some unfinished art of mine

It snowed all day

counting our blessings

it's difficult sometimes to count our blessings when we loose someone to the finality of death. i tend to want to scream and yell and shout and cry, yes cry, the hard ugly sobs of true sadness. death comes swiftly, quietly, right in the middle of a regular day, death comes and steals from us someone me may have just kissed yesterday, the sweet smell of that life still lingers nearby, how can they be just gone?

i wrote to one friend about Heath Ledger's death and she wrote back "What is a health ledger?"

i must admit i didn't know much about him, i haven't seen Brokeback yet, i mostly fell in love with his face on the news, such a beautiful jaw, a majestic forehead and he reminded me of my first love Steven James who also died young while trying to save his mother in a house fire. i cried and i wrote to my daughter and she wrote this:

Okay, so you should watch "A Knight's Tale" One of my faves, great (funny) Heath
Ledger movie....he was so good in The Patriot and (Brokeback...you should see
it, it's just a really sweet and sad love story, it's not visually graphic) He
also starred in that Bob Dylan movie that Tom and I just saw- "I'm not there"
He was a total babe and it is just heartbreaking....I guess he had a really hard
time sleeping and just accidentally took too many pills...poor baby.
When we found out last night Tommy said...
" That's trippy....he's just gone....Poof! Heath Ledger is gone" -nuff said
Life is short and fleeting and we need to cherish all of it....

this was going to be a happy week, my new mystic haze carpet arrived and i painted a little of the room in preparation, i had a fine fire going and i started to move paintings in to the newly carpeted space. but then i saw a face on the news that swept up dusty memories and i just started crying. my fires gone out. it snowed this morning.

i'm remembering a story i saw of a woman who had lost her four year old son to cancer and her husband was angry and just pissed off at the world and couldn't move on and yet she had an amazing buoyancy and she said she just felt blessed that she had those four years. it wasn't a lose, she didn't loose anything, instead she was so grateful for having known that love at all.

i'm going to rent some of those movies from netflix. i am going to get the fire going again. i will post a video real soon of the mystic haze and some of my unfinished art.

peace.

what to do what to do phase one of lumpy gravy

ok so the guy is coming tomorrow to measure the room for my new carpet and i'm so excited but i just realized i really should paint before it gets here but what color? the room is on the north side of the house so it stays cool and in the summertime it is a great place to hang out when the temps soar into the 100's. the carpet i ordered is called 'mystic haze' and looked very magical in it's tiny 3"x 6" sample piece at the carpet store. somewhere in the low purplish color range i think, although i get very confused with all of the choices so i hope when it gets here i like it.
so what colors to consider for the walls and ceiling that is the challenge. Help! i am putting it out into the universe to be considered.
meanwhile i have to empty the room of all that little annoying stuff that is everywhere, always overflowing from baskets...
it looks like the room just threw up. Blah!
stuff oozzes out and screams at me
" look at me"
and
"tell me again why i am in your life"

i get that one alot.

TWINS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BABIES
35 years flew by way too fast.

It's still raining here but the electricity has finally stabilized and is allowing me once again to join the year 2008 after what seems like forever in a twilight zone of frozen moments thawed only by the wood fire and old dogs and cats that want to snuggle close and yes more blankets up over our nose and gloves and hats on lots of socks and 27 sweaters .... cute real cute...
my god it was so boring without power. wood stove in my living room, oil lamp to read by, cold food and wind and rain blowing around like it was
trying
to tell me something
and i listened
really hard
i really did.

and i have to admit i cried a bit.
well okay
i cried alot.

well it is so much better today, of course i still only have the wood heat and i still can't stop crying but i have you now too.
and i've missed you all so much.

SO HAPPY BIRTHDAY

and to day is a really special day because thirty five years ago this morning at 4:28 am i gave birth to the most beautiful baby girl who weighted five pounds and then at 4:33 am i gave birth to a beautiful baby boy who was five pounds too....
hooray
it is the best thing i ever did in my life.

i remember the doctor had told me i could take them home if they weighted at least five pounds and so for the last three weeks i had left the cabin in the mountains of santa cruz that was my home that had simply wood heat and an outhouse and literally a hundred steep steps up a mountain to get to it and i went over the hill to the valley to stay with my mother in forced air heat land, in door plumbing and flat streets and family.
i had wanted to have a home birth, but because i was having twins it was too risky. with all that step climbing, and i do remember just hopping up the hill i was in such great shape then but in my eighth month of pregnancy i was going into labor and i was three centimeters dilated already. that's when the doctor told me i had to lay low for awhile and let the babies fatten up a little so i went to my mothers.
my mother and i barely got along so it was not easy being there and by the end of that third week feeling wreckless i took the dogs running around lake laganita and i slipped and fell and my labor started for real. i remember driving home from the lake in my old covertible vw bug with two big wet german shepherds in the back seat and it started to rain so hard and the top was leaking and by big ole belly was contracting so hard up against the steering wheel and i drove back to my moms. she was having a fit that i wouldn't go to the hospital.
i was doing my breathing and trying to get a hold of everyone in santa cruz that i needed to have with me. it took hours and there was a big storm and my mother was screaming 'i don't want these babies to be born in my living room' and i was doing my breathing. finally baby daddy shows up and by 10:30 pm we were all ready for the big show. i had my midwife raven and my labor coach janet and dr creevy and an entire twin team at stanford hospital in palo alto and the baby daddy all in the delivery room with me.
wow. when my daughter Summer entered my world she was screaming and then when i held her she looked like a little bird and then i saw that she was an angel and she stopped crying for a while. i had to hand her off because i was still in labor and my son, Gabe was a footling breech. dr creevy had to go inside and grab his foot and lead him out and when he was finally resting on my belly he was quiet and very blue but he looked at me and i saw he was an angel and he would be fine and they wisked him off and put him into a warm plastic box with heat and oxygen and i couldn't hold him again for eight hours.
wow
thirty five years
the very finest thing i have ever produced
the most difficult
the most rewarding
the most love ever
the most pride
i love you two so much
to the stars and beyond
for ever and eternity and even after that
i will always love you
thank you for that

New Year

Chambers Brothers singing TIME while we walk around in a daze, hopefully the back of the house will be mended soon, you can sort of see the pile of supplies by the fish pond, but my camera work needs attention so that's one of my goals for the future is to produce a movie that doesn't play like an old acid trip but this one certainly bops around a little too much. There is a new gate that goes up the hill out to the rest of my yard that is off to the side of the back of the house by the stairs and I want to build something magical and spiritual over there like a cob house with a bottle wall and maybe a circle of rocks for a prayer. wow! i can't believe it's 2008 and i am still alive. yippee!!!! the best is yet to come.

well the video is fighting me so i'll keep trying.