DIY Jewelry rack

And now for something completely different.
I am very proud of the jewelry rack I made out of an old decorative frame thing I found at a yard sale for a dollar. I didn't have any cage screen, but I did have some new, left-over window screen in the garage. I invested a few dollars in some nailhead thumbtacks and small hooks and put this together in about an hour.
I was very happy with the result.
It now hangs behind my bedroom door.

Stolen moments

I’ve put the coffee on. Can you hear it gurgling in the kitchen, smell its perfume? I think there’s some bacon in here somewhere at the back of the fridge. Yes, found it! 

I rummage under the cabinet for my favorite cast iron skillet and set it on the glowing eye at the back of the stove where the cats dare not go. Soon your mouth will be watering and you’ll wake to the soft glow of sunrise slanting through the venetian blinds.

I know it’s hard to climb from between those crisp white sheets. There’s nothing like lingering there, breathing the aroma of morning and listening to the sounds of  someone puttering with pots in a room down the hall. It feels like childhood, waiting for that call that it’s time to get up and get ready for school.

But school’s out, my love. We are free to explore this great, wide world and this vast inner one to our heart’s content. Isn’t it exciting? And we can do it together! Oh what wonders we will see, what mysteries we will experience. Are you packed? We have quite an adventure ahead of us and who knows where it will lead.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be back here, perched on the brink of discovery. When I disappeared oh so many years ago, I didn’t even quite realize I had gone. I don’t now know where I had been. But now … now that I’m back … it all seems so obvious. I was lost to the world, to myself.

And I am back.

Don’t tell me there isn’t magic in this world. There’s so much fucking magic we should be tripping all over it every morning on the way to the bathroom. What’s really puzzling is how we fail to see it much of the time. God knows how we could go years, even decades, and look right past it or brush it off us like some annoying mosquito.

Then a single, simple act. A few words. A tiny transmission. And the world shakes you awake. Eyes fly open, hearts fly open, souls do a naked dance of elation. 

Good God, child. Where have you been??????

Welcome home!

I weep for trees

First the photos:

Senseless. What my neighbor doesn't seem to understand is that a grove of trees is a living organism. Together they are strong. They protect each other and they protect the home. But cut into it. remove a third of it or half of it and the remaining individuals are weakened by their absence. They are left vulnerable to the winds, and when the hurricanes blow -- as they surely will -- they will be the ones that snap and topple. I just hope they topple onto his house and not fall across the road onto mine.
That's the anger talking.
The heart mourns their majestic loss. The sky has a hole in it that I notice as soon as I turn into the neighborhood a full three blocks away. When I pull into the driveway of my home just across the street, my heart just breaks. There are a minimum of six giants missing from the landscape, home to countless birds and other organisms.
The owls for example.
They nest there every winter. I hear them calling in the early morning in winter when I go out into the dark to collect my newspaper. Will they move? "Come to my yard," I want to say. I have 35 trees in my small back yard. They are giants as well, but only three are loblollys (pines to the uninformed, brittle, apt-to-snap pines) and they are protected by their tall majestic brethren.
I hope the owls don't leave. Their calling lifts me. I need them.
And I cry uncontrollably at the loss of those trees. Over the top, perhaps, but nonetheless I do. I have cried with the heartbreak one feels when a family member or beloved pet is lost. I don't even understand it. But I have apologized for my neighbor. I have expressed my sympathy to the trees, to the universe. And I have prayed to find forgiveness for him.
I don't feel it yet.

How can it be 2012?

I started this blog in 2009 and have let it pretty much languish for three years.
Well not anymore.
It is hereby resurrected.
I guess it was always a blog without a purpose. I am reluctant to pigeonhole it,  and that will probably be its downfall. But so be it.
You don't care. You want to be entertained, enlightened, moved even.
I think I can do that but only if I write about my life -- my boring crazy amazing life.
I don't know how my friends and family are going to feel about this. I don't know how much I should really reveal.  Guess I'll just have to wing it. Push the envelope.