Today, and Every Day

Happy Veterans Day

and

Thank You

For a Friend

Wishing each of you a happy weekend. xo

Same Old, Same Old

My days are all kind of running together.  Each morning I've been getting up super early and I can't go back to sleep because dogs need to go out, be fed, then that cold breeze from taking them out wakes my brain up and I can't shut it down.

Then I begin to go over everything I need to do, which right now is about a million things, so then I definitely can't go back to sleep, so I just start working.

It feels good to get things done and keep working towards the goal line.

It's kind of like when you decide to clean out a closet and once you start you just can't stop.

And then when you are all done, and the closet is nice and tidy, you feel like you've conquered the world!

It is important to take a break though, and a few of you have sweetly written to me to remind me of that fact.  So today I decided to take a few pictures as a way to distract myself for a little while.

I guess for some people hauling out a camera and getting everything set up might be stressful, but for me it's a nice relaxing break.  It gets my creative juices flowing, and while I'm taking pictures I can forget the swirl of life that is happening all around me.

Having pretty or interesting things to photograph doesn't hurt either...like the last of my roses, French ephemera and some of my grandmother's and great grandmother's jewelry as willing subjects.

I have to admit that I was a little lazy and didn't really try to make the pictures look all that different from one another...my brain was just a little too tired for that I'm afraid.  But sometimes doing the same thing or taking the same sort of picture is a good thing I think, it gives me a sense of comfort, and as long as I'm making strides, it's not so bad really.

Do you find comfort in repetition?!

On a side note I want to say WOW to my fellow Americans for really turning out in mass yesterday to vote.  No matter which way you voted, whether today finds you happy or sad, you should take comfort in the fact that you were part of the process and it's that kind of effort that will see us through whatever lies ahead.

And to those affected by Sandy, I hope this nor'easter passes you by without much headache...you have enough on your plate right now, and really deserve a break and some warmer weather!

If I Needed You

Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments and support from my last post.  Some of you have emailed to ask if the split was with my art partner Mary Beth, and thankfully we are just fine.  The issue was with my business partner who I've been working with for many months now to create an online gallery to sell our artwork.

It wouldn't have been such a big deal, but I've been blessed with a wonderful opportunity which I will share with you soon, and that opportunity means I need a website in place by the end of this month.  The website with the other person has been dragging on for months now, and so last Wednesday I phoned to ask the status and drive home the urgency of completing the site.  Instead I found out what I had suspected all along, that the website was not going to happen.

What that means is that I will now be challenged with creating a website of my own in just a few short weeks, something I've never done before.  I have to say that although the immediate future will be stressful, I've already nearly completed the website in the span of about 4 days and sleepless nights, and I'm feeling strangely optimistic and excited about everything that has transpired!  The e-commerce hosting site has been hugely supportive and I can't thank my husband enough for watching youtube tutorial videos to help me while I created a logo and all of the graphics to fill the site.

There is lots more tweaking to be done, thumbnails to be uploaded, and pricing structure to be determined, but I'm moving forward and I actually believe that things will work out for the best in the long run.

Once again, when I needed you all to hold my hand and tell me everything would be ok, there you were.  And as always my family has lifted me up and made me believe that I can do anything.  For these blessings I will be forever grateful

If you have read my blog for any amount of time then you likely know that I feel deeply connected to family and friends who are no longer with me.  I often feel their presence and see signs they send me letting me know that they are ok and that I will be too in times of trouble.  

The day after I had the phone conversation that rocked my little world last week, I was all alone and sitting at my desk trying to wrap my head around how this would all shake out.  I'm normally pretty good in the midst of a crisis, but even I was having trouble with the notion of all that lay ahead of me, and self doubt started rearing its ugly head.  And then I heard it, just as clear as day and as if she were standing right beside me.  It was my mother's voice, a voice I haven't heard for over 8 years since she passed away.  She said "you can do this!"  And it was at that very moment that I knew she was right, I could do this...and more importantly I would do this!

I guess sometimes we just need to hear that from our mom, that unconditional love and support that can come from a mother who believes in you, whether she is here in the flesh or walking beside you in spirit.  

I heard a tiny bit of the song below yesterday in the movie The Stepmom, and I thought it summed it up in a way I will never be able to.  And for all of those who are struggling tonight, wondering if you can make it, pick up the pieces, and face what lies ahead, no matter the challenge, I hope you hear a voice that will bring you comfort.

Sowing Seeds

Have you ever planted a seed or seeds only to have them washed away, plucked from the earth by a hungry bird, or damaged by lack of rain and too much sun?

That is how I feel lately, like the seeds I've been sowing, which all looked so promising when I first nestle them into the soft ground, have not taken hold and reached for the sky as they should have.  It's like nurturing that tiny seedling (or dream in this case) and having it not blossom into what you hoped it would due to outside forces.

After months of working hard to get the website up and running with a partner, it became evident yesterday that the tiny plant I'd been carefully cultivating had withered on the vine.  I would stop to feel sorry for myself, but when I look around at what so many have lost this past week I would have to be crazy, or incredibly selfish to complain.

So instead, I will plant my own garden, tend to it myself and if the seedlings grow in to ginormous plants I will reap the rewards.  I have friends and family, really good friends and family, who will help me fertilize and monitor these tender plants, and like so many tenacious farmers before me, I will see my vision come to fruition with their support.

And although my most recent endeavors will now go in a different direction than I anticipated, there is always sunshine and gentle rain on the horizon which will ensure a bountiful harvest in the long run.

If growing a beautiful garden was so easy, maybe the fruits of our labors wouldn't bring us so much joy when it does all work out.  And you can't be too upset when things don't go as planned, because maybe that seed that was snatched away was better served as someone else's dinner, eh?  Mr. Bluebird concurs!

Safe and Sound

Well, Sandy has pretty much moved on for us and surprisingly she didn't leave much of a calling card in our yard at least...something we are very grateful for.  We had a few tree branches come down, which Mr. Tide made short order of this afternoon, and we've had some flooding which damaged our dock, but other than that we are good to go.


 

If we are experiencing this sort of flooding, then I know that other more low lying parts of our county are in dire straits.  Some parts down river from us are barely above water when the weather is calm and the tides are low.

We never even lost power, though the lights did flicker from time to time during the most ferocious of the wind gusts.  From what we've heard, the highest wind gusts got to 74 mph in our area, and we thank our lucky stars that our contractor installed our windows so well.  Having lots of windows is great for views, but when a hurricane, nor'easter, or tropical storm hits (in this case a combo of those 3), they can really be put to the test, and ours have passed with flying colors each time we've had a major storm...knock wood!

The winds were at their worst after dark, and that is always a bit unnerving to hear it howl and wonder what sort of destruction it's doing outside.  Our dock suffered a bit of damage from the winds and rising waters and some of the boards were ripped off, but we'll take that compared to what others are now facing!

This morning we ventured out early to check on the farm property and it was like a ghost town.  There were very few vehicles on the road, and most of those were power company trucks.  The farm did fine too, only a few large branches down but nothing major.

All in all, this storm was much kinder to our part of Maryland than Irene was.  We had some trees come down into the creek and one fell this afternoon on the river side, but as we drove around this morning it didn't look like a war zone as it had after Irene.

We have theorized that because Irene had so much more convective energy she likely spawned micro bursts and mini tornadoes which caused the utter devastation she left in her path last year.  And because we had drought conditions this past summer, I think a lot of the copious amounts of rain made their way into the parched soil with Sandy...all good news for us.

The coastline of Maryland didn't fare quite so well I'm afraid, and like NY, NJ, CT, MA and so many other parts of the eastern seaboard, it will take a very long time for life to return to normal for them.  My heart breaks when I see the amount of destruction they have experienced, and as a hurricane prone area, we can certainly relate to their plight.

Today has been a quiet day here, one where I even took a nap.  I think that after all of the stress of preparing, and then riding out the storm, my body just needed to re-set itself.  

We feel so very fortunate to have made it through the storm with almost no damage, and we truly appreciate the outpouring of support you gave us during the storm.  I received so many wonderful emails asking if we were ok...thank you so much!

While we wait for the waters to recede and for life to get back to normal, which it nearly is, we will think of all those facing massive clean ups and trying to contact loved ones.  I hope that sometime soon they will all be safe and sound as well!

Hunkered Down

We are hunkered down here, and waiting for the worst of the storm to arrive.  The latest predictions show the hurricane force winds arriving sometime around 6 pm tonight and lasting until the early morning hours before daybreak tomorrow.

We are as prepared as we can be, save building a bomb shelter, so now we just have to ride things out.  The winds have picked up significantly in the last half hour or so.   Early this morning we had already gotten over 3 inches of rain, and it has only continued to fall since then so I'm betting some of the lower lying areas around us are already experiencing flooding.  And we haven't seen a high tide yet this afternoon but our pier has water licking the bottom of it already.

I had hoped to show you images of the waves on the river, but that won't be happening, the tropical storm force winds and sideways rain are a bit too ferocious for my camera I'm afraid.  So instead I'll just show you our 4 kayaks which are nestled up by the house, just outside our master bedroom.  They are lashed together and turned upright to collect the rainwater so that they will be too heavy to fly away...at least that's the theory!

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and since we don't have a proper umbrella stand (note to self to get one) an old zinc watering can tucked into the garage during our storm preparations will have to do.  As will scatter rugs strategically placed everywhere to try and catch as much water as possible when we bring the dogs in and out.

As the storm progresses, we will need to take them out the front door where we will be slightly more sheltered from the wind and driving rain.  And there is a porch where we can towel them off under cover before coming back inside.

The pups are real troopers though and will come in and let me towel them completely off before giving us a good shake.  Just a little bit ago when Quinn came inside after a potty run my daughter commented that he looked like a boxer getting ready for a prize fight with the beach towel draped all around him.

As much as I dread the next 24 to 36 hours, I have to feel pretty lucky.  Lucky that Mr. Tide and the folks at the company he was visiting worked like dogs while on travel so that he could catch a flight in last night....such a wonderful feeling to have him home when we weren't expecting it!  And our daughter will be staying with us as the rental property she shares with her brother has many more trees surrounding it than our house.  Super saturated ground with high winds = downed trees!  

Our son Bugs is riding out the storm at the local firehouse.  Not what a mother really hopes for during a major storm, but it's what he loves, and I know there will be people who will need his help.  I just hope they don't keep the first responders on the roads until the 11th hour like they did during Irene.  Once it becomes unsafe, no one should be on the roads or be expected to go out during the height of the storm.  He sends me texts every now and again to ease my worries and to let me know how things are going up his way.

And you can't help but feel lucky when you compare yourself to the families who are experiencing loses from Sandy's earlier landfalls, or the pure agony of waiting to see if their loved ones will be rescued after the tragic tall ship accident off the coast of North Carolina today!  I hope the 2 missing crew are found safe and sound.  Or the folks living in high rise buildings in NYC who don't know what to expect.  One of our friends is a New York City firefighter, and my heart goes out to the first responders of the major metro areas up and down the coast.

I went outside yesterday and snipped a few roses knowing that any remaining blossoms will be gone with the wind by this time on Wednesday.  For now, I will enjoy them and maybe even channel a little Scarlett O'Hara myself...

"Oh, I can't think about this now! I'll go crazy if I do! I'll think about it tomorrow. But I must think about it. I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters? Tara! Home. I'll go home. And I'll think of some way to get him back. After all... tomorrow is another day!

Thanks so much for your comments and emails wishing us well during the storm, they are much appreciated!  And to our wonderful first responders, stay safe, and thank you for all that you do! 


 

Dear Sandy

Dear Sandy, I'm writing to you today to ask you a few favors.  I know you are busy wreaking havoc south of me, but I thought maybe you could spare a moment to listen to my short wish list.

#1:   I would really appreciate it if you could spare a few of the beautiful leaves that are just starting to show some color around here.  I know you like to huff and puff, but for those of us who aren't that fond of cold weather, having some fall color makes the transition a little easier.

#2:  All of the lawn furniture (and I just realized today that we have WAY too much) has been safely stowed away, but I wanted to remind you that Mr. Tide and I like sitting in this particular spot each evening, so if you could please not drop any large branches or fell any trees here we would really appreciate it.

Just in case you want to make the argument that hurricanes don't knock down lovely big old trees, I would like to remind you that your cousin, Irene, took this one down a little over a year ago.  We miss this tree a lot, and so did the osprey when they came looking for their nest last spring.

#3:  This request is made on behalf of the birdbath.  He/she would like me to ask you to spare him or her from any more cracks.

#4:  I've loved having my morning glories last a little longer than usual this fall, so if you could see fit to leave them alone so that we can enjoy their beauty a little longer that would be very kind of you.

#5:  This gate would look pretty shabby if one of the black walnut trees should happen to fall on it, and although I know you're all about shabby chic, we prefer neat and tidy.

#6:  I know our pier isn't that great, we would like to add on to it sometime in the near future, but that's not really in the budget right now, so if you could, would you mind leaving it be?  I mean you can storm surge and everything, just don't show off, ok?!

#7:  And because Mr. Tide is away on a trip (ugh!), would you mind keeping the rain and wind to a minimum?  These two like to be outside, and there are times they NEED to go outside, so any breaks you can give us would be awesome!

Ok, so I think that about covers it.  I appreciate you taking the time to let me air my concerns and put in a few requests.  Tomorrow will include some last minute preparations and then we'll throw out the welcome mat, but please don't wear out your welcome!

To all those who have been or will be affected by Ms. Sandy the hurricane, I hope you stay safe and sound!

See you when the power comes back!