Around Town

Back here I wrote about the flowers put on this table and wondered if it was in memory of the person named on the plaque, Mac Graham. I looked online and found an obituary for Mac Graham. He grew up in Kirkland and died at age 21. This lakeside table is a beautiful spot to sit and remember a loved one. Most mornings I go to the lake I see flowers on this table. The flowers are changed often. More here and here

Heads up! A week or so before this picture I saw a crane at this site with a load of four or five honey buckets chained together. The operator lifted them to the top of this construction site. This day they were lowering the buckets; two were in this load. I wondered how careful the crane operator had to be not to jiggle the containers so the contents wouldn't slosh out. 

I often get myself warmed up for the day on these very steep stairs. Some mornings my body really resists climbing them. I loop around the block so I can walk the stairs multiple times. Often when my body is saying we can't do this again, I'll push on - just one more time. 

This tiny plant is growing half way up the stairs. It inspires me. Despite all the concrete and caulking, it found a way to sprout and grow. Persistence! 

Centennial Fountain at Marina Park frames Seattle across the lake

Power

Recently my monitor was acting funny. It was on, working fine, and then it would go black. I had to press keys to get it to come back on. 

I'm normally pretty calm, and approach problems fairly methodically. But every once in a while something happens and I don't slip into my usual calm problem-solving self. This was one of those days. My mind started racing a mile a minute - one more thing to take care of. I don't have the time or the energy to deal with this. I started searching on the Internet for potential problems with this monitor. I'm going to have to make ANOTHER trip to the store to exchange this, .... 

You know how this line of thinking goes - ever spiraling upward into more anxiety and woe is me. I was really working myself up. 

Thankfully before I got too far along on this anxiety road, I looked down and noticed the computer's power cord had somehow come unplugged. The computer couldn't power the monitor in battery mode. I plugged it in and was good to go - feeling a bit chagrined that I hadn't checked this first. 

I need to slip into problem solving mode quickly - all the time. 

I could also come up with some other thoughts about making sure we're plugged into the source of power and light. I'll save that for another post at a later time. You'll probably see these pictures again.

One Patch, One Story At A Time

“Since we cannot reclaim the past out of whole cloth, we must take it one patch at a time.”    Timothy G. Merrill

These blog posts are patches that together give you an idea of our lives and what's going on in our hearts and minds. 

image from Pixabay

Vortex to Cathedral Dome

"The world I live in is loud and blurring and toilets plug ... and I forget everything and these six kids lean hard into me all day to teach and raise and lead and I fail hard and there are real souls that are at stake and how long do I really have to figure out how to live full of grace, full of joy - before these six beautiful children fly the coop and my mothering days fold up quiet?

"How do you open the eyes to see how to take the daily domestic, workday vortex and invert it into the dome of an everyday cathedral?" (Ann Voskamp quoted by blogger Catherine Arveseth).  

**********

Obviously we're at a different point in life than Voskamp, but our situation is similar. We have our own kind of "daily domestic, workday vortex" that too often extends throughout the night.  Like Voskamp, some days I wonder how long I have to get this right, to live full of joy and grace in the midst of this daily vortex.  

Joe frequently says, "We are a team." That we are. Together we are figuring out how to deal with the challenges of this part of our lives.

We know what comes next & that's what makes 

it possible to keep going through this steep part of our journey.

Wednesday Market

We have an abundance of outdoor markets during the summer. On Wednesdays there's a market at Marina Park, just a few blocks from us. 

See the man playing the violin? He plays a variety of instruments all over town. 

 The park, right on the lake, is a beautiful setting for the market

Food trucks, crafts, lots of fruits & vegetables

beautiful flowers

Peonies

This peony display at a nearby grocery brought back memories.

Mom loved her peony bushes. They were planted on the south side of the driveway. Before bringing the cut flowers inside she would put them in a pail of water on the back porch for a while. The hope was that all the huge black ants that occupied the peonies would move out of the flowers before they were brought inside. 

June 2009 - blooms from Mom's peony plants 

that Jan moved to her garden after Mom's death

December 1982

Morning Encounter

Morning Encounter

Sometimes we don't have to move very far to change our perspective. 

We decide what's going to be the center of our focus.