Beautiful Blooms!

It's a warm Florida day, presaging the heat and humidity to come soon. As I step outside my front door in my pajamas to photograph the beautiful PURPLE iris I saw from the French doors, I note that the amaryllis that our 92-year-old golf and bridge and organ-playing friend gave us 15 months ago. It is proudly, boldly, sensationally abloom! So YOU get to see them both!

MOUNTAINS!!!

With this weekend's trip to Asheville, I am reminded of how much I love MOUNTAINS!

Those wonderful overlapping ridges of blue, the serpentine turns of the road, and the way the clouds and mist hang about the peaks, are all thrilling to me. Let's not forget that Florida is a sandbar, and except for a place called Lake Wales, it is exceptionally flat. Bridges are truly the high points around this area.

New Hampshire-born and raised, I revel in scenes like this:

THE INTERNET!

When I think back to pre-internet days, I marvel! These days, when I want to know something, like what is the prevalence of the flu in Florida this month, I GOOGLE it! When I need a recipe for sweet potato, I am as likely to do an internet search as to look in one of my many cookbooks.

Sometimes I am annoyed by spam or popup ads, but woman has never had so much information LITERALLY at her fingertips! I really am grateful for this - how prepared I will be in Asheville next week when I go looking for a place to escape the summer heat in Florida.

It's Been FIVE Years

Five years ago last Sunday my life underwent a massive upheaval!

The STROKE I had changed the parameters of my life - what I was able to do, how I thought about myself, and much more. I was also at that time uninsurable! No one would issue any kind of policy on me.

Rejoice with me that FIVE years have passed, I am now eligible for insurance, and my life is better than it ever has been!

Okay, it isn't perfect, but I don't expect or even want perfection. I'm wiser than I was - I understand the limits of my patience and know better what drives me over the edge into unbearable stress.

The paradox of time is that it hardly seems like five years, and yet it also seems a lifetime ago.

A Song in My Throat

Singing - such joy!

My mother was a 13 year old, singing live on the radio in Burlington, Vermont. Wish I had seen and heard that!

Thanks to her, I grew up listening to favorites, such as "How Deep Is the Ocean?" and graduated to show tunes before I hit double digits. I idolized Julie Andrews.

Next I embraced the Kingston Trio - "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooly". In college, I sang folk music - Eric Anderson, Peter, Paul and Mary, Judy Collins.

At some point I discovered the passionate native American, Buffy Ste. Marie. Hers was not always a beautiful voice, but one full of pain and struggle. I remember being deeply moved by a quote, which must have come from a record jacket, about life being about the wonderful feeling of having a song in your throat. I can feel that, too.

In the hospital, after the stroke, I sang whenever I had the chance, just to prove I still could.

Yesterday, I sang through "The Bell Song" for the first time in years. Wow, did it feel good! Well, except for the final sustained high E; still, though the E may be gone, the rest felt miraculous.

Laughter

I am very thankful when we have the grace to laugh at ourselves. I was blog-surfing and found this entry about Bloopers that have happened in church. I laughed out loud when I read it. Enjoy!

Daily Thanks

It occurred to me that I really should post here on a daily basis! I am truly thankful for many things, though not all warrant a long discussion. So said, here I go:

Yesterday was a wonderful celebration of friendship, particularly among women. Spoonbill and I had a delightful lunch, with conversation ranging from movies to our children, to the "whole ball of confusion" that is racial identity in this country. We followed that with a visit to MaGoose's Stitch-In. Just imagine, 2+ hours of stitching and more enlightening conversation in Ma's sundrenched living room, as the breeze eased in off the bay. Ah, that's living!

Nearly 5 years ago, I suffered a stroke that left me with numbness and lack of coordination of my right hand and arm. For awhile, I could not speak normally, and I couldn't say my husband's name. With time and occupational and massage therapy, sensation began to return. My speech cleared up within the month. I relearned how to brush my teeth and hair, how to butter toast, how to handle a fork. I used a speech program on the computer for several months, because my right hand could not type. I am very grateful for the lessons I learned from this experience. After 5 years, a person is considered to be at no increased risk of having another CVA (cerebrovascular accident). That's my upcoming milestone!