Bubbles, Alison, and Ava Jeanne leave the hospital to begin our lmulti-generational together! (Note the beautifully smocked – if I do say so myself – dress Ava Jeanne wears home. The bonnet Ava Jeanne wears was worn by her mother when she came home from the hospital.
Sounds of
Tiny hands slapping watermelons
and joining in with applause
until she knows an A+.
Boats making their way
through the deep water of our backyard.
Birds melodiously conversing
with birds of different feathers.
Wind chimes singing a duet
with clacking palm trees to the tune of gentle breezes.
The feel of
Really cold ice on her tongue.
The tickle of peach fuzz against her chubby cheek.
Heavily mayonnaises potato salad
squishing through her tiny fingers.
Ephemeral bath bubbles on her arms
Ocean waves stealing the ground from beneath her feet.
Scents of
Roses and peonies.
Heavy hot air of the Lowcountry summer.
A watermelon busting open.
Bubble gum flavored toothpaste.
Seeing
Her mother’s face when she enters the room.
The vast ever-changing ocean.
Her bedtime bottle.
Slowly
slowly
Sometimes taking one step forward
and thirteen backwards,
The shroud of grief is pierced
at least momentarily
and she reacquaints me with
wonder
delight
and hope.
~~~~~~~
Notes:
~ Ava Jeanne is a year older now than in this photo, but the computer wouldn’t cooperate and upload the photo i want to use.
~ My mother took her last earthly breath last fall, and still I grieve. Hard.
~ This was written as granddaughter Ava Jeanne took her 2-hour nap this afternoon in my lap. I know, I know. I shouldn’t be rocking her at this stage . . . but one thing I know for sure: I won’t get a second chance to do this.
a trio of sparkly pink hearts embellishing the beautiful arrangement of flowers my daughter Alison sent on the occasion of my first anniversary of what she calls my Second Chance Day. Alison, a banker, ordered these flowers from one of her customers. I love that she supports her customers.
The post about my Heart Alert brought many questions on Facebook and behind the scenes – something that delights me because this is an important conversation about a serious women’s health issue that needs to be talked about. Here are the Questions and my Answers:
Q: How long did the diarrhea and nausea last?
A: Less than 5 minutes. It was like my body was stepping up its efforts to get my attention and get me moving toward help.
Q: Did you have any other warnings or was this the first and only clue that something was amiss?
A: There was an episode of the uncomfortable stretching sensation that woke me up 3 nights prior. I breathed my way through it and went back to sleep. Not one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, that’s for sure.
Q: In the comments on Facebook, Dana Boyle LaPointe asked this good question: Can you describe the stretching sensation . . . location? Anything else?
A: The uncomfortable stretching sensation was in the hollowed-out place at the base of my throat. (Where’s that World Book Encyclopedia with the overlays of the human body when you need it?!) It wasn’t on the left side of my chest where I put my hands when sending love to someone, and no pain or discomfort radiated down my arms. The discomfort remained localized at the base of my throat. You know those resistance bands used in fitness workouts? It felt like that. . . like 2 hands were pulling in opposite directions at whatever is in this place in my body. (Research ahead!)
Q: Did you go to Cardiac Rehab?
A: Yes, though I didn’t stay long. When I hadn’t heard from them in a month after my Heart Alert, I reached out to them. The hospital had given them an incorrect phone number for me. I signed up, went to orientation, and show up at the hospital’s gym, ready to go. I danced – I literally danced – my laps that day, so happy was I to be moving forward. I’d been afraid to walk (10,000 to 12,500 steps a day) or dance (every night at bedtime The Engineer and I dance to “Could I Have This Dance” by Anne Murray.) because nobody talked with me about whether I should walk or gallop back into my life. I asked the people supervising Cardiac Rehab and the head of the hospital’s fitness department for parameters: how much could I walk? What was considered a low blood pressure? High blood pressure? Any particular sensations I should be aware of should they appear? What was a good resting heart rate, and what was an alarming heart rate? I got no answers. I asked the cardiologist who directed me to ask them. Because it took us about 40 minutes to get to the hospital, because The Engineer had to tend to Baby Ava for an hour by himself, because I couldn’t figure out what the goal was for me and my recovery, and because we have a well-equipped fitness room at home (complete with treatmill, which is all there were having me do there – walk), I turned in my notice. I was gracious about it, explaining to them what I just told you, and thanked them for being there. I got no response. None at all. I have talked with others who went to Cardiac Rehab in different states, and most of their experiences were drastically different, and they recommended I find another Cardiac Rehab (there is none here).
Q: Of course I couldn’t close this post without sharing the question every member of my family – daughter Alison,son Kipp,daughter-in-love Marnie, and The Engineer each asked me in one form or another (after a respectful amount of time, of course): Did you see St. Peter? How ‘bout Lucifer?
A: Yes, these clowns are my precious family, and I adore them! Truthfully, it never crossed my mind that I might die. Not once. It has definitely changed the way I live, but the notion that I could’ve died didn’t land for a very long time, I guess because there was too much going on!
If you have questions, ask away! You can post them here in the comments, on Facebook, on Instagram (I’ll be posting there tomorrow. Some people don’t like seeing posts on FB and IG at the same time.) And you can always email me: whollyjeanne (at) gmail (dot) com
When The Engineer and I first married, I laid down a rule: last one out of bed made the bed up. One year ago today was the first day my rule was broken. By me.
I lingered in bed then took a shower and washed my hair. As I made my way back to make the bed, I noticed a tug of war happening inside my body in that hollow space at the base of my throat. Unlike the pain folks must have felt on the torture racks of ancient times, I felt only discomfort. Intense discomfort, to be sure, but not excruciating pain that would’ve granted those turning the gears at both ends of the torture rack names and other information they sought. I made a silent note of this unusual sensation, filing it away in my mental file cabinet under For Future Reference, pulling the bedspread up over the pillows. The decorative throw pillows never made it to the bed that day. When the diarrhea and nausea hit simultaneously, Brain and Bones whispered in unison This. Is. Serious.”
We’d only lived on the island a short while, and to that point, not a single visitor had been able to find us via GPS. That’s why I didn’t trust the EMT’s and an ambulance to find me, and I sensed I couldn’t afford such a lengthy wait, so Andy drove me to the ER, something I’ve since given many second thoughts. How awful, I think in hindsight, it would’ve been for him to watch me die in the passenger seat.
As we pulled into the ER parking lot, I uttered my first words, directing The Engineer to forget what the signs said and listen to me when I told him to park at the curb to the left of the entrance to the door. At that moment, I really didn’t care if we inconvenienced anybody especially since we’d left the door open for others, and there was plenty of room for other vehicles to get past us. “You need to take the lead, and you definitely need to fill out the paperwork,” I said as the doors opened to let us through, “and remember to say the magic word: heart.”
A very nice man in a blue shirt greeted us, and when he heard the word “heart”, he quickly moved Andy to a seat near the door to the exam rooms, and offered a seat to me in the gen pop area of the rather crowded waiting room. I ignored him and took a chair next to Andy.
In a very few minutes, a smiling peppy woman also dressed in blue stood before me. “Can you walk?” she chirped. “I can,” I told her, “but I don’t think I should.”
“Oh, it’s not that far,” she assured me, swatting at the air. “Come on. Follow me.”
I tried, but when we passed mile marker 27, I stopped, leaned against the wall, and asked if she had a wheelchair she could summon. “Oh, we’re almost there,” she assured me waving her hand at what seemed to me an endless hallway. “We’re turning right here,” and that made me feel more optimistic . . . until we turned and I looked down another endless hallway. I stopped again, and she let me rest a few minutes before urging me on. People were waiting for me. And besides, we were almost there.
I entered room 16, and sure enough, many people were flitting around preparing for me. I was helped into one of those fashionable hospital gowns and somebody helped me climb up into the bed. It felt really good to be off my feet.
Though I don’t think I ever got his name, the hospitalist on duty that morning was one of the kindest men I’ve ever not met. As the flurry of activity happened all around him, he remained calm, smiling, and he made sure he touched my arm or held my toes (which ever was more readily available), sending reassurance through his touch. His touch was my anchor in what was becoming a very stressful, scary time.
“Stemmy in 16, Stemmy in 16,” we heard over the loud speaker. I looked at Andy and asked “Aren’t we in 16?” “Yep,” he said. “That’s you.
Minutes later the flurry of activity slowed when someone said loudly “The cardiologist is here” and people chose one side of the room or the other as a smiling man stepped inside the door, rubbing his hands together in keen anticipation and announced “Not just any cardiologist. The BEST cardiologist is here.”
Now y’all need to know that my first job as a married woman was working as an administrative assistance for the CEO of a private hospital in Atlanta where I was quickly introduced to arrogant doctors. I can’t tell you how many times I grabbed a doctor by the top shirt button, pulling them down to my eye level, and looking into their retinas saying “The only difference between you and me is the classes we took in college.” But on this particular day, Dr. Smalheiser’s words registered not as arrogance but as confidence – just what I needed to hear before turning my heart over to this stranger.
Shortly after his arrival, I was whisked down to the OR – kissing The Engineer good bye at the door, making him promise to move the car then come back and wait for me close by – and the flurry of activity began all over again in what seemed like a small, cramped room. When I left that room, it was with 3 new pieces of heart jewelry (aka stents) and though tired, I had more energy than I’d ever known.
Bubbles, Alison, and Ava Jeanne leave the hospital to begin our lives together! (Note the beautifully smocked – if I do say so myself – dress Ava Jeanne wears home. The bonnet Ava Jeanne wears was worn by her mother when she came home from the hospital.
I spent 3 days in ICU and 1 day in the Step Down unit (forget the official name), and recovery was easy, effortless. Three days after I was released (1 week after my Heart Alert) I was back in the hospital as daugher Alison’s pit crew in the birth of my newest Sprite, Ava Jeanne.
Ladies, there is no checklist that I can find for heart attacks in women. I had no radiating pain, no elephant sitting on my chest, no intense pain. Just the uncomfortable stretching sensation and the briefest of brief diarrhea and nausea. Listen to your bodies and heed their warnings. If in doubt, head to the ER . . . by ambulance (though I have another story for you about that on another day.)
I call my event not a heart attack, but a Heart Alert because it did indeed get my attention! My daughter Alison calls today my Second Chance Day, and that makes sense, too. Anyway, I spend today – the one year anniversary of getting a Second Chance from my Heart Alert – creating my Vision Board for how I want to spend the next year and beyond with a side of creating the longest Daily Gladitudes and Gratitudes List ever. My friend Rainy and I call our Vision Boards “Explosive Blessings”, and honestly I need to add a room to the house – a great big room with blank walls to hold it all. Here’s to much life ahead of us all and more goodness than we can count. I’ll share photos when my board is complete. Do you have one you’d be willing to share with. me?
Cheers. Clink, y’all.
Right this way if you want to hear Jeanne read (Remember: she’s fluent only in English and Southern!)
I am cranky.
I need space (physical and mental).
And order.
In this morning’s First Light of Day journal, I ask what I want my life to be because that seems a good starting point. The question “What do I want?” echoes when it hits the page.
I need a reset button, something to take my mind off the current situation and set me back on the path of cheerfulness and optimism. The only thing for it is to plead with Mother Nature to wrap her arms around me and whisper sweet parables to my heart and something positive to think about to my brain.
The sun has come to call today, so I go outside for a walk and there, in the flowerpot now filled with dead stems that were once colorful blooms celebrating daughter Alison’s graduation from college in our home-held ceremony, I spy a daffodil stretching and rubbing her eyes.
How did that happen?
In July this pot was filled with ham and egg lantana, not daffodils. Daffodils are spring flowers; lantana thrives in the summer. Daffodils enjoy the cool shade; lantanas are happiest in the hot, full sun. I accept it as one of Mother Nature’s conundrums, something for me to ponder.
Now I may be delighted with the notion that everything happens for a reason all in its perfect time, I may giggle gleefully with magic, but The Engineer wants to know how and why things happen. Before I can stop him, he shoves the pot aside with his foot, and lo and behold the pot is sitting in the middle of a small daffodil patch. This daffodil – the only one blooming – who found her path blocked, found a way to keep growing anyway. By golly she was meant to stretch, reach, grow. She was meant to live, and live she would. She was, after all, put on earth to bloom, and she let nothing – not even a heavy pot of wet soil and dead (or dormant) lantana stems stop her.
The Determined Daffodil, now at home in a vase that belonged to my grandmother, the one I’m writing the book about.
She is not a victim, this daffodil. She doesn’t whine or wring her hands because her life is difficult and not at all the way she’d like it to be. This is one Determined Daffodil, and she chooses lightness and smiles and positivity.
I saved this image but not the info telling me who to credit for it. If it’s you, please let me know, and I’ll add.
Pop quiz: 1 introvert + 3 social butterflies = ?
As the resident introvert, hearing “shelter-in-place” sounds like paradise. To the social butterflies I live with, not so much. For me, self=distancing brings on the excitement of having large blocks of time to myself to create with cloth and ink. To the 3 extroverts, it means they have to go more than 2 minutes without interrupting me.
I was a stay-at-home mom, which in those days, was the equivalent of gum on the bottom of your shoe. At last I’m feeling some respect, though, as next generation family members have the choice made for them to be stay-at-home parents. “This is hard, Mom,” my son tells me. “How did you do it?” Wonder if he can hear me purring in response.
Every few days, I reach into my memory banks and sent my son and niece an email with “”low tech” activities they can do with children – things I did when my children were tots. (I am careful not to include any project requiring toilet paper.) I doubt they’ll use any of my ideas, but I’m itching to pull out the supplies and add a daily arts and crafts hour here at Camp Corona.
Creating Space in Our Togetherness
We – that would be my mother, our daughter, The Engineer, and I – have been sheltering-in-place since Tuesday 10 March 2020. You’d think by now we would have a daily routine, but in reality, not so much , though it’s not from lack of trying, and we are getting there. We spent Day 1 bringing beds up from the downstairs guest rooms and moving furniture in the gathering room to accommodate them. On Day 2 we went to the library to load up with books and to the grocery store. Day 3 we went out for supper because I expected the restaurants to close. We kicked off Day 4 with me inviting everyone into my morning sacred practice. We read a randomly selected Blessing from this book written by a talented woman and dear friend Ashima Sarin who is the daughter of a dear friend. Then we draw an oracle card or 3 from my decks and take a few minutes to take the wisdom into our bodies. I’m not sure Mother has ever seen or heard of oracle cards, and I’m not sure they resonate with her. So last night when I couldn’t sleep, I came up with the idea of writing quotes on slips of paper, put them in a container, and she can draw one of those out every day. I think she’ll enjoy that and find it more meaningful. (If you have favorite positive, uplifting quotes and are willing to send them, I’d be much obliged.)
Knowing the value of structure and accomplishment, Day 5 found me introducing the Chore Chart. (It also keeps one person from having to do all the work.) Community Chores are listed, assigned, and everybody has their own signature color to make finding their daily duties even easier. Knowing how important it is to do something for others, I asked Mother to call at least 2 people every day (something she’s taken quite seriously and enjoyed immensely) and daughter Alison to post at least 2 funny kitty videos on her facebook timeline each day (something she’s not done with any regularity). Everyone is required to spend at least 30 minutes outside every day, with their feet on the earth and fresh air in their lungs. The Chore Chart seems such an easy thing to me – and it would be if everybody would stay in their own lane. Mother is bad to do other people’s chores (usually without mentioning it to them), and daughter (who seems quite comfortable in overage teen mode) is bad to do none of hers. On Day 6 we set a time for breakfast (9:30 a.m.), declared lunch on your own every day, and supper at 6 p.m. We binge-watched Turn and are now on the second season of Downton Abbey. There’s some comfort knowing that at 6, we’ll eat the flop in front of the tv (all) and hand-stitching (me).
Today I will create personal Daily Do sheets for people to add their own tasks needing to be accomplished. Chores take about 1 to 1.5 hours each day, leaving plenty of time for reading and making. I do this because we need to keep as normal a life as possible and (perhaps mostly) in the spirit of self defense so I don’t have to remember and remind.
Other things I’m considering: weekly book club or maybe weekly book reports; daily arts and crafts; and a round of daily calisthenics.
Adjustments are required on everybody’s part. Our house is totally rearranged with stuff everywhere, and I am not one who handles clutter – visual or physical – easily. Mother and Alison are in our house not theirs, so Mother, especially, has to ask where everything is and learn little idiosyncrasies like how much laundry detergent to put in the washing machine, how you know if the dishwasher is on or not, and which light switch turns on the lights and which one turns off all the clocks, lamps, computers, and other things plugged into electrical outlets. Which reminds me: our first arts and crafts hour will be spent creating signs for rooms (occupied / vacant) and the dishwasher (clean / dirty).
Meanwhile in the Dissenter’s Chapel and Snug
Over the weekend, while others napped, I treated myself to some much-needed, much-enjoyed studio time. Cut up some shirts The Engineer no longer wears, and mindlessly put them back together. Now that I think about it, this kinda’ parallels our current existence: putting the discombobulated familiar together in new ways.
How About You and Yours?
How are you and yours? What’s keeping you sane? Be well, y’all. Check in when you can.
I revamp my abandoned 2014 attempt and a previous attempt at daily stitching that I can’t even find now into a version that will see me through to the champagne. I just know it will.
Evidence 2017, Day 2
Being an accomplishment-oriented girl, I like to track how I spend my life.
Evidence 2017, Day 3
I first ask myself: how do I want to fill my days, and the answer hasn’t changed significantly in the past 4 years:
stitching,
moving (as in moving my body through space – walking, yoga, exercise, etc),
writing,
mirthing (think: awe, wonder, laughing).
This year I add 2 things:
prospering (in every way a girl can prosper) and
connecting (as in with people, friends, family, strangers)
Evidence 2017, Day 4
Then I assign each a color. (There is a story behind each hue. I’ll tell you later.) stitching moving writing mirthing prospering connecting
Once that is decided, I make my way to the local thrift shop and purchase clothes in those colors to use as fabrics. Storied cloth, my favorite.
Evidence 2017, Day 5
I track everything in my handwritten journal, and each morning I look back at the day before, free-cut strips of fabric in the appropriate colors, then I turn my Improv Self loose to stitch them together into a 6.5″ square block.
Evidence 2017, Day 6
The method of stitching the daily blocks will change each month. For January 2017, I’m using wedges – something I’ve long wanted to try my hand at, but never made the time to try. (Wait’ll you see what the daily blocks will look like next month.)
Evidence 2017, Day 7
You might ask (I know I did) Why is there not a color representing The 70273 Project? The answer: Because The 70273 Project touches every part of my life, and every verb I want to have in my every day touches The 70273 Project. Writing? Multiple writing projects each day are for The 70273 Project. (Know anybody who wants a guest blog post?) Stitching? I stitch several blocks each day for The 70273 Project. Moving? I move so I can keep up with The 70273 Project! Connecting? Oh good lord, such marvelous connections are made daily because of The 70273 Project. You get the picture. Right or wrong, there is no separation between The 70273 Project and me . . . something we’ll talk more about later.
Evidence 2017, Week 1
Each week will be stitched together, then each month, and finally . . . the year.
One thing that eludes me right now is how to finish the back. Ideas?
today’s a day
when we remember,
and in that remembering,
we’re put squarely
in touch,
undeniably
in touch,
with our own
mortality.
we know
we’re all gonna’
die,
not a single one of us
is exempt.
we know
we’re gonna’ die,
but we do not know
when
or where
or (regardless
of circumstances)
how.
if you’re reading
this,
you’re alive.
you haven’t died,
though your clock
is ticking.
so, scoot.
get on out there
and live –
really live,
treating us all
to your very own
gorgeous genius
and genuine glory.
and hey,
while you’re at it,
why not stop,
every chance
you get,
and notice,
appreciate,
pay tribute to
somebody else’s
beauty?
they shine,
you shine,
we all shine,
even though
we might never
know why
or who to thank.
i rounded the curve
and spied a gorgeous sculpture
in the middle of the greening field.
i blinked
and the captivating sculpture
became
a mule
grazing.
from captivated and elated
to
disappointed and deflated
all in the space of
a few hundred feet.
then i remembered
something read
years after i left
pews and classrooms . . .
michaelangelo
said he created his
david
by removing all that
was not david.
and just like that
i was once again
captivated.
///
i’ve been pondering lately what it means to think independently.
and to value feeling as much as thinking.
and every now and then, i wonder what my life would be like
if i hadn’t been so strongly conditioned
that science rules,
that there is only one right answer,
that a mule eating is merely a mule eating
and not a work of art.
as a little girl, i loved dressing up in frilly socks and ruffled panties and petticoats that made my skirts stick out like a tabletop. i liked patent leather shoes and dancing in the grocery store and creating private nests for myself where i could get away from it all and create. one thing i did not like was getting dirty. dirt just did not interest me at all . . . which for some reason, disturbed my mother to the point that one day as i sat quietly working on a new book, she picked my 5-year-old self up, carried me outside, and sat me down – ruffles, lace, petticoat and all – in the middle of the biggest mud puddle she could find. she still loves to tell that story, and i declare she sounds embarrassed that i didn’t like to get dirty and smugly satisfied when she gets to the part about unceremoniously plopping me down in the mud. i can just see her wiping her hands and laughing as she walked back to the house to watch me from the window.
now i may not have liked mud then (and i still don’t like to get stuff under my fingernails, so i’ll not be making mudpies any time soon), but in some ways, mud is kinda’ growing on me. not that i want to spend time in a mud puddle, mind you, but i do like holding clay in my hands and shaping it into something or other. and i love not having a clue what i’m going to write but picking up the pen anyway and just watching the words spill out on the page.
my precious friend and writing partner julie daley (jewels, i call her with very, very good reason) recently asked me a most excellent question: what does writing from the feminine look like to me? that question captivated me for days, and the mud story kept tugging at my sleeve pointing out that writing from the feminine can sometimes be muddy. muddy in the sense that i don’t always know where i’m going when i start to write. it’s not always clear, and there’s not always an outcome – intended, expected, or otherwise. when i write from the feminine self, i write from (including myself, my vulnerabilities, my feelings) instead of about (reporting, answering the 5 questions of who, when, where, what, and why).
when i write from the feminine, it’s more about process than product, and quite often, i don’t even know what i have till i get to the end and can see patterns and threads and word crumbs. when writing from the feminine, i write from the body, and often there’s a lot of space in what i write – space enough to crawl into and get comfortable while things incubate. writing from the feminine, it’s more about following than questioning, intuition than the cognitive. writing from the feminine uses dreams, metaphors, and imagery, relying on intuition and an inner knowing that can’t always be explained (nor does it need to be, actually) more than giving ink to what others think and write and theorize.
. . . as i sit here writing this, my resident owl serenades me under the glorious full moon, and i swear she’s urging me on, telling me that writing from the feminine is natural and needed and even necessary . . .
you know how when cars get stuck, little flecks of mud go everywhere as the tires spin their way forward and out (“out” if all goes according to plan, anyway)? when writing from the feminine jeanne, little flecks (and sometimes big flecks, too) get slung out, often without segues or outlines or even capital letters. there’s seldom a nice, tidy, linear structure, and often as not, there’s not even an
No Academy Award was ever more of a surprise or more appreciated than the various honors and awards i’ve received from my friends in the ethers over the past few weeks . . .
Tracy Brown and Gordon Simmons allowed me to sponsor the Daily Gratitude Journal over at Happiness Inside where there are multiple ways to discover, well, happiness.
Susan, Abigail, and Noel dropped a Stylish Blogger Award on me, and with that award comes a request to tell seven things about yourself . . .
1. I am named after my uncle (my daddy’s brother) who was killed at age 18. My mother and daddy met in third grade in a most unfortunate eraser-to-the-back incident while doing long division at the blackboard. It may not have been love at first sight, but they dated each other exclusively throughout high school, then enjoyed over 50 years of marriage . . . except for that one weekend in high school when a little spat found Daddy taking their classmate, Jean, out on a date. When Uncle Gene was killed, Mother saw a chance to solidify the affection of her mother-in-law, but oh the dilemma when her firstborn turned out to be female. G-e-n-e, short for Eugene, is a male, so that wouldn’t do. And she didn’t want to go through the rest of her life being reminded of That One Awful Weekend, so Mother tinkered around with various spellings until she decided on J-e-a-n-n-e.
2. I met my sinuses while flying the wind tunnel in Denver. It was fun, though – the wind tunnel not the sinuses.
3. As a child, I loved potato chip sandwiches.
4. I still don’t drink bathroom water.
5. I don’t wear a watch – haven’t for years.
6. I don’t like strawberries . . .
7. Or tomatoes.
~~~
“I need 5 more quirky things about me. I’m struggling here. Can you think of anything?” I asked my husband.
In less than 5 seconds, Hubby rattled off all sorts of things to me (almost before the question mark was out of my mouth). “That’s enough,” I told him. “I have my 7.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Cause I was just getting warmed up.”
~~~
While I am loathe to thank my husband, I am not at all hesitant to say Thank you again to these lovely, talented folk who have seen fit to bestow a little spotlight on me, though I deliver it red-faced with embarrassment for my tardiness.
here ‘n there