Feeling Blue

Lake Earl

Salem, OR

Castle Rock

Today my life feels perfect

That frightens me

I feel change coming

and can't imagine a change

which isn't also a loss

Unicorn cloud

Battery Point Lighthouse

Home

I want to hold on to each loved one
who today, is breathing and
freeze the moment

I want the young man to stay young
The old Lady to stay healthy
The pets to stay irritating

Guatemalan Bullrushes

Life is good
It has been good before
in different ways
on different days
at different shores

but it has never been
like this

and
never will again

Tomorrow I might awake to beauty

But right now

I'm already here.

Handmade vase and Calla Lily

Moving on beyond Grace

 It has been a long time since the house has been quiet and my mind has been active enough to flip through my pictures and into my feelings and find anything that I wanted to share here.  The last I wrote was about the death of Grace, my greyhound.

Of course life has a way of moving forward, even if you do not take the time to examine it, or choose to share it.  My spring has been filled, even though my blog pages have not.

I have planted sunflowers and let the grass grow rampant.

  My 18 year old son saw his birthday as his chance to make all those grown-up decisions I have been trying to hold him back from.  He turned 18 and got a tattoo and a puppy and moved in with his girlfriend, and yet managed also to plod his way through those last two required classes and get the precious high school diploma.

I tried to tell him that he was rushing this adult thing, and ask him how he intended to take care of all these new responsibilities but with adult decisions come adult consequences and so far he is doing OK and still swinging by to give me a hug and let me cuddle the puppy when I am missing Grace.

I have taken some time to go to the beach, and to admire the bloom's

painting by one of my students

and I have been teaching a middle school class of severely handicapped students.  I have a love/hate relationship with Special Ed.  I love the kids, love teaching them to be creative and to like who they are, but I hate the getting spit on and kicked and having to do hours of testing and meetings and paperwork.  i actually don't mind the physical stuff like diapers on a kid who is bigger than I am, but I struggle with the bullying they encounter in the playground and lunchroom every day.

I used to feel tall!

I took some time just to celebrate the two wonderful young men I am lucky enough to be "Mom" to. and to remember the marvelous supportive friends that we have found in this adopted town of ours.

Celebrating Graduation.

 I also had two really sad, frightening episodes to deal with.  One was the city wide lock-down of schools for the Tuesday of the last week of school, and the fear and boredom of the kids when they had to keep the room dark and quiet for the day without really knowing why, then the sadness of finding out that one of the girls at our school, and her mother had both been shot in the head at their home, just before school started, and the man who did it was missing, and known to still have his gun, for 11 and 1/2 hours until he shot himself to death as a policeman approached the sea cliff picnic table where he was located, 5 blocks from our school.

The other was the drowning death of a 26 year old man who had been a 4 year old in the very first class of special ed. kids that I ever taught.  His body has yet to be recovered from the Rogue River where he went missing 9 days ago.

We fought the lawn and the lawn won

My husband and youngest son got to go to San Francisco to see Blue Man Group, while I used the time alone to walk and read and take hot baths and remember how the good outweighs the bad in this life.














So I go into the Summer, relieved that my life has a chance to get back on a more even keel, a better time to hug my man, and cheer my kids, and run into my students and former students and be able to have a smile on my face.  You have a good summer too and I will try to write more, take more pictures and find more beauty to share.


RIP Cecilia and Robbie

Love Mrs. Goode

Adopting Retired Racing Greyhounds

George and Grace in Motion

 My husband was the first to say that he would be interested in adopting retired racing dogs, but I didn't think much about it until I took my two young sons to the Chetco Community Library and met a woman who had adopted three and dreamed of having a six pack.

The dog at the library, was polite and regal, and named Jamie.  She looked like she had stepped out of an Egyptian mural from the age of the Pharaohs.  I talked to her owner and began to do research, falling more in love with the regal breed even though there was something almost deformed looking to me in the narrow waist and needle nosed look.  The strange dog could walk right out of an ordinary collar because her head and neck kept getting narrower as you moved up from the shoulders.

Grace used to race as "Enchanted Dream"

We finally found two dogs from a track in Arizona and they were due to be flown up to our local airport on September 15, 2001

Then the World Trade Towers were attacked and flights by small planes without navigational computers were halted for quite a while and That fell through.  I still hope those hounds found homes, instead of the early death that many racers face.

In October of the same year, a race track adoption group, called "Homes For Hounds" agreed to bring us down two from the Willamette Race Track near Portland, Oregon  and they brought several others to try to place in this area as well.

So we got a 2 year old, red Brindled female named "Enchanted Dream" and a 5 year old, red male named "Hard Drive Kid"   Since I wanted friendlier names and had adored George Burns and Gracie Allen, We re-named them George and Grace.  They came, hard muscled, bone thin, used to all kinds of noise and chaos, but unsure how to live in a house, stairs and glass windows and snuggling were alien to them.  They would lie there unafraid as we vacuumed around them but stare at the flight of stairs with fear.  They had no sense of where home was and could run far and fast and be lost quickly.  We had a few close calls when they slipped under the fence or out of a collar.

We thought that racing dogs would be hyper, but they were so mellow in the house we called them our speed bumps.  They were not the best for bonding with children, instead they focused on the adults and followed us loyally.  They even had been cat tested, to see if they reacted aggressively and these two barely ever glanced at out two feline family members.

playing with neighbor dog

George was getting older but still all heart

"Hard Drive Kid" on the tracks, George at home

A racing hound is bred to be strong and any puppy with any weakness has been ruthlessly culled.  The one advantage of this is that the breed has no disposition to weakness and ailments like many specific breeds do.

Our hounds lived long and happy lives right up until the week they died.  George two years ago, and Grace this week.  They were such a delight and will live forever in our hearts.

"Say Good-Night Gracie"

Spring Again

The winter was long and extremely stormy here.  Wet, grey day followed wet grey day until we forgot that the sky was ever meant to be anything but a place where the ocean gathered over our heads.

At last the sun has begun to make brief appearances and the spongy earth has yielded a host of blooms, eager to grow as soon as they felt that first flush of warmth kissing their sleeping cheek.The darkness lingers in my house but the sun beckons me outside, the beaches and trails are scrubbed clean from a barrage of winter storms, except for the fallen branches and driftwood.

Easter season always speaks of rebirth and new life, but this year, more than most, there was a need in me to see the newness, to feel the warmth, and hear how silent it can be when the wind stopped.

The Azalea in a pot in my house has bloomed pink every year, but this year and last, it has featured one albino bloom as well.  I don't know why that one snowy bloom amid the rosy others, seems so promising, but I keep coming back to stare and feed my soul on its beauty.

I wrote last fall, of the death of my beloved yellow cat, and how I buried her in the rain, with daffodil bulbs.  Now her grave has become a flower bed and I find peace in that as well.

My only remaining cat has found himself wanting more companionship and is often under my feet when I haul firewood or work in the yard.

Even down at the Crescent City harbor, so recently devastated by the Tsunami and the loss of a fleet of commercial boats, There is a renewal and a sense of hope.  The enormous floating crane, hired to raise the sunken boats, has completed the task.

The animals have survived without a one being found with oil on its fur or feathers.  The city is pulling together to cheer for Crescent City on the Reader's Digest, We Hear You competition and life resumes where chaos reigned for a month.

 I find it easy in the spring, to be an optimist.  I choose to remember that it is the simple, inexpensive, treats in my life that make me the happiest.  Talking to my teenagers, typing on a story, focusing my camera on a beauty; I find it imposible to feel the cold, grey of winter anymore.