School's In.

A little tough...

...to get back in the swing of things.

Guess I was really spoiled.  I did so much, had so much fun, did so many little chores that I felt like the break went on forever and I'm completely rested and ready to face reality again.

Well, as ready as anyone can be to face reality.

The brugs are amazing.  This is "Peach?"  This is taken from my bedroom window.  Nice to wake up to, isn't she?  Now, if I could just figure out how to camo those sprinklers...

So, what's the news?


DS1 and his family are doing well.  I'm planning on a visit in November, Thanksgiving break, to meet my grandson and - oh yeah - hug his parents, too.  I've never been out of the country and it is a real thrill to have a passport!  The world really is opened up. And for Debi the historian, this thing is a thing of beauty.  When my sons got theirs, the pages were plain, but this one has historic landscapes from all around the country.  And each page has a quote.  My favorite is a two-page spread of bison grazing against a rocky mountain background with a bald eagle superimposed and a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King:  We have a great dream.  It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.

I did a lot of reading this summer, mostly positive psychology and how-to-write books.  So how I got Justin Cronin's The Passage in my hands I don't quite understand.  But what an amazing writer.  "...pacing the halls of her mind."  Sigh.  I'm finding that it reminds me of Michael Crichton or Dan Brown at their best.

I didn't quite get my Christmas jacket finished, although I'm confident I will finish it before the holidays.  I ran into some supply snags (why isn't it easier to find deep red and hunter green ultrasuede for fringe?), which brought me too close to my end-of-summer deadline for the project to remain fun.  So, I put it away when I left for my mom's.

My mom had a rough couple of weeks after her knee-replacement surgery, but is not getting impatient with her recovery.   (They warned her it would be 3-6 months to a full recovery; she's getting irritated that it's taking so long at 3 weeks tomorrow.)  She has her first in-office physical therapy session on Thursday and is determined that she will take a real shower and wash her hair in her shower UPSTAIRS.  She's scaring the crap out of me.  I'm going to drive to her house and sit and read my great book while she does the deed.  Just terrified that something MIGHT happen and she would be stuck for hours without someone to call for help.


While I was staying with her after surgery I bought the fabric for this new chart:

Josephine Wall, Spirit of Flight.  Heaven and Earth Designs.

If you've been visiting here for a while, you might remember that I found this art on a journal early in the summer.  I felt then - and still do - that the color and energy of this piece reflected the New Debi that is in process.  I don't know why it never occurred to me to look for a cross-stitch chart of it, but it wasn't until someone followed a search for it here (and found the journal, I guess) that I went hunting, too.  It's produced by Heaven and Earth designs.  The company has a great reputation for rendering art into charts so I'm hopeful for a true rendition.  My only problem is that my eyes are so challenged now that even with my wonderful magnifier, there is no way I can follow the instructions to work this over ONE ON 25 LINEN.  Uh uh.  So I bought a large piece of 18 Aida.  I know it won't be perfect, but at least on that (and it's huge, as you can imagine) it stands half a chance of completion in my lifetime.

Journal writing and Morning Pages were about the only writing I did this summer.  Did a little character development for my book, but managed to procrastinate the project nicely.

And now it's time to head to my bedtime routine so that I have some energy for teaching.  Saturday is a Disneyland trip.  A colleague and I are entered in the Visions Fantastic Scavenger Hunt.  I've done the hunt a couple of times and worked it once.  Excited to see my Viffer friends and see what they have in store.  You'd think after 56 years of visiting Disneyland I would know it pretty well, but these hunts always teach me more about looking carefully and discovering treasures.