Five things I am grateful for today

These are all from yesterday.

1. I think I mentioned last week that I am starting to do some home health again. As Tucson is filled with snowbirds, in the summer the town empties out some, especially the geriatric population that I generally work with. So I am picking up some extra work doing wound care and cardiopulmonary assessments for my old home health compnay. I agreed to take on one patient to case manage and I met him yesterday. First of all he lives about five minutes from my house and second what a delightful old man! I will be happy to visit him twice a week until he feels better.

2. Playing with my new haircut is SO fun.

3. Date night with E! He grilled teriyaki chicken and veggies, I made us cucumber salad and coconut rice. Oh and a few potstickers as a appetizer. It was so nice to just hang around together.

4. There are two tiny eggplant babies on the eggplant plant, hee hee. Also this morning I noticed two tiny yellow blossoms on the cucumber plant. Yippee! The garden is thriving.

5. I enjoyed working yesterday, I did two home health visits and one hospice admission. While I would prefer not to work both jobs
every day, it was definitely a fun and rewarding day.

Five (x2) things I am grateful for today

1. Two great home health appointments. A patient with a gentle soul. Wound care can be really fun.

2. E and I went out on a date at lunch time. We had a great time and found a pool to sneak into that isn't too far from our house.

3. A new haircut that I just love. Lorraine at the Supercuts on Swan and Grant ROCKS. I feel like a cute baby bird. What could be better?!

4. My favorite yoga class of the week

5. On my walk today the wind was blowing enough to keep me pretty cool.

6. Tonight my friend Cynthia spontaneously came over to do crafts. So fun to see her. What a breath of inspirational fresh air!

7. I made myself a present. It's a small mixed media collage. I'll take a picture in the next few days and post it; it isn't quite complete but I already love it. I am looking forward to hanging it up on the wall. It seems I rarely keep my favorite pieces, and that seems like a good thing to change.

8. Tomorrow is another lovely day of work--two home health visits and a hospice admission.

9. I am playing spa right now with a clay mask on my face.

10. 34 years ago today my parents got married. I am grateful that they found each other, fell in love and placed an order with the stork.

Five things I am grateful for today

1. A full work day (things have been a little slow these last two weeks)
2. Watermelon
3. RR is being snuggley tonight.
4. My eggplant plant has two eggplant babies.
5. This long day is ending. Right now.

Five things I am grateful for today

1. Clean floors
2. A fun day of marketing with Stephanie, good to laugh that hard
3. Sunset walk
4. Dinner date at Gandhi's with E.
5. Cool evening air

It's 11am and my grateful list is already sneaking past 5 things

1. The way RR rubs his face on my legs to say "I love you."
2. Picking those first three tomatoes from the garden this morning
3. My watermelon, apple, spinach smoothie came out pretty well. I am beginning to realize that these smoothies need ice if they are going to be really good.
4. There are the sweetest tiny rose plants at Trader Joe's for just 2 dollars. I got one for my friends who are having me over for lunch and scrabble today and one for myself and Eric. Ours is orange-y pink and so lovely.
5. I am so excited to go see my friends today! They are making veggie burgers and chips. Oh and homemade kombucha soda, yum! I am bringing those peanut butter cups that I posted about a few days ago that Regina taught me to make. I haven't seen these friends in months. Yippee! I am so grateful to have such wonderful friends in Tucson and faraway. Thanks for adding your goodness to my life. <3 <3 <3
6. There are chickpeas sprouting in the kitchen that will be sprouted hummus when they grow up.
7. My favorite yoga class is today!
8. Mead is coming over to make dinner together and do crafties tonight.

Collage Goodness

I have been working on some mixed media collages over the past couple of weeks. They are mostly inspired by my yoga practice and desire to somehow bring my practice into my art studio. Here are a few shots of them.





This one I completed and gave to my new friend CJ. I forgot to take a picture of it complete before I gave it away. Unfortunately the quality of this picture taken by my phone is not great. Oh well.



Here's a photo of my desk right now with some tiny canvas works in progress.

Squash blossoms, tomatoes & a ham

We have at least a dozen or two squash blossoms on the plants now!



Squash blossoms with tiny baby tomatoes



These are the first tomatoes I have ever grown!



Lately he thinks he just has to be in every shot. Or maybe he's thinking, are those for me?

Five things I am grateful for today

1. Green smoothie #2: 2 peeled oranges, a cup of pineapple, 2 cups (loosely packed) spinach, a cup of Greek vanilla yogurt, and 2/3 cup (or so) of water. This made about 24 ounces which E and I split for breakfast. It tasted a whole lot like an Orange Julius to me, delicious. If I had made it with ice it would have been totally perfect.

2. A fun morning marketing our hospice at a health fair, I appreciate that I laughed hysterically at least three times while on the clock. Thank you to Stephanie, for being such a crack up. We decided that we should start a marketing firm called Spaz Marketing, it was all downhill from there.

3. Lunch with E. HUGE salad and macaroni and cheese. So nice to spend some time with my honey.

4. Sunset walk

5. A kitchen full of healthy fresh food

Five things I am grateful for today

1. Today I bought a Vitamix blender...I am trying it out for a few days to make sure that it really IS better than just using my old Magic Bullet. I try to start every day with a green smoothie for breakfast. Hopefully a Vitamix will let me use all sorts of fruits and veggies that would otherwise destroy the motor of my Magic Bullet. Regina recently got a Vitamix and has been enjoying the heck out of it... I'll keep y'all posted.
2. There weren't any admissions to work on today, so I just stayed home and relaxed.
3. Now I am going to curl up in my bed, write in my journal and read my library book. Pretty much a perfect Friday night.
4. A walk around the neighborhood at sunset
5. Weekend

Five things I am grateful for today

The very best part of today was going to Regina's house for dinner. So all five of my things are coming from tonight:
1. Great to catch up with my kindred spirit, earthy crunchy, inspired, inspiring, crafty sister
2. Her two sons are precious creatures. Her nine year old kept walking by me and saying hi, like I had just showed up. Her six year old walked up to me about five times, leaned in kind of close with this really sweet, big smile on his face. They made my heart kind of melty.
3. Whenever I spend time with Regina I leave filled with inspiration and tonight was no different.
4. She made us vegan lasagna with green salad for dinner, and homemade delicious agave sweetened mustardy dressing.
5. For dessert she made vegan peanut butter cups...but she used sunflower seed butter instead of peanut. She mixed it with graham cracker crumbs, put the mix in muffin cups and covered them with melted chocolate chips over the top. Then she froze them for a little while. HEAVENLY. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing her recipe...

Here is a picture of my friend Regina making the peanut butter cups. She doesn't have deformed fingers, for the record.

Garden Stuff

There are tomatoes on several of the plants that are turning red!



And plenty of tiny babies! So cute!



But here's the cutest thing growing in the garden:

Five things I am grateful for today

1. A long letter and neat present from my faraway friend Jana
2. A partial day off to play with E. We met for lunch and had an awesome lunch at La Indita--I had a mushroom taco and a spinach/nut taco sort of thing, he had carne seca taco sort of things. Then we looked around at Gerson's, the used building materials place in S. Tucson for treasure (which he found in the form of old lockers which will be perfect for storing reloading stuff in his creative space.)
3. Tonight for dinner I am making artichokes, corn, zucchini and chicken fricassee. Am I just making it because it's called fricassee? Well, the first time I made it, yes. This time I am making it because it was so good last time.
4. A light heart
5. Tomorrow I get to see Regina! It's been since January which is ridiculous. Very excited to catch up!

Five plus three things I am grateful for today

1. Work went well yesterday.
2. Last night Mead and I met up for a spontaneous dinner date/long walk. It was wonderful.
3. Roofrauff and Eric
4. Living without physical pain
5. My tomato plants have a lot of tomatoes on them! Some (from several bushes) are starting to turn red!
6. The cilantro and Thai purple basil have sprouted in their pots in the kitchen.
7. Yoga
8. My mom

Five things I am grateful for today

1. Yesterday I hung out with my new friend CJ for the first time. We went to Rincon Market for breakfast/tea and it was so fun. So nice to meet a kindred spirit.
2. I have spent pretty much the whole weekend doing collages and relaxing.
3. My favorite yoga class of the week starts in 29 minutes.
4. Good quality time with my E-Frey this morning. <3
5. Roofrauff is having a very snuggly day.

Poem for Sunday

I read this poem last night and it really spoke to me:

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
Catches the thread of all sorrows
And you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that fits your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Five or six things I am grateful for today

1. that blogger is back up so I can post my gratitude list.
2. I admitted a nice man to hospice today. The admission went smoothly.
3. E just stopped by for dinner.
4. When I took my car in to get the blinker fixed today I was in and out of there in about 40 minutes. Wow.
5. It's Friday! Yippee!
6. that Wendy's friend who hit her head is going to be okay.

Five things I am grateful for today

I have spent almost the whole day making collages. The work feels good when I look at it, that is extra-nice.
Tonight Eric and I are hanging out.
Intermediate Yoga Class starts in 35 minutes!
The cucumbers I planted the other day are already growing.
My friends

Cards for Mother's Day

I made these as a present for my Momster for Mother's Day. She loves purple and I bought that "Birthday Blessings" stamp and the candle punch to make cards for her. She is a big fan of birthdays and goes out of her way to make sure that those close to her feel loved and recognized. There's a joke among my friends because whenever their birthday month (or mine) starts I start saying, "it's your birthday!" as often as possible. Sometimes to justify whatever it is that they want, or to defend them against the world, or just to say, "yippee, it's your birthday!" I must have inherited the love of birthdays from her. Anyway, here are the cards.

Congratulations card

Sunday my friend/Compassionate Communication trainer was at the REI garage sale and found the bike of her dreams! Hearing her talk about her new lime green Townie cruiser was so neat--her excitement made her seem like a really happy kid which was so fun to see. So I had to celebrate along with her. This morning I made her this card. And this afternoon I will be riding my own Schwinn cruiser to yoga. Yay for cruiser bicycles!

New look

Yesterday I started playing around with the different options for the look of this blog. I hadn't made any changes since I initially set it up in summer of 2009. Seeing as I had just been playing around in my actual art space, I thought it would be nice to change things around here too. When I found this I knew it was perfect right away. When I was a kid my mom and I would go for walks all the time and she taught me to pick dandelions and wish on them. But she didn't call them dandelions, she called them "wishy bugs". And of course I love nature-y things, so here we are.

Five things I am grateful for so far today

1. Lunch with Karen and Dee (the woman who trained me and my boss)
2. A nap
3. The garden
4. New friends
5. Compassionate Communication Practice Group tonight, and Mead is going!

Craft room pictures

Rearranging and reorganizing my craft room remains a favorite pastime. For some reason it makes me feel calm and inspired. Maybe because so few aspects of life can be controlled, but here I am the ruling queen. Here it is today:

Last night I bought that little shelf which is only about 6 inches deep so I can have it on my table without it getting in the way.



I also got that rattan chest to store extra frames, envelopes, fabric etc. Stuff I don't need to get to every day. It is surprisingly wide and hold a lot of treasure.



Finally, I bought a few boxes to keep in the cube shelf to help organize completed crafts/crafts in progress.

Garden Pictures

Here is a new picture of the garden--the tomato plants and squashes are going crazy! I wish we had more tomatoes instead of just the tiny yellow flowers, but I should have planted them earlier. Ah well, next year. Lots of flowers for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds!



Sweet Roofrauff, couldn't be any more precious



Also our eggplant has several blossoms and I think it would be so NEAT if we actually grew our very own eggplants. They are the Asian kind, yum!

Five or six things I am grateful for today

1. I am grateful for my mom, for all the love, depth, nurturing and guidance she has given to me. I am so very grateful.

2. A lunch date with my boyfriend, E.

3. A wonderful yoga class

4. Spending all late afternoon and evening with Mead, having a great time

5. My craft room is getting more rad all the time.

6. An artichoke with my dinner

Craft Night and Five Things

Tonight I went over to my new friend Cynthia's house for an art date--we spent the first long while catching up on our lives. Considering we are new friends there is so much to talk about! She gave me a tour of her beautiful home which has her art on the walls. She does mixed media collage and I LOVE her work. She does really neat things with all sorts of materials, several of her pieces were so beautiful I wanted to stare at them for a long time. Her use of color really drew me in.

She gave me this card when I left. It was her project while I was there. So'ham (pronounced so hum) is a yogic mantra that means I am that, "that" being all of creation. To me it is reflection on our oneness. I think it when I see great beauty and atrocities, that we are a part of all things and all things are a part of us. We think "so" to ourselves as we breathe in, and "hum" as we breathe out. I think the card is lovely and it was so kind of her to make me a gift.





These pictures don't do the colors justice because they are taken at night in my studio. I just can't wait for tomorrow to post them though.

Spending the evening with her inspired me in many ways--artistically because her work reminds of the direction I want my own to go in. And I like the way she does things for HERSELF. She is doing the yoga teacher training at the studio where I practice not to teach but just because she wants to. And she doesn't sell her art, she makes it for the joy of making it. So often I feel that everything I do must be "productive" in some way, it was refreshing to spend time with this calm, centered woman--there is no rush for her because doing the work, her process is its own reward. I feel that way when I am drawing. I would like that feeling to spread through my life much more.

1. This morning we planted cucumbers, jalapenos (I thought I bought bell peppers...guess I'll be making some salsa!), tons of marigolds, red/orange lantana, purple dahlias, honeysuckle, some cute pokey orange flowers, and graceful little yellow flowers.
2. A homemade reuben sandwich for lunch
3. A nice long nap this afternoon
4. Eric didn't have to go in until 7 today so it was so nice having him around all day.
5. My mom offered me my dad's trumpet today. I couldn't be more glad about this--he loved playing the trumpet and played by ear. He could play along with anything even the first time he heard it because he could anticipate where the music was going. Listening to him play would bring tears to my eyes even when I was a crabby teenager (I would retreat to my room so no one would know). There was a time when he played professionally and had to decide if he was going to "go big or go home". He decided he really wanted to raise a family and so chose a more stable career. He played now and then when I was growing up along with his jazz music or ballads that he and my mom liked. Having his trumpet will be like having a part of him with me.
6. My new friend Cynthia

Five things I am grateful for today

1. I met a very special old man today. He told me that his birthday is September 11th and he was struggling to find a way to celebrate because of the tragedies that also happened on that day. So he and his wife smoked some turkeys, made some sides, baked some pies and took them down to the local fire department to thank them for their service. During our chat he also recited a long love poem to me that he recites to his wife every year on her birthday...for 67 years now. I was struck by how kind to each other they were, how sweetly they spoke of each other when the other was out of ear shot.

2. My coworkers invited me along to lunch today at Los Agaves...I had a grilled chicken topopo salad and it was SO yummy. It's really fun being a part of this team. I love my job.

3. After lunch we had a small memorial for patients who have died since January just for our staff--I was working in the Green Valley office today and only a few of us were there. Peggy, our bereavement coordinator set up a bowl of glass pebbles and a large empty crystal bowl next to it. Then one by one she named the patients and passed the pebbles so we could say the things that we remembered about the patients and tell the stories that we knew about them, pray for them or wishing their families well in our minds, then place the pebble in the big crystal bowl. We held each pebble one by one for a few moments and the whole memorial took over an hour. It was really touching, the reverence that we all shared for the patients and their families. I am so grateful to work with these people with such tender hearts. At the end we each took a pebble for someone in our own life who is struggling or has died recently. It was strange and amazing to sit and quietly weep with my coworkers over each other's personal suffering, to sit with the admissions coordinator, social worker, volunteer coordinator and bereavement coordinator and be that real.

4. A whole grip of new flowers for the garden. Pollinators, you are officially invited to dance and buzz all around.

5. It's Friday. I am ready for some serious rest.

Pictures of Paper

This is the new way I have my papers organized. E helped me roll them all and either tie them or rubber band them, one by one. It took awhile, and he was so patient!



These are a few of the cards I made the other night when Mead and I went to the coffee shop.

Five things I am grateful for today

1. A card from my boss thanking me for my hard work and good attitude
2. A good day's work
3. Yoga class, it felt great to really dwell in my body after not practicing for a few days
4. Spaghetti leftover from last night. I think it might have been even better today...
5. Sometimes it feels like the ultimate luxury to climb into bed at 8pm, read for a little while and call it a day.

Night night.

Five things I am grateful for today

1. Eric is a very patient and easygoing fellow. I may have mentioned that before as I am so frequently grateful for it.

2. A great salad for lunch. And a bunch of other things...there was a meeting at work that was catered...afterwards there were leftover sandwiches. I had half of one that was chicken salad with cranberry sauce. I don't like cranberry sauce but this was SO delicious and the cranberry sauce made it, go figure.

3. My coworkers said that they missed me while I was gone. It's nice that they even noticed let alone missed me.

4. I finished up a little early and got to hang with E and Jim (his twin) for a little while.

5. At work my friend Karen brought some crackers in for me to try. She calls them fire crackers. You take a packet of multigrain saltines, 1/4 cup of olive oil, 1/4 packet of dry ranch dressing powder, 1 tsp of red pepper flakes and 1/2 tsp of cayenne. Set the crackers up on end in a container that you can close. Wisk the seasonings with the oil. Drizzle the seasoned oil over the crackers. Turn every 15-30 minutes for at least an hour or two. HEAVENLY.

A bowl of grateful

I'm not sure where to start--after such an awesome weekend...Wendy and I hung out together in Seattle eating amazing food, shopping for paper and encaustic supplies (for her), doing yoga, drinking tea, walking around, and laughing our heads off, mmm it was SO fun. I have so much new paper and other cool supplies and I feel like I am drowning in inspiration. I jokingly told her that my punishment for buying so much paper is that I can't work any overtime for the next few weeks--I need the time to spending in my studio. I am hoping to work 40 hour weeks for the next few and otherwise just craft out, do yoga, go for walks and relax. We ate at fabulous restaurants and she is a great cook too so when we ate at home it was healthy and delicious.

Also Wendy spoiled me rotten with jewelry that she had made. I am wearing a necklace that she made right now. Love it.

Now I am home and it's so good to see Eric and little Roofrauff. It seems they are both cuter than I remembered. And I remembered them as VERY cute. I'm not sure who was more excited when I got home last night. I am a lucky girl to be so well liked around here.

Eric and I just finished reorganizing my paper. It looks more delicious than ever.

We have ribs in the slow cooker that are just about ready. So I'm off...

Thank you, Wendy for such a super weekend!

There will be several posts with pictures coming up, I promise.