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Welcome to Our Photo Gallery & Travelblog
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November 2005: Still in VA ... 29 November 2005: Thanksgiving has come and the turkey is gone/ Soon I'll be flying back home to Tom in Ore-gone! 23 November 2005: Yesterday, Becky treated me to lunch and a visit to the Allegheny Arts Center in Clifton Forge, VA, where local artists display their work. I bought a few cutouts by Dodie, an acquaintance of Becky's who resides in Frederick, MD, for holiday gifts, and a painting with a farm and chickens for my sister's farmhouse kitchen where chickens and blue roosters rule. There are many pictures there of the famous Humpback Bridge in all seasons. Snowflurries dotted our way and left a dusting of snow on the ground this morning. Winter has arrived. Tom and I are counting down the days until my "homecoming": 10 days to go! 20 November 2005: Lazy, cold weekend. Candy came to visit last night after accomplishing her goal of planting all 225 apple trees in the rain, then cold. Mom was happy to see her. Several of Mom's church friends stopped by to visit her this afternoon bringing food, so Cinderalla got a day off from cooking. Power went out for a few hours so my shower was delayed and the gas heater, which is only emergency back-up heat because of the price of the fuel, had to be used for a few hours. The afternoon sun helped out, too. I think Mom and Dad miss their warm woodstove heat, but Dad got old and said that keeping the woodstove fed was too much work for his achy knees. I am spoiling Dad's dog, Shasta, by letting her sleep with me at night to keep me warm. After she goes out for her night-time pee, she runs right into the bedroom where I'm sleeping, sits, looks so cute, and waits for me to pick her up and put her on the bed. She can jump down from the bed, but not up on it because she has some stiffness in her hips and legs. When I leave, she'll be sleeping down in the basement in her own lounge chair again. Tough life she has. Her dog groomer came yesterday to give her a bath in the house bathtub and trim her fur. She hates having her nails trimmed; cries and yelps like it's pure torture. Then when Becky the Groomer leaves, Shasta wags her tail and licks her face. She doesn't stay mad for long. I forgot to note that my friend Susan came to visit a few weekends ago. I was very glad to have some talk time with her and pet her hounddawg Daisy Mae who is quite a handful. Mom has medical appointments this week, then we'll have a very quiet Thanksgiving, my first Thanksgiving without Tom, Harry, and Sadie since we've known each other. :-( I uploaded a new photo of a creek scene taken through a missing board on the Humpback Bridge here in Covington, VA. I really like how the boards frame the creek scene in this photo. I think that my best photographic skill is composing and framing. 17 November 2005: COLD! 12 degrees in the wee hours of the morn', according to my Dad who gets up then ... Light snow predicted for Thanksgiving week. Busy day being Mom's answering service with phone calls and visitors. She does have many friends and family members checking in on her. That's a good thing, except during naptime which is sacred to her. My sister Candy and her husband Phil are trying to plant 200+ fruit trees on their farm. It rained cats and dogs the first day, then it turned cold freezing some of the roots of the baby trees that were stored in the barn. Seems that a farmers' work is never done and always vulnerable to Mother Nature. 16 November 2005: Finished reading The Mermaid Chair, the second novel written by Sue Monk Kidd. It's quite a love story, about loving oneself. Started reading another book by SMK, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, but I need a break from her soul-searching writing, so I'm back to reading Dr. Mel Levine's A Mind at a Time. This is a book that I already know so it's an easy read for me. I have created a webpage of excerpts from it on my educational website. I have really liked all of Dr. Levine's books because he focuses on finding strengths in kids, instead of just labeling their weaknesses. Some students are strong in certain areas and some are strong in others, but no one is equally capable in all. Yet most schools still cling to a one-size-fits-all education philosophy. As a result, many children struggle because their learning patterns don't fit the way they are being taught. We brought Mom home from the hospital after a 2-week stay. More meds, more doctors' appointments, more chemotherapy... Her home health nurse is again Mary Beth, whom we just love. I am still planning on going back to my "home" on December 2. 13 November 2005: A day or two ago, I stopped by Becky's house, the owner of the beautiful red maple tree. She cordially gave me a tour of her log "HOME." Several times she said, "This is home." She has lived in that house since she was 18 months old. When she and her husband were married, her parents moved to a different house and she and her husband moved into her "home" and raised two sons. Her repeated reference to her home made me think: Where is my home? I, too infrequently, snuggle in Tom's beard and say, "This is home." I miss that being on the other coast away from him. I think that Tom and I need a piece of land to call our "home." As Sara Evans sings in "New Hometown" on her new CD Real Fine Place: We all need a little earth to stand on / Plant our hearts on solid ground / Turn the lights out on the city / And wake-up in a new hometown / We'll stand out in our front yard / Where we can finally breathe / If we find a little earth to stand on / Baby, you and me. 09 November 2005: Finished Bees and wrote a web page for it capturing my favorite quotes. It was delicious. Sue Monk Kidd definitely knows how to wring the juice out of words. Went for a drive to photograph fall colors and met Becky Woodson who invited me to photograph her grandpa and baby red maple trees. Tried to get a "magic shot" for my stiff and swollen index finger, but there is no space in the joint, so very little medicine went in the joint. Time for surgery. I've been visiting my Mom daily in the hospital after another medical crisis. 06 November 2005: I'm getting homesick for my life on the road, but I need to stay here in VA longer to help my folks get through some tough times with illness. I've been reading, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Here's one of my favorite quotes so far: As I walked, I began to hear the sound of running water. It's impossible to hear that sound and not go searching for the source. View some photos of water. 02 November 2005: Weather has turned very cold at night leaving heavy frosts on the ground here in the mornings in the Allegheny Mountains in Southwestern VA. The afternoons have been sunny and warm, but the fall colors have been less than brilliant. I'm still here helping my parents as my Mom goes through chemotherapy again for lymphoma, a kind of cancer that invades the lymphatic system. My Dad's gardening, grass cutting, and leaf collecting chores are almost finished for the season. He seems to be enjoying his weekly bets on the weekend football games, both college and pro. Although he's not winning, he enjoys playing the games from his lounge chair. I am missing my family and my "home on wheels" very much. I'm ready for a road trip! Maybe I'm not ready for a house. Tom has been staying busy out in Brookings, OR researching how to build an "earth-sheltered" home on a hillside somewhere here in the Appalachian Mountains, nearer to our families. Of course, this will take some years, so maybe I'll be ready to settle down into a comfy cave by then. I finally finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! It took me awhile with the distractions of family responsibilities. I didn't enjoy it as much as the others, perhaps because it is sprinkled with doses of reality: "...weaker resistance, slower reflexes... Old age, in short ... One day, perhaps, it will happen to you ... if you are lucky ...." |
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