Resolution

It took me a month. But I decided. I needed one simple resolution, nothing complex, just deep.

To be a better person.

That's it.

The writing is going, slowly, scratched pieces of lined legal pad paper which flow along to the cadence of the sea. I will type soon these little snippets, and hopefully get back into posting some of the projects that have been going on.

Living by the sea, the sea air, saves me. The tugs are spraying water today. I watched two tankers come in this morning.

Hello Again

Has it been that long?
I'm still around.
There have been setbacks to pulling the home together as I wish.
But the thing with setbacks is they are very often totally beyond your control.
And that is fine. I keep trying. And then the dishwasher goes out.
Boxes are moving to storage, a bookcase went yesterday.
Little by little the place is getting to be how I want it.
I've been sewing a little. Easy stuff, no concentration required.
I find it relieves stress.

I like living by the beach.
Hearing the waves.
Watching the sea faring traffic, and the way their lights provide atmosphere at night.
There is ample light and fresh air, and what more could one ask.

Again

The beach house is calming, and I look out to sea water and curious little tug boats hauling around all manners of big ships. I feel blessed. In abundance.

I look around and there is everything that remains to make a home a home. Boxes to sort, items to put away. All manner of things to be cleaned, polished, washed, and deposited in a new home that will function with purpose.

This stage is the awful stage, the stage of dancing around boxes, and looking for five minutes for things that should be at hand. The frustration will subside, and once the utility items are put away, then it is time to frost the house with the beauty. To put up the pictures and the art and the quilts that make a home into something personal. To tell the story of a life, as an exhibition of fine art.

Summer

The summer is going well.

The boxes are being unpacked.

I see the sea everyday.

I've made one quilt block.

I'm not sure there is anything more eerie than being in an empty home on a nice day scrubbing in silence. Meditation is found in many ways, but manual labor seems the most instant for me now. I'm letting go of this house in the country. The yard has grown up and daisies speckle the field.

It is a morning for water skiing, and following that shiny black lab that wanders about on the beach all by itself, like it were just a step behind a ghost owner, or it had a mind of it's own that it couldn't make up, and it was freed to go about and snoop in seaweed filled corners and claw at the pebbles.

The beach life is much different. To me it truly feels like home. I love the privacy of space and the green of pasture; but my heart stops truly for the sea and shore. The roses were watered and they have bloomed with all this change, and I take that steadily to heart.

I'm still working on closing this chapter before I start another. It has worn me down: the cleaning, the closing up, the thinking about the "lasts". The last meal and the last . . .

I'm thankful for this time. For the sore muscles and the fatigue, and the feeling of satisfaction when a room is done and ready for someone else. I exist day to day now with just the basics, and nothing I really want to find yet packed up in a pyramid in the new place. My mere annoyance that I cannot see the sea from the kitchen because this marvel of boxes blocks the view.

I long for creative time and in the quiet moments I search for the creativity in repetitive tasks. I fear that the only creating is in the new cleanness and not making something from separate pieces. So in the now I will rise and go back to finish out the old life so I can get on with the new, I am just a crab after all leaving the old skin behind and letting my sadness go with it.

Harder Said Than Done

I am going through the withdrawal of not having a studio. It is almost packed and ready for arrival in a heated local, and I'm not sure how long it will wait to see the light of day again. So I am taking comfort in my bravado for now.

I'm not going to stop creating art, so I think for a bit it will just be downsized. Smaller pieces that lend to faster completion. I have paired down my studio to the basics and will use those at the new place, then I can visit storage as needed.

Someone told me that maybe for a while my studio wasn't supposed to be at my home. And I wonder about that comment and so many others that are brought into our lives by people, some close, and some seeming strangers. How does one take these messages and heed them, and yet know what is of importance and what is not?

What I've Been Up To Other Than Packing

This is an earlier shot of a rose planted. It's purple tiger, a long awaited find. I just this past weekend planted two others that sat on the porch for way too long, they are doing well, and one even has color on the bloom.

I find myself in a bread making phase? There is something about kneading. I really don't eat that much bread, although my husband does, but I have been making it, cooling, wrapping, and freezing. It so meditative and it transports me back in time. Plus I can use organic flours.

The packing is continuing, and one knows there are seriously going to move when the cookbooks are packed. I saved one new local one on the Skagit Valley, and I will work my way through the recipes in spare moments when I find my moving sickness approaching. Up until the last moment when it is time to go.

One puts so much care into creating a home. And then it is dismantled and wrapped, and almost like the bread, put into the freezer to open and enjoy some other time.