Romantic? Maybe. In a Way.

I have no picture to post today because I dropped my cell phone in the toilet, so I'll just write about something beautiful instead...

Today is not only St. Patrick's Day, it is also the thirtieth anniversary of my husband's and my first date and kiss.  I was sixteen and a junior in high school.  He was eighteen and a senior.  We were both cast in the school play, "Arsenic and Old Lace," and when the production ended we both attended a cast party.  I had had a crush on him since the moment I saw him at auditions for the play, and I saw the cast party as my last chance to get him to notice me too.

I tried and tried to flirt.  At sixteen I was not so experienced at this.  Then later during the party everyone went downstairs and we were all dancing.  The lights were low.  Michael Jackson's Thriller album was playing on the stereo, and I knew that the next song up would be a "slow dance" song, so I positioned myself in the room just so my future husband would have no choice but to ask me to dance.

My scheme worked.  We dance, not just to that one song, but for the rest of the night.  He wouldn't let anyone else ask me for a dance.  We didn't kiss that night.  Before he left he hugged me and said, "Give me a call."

I said, "Why can't you call me?"

He said, "Because I lost the piece of paper with the cast phone numbers on it."

I was really scared that I was getting the brush off, but I called him the next day, asked him out on a date, and he accepted.  My best girlfriend chauffeured for us, and we cruised the loop downtown and went out for ice cream.  When we dropped him off at his house I walked him to the door and stood there with a stupid grin on my face until he had no choice but to say, "Aw, give me a kiss."

And that was that.  He was mine forever.

And I had just finished composing and sending him a lovely Happy Anniversary card to send via text message when I dropped my phone in the toilet.  Yes, I was sending a romantic message from the throne.  Fitting for thirty years, no?  The ONLY good thing about dropping my phone in the toilet is I did it AFTER flushing.

A Light in a Dark Corner

 

 

This is a candle in my bedroom that I love.  I haven't lit it in a long time.  Looking at it and snapping a picture has inspired me to declutter the corner of the room where my rocking chair sits so that I have a cozy place to light my candle and read or listen to music or just sit still for a few minutes.

A Quickie

No time to write.  I'm headed out the door for dinner and drinks with some girlfriends, but I didn't want to forget my challenge, so I'm posting a hasty selfie, and now I'm off!

Weird and Wonky

Last Friday I weighed 240 pounds, and this Friday I weigh 237.8.  I've lost 20 pounds in 2 months.  This is really nice progress, and yet, I'm afraid to believe I'll ever be "thin" again.  I still struggle sometimes with negative and critical thoughts about myself (You've lost weight before, and you always blow it.  Better not get your hopes up.  You'll fail, you always do.) but I've experienced the magic loving myself can create, so I can forgive myself for having those thoughts and learn to trust myself more and more.

I'm having trouble finding beautiful stuff to take pictures of around my house.  Isn't that strange?  I'll have to try harder, get out some more or create some beauty if I'm not finding things beautiful around me. 

This is a bead I made out of a bunch of leftover glass that's been sitting on a bookshelf in my bedroom for years.  I haven't made any beads for years.  I'd like to do it again sometime, but I don't have a safe comfortable place to set up my kiln and torch right now.  I got tired of freezing in my garage while I worked, so I stopped making them.

Anyway, this one is wonky and weird, but I love it.

Sunny Days Are Here Again

Two views of the sky in my world at two different times of the day and in two different parking lots.

I never take the beauty of Mt. Rainier for granted.  That's because it's hiding behind clouds so much of the time, so when it shows up, I take notice.  The sky has been so gray for so long, as is always the case here in the Pacific Northwest, but we're finally seeing signs of Spring, which will have plenty of gray days.  Still, the sun is appearing more and more and that always improves my mood and energy level.

The days of reading on the deck and manufacturing my own vitamin D instead of taking supplements are coming!

A New Challenge

I've been trying to be more intentional and more mindful in my day to day living, but it is not an easy thing to do.  It's so much easier to just do the same things I always do without thinking about them.  Trying to live intentionally feels a little bit to me like trying to make a ball roll uphill.  It takes constant thinking and doing, and I get tired of it and go back to letting the ball just roll downhill, even if it means letting the ball roll into a puddle of slop.

As a way to add more intentionality to my day, I've decided to challenge myself to write here every day for a month.  I also plan to add a picture of something I find beautiful, whether it is extraordinarily beautiful or just an ordinary thing that I have stopped noticing.

The sunshine is beautiful today and I love the way it feels on my face and shoulders.  Pepper, our little Boston Terrier loves the warmth and the sunshine too.  The lawn is growing again, (and needs to be mowed!) and Pepper just looked up after chewing on a blade of grass.

The Trees

I've mentioned the pendants I started making a couple of times now, and I thought I'd post a picture of a couple of them, but first there's an interesting story about those pendants.

For a couple of weeks I was seeing trees everywhere.  I don't mean real trees outside.  Of course, I always see those, but I was seeing the imagery of trees in articles I was reading, shows I was watching, tattoos.  Everywhere, every day.  I was beginning to wonder if it was a sign from the Universe or if there was some message I was supposed to be getting from the trees.

I thought maybe it had to do with pruning and new growth because I had been experiencing some of that in my life, and then after seeing a Celtic tree of life symbol as a tattoo I Googled, "tree of life," and I found beautiful jewelry that I wanted to wear with trees on it, and then, because I make jewelry, I thought instead it would be more meaningful if I made myself a tree of life pendant, and that's how I started making them. 

When I shared pictures on Facebook of the pendants I was making, people started asking to buy them, and then I stopped making them, which is weird, but I think it was as Magic Mentha mentioned, a difficulty with receiving that made me stop making the pendants when others expressed a desire to pay for them.

There is another layer to the whole "tree" thing, and another possible message from the Universe or my psyche, and that is that I should begin working on a novel I started last year.  I only wrote a few chapters, but when I looked at the very last sentence I had written I couldn't help wondering if the trees were telling me that I needed to tell this story.  The last sentence I wrote was, "Kali scratched her head while working on her History test and suddenly remembered the strange vibrating tree in the middle of the woods."

The trees.  They are giving me something, and I'm still not sure if I'm imagining it or it's a true sign, but it doesn't really matter, does it?  Anyway, here are the pictures I promised:

The pendant on the right is actually larger than the one on the left.  Here is a picture of them together so you can see their actual size: