lady cordelia

until you succeed

 





“Take risks, and you’ll get the payoffs. Learn from your mistakes until you succeed. It’s that simple.” ~ Bobby Flay

I've always loved that quote. Simple, direct information to remember and live by.

Here's what my world looks like under that lens (most of you are well-versed in these still "very real" realities of mine.)

~ A little tiny veggie patch is beginning to thrive after a lot of hours and days of nursing.
~ A doggie who we were told was "a risk" to keep alive is back with a vengeance (and dirty socks.)
~ A hen, who is determined to make a batch of infertile eggs hatch will, when the time is perfectly synchronized with her little hen homones, be given (by us) her own day-old chicks to raise as her own.
~ A business dreamed up just a few months ago by a mama who wanted to find a way to make some money through art and stay home with her kids...well...isn't quite booming yet, but hey...it's most certainly rolling!

Determination.  What a fine word. 

What are you determined to do these days?

 

through the eyes

[I'm sorry to wax on about my dog, if you're bored with it, I understand.  But for those of you who can bare with me for another moment here...]

Raji is back to his normal self  and I can't help but wonder if all the tests were wrong.  I check myself though, knowing that even if it was a wrong diagnosis, he is now living beyond a Lab's general expected life span (according to the internet.)

But here's what I want to share today: I've been through something with my boy in this last week. Something huge and all encompassing.  There have been moments, beyond what I've shared yesterday, in which he and I would lock eyes for moments and what I experienced in those moments, I'd only previously read about.

Sure, we all love each other.  Day in and day out we love our family, our pets, our surroundings, even.  But to  "get a hit" so to speak, of the preciousness, the power, the straightforwardness and depth of love, to look into another earthly creatures eyes and feel that love transends our here and now....(Yes.  To trans-end.  Literally, to go across the end.)  That's what love has the power to really do.  And, I know it sounds strange to say I experienced this with my dog, but that's what happened.

I'm not saying I'll always be able to act according to this realization.  (If I did, I'd turn into a saint or other revered figure and heaven knows THAT ain't gonna happen.)  But I'm glad I experienced it nontheless.  I'll hopefully be an ever better dog owner, parent, wife, daughter.

Animals have so much to teach us because they don't judge us, they have very few expectations actually..  Perhaps that is why some people find it easier to connect with animals than their fellow humans.  Animals of all demeanors are always giving us the opportunity to connect with them on a more intelligent level.  They don't expect us to, but they are there if we are willing.  And, if do we take them up on it, perhaps when the end comes for a pet it amounts to the difference between thinking we've "lost" them, or instead knowing beyond a shred of a doubt that we've only gained a universe of love.

My dog taught me this with a few deep stares into my eyes.  Isn't that wonderful?  Isn't that just wonderful?!  Somehow, I let him teach me.  Wow. That's all it takes. Thank you Raji.

boy

Last night, after a plethora of tests, our vet called to tell us that our old boy should be put to sleep this morning. 

We cried all night.  And I mean all night.  The cause was mainly a bleeding cancerous tumor in his spleen, but there were side issues as well. We were shocked that it was all this serious, and doubly saddened by the ironic reality that today is our oldest daughter's 7th birthday.  Not the kind of present you want to give to a child, the death of her beloved doggie.

All night, in between fits of tears, with my boy lying next to me in labored breaths, I drifted through the stars. I  saw the earth from above, and I felt the unfathomable wonder of life.  I remembered hearing once that we are all made of stardust and to stardust we will return, and I knew that to be true then, beyond any shred of doubt.  I knew no matter what, love does not die.  And I allowed myself to let my boy go. The Brad cried some of his very rare tears into our boy's polar bear fur and said his goodbyes as well. I thought about my 7 year old and I realized, that although it didn't sound like a good thing - her dog dying on her birthday- that somehow maybe it could be special and magnificent.

This morning, the girls said their goodbyes, simply blown away by the idea of never seeing him again. 

And then...this boy of ours got up and ate.  He wagged his tail and his ears went up.  I called the vet and told her that for the first time in two days my boy was eating his food.  He was walking.  His tail was wagging.  An ultrasound revealed his internal bleeding had subsided for the moment being.  They pumped him up with fluids. And after getting hydrated he showed his thanks by picking up a plastic door stop with his mouth and walking around the animal hospital with  his tail wagging so hard he curved into the letter "U."

The vet said: He's not going to heaven today. I was free to take him home. 

I can not tell you how precious every last piece of time will be with him.  A day, a week, a month or more.  Whatever it is, we will take it.  We will take it with huge smiles and tears of gratitude and run and run and run (figuratively of course, this boy is no longer a runner or even much of a walker.) 

And so today we are cleaning up for a little party for a very special someone who is so happy her "best friend" will be here for it.

Read more about my boy, Raji, here and here.

 

weekend heart

Today was rain and sun.  A little jaunt downtown.  Then, making the tomato patch bigger.  Realizing I hadn't changed out of my one nice pair of jeans.  Whoops.  Oh well.  That's very me. 

Onto planting the starts I bought yesterday.  (Yes, I bought kale and lettuce starts because I really couldn't get mine going from seed very well and I really need daily homemade raw kale salads and green smoothies.  I need them soon. Impatience does have its place. Oh well, looks like my garden isn't ALL from seed. So sue me.)

Today was also watching my little girls get older.  Realizing that the magical age of four is almost past with my second girl.  On a brief jaunt downtown I saw a cute journal made especially for recording all the cute things your kids say.  My kids still say some cute things, especially the younger, but they are getting more and more sensical and so I realized my time to have bought that journal had passed.  It stung, just a little.  Marshmallows are not Meshmarlows anymore.  Helicopters are not Helioboppers.  You know.

They are not babies. I have two healthy and sweet little girls.  And on they will turn into beautiful, happy and wise women.  And you know what?  They will always be my babies.  I am so happy to have daughters.  I thought maybe I'd be lucky enough to have one.  But no, I was blessed with two.  I'm thinking they can go to college right down the way and I can still make their lunches and do their hair.  I have it all planned out.

Sometimes I think it would have been nice to have a boy too.  I would have named him Bruno.  That's my dad's middle name.  Sometimes I think about the Bruno I never had and I hold his little body in my mind.  I wonder if maybe the Brad's surgery will untie accidentally.  It could happen, right?  But, then again, who can hold a baby while selling quilts at the shore?  Who can sew for hours a day? Our lives are full to the max and my childbearing years are over. I think it's just that feeling of mortality, you know.  

C'est la vie, baby.

 

weekending with Habit Of Being

Yay.

Gosh.  I could hardly wait to tell you that I had a really good day today at the show.  As hard as it was to tell you how crappy last week was...it is  SO exciting to tell you that today was much better.  Brad made me that rack you see to display 3 quilts (you are only seeing one side of it) and I'm going to ask him nicely to make me a few more.  It really makes the space.  All the rest of the quilts are folded on the racks and then in the baskets are all the little animals, etc...

And HEY....guess what: I sold things!  Yep!  I consider myself in business now.  The proverbial ice is broken and I feel SO much better.  I sold my very first quilt at the art show today when Summer and her truly wonderfully sweet family were visiting me. In fact, I was so engaged talking to them I didn't realize I had another customer! Summer is another friend I've made through blogging who was kind enough to cross a few towns to visit. I think she and her mother and the rest of her family must have brought good luck. Because after that?  I had some more sales.  Someone even bought two quilts at one time!!  I'm not going to report like this ever again, blurting out how good (or not good) I did at a show.  Of course I'm not.  But this time, just this time, I had to tell you. I had to tell you because you have been with me on this ride and you certainly deserve to know.  You have championed me and I want to thank you.

Oh happy life.  I'm just so pleased tonight.  And sunburned and beyond tired.  Totally brain-fried, actually.  Can barely deal with the thought of making dinner.  But I'm happy as a gosh darn clam!

And as a complete non-sequiter random thing, I just overheard my four-year-old say: "I'm never getting rid of my gina."  (And that would be pronounced as if there was a VA in front of it.)   I just couldn't let that one go and not share it with someone.  And you are here. I'm so glad you're here!!  We've really ridden this wave together, haven't we?

XO

break for deep

I may never feel my art is worthy and professional.  Worthy and Professional are bad words where art is concerned. Art is what it is.  It's subjective.  Period. 

I realize and I admit that I am more like a colorful tangle of embriodery thread than a neat tidy box of it.  I could hate that about myself or I could love it about myself, but it's not going to change the fact that it's who I am. I admire tidy stuffed animals with perfect stitches, but -at this point in my life-my soul feels confined when I try to make them.  Same with following a precise and cleanly symmetrical quilt pattern. It makes my brain hurt to think of it.

Everyday, at some point, I dwell on how uncomfortable this process has been and still is to put my stuff out there.  I know I keep mentioning it, but eventually I won't feel this way and you and I will both be relieved.  Until then, I imagine people giggling their asses off.  "Hey Lloyd, check out what Cory is doing. She thinks she's gonna SELL that! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"   

(Not fishing for compliments. Just sharing my human condition.  I have fancy friends with fancy jobs that still worry what people think of them. Sigh. Let's all cut it out, shall we?)

Cause....this is what I know: Better to just get up in the morning and go for it.  Whatever it is you have your heart set on.  Not worry too much about it.  Not take it too seriously.  Not attach too much meaning.  Like that old Nike ad I like to quote: Just Do It.

Speaking of Nike, I went for a run today.  I don't usually do ridiculous things like that, but I felt I needed to really move.  I put on my headphones and listened pop music.  I listened to silly stuff like Katy Perry and someone I think is called Jessie J (I know, I didn't like Katy Perry 6 months ago. Then I heard "Wide Awake.") 

Anyway, I ran.  I ran fast and hard and everything seemed like it was possible and beyond easy.  

I don't know.  I guess there are just minutes when you cry and cry and you know you have to slog through.   And then there are moments when you run and run and you're laughing because your legs move and you realize you are still young.  Somewhere inside you, you realize that you are still young.  That you will always be young.  And there is still time.

 

spring beginnings

I see pics of the East Coast and I'm like: f*** man, that looks cold.  But it also looks beautiful.  My 4-year-old asked me if we could go to the snow someday....  Hmmmm.  Don't know.  Not today. 

Today there was our life. Pink flowers falling into the coop. 
I'm living with greasy hair (we ran out of shampoo). 
I'm the girl with 3 year old mascara and I should really trim my eyebrows.  (Some girls never run out of shampoo.)
I'm the girl looking around the yard seeing everything I need to do and also admiring what we have.
I'm looking in the mirror, going: Come on. Who the hell cares if I have a few lines on my face.
It's natural.  Petals unfurl. Petals take your breath away. Petals loosen. Petals fall.

I'm just living.  Walking the dog.  Feeling I should do it more often (they say exercise is good for you.)

I'm off to have a glass of wine, get dinner going with The Brad.
The days pass by into Spring.
Soon it will be deeper Spring.
I'll be planting the tomato seedlings.
I'll be hoping the soil is good.

xo

 

 

 

Oh, what a world.

It is said that the chances of existence... of everything lining up as it has in terms of what we call "life"... is so exquisitely slim, that, well...it boggles the mind really- just like the concept of infinity.

I've never subscribed to one religion.  In a moment of loss, I look to the seedlings and my children for reminders of how to act rightly in this world.  I took the path of trusting the unknown, or rather, it took me.

This year so far has been a torrential stream of learning, patience, joy, some tears and exhaustion and frustration as well.  Also great fulfillment, as art will certainly give that to a person.  Free expression.  Worry, doubt.  And perseverance (a favorite word of mine.)  Trust, also. 

There is nothing stronger than wiping a tear and digging back in to whatever it was that caused the doubt in the first place.  Because whatever it was that troubled, was likely worth the trouble and will be again and again until perfection comes. Or even a "near-perfection" will do. A time and place where one can stand back and say.  Yes.  This is something I feel really good about.  Let's move along. 

I've never been more willing to make mistakes, let my ego be dismantled, cry a tear or two or mutter a bad word and get back down to it. 

It's hard for me to let things go..whether an argument with a friend or dirty dishes in the sink.  In the midst of my new endeavors, I find myself tired of feeling the playroom should stay organized and asking (sternly) the kids to please pick up their clothes, toys, messes. I'm actually practicing letting things be more messy, beds to stay unmade for a day or even two. Clothes to pile up.  Really, wouldn't the kids be better off jump roping outside? 

I love the inscription to this book I am currently reading (this one) in which the author, a sea urchin diver, thanks his piano teacher of all people...

Because...in a world of mismatching socks, biscuits that didn't turn out the way you hoped they would (but are still quite good), seedlings, kids messes and scraps of material all over the place ...there is the sound of a child learning to play piano.  The ear picks up far fewer mistakes on the keys than it seems there should be for a child of her age. 

And so I sit. With a cup of coffee between my hands, in the still of the morning, listening to those notes
as they fly off the keys
and make their way into the world
unobstructed.

these days

The thing about becoming passionate about something, is that there's not much more than that to talk about.  And I certainly don't want to bore you.  But, what can I say? 

I wake up, have coffee, and get to the sewing machine.   In between those hours of sewing I assist my four-year-old in finding creative things to do, clean the chicken coop, plant more tomato (etc..) seeds into 6-packs and place them on the windowsill.  I pick up the older one from school, run an errand or two, come home, clean for a while, throw in a load of laundry or fold one, remind about piano practicing (it's an unarguable must in this house) and all in the in between: cutting log cabin strips and squares, making mistakes in stitching, still learning how to use this machine that I upgraded to a few weeks ago. Quilt after quilt.  (They engulf the room in various stages.  I'll share them SOON.)

I walk through the house and glance at the finches that found the feeder on the lemon tree.  (Need a lemon, by chance?  Helllloooo!))   I think about warmer weather and digging into the earth outside for Spring/Summer gardens.  What can I say?  It's a boring life for some, but it's beyond rich for me.  I don't remember a time when I've been more content or (knock on wood) sleeping better.  It's a simple life, really.  Things are quiet. 

I think of all the things I "thought" I should do in the past.  I  have, like all people, various opportunities throughout the day to make mental decisions about how I want my thinking to stream.  Every moment a choice in what I want to believe and what I don't.  Lately, it's been quite easy. Feed the cat, set the table for dinner, help a child spell a word or wash her hair, think about things I'd like to embrioder. And so on.  

 

 

 

 

thank you

You have given me so much assurance and such a powerful feeling this morning with your comments on yesterday's post.  Thank you, friends.  And I do call you friends even though I have not met many of you in the flesh.  It is an amazing thing to wake up in the morning, check your email, and get cheered on from different corners of the country and world. 

Many of you have been here with me for the approximately three years (really?) that I have been blogging and still, yesterday's post was hard for me to write, I was nervous to "come out" so to speak.   But today I feel so much lighter and freer with your words of encouragement and I felt downright giddy this morning trying something I was worried to try before: making squares for a log cabin quilt. (It's actually very easy!) 

Gosh. Such a voice in my head for so many years saying that I was just not "smart" enough to carry through with something, anything of real value to myself- as far as work.  I couldn't just "get a job" like everyone else because I'm not that girl and I've made it this far without having to do it.  But....it's a funny thing, that voice.  Right? the one that says you can't.  But what I see now is that passion overcomes fear.  A longing to learn isn't enough, there has to be a powerful propelling.  A hunger.  A willingness to make mistakes.  A willingness even, for someone to NOT like what I do. 

I've watched my husband for 10 years slog through so many feelings and emotions connected to his art and where he has come in those years is amazing (he has come here.)  I've watched several female friends build businesses from the ground up in the last few years and that has given me a wonderful mirror, as well.

It's hard to do the easy thing sometimes, which is just doing what we feel led to do.  Unclogging all the crap that we need to unclog in order to see what it is exactly that our hearts are driven to do.  Even as I write this, I can hear that old familiar voice saying...Nah.  You can't pull it off. 

But your voices this morning, were stronger. 

Thank you.

~Cory