awareness

some days, i just wait.

i do stuff, i move around, i take rides 

but i know i am waiting.

for inspiration...

for a moment that turns the day from mundane to meaningful.

i am not always patient.  

but if i stay engaged and aware, 

i am always rewarded.

love...hate?

i have had a love/hate relationship with fall over the years.

it is a time of glorious but fading beauty 

and it makes me tense, to some degree...

i feel pressured to appreciate it all before it goes away.  

nature can be a tough teacher...

time and time again, it makes me understand and appreciate THIS moment...

today. 

right now.

i don't want to miss a thing...

and at the end of the day,

i learn again, deep down in my soul,

that even though this too shall pass,

the wonder that is winter 

has a beauty all it's own.

and that, too, shall pass...

looking at 60

there are eleven more months of being 59 yrs old.

God willing, that is :)

i want to live deeply and fully for these 11 months. 

my plan is to develop new habits that make this part of my life all that i dreamed it would be.

my twin sister and i have a facebook page called looking at 60.

as we come across anything that helps us look at 60 with new eyes, we put it on there.  

our goals for this year are simple

we want our last year as 50-something to be the year of the Good Stuff. 

 

What is Good Stuff?

1 - Do Good... volunteer, donate, give back, pay it forward, feed the birds, donate coats....
2 - Play... in the snow, poker, Frisbee, kickball, pool/darts, go bowling... participate, not spectate.
3 - Appreciate... buy bouquet. watch the birds. walk in the rain. go to sunrise. taste-touch-smell-hear-see... 
4 - Be Bad... say yes instead of no. take a cab to a bar, sleep naked, drink beer for breakfast, trespass, share a sin LOL 
5 - Leave a Legacy. teach someone something, make a difference, touch a stranger, share The Adventure List, gather momentum...

                                              here's to Looking at 60, may it be all and more than we hoped for :)

 

hellooo november :)

today is my mom's birthday, she would have been 84 yrs old.

she died of lung cancer 11/13/08 and I miss her terribly every day.

when she died, my sisters and I divided up her plants.

I have one of her Christmas cactus plants.

and in honor of my mom's birthday, it has this beautiful flower today

:)

 

this is also the first November since 1979 that I am not overloaded with retail stress.

I am going to see this month and all it's beauty :)

I am going to see the gray stuff,

the temperature drop, the election signs,

the wilting pumpkins,

the rusty dried leaves

and smile...

hellooo November, I hope to enjoy the hell out of you this go round 

:)

one more image to add -

I bought an annual for the front step this spring, and it barely made it through the season.

I brought it inside a couple of weeks ago and it now has a few buds!

it feels like an omen, a message of new life...

:)

so hellooo November :)



i took a break...

I am not sure why I took a break.

I am not even sure what I took a break from, or what I did on my 'break'.

but I definitely was gone a bit.

 

spring and summer were busy and we loved it. 

retirement was confusing but enjoyable.

 

 

September was more painful, for sure. 

September actually hurt. 

 

my brother in law moved in with us, which was rough on everyone. 

he didn't want to be here, we preferred our lives as they had been,

but he needed help and we all knew it.

 

 

my brother and his wife decided to move away, far away...

all the way from their maine/cape cod homes in the northeast USA to southern California.

it's good for them but sad for me...

they were a big part of our cape cod lifestyle

and we missed them long before they actually left.

 

it was a lonely time.

 

I have a hard time looking at the pictures I took because I was so profoundly lonely.

 

 

 

but October has been better.

my brother in law has found some housing back in NY where he wants to live.

my brother has moved on but I have traded sadness for gratitude.

I am lucky to have had a few years of hanging out together at the cape;

it's more than I would have had, if we hadn't bought a house at the cape too.

so my heart is healing.

 

 

joey and I have been able to spend some time enjoying autumn together.

we lost us-time in September and it felt like we lost everything.

but as leaves fall and the outside world changes,

so does our inside world.

and we will find a beauty in the new season too,

as long as we're together...

 

 

home again...

I got to spend a few days in Connecticut this week, which was wonderful.

can you miss a road, a tree, a fence?  yup, you can...

good to be home for a bit :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love this place and will miss it greatly when we move...

until then, I hope to appreciate every little thing,

not only the look

but the feel...

winter vacation...

i needed a vacation bad.   my sister needed a vacation, also bad. 

key west wasn't an option this year. 

so we went to cape cod during one of the worst cold spells in years. 

it was utterly perfect :)

 

we sat on our couches in our soft pants,

with our laptops, and worked - or played :) - with stuff. 

pictures for me, etsy/facebook for her...

it was a week of art

and snacks and beers

and fires in the fireplace

and hgtv (or the bachelor, or american idol)

and sunrises in the snow and rides to the beaches

and dinners at some of our favorite restaurants... o m g.  

who needs the heat from the sun

when there is good company and hours for putzing?? 

it.

was.

PERFECT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we could not have asked for more...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

explore...

my word for 2013 is explore...

i am excited about it, it already has made an impact and it feels like it could make me stretch in a lot of different ways this year...

on friday morning, i went to the sunrise at the river like i do as often as i can.
i feel like i have photographed every bit of this little road along the river,
yet it calls me back day after day, season after season...

friday, i purposely 'explored' different angles,
and played with my macro lens.
i drove through the field instead of staying on the road, exploring a different section of the floodplain.  all in all, a great friday morning,
thanks to my new word...
 

 

 

 

then, on saturday morning, when i was driving to the river,

again the word 'explore' made its impact. 

i turned around and drove AWAY from the river,

and explored somewhere different for the sunrise.

i used to go to different places all the time but so fell in love with my secret river road that i've spent easily six months going there almost every day. 

by exploring some place different, two days in a row, i found beauty i was missing.

 thank you, my new word-for-2013,

you already are more than i could have hoped for...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

some images were enhanced with snapseed, some with kim klassen's textures....