Blog-aversary

 Today says I've been blogging since 2008! My first blog was Goddess in Clay. It's been completely dismantled, and no longer exists in the la-la land of blogs.

So I wrote a few months, then decided to expand and include posts of my own functional clay work...which I started making also in 2008. I had retired in 2007, and recovered enough to start working in the community studio in downtown Black Mountain NC.

Those first efforts were pretty sad, but I was not deterred. I had already studied ceramics and got a BFA many years before. I even spent many Saturday mornings in summers selling my wares at the Tailgate Market.

In the meantime, I would sit here at a computer (I think I've been through one CPU tower and am on my 3rd laptop) and read about other people's lives all over the world, and share little bits of my existence.

For me it was fun to have different topics for different blogs. And so the pottery one, where there used to be recognitions based on how many pottery posts were made in a year...evolved into all art...Alchemy of Clay. 

And since people really responded to photos of the area I lived in...Living in Black Mountain was born (2013-2024) then finally retired as I focused more on this one, When I Was 69 (2013-present.)

However, I had other interests, and started Three Family Trees (2018-now) about my genealogy interests, and Open Yesterday's Pages (2024-26) about anything historic, and then Inner Workings  started just last year for my more serious thoughts.

Then the opportunity came to move to live closer to one of my sons, and perhaps breathe better in drier conditions, so I moved to Durango CO, and within a month I knew I needed to start a new blog Life in Durango!

And I even tried at one time to write a blog about the clay studio, which I kind of let fall away after a while. Most of my blogs are still active, except maybe the goddess one...so I put goddesses in whenever I feel like it, wherever I'm writing. And I sure don't have anything to say on most of them, except this and the Durango one. I keep trying to skip this one...but hey, something is worth sharing, and boom, here I yam!

I enjoy interacting in comments...and making replies. I know few other bloggers do this, but that's ok. I do have busy days when I just barely read blogs at all...but there are seldom days where I don't connect to the www out there at all. I admit to being a blog-addict!

So when blogger started having problems last month or so, I was really worried. I've thought of this as a safe place to store all kinds of information. It's not just the social connections, it's an archive for me. 

I know some of you have been blogging longer than I have, and it's really great to have those friendships. And I also have the sadness associated with those who have died, or just stopped blogging for some other reasons. I have a good-bye blog which will automatically post (if blogger so chooses) whenever I'm no longer able to write here. I just keep adding little bits to it, taking some off, and setting the publication date forward a few months time. So there might be a bit of silence before it finally is posted...and I imagine that's just the way it will have to be.

Until then, I'll see you in the funnies!

I'm walking for exercise again

 

I wanted to sit out on my front porch on Sunday, Mother's Day. But I kept waiting for the 70 degrees forecast, and the windy cloudy 60s just weren't as welcoming. I finally did have a half hour in a bit of sunshine!

I walked down our steep hill, then up half way, stopped to photograph some flowers, then came the other half way back home. Whew...good for me!

The porch is looking a bit more welcoming I think.

There goes the flame azalea, and all those thin leaves are promising the day lilies.

Yes the lilies of the valley have bloomed a bit...it's past their peak.

I stuck my nose and the iPhone down among them...got the picture, but my nose is still out of whack.

That's from the pneumonia, I got tested and didn't have COVID.

Even picking one flower and bringing it home, I failed to smell a thing.

This is the last azalea bush still blooming. Sorry to lose these beautiful colorful blooms for another year.

This is the anniversary of my having a stent inserted via my veins into my heart, which was the result of having a heart attack that was not like the medical descriptions usually say. But they do admit women experience different symptoms. Mine were 3 days of pain in neck and shoulders such that I couldn't sleep. Even though I went to my primary care doctor, he just changed one of my blood pressure medicines. So I got a friend to finally drive me to the ER, and they tested and tested and tested and finally found I didn't have COVID, and had had a heart attack.

No wonder I feel so good that I'm still walking around and talking to you all here!

Today's quote:

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”

Rumi

Anniversaries that are packed with emotions

Yesterday was the one-month anniversary of the death of my cat.
What, you must wonder, you're upset still?

Actually I was doing fine, over the last several weeks I've been too busy to notice the lack of a being which I had an intimate sharing of my life with, much as a spouse in that we had no secrets from each other...but of course I was totally responsible for her care as her health declined.

We never realize as it happens, while we do more and more as it's needed, how much of our mental and emotional energy and just plain time is sucked into a sick being's need for care.  Each day is just a bit more, with sometimes a respite, so we can return renewed to love and give and think about what might help.

And the vet is very helpful too, but adds the burden of a financial strain.  Their view is to present options, and they do this lovingly, but I had to make choices between all these options. I had to give the medicine, using all their recommendations, and a few I thought up on my own.

And I had to live through the days when that sweet little creature just slept curled up in one or another favorite place.

So yesterday I read the journal entries of the experience of euthanizing my cat, Panther.  And I cried again.  It was surprising to me.  I mainly cried when thinking of all her sweet tricks that she had performed when a younger and healthy cat.  Oh the laughs she gave me.  Not like a dog doing tricks, but just cat tricks which were subtle and yet clearly her being was interacting with her environment.

I am firm in my resolve to not have another cat.  This is rational, with my continued health needs and the allergies triggered by just about every kind of litter, more than the fur which lands everywhere.  And I admit it is to protect myself from experiencing this loss again, as well as to keep from leaving a pet without care if I should die first.  I have found my limitations as a care-giver, at least at this point in my life.

This doesn't mean I can't share love.  I certainly hope not!

The other anniversary fast approaching is my birthday, the 23rd of next month.  So I will no longer be 75.  Shall I again change the name of this blog, which used to say "When I was 69"?

I don't actually know yet.  For now I'm looking at what each day demands, and perhaps to find what it can give as well.  And I'm so very grateful that I woke up again this morning!