Taking a Break

After 5 days of sitting with my son as he had chemo that merged into a weekend where he was feeling way beyond miserable, it was time for a break. Bryon needed some time alone and I needed to step away from cancer and oncology, and focus on something different. 

I arrived in California the Saturday before Bryon started his chemo. I went to church with Bryon and Amber (Bryon’s sweet, sweet girlfriend) and met a lovely woman named Joy. She was raised in the South and has a sister who lives near Charlotte. She approached me and we talked about Cheerwine and pimento cheese and, of course, Bryon. I gave her my card and later on she texted me to check in to see how we were all doing. She made an offer, “If you need time away, let me know”. 

I took her up on it. Joy came and picked me up on Monday, took me to lunch and we chatted away about our lives. Joy is an artist too. She told me about being a screen writer and director of the Sugar Gang movies as well as the Mandie movies (that is so cool!!). Joy also paints and she took me to see what she was working on. Let me just say, the girl is good!

Then she took me to Eaton Canyon. We went on a short hike and she told me about watching out for rattle snakes as we walked down the jeep-sized dirt path. As we walked over a bridge, I looked out and there was a pair of sneakers hanging from a tree. I took a picture and wondered how and who put those sneakers in the top of that tree so far off the ground.

My new friend pointed down to the shallow creek and told me that it was unusual that there was water in the stream. “It doesn’t happen often,” she said. We walked further down the dirt path and made our way down to the creek.  It was lovely there. I pulled out my phone and took some more pictures. I took note of a speckled stone and Joy reached down and collected it for me.

It was a good day. Here are some pictures — I thought I would share them with you.

This is my break from my son’s cancer.

Groundhog Day

Last week Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.* 

I've never met Phil, but I've seen lots of his kin in my lifetime. A groundhog is a woodchuck, a rodent, a ground squirrel. I grew up on a farm in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York and there were woodchuck holes all over the fields. The critters liver underground, where they dig long tunnels with several openings on the surface. When I was a young girl, I my father stopping me from galloping a horse through the field. He took me out to that field, showed me a groundhog hole and said, “If that horse steps in one of these holes while running, it's gonna break its leg and we’ll have to put ‘em down.” I never ran a horse through the field again.

In Germany, hedgehogs were the animal of choice to predict the coming of spring. But when German immigrants came to America, there were no hedgehogs to be found — so they called upon the woodchuck to predict the weather. It works like this: if the groundhog sees its shadow, it will be scared of the shadow and run back down the hole to sleep for another 6 weeks. But if the groundhog does not see its shadow, it means spring is close at hand. Now, mind you, groundhogs are only 40% successful at actually predicting the coming of spring, but still the ritual happens every year. Oh well, what can you expect from a humble rodent that never went to college.

*If you aren't happy with Phil's prediction, here are 8 other groundhogs that predicted spring last week.

Paper Flowers

Our oldest daughter got married a year and a half ago. She lives in Lynchburg, VA, and, of course, she wanted to get married there. She and her fiancé had both been living in the area for several years and they had established a great group of friends and a church family there so certainly it made sense. 

I wanted to have a shower for her but since her social group was in Lynchburg, it made more sense for me to travel there and host it in the area rather than having it in Charlotte, NC. I wanted it to be special, original, and transportable from Charlotte to Lynchburg. I needed to do as much as I could at home so the set up would be easy.

After some thought, I decided to multi-task flowers/decor and favors into one. It was Spring, so a garden theme fit in perfectly. Origami is one of my hobbies, so instead of purchasing flowers, I made them… about 100 of them.Then I made tags for each flower with a positive word on the tag; happy, wonderful, amazing, lovely, enjoyable, and so on. I used them to decorate the tables and at the end of the shower everyone received 2 or 3 flowers to take home and enjoy. My daughter kept several as a memory, too.  

Our lives are made up of memories and then we share them with others by turning them into a little story. What happy memory do you have? What did you do that was special and original?

On-purpose Repurposing

I don’t always use things for the purpose for which they were intended. I also try to keep things out of the landfills and repurpose them whenever possible. So I'm happy when I find creative ways to solve problems using items that would otherwise be discarded. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Crockpot Lid

• PROBLEM: My cat, Jovi, loved to steal trash out of the living room trash can. I needed to find a way to outwit a very smart and determined feline. (Meet Jovi here.)
• SOLUTION: I pulled out an old lid I had saved from a broken crockpot and put it on the trashcan. Problem solved — the trash now stays where it belongs.

Grated Cheese Container

• PROBLEM: I buy cleansers for cleaning which would often tip over under the sink, leaving a big mess for me to sweep up. Then the container would get wet, so I'd have to throw out the whole thing because of the moisture destroying the cardboard container and the cleanser inside. Grrrrrr.
• SOLUTION: The parmesan cheese you get to shake on pasta (we call it "shaky cheese" in my family) comes in a great plastic container that can be reused. I save these containers and use them for my cleanser. The lid snaps shut, the plastic does not absorb moisture and you can see the product. I use a sharpie marker to label the containers — problem solved. Those containers also work great for beads and glitter, by the way.

It’s a new year, so find a new use for something you have then tell me what you did — I’d love to hear about it in the comments below! Meanwhile, get inspired by the repurposing ideas online at Upcycled Wonders and My Repurposed Life.