Five things I am grateful for today:

Even though I have not posted in 10 days, rest assured I have been grateful. I went on a trip to Oregon to be with my family for the holidays and decided to stay off the computer for the most part. It was pretty relaxing.

Anyway here are my five things for today, they don't summarize my trip, tempting as that is. (In summary, the trip was wonderful.)

1. A nice walk with E and RR at Fort Lowell Park. This is Eric reading a plaque. He loves plaques. And history. And he even remembers what he reads. Wow. I like that about him, even if I do walk around trying to stay warm while he reads. Walk was followed by cooking dinner together which was delicious!

2. Being home in Tucson after a week at home in Oregon. I am lucky to have so much love in both of my homelands.

3. My birthday present to myself. Yippee x3. Or 4. I have wanted a mandoline for years, but after my mom chopped off part of her thumb last February, I gave up the idea. Now she is talking about getting a new one, so we both decided to go top of the line to help prevent injury. A lifetime of free blade sharpening from Shun. Thank you very much, and where? In a suburb of Portland, of course. Hello vegetables? Clear your schedules, you are all mine.

4. I have three visits tomorrow and then Friday and Saturday off! An unexpected weekend that materialized today!

5. Tonight I made peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They taste like all of my cookies: I sort of replaced the flour with ground flax. Hi Fiber and Omega 3's, I do love you.

Have a delicious last day of 2009. Much love.

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. This weekend has rocked so far. Last night E's band played and they were awesome as always. Got to dance up a little storm! E's friend Charles came down for the night for the show and to hang around for his birthday. We had lots of fun and stayed up til 4 laughing, eating Mexican drive-thru, and making lots of noise.

2. When we got up this morning I made this for breakfast: breakfast pizza from the Food Network and this Eggs Florentine Casserole from Pioneer Woman Cooks. Both were delicious!

3. Tonight is date night with Eric. Our last one before I go to Oregon for a week. After I finish this post we are going to scheme up what we want to do.

4. My great aunt Harriet died today, and after a few really rough years of suffering, I hope she is in a better place. I am grateful that her suffering has ended, though I will miss her. She had a way of making you feel like you were the most wonderful thing that had ever happened.

5. A 73 degree day in December. I took a nap on the futon on the front porch with Roofrauff at my feet. Life is good here. Grateful, yes I am.

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. Tonight I had dinner and played scrabble with E's mama, and two sisters in law. It was WONDERFUL.

2. I met a new patient today whom I adored right from the get go.

3. A good day's work.

4. I got to talk to my dad for a good long while.

5. Big inspiration to take my usual card style idea (with handmade paper/stamps/small sayings) and buy some simple frames at thrift shops and make some small collages to be framed. Several customers at the craft fairs have said that they wanted to frame their purchases, so I figure, why not do it ahead of time? It always makes me sad to think that the cards I make will be looked at for a few seconds and then thrown away. I also would like to stain/paint the frames. Ikea used to have some really simple would frames but now they have plastic instead of glass. Hmm, not sure how I feel about that. I will start by trying to find some good used frames. Excited about this! Of course I won't start until after I get back from Oregon.

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. Lots of fun having dinner with Sande and her friends. It's great to laugh so hard with people I hardly know, what a treat!

2. My new patient is a wonderful addition to my caseload, a totally unique and special human being.

3. For things not being as hard as they could have been.

4. A good night's sleep.

5. For Eric's good listening skills and kind heart.

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. NVC practice sessions.

2. A long walk with RR on the Rillito, and plenty of time sitting with the trees, listening to the leaves moving with the wind.

3. They are piling the work on me, yippee! And "yikes!" at the same time. If this continues I will be able to support myself in this job, no problem.

4. Some really good toast with butter and nutritional yeast. It's funny how certain things taste like the chapters of your life. Sourdough toast prepared this way tastes like October of 1996, community college and a rainy winter and a lot of yoga and everything being possible.

5. My family.

Goodness I read today

"Sincerely explore for yourself, are you here or not? Are you in your body or oblivious, or only aware of parts of it? When I say, 'Are you in your body? I mean, 'Are you completely filling your body?' I want to know whether you are in your feet, or just have feet. Do you live in them, or are they just things you use when you walk? Are you in your belly, or do you just know vaguely that you have a belly? Or is it just for food?

Are you really in your hands, or do you move them from a distance? Are you present in your cells, inhabiting and filling your body? If you aren't in your body, what significance is there in your experience in this moment? Are you preparing, so that you can be here in the future? Are you setting up conditions by saying to yourself, 'When such and such happens I'll have time, I'll be here.' If you are not here, what are you saving yourself for?" Hameed Ali

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. I am getting three new patients. Three much needed new patients. Not to sound desperate, but I really need more work to support myself. I was down to six home visits for this week until the office called and gave me the new patients. Phew!

2. I ate a truly wonderful dinner: my favorite kind of frozen pizza, a carrot, a clementine, and a piece of chocolate from my chocolate orange. YUM!

3. Wonderful morning with E and RR. We went for a lovely walk around our neighborhood in the noonday sun.

4. Almost all of my Christmas present scheming is coming together.

5. I talked on the phone with my mom for a long time three times today, maybe four. I miss her and my dad like crazy, so it was fun to chat about our little details as well as the big stuff. Also had a nice long chat with Wendy, mmm hmm. A good day for chats!

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. I am home from my trip to San Francisco. It was so wonderful. I loved EVERY minute of it. I laughed really hard and ate really well and being with Mer and Tiff really filled my heart.

2. It's great to be home. So good to be with E and RR.

3. It's cloudy out and I think it might rain today. Then it might get up to the very low 70's on Wednesday and Thursday! Yippee!!!

4. Today is date day.

5. I am excited about Christmas.

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. My compassionate communication practice group.

2. Tea with Sande tonight, lots of chatting that left me feeling inspired and hopeful about our community and goodness in the world.

3. My dog is the sweetest dog I have ever met.

4. I slept for 10.5 hours last night.

5. Dad's pain is a little more under control than it has been for the past week or so.

Five more things

1. Good workout.

2. Clementines are on sale for $2.37 a bag. And wow, are they delicious!

3. Two good home visits.

4. Nice chat with my friend Nora this afternoon.

5. It feels really good to be in such good touch with my parents. If I can't live in the same town it sure helps to talk at least once or twice a day.

Five things I am grateful for today and some art thoughts

1. I have a lot of free time.

2. Yesterday around 4pm a storm started here. Eric put one of our envirologs (recycled waxed cardboard) in the fireplace and lit it. We kept the fire going until around midnight when we went to bed. What a super night! He researched gun things at my desk while I cleaned up my craft room, worked on a Christmas present, talked to Wendy, and generally just lurked around. We had a snack dinner: fresh hummus, two kinds of crackers, two kinds of cheese, carrots, an apple and a pear.

3. We are working on our plan for where we want to live and when we might want to move from our house. It looks like we will be moving later than sooner so we have decided that for the next while that we live here we might do a few things to make it more fun. We have a dog run that is fenced in on the west side of the house, it's about 13 feet by 30 feet, with a pretty high fence around it--the only thing in there is a huge dog house. I would like to turn that dog house into a chicken coop and get a few hens. Eric is really excited about the idea and agreed to take care of them even when I leave town now and then. We also have a lot of room to grow things. We even have some space in the front that would make great beds for plants. I would like to grow a few flowers and mostly a bunch of things to eat, herbs and other things. Eric has a green thumb so together we should have a pretty sweet little garden. I would also like to have some of the garden in containers so that we can take it with us when we do move. I really like water troughs as homes for plants--you know, the ones that are around 3-4 feet long. So the scheming begins! I am so excited to learn about desert gardening and taking care of chickens. Also if it is feasible I would like to do a little bit of water harvesting to help water the garden. Mmm, a new project!

4. Our house is gloriously clean.

5. Two days til I leave for my San Francisco weekend with Meredith and Tiffy!

Art thoughts: I am done making my hot packs with flax seeds. DONE. I don't hate making them. I just don't love to. It is not a project that deeply inspires me. And if I am spending time in my studio shouldn't I be doing something I love? I would rather go deep with my creativity and not earn a cent than make things that I am not happy to make. Why do I do crafts? Several reasons: it puts me in touch with a part of myself that is otherwise not accessible. A quiet, full alive part. Some crafts put me in touch and some do not. Painting? Yes. Collage? Yes. Anything involving silliness, lightness, or reflections of my inner self.

In those last reasons I did not see anything about earning a living. I went to nursing school so that I would earn a living, and so that I would have plenty of time to pursue the things that bring me great joy. So I do not need to make a living from my art/crafts. I think it is confusing when we earn money for what we make. It is easy to get distracted from the initial passions that bring us to creative work to begin with. There are some gray areas in this, as some aspects of selling my work are really fun. I liked making the hot packs because they help bring relaxation into people's lives, and because I like the idea of people taking care of themselves. This is the same reason that I liked teaching yoga. It feels good to me to offer something positive out into this often chaotic and stressful world. But I think I would rather teach yoga to fulfill this need than make hot packs. I liked buying the fabric, I liked scenting the seeds, and I liked meeting the people who would enjoy my work, or give it as a gift to someone they love. But I do not like cutting fabric, and I do not like sewing the same thing over and over again. I do like sewing the occasional skirt, or some other small project. But I do not really sew well, my lines aren't straight and I am not really into work that involves being meticulous. So to do it over and over and then sell my work isn't as rewarding as say, making a card or painting an anatomical heart with wings standing on a tree branch.

Of course I am not saying there is anything wrong with selling my work, only that it is confusing. I love it when a stranger sees my work and "gets it", and loves it enough to buy it. That is rewarding and meaningful also. I don't want to stop selling my work, I only want to be more focused about how I spend my time in my studio, and to spend more of it accessing that quiet, fully alive part of myself.

My friend Toni had a good idea when we were discussing this the other day, he said to just make what I want to make and eventually if there is a lot of work piled up, then participate in a fair. Instead of making things for a fair, I would make things and THEN find a fair. That would certainly shift my focus back to creating for its own sake. I like this idea. I am taking a break from production in favor of spontaneous creativity.

Off to work, more on this later maybe.

Five things I am grateful for today:

Mmm, I love today.

1. I am so much less sick now. Almost not sick.

2. I caught up on sleeping and snuggling. Well, you can never totally catch up on snuggling...

3. The custom orders from the craft fair are finished.

4. A wonderful afternoon at the coffee shop with Mr. Cafiero--I left feeling so inspired.

5. Date night (yes, two in a row) with E. Out for dinner, fire is lit, puppy is eating, movie is cue-d up.

Good night.

Yes, yes, yes!

Ahh, I am catching up on reading blogs filled with recipes and other goodness! It's good to be back! Now I want to do yoga, write back to my friend Abby who sent me a gloriously long letter which arrived to day, cook some goodness, and lie on the floor with Roofrauff. Life is soooo good.

The fair and five things

Here is a picture of a very patient and generous boyfriend, who helped me finish my crafts last night, loaded my car, woke up at 6am, unloaded my crafts at the fair, sat with me ALL DAY LONG (albeit reading Guns and Ammo at times), chatted with customers, made sales while I went to the bathroom, brought me food, and kept me company--all the time with a great attitude. Wow, am I a lucky girl or what?

We had hot packs with lavender and geranium oil, eye pillows, headbands, cards, magnets, felt flower barrettes, and faux flower barrettes. Yes, I am selling magnets about love and peace out of an ammo can. You gotta problem with that? Hee hee hee. Stable metal displays are hard to come by. And Eric would want you to know that they don't even sell big ammo cans like that one anymore, it's special. It's bigger than it looks in the picture.

These pictures were taken near the end of the fair, notice how the table is looking pretty sparse! Though I would like to have come home with a full wallet and empty car, we did pretty darn well.

Five things I am grateful for today:

1. Eric, for giving so much as asking so little.

2. For my friends who came to support me. Thanks Celeste, Nora, Lisa, Ken and Mary Lou (yes, Eric's Mama came with his aunt and uncle)! Also seeing my old friends at TMC was so much fun!

3. That even though I am sick, I didn't feel awful during the 9 hours we sat there. Yeah, 9 hours, maybe we should revisit #1...

4. This year so many people seemed to REALLY appreciate not only my hot packs, which are sort of the bread and butter of my crafts, but my cards, prayer flags and magnets too. People seemed to really "get" my work. I sold a bunch of handmade papercrafted cards. Mmm, that makes me really happy.

5. It's over! That's right...now I can focus on other things. Yippee!

Five (plus one) things I am grateful for today:

1. My new patient is a very sweet old man. I am looking forward to spending time with him over the next few weeks while his wound heals. Today he took me on a tour of his home and showed me his deceased wife's quilting room and about 20 of the quilts and cross-stitch pieces that she had made. He has maintained everything as she left it which breaks my heart. You would think she was just sitting in the other room, not gone for two years. "You should have met her, she was so high-spirited--you would have loved her." Me (earlier in the visit): You seem like a really nice man. Him: "My wife liked me." I haven't told him yet that I love crafts, he just showed me all of her work on his own accord. It is such a privilege to go into his home and be a part of his life, even briefly. And it is good to see a deep love lasting since 1948.

2. Lovely quiet morning with Eric.

3. I had fun making dinner tonight for E and two of his coworkers. Quinoa pilaf with grated carrot and pistachios, super yummy chicken sausages, spaghetti squash, and caesar salad with homemade croutons.

4. This delicious cup of tea, PG Tips with sweetened condensed milk, how decadent, I know.

5. For my good friends--I am so very grateful for you.

Plus One: Last night I slept for 9.5 glorious hours.