I come from......

Good morning!  For anyone that read yesterday's post, I said I would follow it up with this poem.  I took an online class earlier this year with the wonderful Misty Mawn.  It was titled "stretching within".  It was a drawing, painting, collage, journaling and photography class.  It was amazing!  Our first assignment was to write a poem, with the prompt, I come from................  This was the first writing I had ever done. It was hard!  But I did it, and shared it with our group and found out from reading everyone's poems, my life was not a lot different.  Everyone struggled with some issues from their childhood.  But we survived and came through and are stronger because of it.  I wrote a post earlier that was titled "don't look back".  I am trying to follow my own advice!!

                                                         I come from.............

I come from the fifties, from roots deep in the heart of Texas.  Stretching the sea from Ireland to the Choctow reservation.

I come from small town parades, walking to school, many childhood to present friends, handmade barbie clothes, antiques, gypsy blood and wheels on my feet.

I come from talent.  Mother was a blue ribbon gardener and gypsy treasure hunter and daddy was a blue collar worker and an amazing woodworker.  Talent and lives blurred and slowly washed away in alcohol.  I come from being the adult in a child's world, filled with anxiety, mis-trust and fear.

I come from loving grandparents.  Aprons, fried pies, cobblers, gardens of swaying poppies, feather beds, beehives and honeycomb, paint by number, days at the five and dime and the lingering smell of jergens cherry almond lotion.  My salvation and my rocks.



Today I am happy.

Life is great!

Today I am sad. 

Life could have been better.

01/06/2011 



my grandparents.
Ina and Fred Leonard.
thank you.







Where do you come from?

Life Changing Moments

Here is a little something my friend Phyllis posted on facebook today and I immediately borrowed it!

A study has revealed that the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle. For example: if she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating or menopausal, she tends to be more attracted to a man with duct tape over his mouth and a spear lodged in his chest while he is on fire. No further studies are expected on this matter. nuff said!

This quote made me think of a friend I worked with at school, a few years back.  She was our graphic artist and she was going through similar feelings!  She called the doctor's office to make an appointment and the receptionist said she could come in, in two weeks.  Linda told her, with her voice escalating, "Lady, i don't think you understand.  In two weeks my husband will be dead, my children will be dead and my house burned down".  The receptionist said she could come in the next day!  True story.

This in turn makes me think about my own life.  I have struggled with  anxiety and panic attacks most of my life.  I had no idea there was name for it, much less medication to control it.  I just knew I spent my entire life worrying about things that were completely out of my control.  I will post my "I come from" poem tomorrow (it was a prompt in my Misty Mawn online class I took this year).  For those of you that don't know me, this will explain alot of the anxiety that started as a child.  Then along came Jodi and helped me realize it was something real.  Two years ago, our cat Roadie disappeared from our other home in Caliente, Nevada.  I was heartbroken.  And to make it worse, he vanished 5 years to the day my daddy died in that same house.  I was a freakin mess.  I cried for a week, and that is when Linda stepped in and had me talk to the doctor.  She suggested Lexapro and I started taking it and it changed my life.  I asked her the next year when I went in for my annual check up, if I could be the poster child for Lexapro!  I am not advocating taking drugs of any sort, I just know it worked immediately for me.  Funny story....it worked so fast that the following week after starting it, I was out doing errands and grocery shopping.  I came home and told Lee that everywhere I went, people smiled at me and said hello.  He said, maybe because you are now smiling and looking up.  Aha!  As I told someone, it just took the edge off.  Don't get me wrong, I still worry.  I am still nervous when in traffic on the freeway.  I still have white knuckles on airplane rides!  I still lay in bed at night and listen to Lee breathing, praying he will stay healthy for a very long time. I still wonder if that headache is a brain tumor.  I just know these things are out of my hands and there is a higher power watching over me.  Thank you Jodi and Linda for always being there and listening and loving me. And thank you to the love of my life, Lee, for always standing beside me and loving me, no matter what!                                   

I hope I haven't spilled too much personal information!  I hope my followers on this blog don't suddenly decrease!  I just ended up here from the funny quote at the top of the page!  xo



What causes you anxiety?

For me.......what if they run out of pie?!!
I heart pie!



The Tuscan Countryside

I visited.

I absorbed.

I will return.

friends are like perennials

i was thinking about a conversation i had with my sweet friend joanne, about flowers.  which in turn made me think about my dear friends i have in my life.  each one of you are like the perennial flowers i have planted in my gardens. you are there for me year after year. you are a constant and i don't have to worry about you not returning the next year.  you are brilliant and beautiful and bursting forth with the tenderness of a newborn.  the one i chose to delete from my life this year, must have been an annual.  there will be no returning next year, or any year.  that flower had thorns that hurt me.  i didn't need that.

flowers,  like friends need nurturing and care.  some flowers are newer than others in my garden, as are my friends.  but i care deeply for each of you as if you have been planted there for decades. 

what is planted in your garden?  xo

Hoppy Monday!!

hoppy monday to you!

one of my little fellows that live in my garden in caliente!

hope you have a "ribbiting" good week!  xo

Charming gardeners

LET US BE GRATEUL

To people who make us happy;

They are the charming gardeners

who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

pictures of my backyard in boulder city.

what makes your soul blossom?

xo

don't look back!

Summer is just flying by, which suits me just fine since the summers are so brutal here in southern Nevada.  Looking forward to our vacation in Oregon in the fall.  Autumn is my favorite season, and especially spent in the beautiful state of Oregon.  The colors must rival New England, at least in my mind!  I am always in amazement at the vast amount of colors, textures and fauna that i experience when I am there. From ferns of every kind to the moss.  MOSS, coming from the desert, this is quite appealing to me. The campground hosts and park rangers are always chuckling as I scurry around Valley of the Rogue campground outside Grants Pass, Oregon, picking up acorns by the pound,  filling my bags with beautiful leaves and picking the lonely blackberry stragglers left on the bushes.  Sitting by the mighty Rogue River and daydreaming of living on it feeds my soul.  This year I intend to sit there with my sketchbook.

Yesterday, my husband Lee and I went to Las Vegas to do some shopping and get groceries.  We stopped by the Total Wine and More store to look around.  As we were checking out, the cashier Pamela asked Lee for his I.D. with his credit card.  So me being the smart ass I am, asked Lee who he was. The cashier said to me "i know you just met him in the parking lot and want him to buy you some beer, because you are underage."  I laughed and said "I wish".  She said, not me, she wouldn't go back.  She said marriages and kids and life in general.  She wants to only look ahead and not look back.  Wow!  I thought about it and told her how that really was so true.  She said there is so much to look forward to.  I couldn't stop thinking about that all day.  I tend to revert back to the past, and the what if's, and maybe if I had done this or that differently.  I really want to focus on today and think of all the wonderful things I have going for me and the wonderful people I have in my life NOW.  Thank you Pamela and if you read this and I didn't quote you exactly right, set me straight! 

Last week I got to Skype with my sweet friend Livve in the U.K. and Phyllis in North Carolina.  Phyllis got us on a group chat.  I LOVED Livvie's accent.  We are all excited and busy planning our grand adventure to Artfest in Port Townsend, Wa. next spring.  There is a group of us that met online during Misty Mawn's class.  We formed such a strong bond, that we are all sharing a house up there. Of course I am sharing a room with one of my very bestest friends in the world, Jodi Kincaid!  I can't imagine getting to meet my stretching sisters in real life!  Wishing our friends Michele Redman, Joanne Rose, Kristin Hyde and Jenny Wentworth could join us.  That would make this journey complete!

Guess I will quit babbling and let you enjoy your Tuesday.  What are you planning for the week?
Have a wonderful week and DON'T LOOK BACK!  xoxo  Carlanda

her name is Dottie.  5x5 canvas.