Dads, I find myself repeating the adventure with the granddaughter, and hopefully someday with the younger cousins she has as well.

 Stories bridge the gap between not knowing how to get through this adventure we call life, and being able to use our imagination to draw on the history and knowledge stretching back through our family and the human family in general.  I am so blessed to have my rich store of tales and memories.  My mom's dementia reminds me that even those can be taken from us, and need to be shared and distributed to our future before we lose them.

 Bless the future with the lessons you have learned and teach them to choose kindness and strength over fear and cruelty. Happy Valentine's Day to the world.

Things To Be Thankful For

 I was driving home through a Redwood tree grove and along a pristine river and through a sheer canyon. It was just another commute home after a day working with wonderful children and supportive peers.  I was still feeling a bit down and exhausted, the time change making everything feel later than it was.  I had absolutely no reason to feel anything less than thankful, but I wasn't feeling it.

 When I got home, I decided to drag out the one pumpkin I'd saved from being carved into a Jack-o-lantern and try a new, very old recipe I'd seen that claimed it was the type pumpkin pie that the Pilgrims would have made. It surely wasn't a pie, just a simple egg and cream and sugar flan baked in a pumpkin shell, and it came out very much not tasting of pumpkin.  However just that little bit of change, stepping outside the daily routine, seemed to reset my mood and allow me to feel awake and happy again.

 I know, sugar is poison, but baking is still one way I feel myself connect to my grandma and my mom.  I reach to my roots where my soul is nourished.

 Then I got the granddaughter and we went to the park, running between rainstorms to climb and slide and swing. And this local park also has a redwood trail to explore. In this rainy season the slugs and mushrooms are abundant.

My mailbox brought me a book written by a facebook friend

My new waffle iron made bowls which demanded a caramel sundae instead of syrup

 And old friends sent me old pictures of my Mom and new pictures of my brother Lance.  Life was reminding me, again and again, that it is good to be alive.

My Brother and my Niece

My Granddaughter was Princess Poppy Troll for Halloween

Mom and her extended family in about 1946. ! of many old pictures that were sent unexpectedly from an old family friend.

mom

Mom, with her cousins and grandparents

Mom

 So when the rain returned, we simply grabbed the rubber boots and kept on playing.

From Letters to pictures

Lately I have been working on putting together the old letters, and once i had them assembled I tried to load them into one of the blog2print sites and make a book.  It worked but was expensive, so that the letters and picture part of my blog, just from two months of posts made a book over $120 for a hardback, so I bought an $8 pdf of it and called that good.

Now, while I am thinking about what to write about next I have been looking at the pictures I have on my desktop from playing with old Photographs on 365 project and on PicMonkey and Ribbet

So I will share some of those today

 When I was a child I lived in the desert, the high mountain desert of Wyoming, and spent summers at 10,000 feet in snow and tundra. But somehow, I wanted to grow up and be a dolphin. At first I went through a phase of being very angry that my parents had not named me flipper, then when I talked them, who were both so afraid of water that they held on to the towel rack all the way through their bath, into signing me up for swim lessons, and I spent hours swimming underwater, pretending to be the mermaid I knew I would grow up to be. And that was years before Disney showed me there could be redheaded mermaids. Ariel came to the big screen the year I started teaching and I took my first class to the theater to see.

 The picture is of a cigar box that a friend from an online forum made because he knew me as "Echo"

Hello, Hello!! I have named myself "Echo," not because of the myth connected to the sad girl who wasted away to nothing but her voice, although after I am gone, I should be pleased to think that some of my words linger on. I love the images of places where one stands and shouts out in joy and waits to hear the echo come back.

When I was a young girl, going through the, "I love horses" phase of my life, there was one very special Morgan mare living on my cousin's ranch in Wyoming. I never owned her, but I rode her, and fell off of her, and admired her and dreamed of her. Her name was "Echoes of Pandora" but we called her "echo" and when I first began posting on forums like backpacker.com, and guideposts.com I used her name as mine, "echo." I have posted some of my things on redgage using "echo" too. Sometimes that name has been taken, and spaces aren't allowed so I use pandorasecho, on twitter and a few other places as well.

Gradually I reminded myself, when it became tempting, even fun, to get involved in the sniping and rude behavior that the anonymity of the web invites, that I only wanted to leave behind "echoes of kind words," and I remembered that what Pandora had left behind, an echo after all the troubles she had turned loose on the world, was HOPE. So passing on Hope, and kindness became my goal for any interactions I would have on-line. A goal, which has helped me to police my own words and posts so as not to injure someone I've never met, just because I can think of the funny, cutting thing to write.

I have always needed creative activity. I have to write, or draw, or weave or sculpt or paint, or doodle on a rock with a sharpie. Having a blog seems to fit in with this need very well. I usually, doodle and then put it away in a storage box but sometimes I want to share what I have done, beyond leaving the doodled on rock on the river's edge for someone else to find and wonder about.

When I wonder what are the things I am expert at, what can I share, I come up with the following things that I have quite a bit of experience in:

travel
children
art
writing
teaching
adoption
photography
camping
books

hopefully, I will send echoes of my knowledge out to where it can help someone else as well. It is such a mixed world of pleasure, beauty and pain and ugliness. Hopefully the echoes of my life leave a little bit more in the balance on the side of appreciation and a little less on the side of isolation. I know that I have read things other people have written, and looked at their artwork, and found myself just a little better because of it. Perhaps it is my turn to give a little back.

 This Pioneer Cemetery is on the Campus of the Oregon Ducks. I got to stroll and take pictures while my husband was attending a music Festival


“And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.”
― Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

“the much-sought prize of eternal youth
Is just arrested growth.”
― Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

“I tramped through the country
To get the feeling
That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
I used to lose myself
By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
Sometimes I talked with animals…”
― Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

 Here the real winter sport seems to involve trying to keep up with the weather and understand that it isn't spring. Everything is confused by the drought and unusually warm December and January so it looks like April around here and I'm afraid none of the blooming fruit trees will produce fruit this fall.

 this is a painting I did years ago when I was a freshman in college, but we are in the midst of clouds and getting a real full moon is not happening, in fact we had 9 1/2 inches of rain at my house since last Friday

“I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again to one’s eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life goes by uncherished. ‘This may be my last moon,’ I sighed, feeling a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of The Odyssey.” 
― Roman Payne

 This is my oldest son with his blind, loving dog and the fishing float that he found while our at sea crabbing
and my husband and I with our youngest son

 Hobbs Wall was a redwood logging company which had the logging camp shown above. That isn't my picture but one that the Del Norte County Museum was displaying on their facebook page from the late 1870's or 1880's I'm guessing. The three bottom pictures are mine. Two rooms in my house were two of these bunkhouses. Then a third room was built between them to make a three room house and gradually a second floor and other rooms were added but the original roof and wooded shingles is in the closets and crawl spaces upstairs.

 In this picture the books that stand out are the three I have published.  There is
Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog
Duffy Barkley: Seek Well
and Double Rime In the Oregon Trail

 another Christmas photo collage

 a treasure of a picture that my son Austin took while out at sea to tell his Mom a special message

 My life has been filled with books, and it started with these, the kids picture books that were always abundant in our house even when we were low on money for almost everything else. On the wall is the quilt from my crib that my grandmother made for me.

"You may have riches
and treasures untold
mountains of rubies and
boxes of gold
but richer than I
you never can be.
I had a Mother
who read to me."
Author unknown at least by me

It isn't possible that weather can be just one image, I swear. You have to have others to convey the concept.

"La la la la la dee oh,
Whether the weather be rain or snow
Pretending can make it real
A snowy pasture, a green and grassy field

Walking In the Sunshine, sing a little sunshine song
Put a smile upon your face as if there's nothing wrong
Think about a good time had a long time ago
Think about forgetting about your worries and your woes
Walking In The Sunshine, sing a little sunshine song " Roger Miller

 Here the real winter sport seems to involve trying to keep up with the weather and understand that it isn't spring. Everything is confused by the drought and unusually warm December and January so it looks like April around here and I'm afraid none of the blooming fruit trees will produce fruit this fall.

a poster I made when my boys were little and the youngest was deeply into the Irene Vinton picture book

Look out for Pirates

NaNoWriMo 2013 Participant

I #amwriting again of course

Yesterday was November 16, and that has been a special day to me for 20 years now.  It is the anniversary of the day my husband and I stood in front of the Judge and promised to Love, and cherish the 6 month old boy who had been ours since his birth Mom handed him to me when he was 14 hours old. Adoption Day has been a joy. A celebration of the world recognizing what we already knew. But this year we are lonely for him, he's grown and working on a Crabbing boat 400 miles away from home, and I still celebrate being his Mom.

but writing means needing to reward myself with apple custard pie

 But it is also National Novel Writing Month.  I love November for the rush of typing a novel with all the emphasis on the story and non of the worry about editing it until later.  Some of my books have taken 13 years to edit so the intensity of jut doing story, while hundreds of thousands of others encourage and challenge me, is delicious freedom.  Writing is lonely, and has to be, to allow me to hear the soft voice of characters who live nowhere else but in the point where my fingertip meets the keyboard. For now

lots of fog and that is both in my mind and in my yard

 Usually I am good at this month long dash, but sometimes it doesn't work.  This year it is working, but not according to the rules so I am going with it and joining the group who call themselves nano rebels. I am still trying for the 50,000 words in a month, but with two books competing for my attention.  The third in my Duffy Barkley series is now at 60,000 words but didn't start here. I just can't stay way from it when something exciting comes into my mind for that story.  The other book, the new one, is a story of two boys facing destructive volcano eruptions 1901 years apart. But it uses the same device to communicate between times as I used in Double Time On The Oregon Trail.

snuggling the dog can count as work if I'm plotting the story

I work better with this guy in the house

 So Life is all about words on paper here this month, but of course it isn't. Today was proof of that.  My husband was just home after 48 hours away at a music festival, I got up early to write and brewed a 12 cup pot of lovely coffee all over the counter and the floor in my kitchen, so mopping happened. Then It is my sister-in-laws birthday and then My brother texted me about Christmas plans and a friend wants to come visit and someone else needs me to substitute teach and another friend needed to talk.  Family is hurting, to angry or celebrating, and actually all three. Life doesn't stop just because I have A NOVEL TO WRITE FOLKS!

And you know what, I'm glad it doesn't. I love so many people and I am not the best at letting them know sometimes, but They let me know, even when the timing isn't convenient, that good times and bad times, lonely or not. I'm not alone, even though it feels like it.

Good night