Skip to main content

A Quick Interlude

Gonna just interject and say that we're home and safe, and all was really good on the New York trip, but we did so much that all we did, pretty much the moment the bus got into the hotel, was go to our beds and fall asleep.

I walked 120,000 steps in New York City, and every one of them was worth it, and I'll be writing it up as I get the pictures up. I loved it all, and when our guide asked us what our favorite part was, it was so hard to say.

I'll first finish up the reunion trip, and say that in the days between the two trips, I got the first two days up, and mostly just did laundry, sleep in my own bed, and figure out how to pack, for the first time in a long time, so that I could carry-on everything.

Red Oak Leaves from Central Park
And I'll leave you with a painting I did yesterday, it's of red oak leaves that I found on the ground in Central Park, and I picked 'em up, washed them off, and pressed them in my notebook. They're a flat, bedraggled mass now, but using them as a reference, I went ahead and laid this out on the plane.

The turbulence was so bad on the plane I couldn't use brush and ink, so I just used pencil on notebook paper to do the initial sketches, but when I had my watercolors and ink yesterday, I painted again. I've signed up for the OAS (Oriental Art Supplies) 30-day challenge, and will be painting every day in June.

So still going full-blast, and I'll catch this journal up as I can. *laughs* I actually want to reorganize this journal a little, get all the old fiction off the sticky page, and do good indices for all the travel entries.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Everything Is A Lot

My mother took my hand, as we were going to leave tonight, and she very deliberately, gently, and slowly pressed a kiss on the back of my hand. And at the look on her face, I clasped her hand back just as gently, but firmly, and I kissed her on her forehead. She smiled and let me go.  Words are failing her. I find it ironic that the only way that I can process her now word-muddled existence is through my long practice with words.  On November 13th, my sister and father did a video doctor's check with my mother. Their GP was so alarmed at her inability to truly respond to their questions made their primary doctor tell them that they had to go to the ER. That there was something seriously wrong with her and they had to get her looked at as quickly as possible. The three of them spend two horrific days in the over crowded ER at UCSD, in order to get the CAT scans and MRI that showed a very large shadow in her brain.  This was while John and I were in Kauai. We heard the begi...

Hard Things

I'm getting asked a lot these days about how my mother is doing. It's never easy to answer, because she's dying. She's pretty comfortable for all that, all of her needs are being taken care of. She has hospice checking on her every time she needs anything. She's being made as comfortable as possible with modern medicine and care.  Most people end up saying, "That's so hard."  And the only thing I can really do is nod. There's something in my head that always says, "It's not hard the way you think it's hard." It doesn't detract from the fact that everything is pretty difficult right now. I've always hated my emotions. They're always pretty difficult for me to access, except when I have the opportunity to process them with someone else, extroverted emotional expression seems to be one of the few ways I can deal with them. Grief always eats all my energy.  When I first came home from San Diego after the Thanksgiving perio...

Thankful

Tuesday was absolutely insane. We had two appointments for the radiation oncologist and then the lung cancer specialist.  And while we were talking with the lung cancer specialist, he heard that John and I were here from Colorado and were going to fly back, again, for the brain cancer specialist next week. He said, "I think I can find an opening for you with him. Let me go talk to him."  He talked with the brain cancer specialist, and lo and behold, we got the 1pm appointment we couldn't get through the regular channels, and while we decided to have lunch in the cafe in the cancer center, Kathy and John got texts about the new appointment.  This whole trip has been blessed with so many bits of luck. John and I got two of the last four seats on the non-stop that was most convenient for our flight in. This Friday's flight was half the price of all the other flights around this crazy travel holiday. Our room at our hotel was the very last room left at this Homewood Suite...