AAM Monday: Project Life Week 29

Going back to some of my older templates from Designer Digitals Pocket Pages, I shifted them into the style I'm almost always using - 4 4x6 inch spots and 4 3x4 inch spots with a white border and then a patterned paper border. There's a lot of ways to vary that easily when doing digital pages vs having to have various plastic protectors if done in paper or hybrid. Any time I think of such things, it cements my choice of digital.

With these two pages, I stuck to the way the templates were laid out with the stitching,  eliminated almost all the extra elements and was set. I do see that I forgot to clip that corner Instagram photo of my son and wife to the background paper, thus covering up the stitching. Again, digital correction will be easy!

AAM:Monday PL Weeks 27 & 28

Where has the time gone? she asks again.

Summer is the hardest season for me. I really mind the weather and cannot wait for cooler times. This year our humidity has been worse than the normal bad. But I do remind myself I am fortunate not to live miles more down south. One or two days I walked out the door and thought...This is sultry! I am glad to leave that kind of weather to my friends in New Orleans or other such regions.

But back to the weeks I've completed.

My football joy was not long lived but that's the way of the World Cup. You hope you dream and then crash it goes. The French are mauvais. imho

AAM Monday: Project Life Week 29

Because there are some photos blurred out for privacy sake, these are not the usual quality images. Sorry about that but that's how it goes.  Other peoples' stories that are important to me...

AAM Monday: Project Life Week 28

July tends to be the time of year when I have very little energy. Hot, humid and I'm content to just read books and watch tv. But this week did get me out to Southern MD and a very hot and tiring drive it was. But a retreat on the Potomac is always good. I only left the building once I think!

Five on Friday July 25, 2014

This has been a really great summer so far with temperatures that make me wonder if I'm in Maryland. The humidity has been low enough to make the days just perfect.  We had a good bit of rain a week or so ago, and while other areas had bad storms, we were spared.

1. There is nothing like a good retreat to remind me how much I enjoy sisterhood. It's also a great reminder to find more of that in my life on a regular basis.

2.  Finally, I got round to making a drink I saw somewhere on line.  Watermelon soda with basil. 

blender
1. club soda
2. a big basil leaf
3. a pinch of kosher salt (optional)
4. chunks of watermelon

Put the ingredients into the blender in the numbered order, blend til totally liquified and server over ice or add some ice last while blending. The salt is good if it's super hot where you live. You might want to add a tsp then. Really.

3. Some things in my life have made me both very sad and very angry.  It's possible to feel both of those things about the same event/action. Not enjoyable but everyone makes her own choices. Sometimes they are just plain selfish choices.

4. Did you know the Mendenhall Glacier is doing some serious calving? I hope access to the glacier is not restricted when my dh and granddaughter go fishing next month. That's a long way to go and miss seeing the glacier. I suspect the helicopter tour would be a bit pricey.

5. This is the time of year that I harvest my lavender branches. Normally, I've had about 5-8 bees happily gorging themselves on the flowers. This year I've been lucky to have two at a time, and some of those not even the normal fat black and gold bees.  A visible sign of what pesticides are doing.

AAM Monday: It Was a Very Good Time

This past weekend I went on retreat so there's not a lot of photos of that time, except in my head. That's how it should be.

We were all women and while it was a very good time, it occasionally got pretty loud when about 80 women were eating and talking. Boy could we raise the decibel level! We also had a tremendous rain, so heavy that the view of the river was totally blocked. We could only see a curtain of white beyond these trees.

This was a spiritual retreat so we had a retreat leader who gave several talks that gave us things to ponder. Not only did I ponder, I also had the opportunity to speak with some other women I had never met and exchange ideas and thoughts. Like the curtain of rain blocking our vision, by evening the sky was clear again, and our minds were finding clarity.

 

I have come to the conclusion that I do want to go on a silent retreat some time in the future. Not sure when but I know it'll happen.  I'll miss the interaction I had with these other women but I'll have a deeper interaction with my own soul. It's all good.

Peace and Laughter

I had a wonderful weekend away at a retreat in Southern Maryland. Going down there took a good deal longer than it could have because we had torrential rains.  My dh had warned me that there could be an inch or two of rain PER hour in mid afternoon but I really didn't want to leave too early. As it was, I had a chance to stop in both A.C. Moore AND Michaels to use those wonderful 50% off coupons. I knew what I wanted so that didn't take much time but even so I got hit with the rain. Fortunately, the bit of storm I went through only lasted about 10 minutes but those were long minutes, let me tell you. I never liked driving in rain that heavy - who does? - but at least it wasn't at night. I have no idea what I would have done then.


When I got to the retreat center, it was hot and humid and raindrops started coming down again, but lightly. Fortunately, I did listen to my dh and took my raincoat so getting to the front door of the center from my car wasn't a problem. I did leave my pillow in the car til later! All evening long the rain came and went, and those of us already there had some good laughs when some poor woman arrived during a downpour and came in looking like the proverbial drowned rat! This was a spirtual retreat and most of the other women knew each other so the teasing and the laughs were taken in stride. If that's the worst thing we face that day, we all know how fortunate we are!

Potomac River Sunset

View From My Room & My Heart

I went on a 3 day women's spiritual retreat this past weekend and came home filled. Filled with gratitude for what is, filled with gratitude for what I had to go through to get to this place, and filled with gratitude that the women I met are seeing and believing that hope is real. Change is possible. The kind of change that is inevitable when we look at our past and shake our heads and say ...No, not any more! Our past does not have to be our future. I think our world is saying that now too, don't you?


This retreat is always held in the dark days of January when the frenzy of the December holidays is put to rest and when, at times, the cold dark seems to be endless. Each of us has her own limit of Enough of this! Let the light of spring start showing up! And then we notice.

No, the days are not as short as they were at the close of the year. We realize that the dawn has come earlier, and there is that little bit of extra sunlight as we make dinner or get ready to leave work. Almost imperceptibly the season is changing and we, like our formothers, know that the shift continues even as our own bodies shift monthly and remind us of the renewal of life.

At the end of our retreat, one of the women organizers had each of us look under our chair. Some who had tags received little surprise gifts and some had little stickers and others just had chairs! One of the women who was a bit disappointed to have 'just a sticker' said to me (who had a chair!) Well here - you can have it! She stuck it on the sleeve of my sweatshirt and I proudly wore the little lion. Other women who saw me said Do you know you have a sticker on your sleeve? Yes, I do...do you want to hear me roar?!?!? I joked.

But on the way home, I thought of the words that came to me about that sticker as I drove through the beautiful farmland of Maryland. Lionhearted. Heart on my sleeve. Simba Jike - the name given to the heroine of a novel I'd just read. It was enough confirmation for me that I'm in the right place, I am who I am, a woman who is an open book, who wears her heart on her sleeve, and who wants to love fiercely but doesn't roar enough - yet.

I felt that this retreat was - as they always are - a time apart that fit so perfectly with our current world situation. When I listened to the other women, spoke with them, danced near them and with them, cried my own tears at their pain or their joy, I knew deep in my soul how truly We Are One. It's not just a political slogan for me who comes from so many years in politics. It's a core belief, a knowing. I write this today so that I can remember what I feel, that I can be reminded of what I truly believe when I get mired in the minutia of life, as I know I will, and as I know you will. I love knowing that there are others out in the blogosphere both near and far who 'get it'.

You are pieces of my life that I treasure and you are loved, even if I haven't 'met' you yet. So Thank you! for helping me to roar!