lucky

I really live a charmed life. I have always considered myself a lucky person. Good things happen to me. When I want something enough, I get it. When bad things happen to me, they are not as bad as they could be, and they work out fine in the end.
I try to be aware of that, and grateful for it.
Today I am feeling especially thankful:
I am thankful for a new client I started working for today (a company that wants to give me lots of work) and for the woman who recommended me so wholeheartedly that they wanted to hire me on the spot without even reading my resume.
I am grateful for my girls' soccer coaches and the time, skill, and care they give season after season.
I love that my girls are so talented and smart (and silly).
I appreciate my girls' teachers and a principal who cares so much and appreciates my contributions to the school.
I am thankful for a loving husband.
I am feeling happy about connections I am beginning to make.
Life is good.

Tuscan-trees

wishing to create

BanyanTree

Yesterday (the day I should have posted this!) I went to an open-studio event put on by a group of artists that included my favorite client and his wife. Their art was really lovely and I wished I was feeling more flush with cash than I am right now (wish my client was giving me more work at the moment!) so that I could buy a piece.
But what really knocked me out was the art of a friend of theirs, a woman who had recently had a stroke and lost the use of her right hand -- her dominant hand. All of her art -- and it was really luminous and beautiful pastel work -- had been created using her left hand. What an inspiration. Some people might have given up after losing such an indispensible tool, but she was still so driven to create that she fought to learn how to use her left hand to do it. She struggled with making her pieces look the way she wanted them to, but they were absolutely beautiful. And there were so many of them. Amazing.
I have so many excuses for not creating: too busy, not talented, don't feel like it right now...but creating is something I really want to do. What flimsy excuses those are.
The colorful drawing above is by my 10-year-old daughter, Allie. She doesn't spend much time sitting down and drawing for fun anymore, but she does have mandatory art classes in school, so she can still create beautiful work. I guess I just need to enforce some "creativity time" on myself.

being a tigger

Flor-tree

I had a little downtime tonight and decided to clear off the Tivo by watching some things I'd recorded. One was "Crazy Sexy Cancer," by Kris Carr. Tivo had decided I only needed one hour of it, so I still haven't seen the second half. But I really liked watching Kris and her go-get-em attitude about living with her incurable cancer.
The other show I watched was the Oprah episode featuring Kris and Randy Pausch, who did the "last lecture" I had seen on YouTube a few weeks ago. He is dying of pancreatic cancer but such an upbeat person with such a great outlook on life.
Wow, do both of those people make you think. One of Randy's philosophies is that you have to decide early in life whether you are going to be a Tigger or an Eeyore. I really want to consider myself a Tigger, but I have really been shlumping around like a big fat Eeyore lately. Life is short and I really need to embrace it more.
I resolve to be a Tigger!

what have i done?

Okay, on a whim I just signed up for NaBloPoMo. That means I HAVE to start posting every day. What in the world am I going to talk about? Guess I will have to come up with something!

dwindling halloween

Jackos

Happy Halloween. For the first time, only one of my girls wanted to go trick-or-treating. The other one stayed home to hand out candy. While it was kind of nice not to have to put together two costumes, it does feel kind of sad to be moving out of an era!

more scenery

We spent the last several days in the mountains and Colorado's western slope area. Beautiful scenery and fun family times. We were surprised by a couple of our exciting October snowstorms, though -- a little one on the way there and a big one the day we drove back. The drive back was a little harrowing, and we had a close call on a slippery hill as we approached a major accident, but managed to escape injury or damage (we did get tapped on the back bumper by the guy behind us). It could have been so much worse. People were sliding off the road right and left. Luckily it was in a flat valley, not on the side of a cliff.
I have spent the last half hour trying to get World Series tickets, but with no luck. We go to a couple of Rockies games a year, and it would be awesome to get to see them play in the World Series. We figured it would be a long shot to get through online and get tickets, but we'll enjoy watching it at home too. [Just found out that almost no one got tickets due to massive numbers of people trying to get them at once, so we may have another slim chance to try again!]
I notice, looking at this photo now that I've posted it, that it is demonstrating the effect of the new problem I've been having with my camera -- the retractable lens cover doesn't always open all the way, right away; hence the dark corners. Oh well.

nothing but photos

I have been really busy this week with work, but I wanted to post a picture I took this weekend during our last camping trip of the season.
Nothing else to say at the moment really...time to get back to work!