Restoring Balance...

Yesterday was discouraging, hectic, productive, inspiring and exhausting all in one. This morning, after getting the girls on the bus in the nippy cold of the morning, I decided to grab my camera and head down to Mapleton Park right at the end of our street.

Half of my Fine Arts degree was spent carving lines into metal plates and the other looking through the lens of a camera. I needed to restore the balance that you can only truly find when you try to capture the world around you through the composition of your photo, wait for the right light and then hold your breath as you push the button.

It was excellent therapy!

First, I stumbled across the weeds along the path, transformed into fairy plants by the coating of frost from last night. It brought out a delicate beauty that we usually ignore as we are hauling weeds out of our garden or trodding on them when they invade a path.



As I drew closer to the lake, I began to see the first hints that I was in for something truly spectacular... one of those magic moments for a photographer when light, colour and temperature combine to produce something truly amazing!



The lake was covered with a fine mist in the crisp morning. As I slipped off my mittens each time to take a picture, I was aware of how biting the air felt on my fingers. My fingers and toes are almost always cold unless it is summer time. This morning they ached in the cold. The air nipped at them as if to say “Hurry! Gather what you need... the cold is coming!” A red squirrel chided me as I stood beneath his tree to take this glorious shot of the perfect stillness before me.



The minute any human stands still near the lake, the local ducks think that this means feeding time. All of the shots trying to catch them landing on the pond were blurry, but I did like this one with the rings around each duck as they headed towards me quacking hungrily. Sadly, my pockets had no cracked corn to feed them.



I rounded the lake, taking a break to slip my hands back inside their mittens to thaw for a bit. My friend and I love to walk the trails of this park and we can do the 6 km loop in less than an hour. This morning was not about speed or exercise. It was about slowly letting the tensions of yesterday, the worries about remembering everything for Toronto, the aches in my body, the need to run at a crazy pace... I tried to let all of that twisted energy ripple out from my centre and fly away on the wind. Deep lungfulls of clean, crisp air reminded me how lucky I was to be able to have such a haven at the end of my street. We humans are a part of the world around us and sometimes we forget to truly see the places we inhabit.

One of my favourite paths lay before me, transformed by the early sunshine into a splendid example of Sunshine and Shadow. The Amish knew how to work both light and dark into their quilts... the bold colours standing out even more against the stark blacks and greys of the other fabrics. Each day of our lives can hold both the light and the dark. I loved how the path seemed flanked by sunshine on the left and shadow on the right. What matters is that you walk the path and take the adventures that life offers you.



Rounding the other side of the smaller pond, I looked back to see an almost alien landscape as the mist swept through the rushes where the ducks usually hide their nests in the springtime.



The ducklings are all grown now and the urge to test their wings on a longer journey must be growing inside them as the days grow cooler.



The rushes themselves are pillars of fluff and seed now, the smooth brown that I loved to pat as a child have exploded into clouds of softness. I wonder what a nest lined with such fluff would feel like and can almost imagine a squirrel, chipmunk or field mouse nestled warmly in a den lined with bulrush down as the winter winds swirled about outside. My fingers twitched with the urge to sketch a scene that my camera could never capture.

I headed home and just before I walked up the path leading out of the park to the end of my street, I saw this tree, standing alone in a blaze of colour against all the others around it.



It is OK to be different and not blend in. It is OK to speak out against something you know is wrong even if it is easier and less work to stay silent. We are called to be lights to others around us, to live fully in a blaze of wonder and glory that the mundane tasks of the everyday world can never truly snuff out.

This tree is saying “Tadahhh!” to the world in its moment of glory before all the leaves fall off for the winter and it waits, patiently for the chance to have that moment of glory next year!

Now that I’ve captured this morning’s ramblings, it is time to go draw some dinosaurs at my dining room table with my iPod on!

The math is simply SCARY!

Cross posted from my Multiply site...

One designer posted a link on a Picasa site for us to check out to make sure that our work wasn’t being abused or shared illegally. I spent about 40 minutes there (when I really should have been working on the kits for Toronto or the illustrations for the author I meet with on Friday) and picked 20 users at random to visit. Between them, they had 1,755 albums of illegal scans of patterns for everything from cross stitch and needlework to crochet, knitting, felting, tole painting etc.

Just 20 people had more than 10,000 illegal images there to share with others! It made me wonder why anyone would ever pay money for a pattern when there are more designs out there illegally than any stitcher could complete in 8 lifetimes!?

But if it is going to be so easy to steal and share a design, why would any new designer go into this as even a second job? If there are no new designers creating the next trends and exciting designs... won’t stitchers get bored?

I still just don’t get what the appeal of doing this is...

Home With A Sick Bunny!

Bethany was running a fever last night and had a rotten case of the sniffles, so I let her sleep in this morning and sent Erin off to school to write her provincial English Language tests. Now that my “bunny” is up and around, she seems to be quite a bit better. The fever is way down and I am giving her plenty of liquids. It might be the same head cold that had Nick and I feeling off last week. Needless to say, I will NOT give her any of the cold medication that we took!

This is one of the nice things about my job and working from home. Although I do end up rearranging my day a bit and taking more breaks (which is probably better for my hands anyway), I am able to be home when one of the girls is sick, unless it falls on a Tuesday. Even then, there would probably be another Weight Watcher leader who could cover for me.

I almost thought about getting her to help assemble kits for Toronto. My mind went a bit blank when I looked at the calendar and realized that in 10 days, I will be heading to Toronto for the Creativfestival! Child Labour Laws not withstanding, I thought it better to keep the germs off the kits just in case!

I am about to go wrestle packing beads into tiny bags over a cookie tray for the Beadpoint Basics class. This should be interesting.... I’m going to be sure not to sneeze!

Swimming Through Oatmeal...

OK... the title should have been the clue as to how today started out. Anyone who has ever stirred a pot of regular, quick-cooking oats and watched it turn from liquid with flakes in it to a thick, gloppy mass should just imagine trying to swim through a pool of that stuff!

No... I was not a contestant in a bizarre game show or radio morning show stunt.

Nick has been battling a bad head cold all this week and when my head started to feel like a balloon late yesterday afternoon, I decided that I didn’t need yet another reason to be deprived of sleep. Before bed last night, I took a dose of Tylenol cold medicine- the nasty blue tasting slime with “ice minty freshness”. BLEEeeeeaaaaah! Then, someone hit me with a sledgehammer.

Not literally, but the effect was the same. I should have done the math when Nick told me that it made him groggy in the morning. We took the same adult dosage (as everyone does) but he outweighs me by about 100 lbs.! What made him a bit groggy almost drugged me senseless, so what would it do to a regular 5’4” female?

The next thing I knew, the alarm was beeping and I fell back into a deep sleep dreaming that I was in a hotel room trying to sleep and all kinds of people kept walking in and out of my room. My poor brain was probably trying to cope! Nick came back in and woke me so that I could get out of bed and eat something before driving him to work. I almost asked him to bring the van down at lunchtime instead. For the first time, the dire warnings about not operating heavy equipment or machinery while taking said product made a whole lot of sense!

Luckily, breakfast and a quick dose of caffeine allowed me to safely drive him the 6 km to work and back being VERY careful! I WALKED the kids up to the bus stop in the misty rain (telling them that they needed more exercise... not that Mommy was a bit to drugged out to drive them) and got them safely off to school, then stumbled home and crawled right back into bed to sleep this off.

Another 3 hours disappeared into limbo.

Now I am up and mostly functional, though it still feels like I am swimming through oatmeal. Every now and then we need to check out of the world and give our bodies a chance to rest instead of running at a crazy pace, but I don’t think I ever want to do it in a “minty freshness induced stupor” again. Ever!

Next time, I just honk and snot all over my keyboard and still get some work done!

Coping Strategies For Canadian Parents

Indian summer is over. Yesterday morning’s cold, wet drizzle did not motivate my children to get out of their toasty, warm beds which now have the fuzzy, winter sheets on them. While there may still be a few warm afternoons, during which I can coax them outdoors, I have begun to plan my winter coping strategies. This is in everyone’s best interest, especially since eating my young is not an option like it is for some animals.

Before the snow comes, I will have my lines memorized:

“If you can’t find something to do, you can always tidy out your closet!”

“Back then, there were no Gameboys, DVDs and computers. We read books and used our imagination!”

“I could teach you how to do a load of laundry!”

“I know it’s cold out there, but Mommy used to play outside in -30 degrees when she was little!”

I will, of course, try to set the example to encourage them to enjoy the outdoors all year long... but when I can no longer feel my toes through two pairs of socks and warm, winter boots, I will make the ultimate sacrifice. I will go inside and get the hot chocolate ready!

GIVING THANKS...

It certainly was a weekend of making memories! Saturday morning we got to sleep in a bit because all of the swimming lessons and other morning events that keep us hopping most weekends were canceled. It felt VERY decadent to sleep in until 8:30 am! After that, we headed off for the day’s adventures.



First stop was the Moncton Farmer’s Market. I had a bowl of Cantonese noodle soup, Nick and Erin had oriental food while Mom, John and Bethany had sausages. We picked up some decorative gourds and other wonderful harvest treats before heading on to our next destination... the apple orchard!



The trees were bursting with crunchy apples. We arrived just as one wagon was leaving for the field, so we jumped aboard. Erin snapped this photo of Nick and I on one side of the wagon. It’s kind of nice to have a daughter that can take a decent photo now since I am so seldom in many of the family pictures.



I tend to be the one behind the lens instead of in front of it. John had never been to an orchard to pick apples and the girls were eager to show him all the fun.



Once our bags were bursting at the seams, it was time to catch the wagon back.



Back at the main area, we picked out some wonderful pumpkins to bring home. I snapped a picture of Erin amid some of them. It was really hard to chose which ones we wanted before they “ringed” them to determine the cost by sliding a wooded shape around the widest part of the pumpkin. This is done instead of weighing them. Hmmmm... I wonder if that could work for humans?



After this we headed a bit farther up the coast to show Mom & John Pré-d’en-Haut ( not Pray Don Ho as Nick likes to joke, but it is pronounced similarly) Bethany sat looking out over the Petitcodiac river long enough for me to capture a few shots. She’s not very happy with this year’s school photo, so it won’t hurt to have some backups.



We headed home and parted company for the afternoon so that each family could get stuff done. I tried baking pies for the first time in our convection oven and ended up sending poor Nick out to pick up more canned pumpkin as well as walking one whole questionable pie up to a cooperative neighbour who had volunteered to taste test it. Since it took almost an extra HOUR to cook before solidifying properly, I was a bit worried, especially since I was hosting my Mom & John as well as my mother-in-law and Jerome the next day. I am rather proud of how well I bake and didn’t want anything to go wrong! I’d like to say that I was completely calm about the whole thing, but since Nick was the one who had mixed said pie filling for me, I’m afraid that I was less that sweet about the whole “pie fiasco”.

Sunday morning I was up early because I’d had a rough night getting comfy again. Erin came down to help me stuff the turkey and learn how to make stuffing from scratch. We got everything ready before John and I left for choir practice and Nick tucked the bird into the oven before he and the girls left for church. After church we came home to check on the bird, set the table... and make 2 more pumpkin pies. I just wasn’t going to take any chances! Erin was a great helper and even made the cranberry sauce ALL BY HERSELF!


The little decorative gourds from the market made the perfect centerpieces around some candles...



We added the extra leaf in the table and fetched a few odd chairs to make enough room for everyone...




The turkey turned out perfectly and I was so proud that I snapped a picture of how beautifully it browned. Next time, I will remember to clean off the counter in the background. I’m certainly NOT Martha! LOL!



Even our hamster got his own special feast for the day...



Finally everything was ready. The second batch of pies turned out just fine and were cooling on the counter when I snapped this last shot of the girls waiting to dig in.



Today has been another hard day comfort wise, but I am just trying to cope until the tests in early November. I do plan to try to see my doctor before I go to Toronto to see what might help cope with the discomfort. Physio doesn’t seem to be making any difference and my tummy finds too much aspirin or ibuprofen a bit hard to handle. IF ONLY chocolate were a pain killer! Then again... maybe not!

The most important thing is to be thankful for all the blessing that come into our lives, even the ones that don’t seem like blessings at first. There is always something special to treasure about each day.

I hope that all of you had wonderful things to be thankful for this weekend, even if you aren’t celebrating THANKSGIVING here in Canada!

Being A Parent...

I meant to blog all week. Honest. I really did! Instead I found myself writing in my old-fashioned journal and getting caught up with myself. Tonight, I finally had time and realized one very profound fact....

If I hide in the basement long enough, I won’t eat my children.


Ok... so maybe they wouldn’t really be tasty, even with ketchup, but sometimes it is safer to be the grown up, count to ten and leave the room instead of turning into the growliest mother dragon on the planet!

As any parent knows, some days or nights (weeks, months, years?) are more of a challenge than others. It doesn’t help that I’ve been trying to run full tilt all week, doing physiotherapy, getting kits ready for Toronto etc. In the midst of this, my grumpy season hits a week early. I should have known something was up last night when I was baking cookies for Nick’s staff and suddenly needed to eat two chocolate chip cookies without so much as a pause for air between them.

Tonight, Nick went off with his staff to do a group bonding exercise on the new treetop adventure here in Centennial Park. It is a whole obstacle course of bridges, zip lines and climbing things in a course that takes over two hours to complete. The staff was going off to this adventure and I, being the noble mom and wife (and feeling way to icky to be on a zip line anyway) stayed home with my girls.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself until a few minutes ago when Nick called to say that he stopped the course early because he’d accidentally ended up UPSIDE DOWN about 35 feet in the air on one of the wires held by his harness and his carabiner! I would have screamed myself unconscious!!!

So maybe hiding in my office and listening to the girls laugh themselves silly over Lego Star Wars as they slash each other with light sabers is not so bad.

Now if I can just find some chocolate and red wine to go with my hot bath later!

Why There Are So Few Dragon Doctors....

I saw the GI specialist yesterday and sure enough, it means more tests. I get to glow in the dark for one and have something shoved up my dragon butt for the other! Lori-Ann’s comment made me think of how risky it would be to try to doctor and angry dragon and out came a doodle!

They’ve told me that both of those tests will be AFTER Toronto in early November, so part of me is very relieved that nothing is going to interfere with the fun of CSNF... but part of me is also not looking forward to being uncomfortable for that much longer!

I went for my first round of physio, prescribed by my doctor in case the pain is being caused by something deep and muscular. While it felt reasonably good at the time, all I can say now is OUCH! Nick insists that I will feel WAY better 24 hours after the little zappy electro-shocky treatment I had today, so I plan to hold him to that!

The fun today was going over the book dummy for Owen and the Dinosaur with the local author. Since few people are probably aware of the process of illustrating a children’s book and watching it grow, I may slap a few pages on the scanner or take some photos to share on this blog for posts next week.

The book dummy is actually one of the most creatively challenging parts of matching the pictures to the text because you are planning out what will go where, how the illustrations will compliment the story rather than distract from it and all fit into a set number of pages. Sometimes it can be a creative high to get things to work within set parameters. Somehow that is less intimidating that just staring at a blank page and having no limits whatsoever.

It poured rain all day today and I must say that the dragon was rather SMUG! I kept looking out at my dry backyard, the dry window well into my office and thinking “Yes, all the digging was WORTH IT!”

Waiting...

I finally pulled all my tomatoes off a few nights ago because we were getting frost every night and yesterday the temperature soared to over 27 degrees (around 80) which is almost unheard of this time of year! Still, they are ripening rather nicely on my window sill along with my little “Computer Mouse” carving that needed one ear mended with a bit of glue. That got me thinking about how we sometimes find it hard to wait until things are ready.

I had a great time launching Santa’s Dragon on Tuesday. Because You Count (our LNS) was packed and I got great hugs from SuperBeth and her husband, Doug, from Lori-Ann who is starting to share her own unique vision and designs with the world, from some of my favourite Retreat friends and of course from the whole caravan of stitchers who were on Sue Hillis’s fabulous stitching cruise! It was a fun day, but I totally forgot to bring my camera! Bad Dragon! Most people seemed to really like the design, so I hope it was worth the wait. It feels awesome to have the design out at last, even if I did have to correct a Dragon Oooops on the first batch of chart packs. I’d copied the back page from another pattern to get the layout right and the only thing that didn’t get replaced correctly on the back was the STITCH COUNT! Yikes!! Luckily, I’d written a blurb underneath about how stitchers needed an 18 x 24 inch piece, so Wanda from BYC came over to ask me why I was giving them so much extra fabric. She’s calculated things from the stitch count and caught the mistake. I hand corrected all the ones that had been purchased and put a “Dragon Oops!” beside them, so maybe that will make them collector’s items? LOL!

Yesterday was another rough day in terms of pain, so I tried to just do my work in fits and starts and wait for things to calm down a bit. Then I got a phone call from the specialist my doctor had referred me to and I am going for a first consultation today! Hurrah! I’d been warned that the wait could be weeks!! I really don’t care how much they have to poke and prod, I’d just like to get this figured out!

For now, I’ll just head upstairs and put the finishing touches on the rough book dummy for Owen and the Dinosaur because I meet with the author tomorrow morning. We should know by then whether or not the book will be 20 inside pages or 24.

Hmmmm... Two of those tomatoes finally look ripe enough to add to my salad at lunch! Yumm!

Leaving Your Mark...

We found this inukshuk on the beach a few weekends ago, made by someone else who’s been out to enjoy the wonderful scenery. As I searched for a photo to go with this blog entry, an image about marking one’s passage seemed appropriate.

Even the mention of the word cancer is enough to send most of us into a tailspin. Having many of the symptoms of ovarian cancer while my family doctor was away on vacation with no one to cover for her made the last 5 weeks a haze of fear and doubts. It was sleepless nights with enough internal pain to be uncomfortable, but never bad enough to justify the long waits in the Emergency department at the hospital. Not knowing what was causing the pain and other symptoms meant wondering if something was getting worse while they ran tests or left other things until my own doctor got back. I finally found out late Friday that my ovaries look fine. Now it’s on to more tests, some physio and slowly ruling out other things until they find out what is causing all this discomfort. Some of the stuff is so unrelated that I think my doctor is tired of trying to find a correlation. Perhaps it is actually several things going on at once...

Nick still insists that my warranty is running out... but so far, I haven’t smothered him with a pillow.

I read about Dani being so honest and sharing her own fears earlier this year through her blog. I know now what kind of relief you feel when something that scary is ruled out. I have other brave friends out there in cyberspace, at Retreat and in our congregation who had to face the much harsher news that they did indeed have Cancer. They have fought such brave battles that I am in awe. This past month especially has made me wonder if I would cope with as much grace, humour and courage as they have.

I have wandered in that greyness of uncertainty. I have struggled with computer codes and wondered if there would be a point to revamping the site at all if the news was bad. I have hugged my daughters more and prayed that I would have more time with them even as our whole city mourned the loss of four 16 year olds in a horrible car crash. I have drawn, journaled, stitched, prayed, wept, wondered, hidden and finally emerged on the other side of this experience with the certainty that it is NOT about how many days we are each given, but how we live each one to the fullest. It is about how and what type of mark we leave on the world around us and in the hearts of those we love.

It is still frustrating in this day and age not to be able to walk up to a computer screen, let it scan me and have it tell me EXACTLY what is wrong. Picture a Hal type computer voice...

“Eat some dark, leafy greens today, Jen!”

“Time to stay away from the cookie with your tea, Jen.”

“That walk you did is toning your legs rather nicely, Jen.”

“You should put ice on that bruise, Jen.”

“Your iron’s a little low, Jen. Time to go out for some liver.”

“I think you need a hot bath and some chocolate, Jen.”

“You’re thinking too much again, Jen. Go get some sleep!”

If I keep telling myself to just put one foot in front of the other each and every morning, and never go on a chocolate-free diet, I should be fine.

Ask Me If I Missed Them...

I meant to post this on Wednesday morning as soon as I skipped home from the bus stop. Tuesdays, I work outside the house, so Wednesday was really the first day of freedom to work in an empty house.

I’ve got 85% of the web site ready in iWeb to transfer over to Adobe GoLive next week and it is looking SO much better than the stuff I could design in the other programs! Unfortunately, I’ve also had some tests scheduled this week that took me away from the computer. After fasting overnight, I got down to the blood lab this morning for another round of bloodwork and the room was packed! I was there for over 2 hours and pretty faint by the time I left since my 8 hour fast was more like 12! I headed right for somewhere to get breakfast. Beware of Hungry Dragons!

Now our family is off to a wonderful overnight retreat on the coast. My kids can’t wait to roast marshmallows over the campfire tonight and hunt on the beach for beach glass tomorrow, especially with the weatherman calling for weather in the 28-32 degree range (84-88 degrees F) This may be one of the last nice summer weekends. I actually had to cover my tomatoes a few nights ago when we had a frost warming!

As much as I love my family, I much prefer an empty, quiet house in which to create... and skip about madly when no one is looking!

SO Close......

Happy Labour Day everyone!!

After months of wanting to just beat my head against the computer screen, I am filled with hope again! I have spent the better part of the weekend rebuilding my website for the 4th time this summer and patching it between two programs... doing the layout in iWeb which is more visual drag and drop (but limited in terms of customizing code since I don't have the newest version on my system) then reworking the files in Adobe GoLive which is MUCH more complicated than I first expected it to be but will have all the rollover features for mousing that I need the portfolios and new needlework sections to have.

I am still feeling slightly cross-eyed from more hours on the computer than my hands are comfy with... but it LOOKS so good. I just hope the code works as I start adding all the hyper links in GoLive so that I can get this up and running as soon as possible for all you patient Dragon Dreams fans.

Here’s a quick peek at the little dragon that will grace the stitching part of the site. Start thinking of a nickname for her... him... it... that’s one of the first contests once everything is up live. Don’t post them in the comments though or someone may steal your great idea!

Now, I need to dial my Canadian Idol votes in...

Wii Madness!!!

Ok.... so last week the Nintendo Wii was on sale at 3 major retailers here in Moncton last week and they were all having price wars with each other. We turned in all of our Zellers Club Z points and got $80.00 off the best price in town... so I talked the family into getting a Wii for my birthday next week.

Since we’re also going to be away next weekend at a church event, I talked them into letting me open my present a week or so early!

What a riot!! The girls and I spent the whole afternoon building our Miis and trying out the sporting games that came with the system. Then, when my Mom and John came for supper tonight, we made grandparent Miis for them.

We spent a whole hour playing Brain Academy as a family and my daughters ROCK!! I’m still the highest score in the family (the Dragon says ever so smugly!) but now after a bit of bowling and tennis with Nick, my hands hurt again.

I am typing this carefully in the basement while the upper floor shakes with Nick doing his boxing levels.

This is going to be GOOD CARDIO!!!

It Was Worth It...

I wish those who shared patterns illegally could understand just how much work goes into a design. It is over a year later than when I first hoped to release Santa’s Dragon and has been the most complicated design that I have ever created, as well as the largest.

Sore hands, late nights, fabric changes, braid colour changes etc. were all worth it when I walked into my LNS yesterday with the framed model and watched a bunch of stitchers gasp in delight.

Here for all you blog readers to see is the first peek at DD-98 Santa’s Dragon which will officially be released on September 25th when Sue Hillis and her cruise of stitchers jaunt into Moncton for the day while their boat is docked in Saint John. The bait of a wonderful cross stitch shop just an hour and a half away was enough for them to make the road trip. I can’t wait to meet some of them at Because You Count between 11:30 and 1:30!

Knowing that there were some people ready to steal this design as soon as it came out really made it hard to continue at some points when my hands and spirit were weary. Then I read a quote that spoke right to my very soul.

“Once you accept an artistic assignment from the great Creator, it’s yours. Nobody can take it away from you, unless, of course, you relinquish it. Nobody can duplicate your work because there’s no one in the world like you. They can imitate, but they can’t duplicate. Your work is born of your sensibilities, temperament, experience, emotion, passion, perseverance, attention to detail, idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. When you are authentic, so is your art.” -Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance

Pattern sharers may steal this design, but that is a risk that I have to be willing to take, even though what they are doing is WRONG. This design is one that I have wrestled with more than any other and one that comes from deep within. It is time to let it be seen by the world and hopefully be enjoyed by those who stitch it. I know it was worth it...

Now I just have to finish checking over the chart to make sure it matches the finished model. That’s one of perks and frustrations of being a designer that makes boo-boos as she stitches. If it still looks good in the model, I can just change the chart!

Moving Parents...

They’re here! My Mom & John arrived late Thursday night with their van loaded to the gills and the moving truck showed up at their new house this morning at 8:30 am! It was a horrid, wet day that made the job more than a bit damp for the moving crew. By 2 in the afternoon, the boxes and furniture were all moved in and Mom & John collapsed for a nap. Our family went over to bring Chinese take-out for supper and help unpack a few boxes. To say that the girls are giddy with delight at having them less than a block from our house would be a GREAT understatement!!

Having four of the eight grandparents (both Nick and I have parents who divorced and remarried) will be heaven for our girls, especially when I am away in Toronto in October at the Creativfestival. I just found out that that Thursday and Friday are holidays from school for the kids while the teachers have professional development sessions, so it would have been dicey to find a sitter!

Looking around at how many boxes of stuff Mom & John have really made me more determined than ever to get rid of “unnecessary stuff”. I think that this shall be my challenge for the next few weeks as I get my office back to rights once school goes back. I am sure that our church rummage sale could use more objects!

Yay! They’re here at last after a whole summer of house hunting, house finding and back and forths. Welcome Home!!

Best of Times...Worst of Times...

When it comes to opening lines for novels, one of my favourites has always been from Charles Dickens A Tale Of Two Cities which begins “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” How that has summed up this summer.

Our family visit to PEI was one of the highlights. My brother and his family jaunted over from Switzerland to join my Mom, my stepfather and our family in a 100 year old farmhouse right by the ocean.

We collected seashells, built a mermaid in the sand, boiled our own lobsters and made lots of family memories.



But somewhere along the line, I got bit by a few things...



And then things got a little dicey...



Thank goodness for modern medicine, potent antibiotics and bed rest! I have my ankle back, but we’re still running tests for a few things because deep down inside, I just don’t feel quite right or back to normal. I’m also having problems with my hands that has made drawing, typing and stitching very painful for the past few weeks. A scary prospect for an artist to say the least. It may be a left over reaction to one of the anti-inflammatories that they tried to bring the swelling down on my ankle... or the strong antibiotic.


Life marches on however and today the house is blissfully silent as everyone else is out the door for a few hours. I finally have the time, the energy and enough nimbleness of finger to blog again and try to catch up on e-mail.

First of all, thank you for the kind messages that flooded my inbox. Nick tried to keep ahead of downloading them for me when I found it hurt to hold the mouse. I’m sorry I kept silent and worried you, but for a few weeks there... I wasn’t sure what I was going to have to say. “The dragon’s foot needs surgery” or “The dragon’s claws aren’t working anymore...” were both incredibly scary prospects to even think about, let alone write about. But it did give me time for a lot of thinking.

Creativity is not just something that we celebrate with our hands... though that is one of the funniest ways to do so in my opinion. It also comes from our heads, our hearts and our lives.

I am still struggling with the codes to get the website to do what I want for the new look (partly because spending any great length of time on keyboard or mouse is still a bit hurt) but it is getting there. I am hoping that things will be ready after Labour Day, so one month late isn’t too bad. I know it will be a bit of a surprise for everyone to see the changes and to learn how Dragon Dreams is evolving a bit, but I think you’ll enjoy some of the fun!

In the meantime, I’m going to try to blog in small burst and start sharing new with the world again. Thanks for all the sympathy and patience!

Out of Commission For A Few Days At Least!

The timing on this is horrid... and so has my reaction been to some bugs on PEI. I got SO many bites around one ankle that my whole foot got swollen, hot and very red. I made it back to New Brunswick and they have slapped me on massive doses of antibiotics, anti-inflamatories and told me to stay in bed with my foot up to keep this from spreading! The doctor even drew a dotted line on my foot and told me to get to the hospital if the redness goes beyond that point...

So, I snuck down to post this, but I am going to be out of action for a few days. Sorry to all those of you waiting for the great unveiling. I will activate everything as soon as I can.

The Dragon Is Escaping!

Not that I haven’t been silent lately... but the Dragon is escaping from blogging and other work for a week or so while my brother is here visiting with his family from Switzerland. After all the family chaos of the past few months and all of the grueling home renovation projects in the last 2 weeks, I need some family time. I need to get away from my computer and go stick my toes in the sand. I need to watch a few sunsets and hug my niece and nephew a few hundred times before they go back so far away.

I’ve done a LOT of soul searching while I’ve been moving all that mud and sod out in the backyard. I’ve done a lot of praying lately about which step I am supposed to take next in this creative journey that is my life. Cross stitch remains a passion, but it just isn’t enough any more. I am SO tired of closing down sites, jumping through hoops to prove that my work has been infringed upon when a pirate has such an easy time creating the site in the first place. I am also very tired of sounding like a broken record in my blog.

When the site opens up again in August, I know that some people will be surprised and others will be disappointed. Nothing stays the same forever and I made myself a very important promise when I first began to design over a dozen years ago that I would be a POSITIVE force in the industry instead of a grumpy one. I have also realized that there comes a time when you have to take a stand and draw that line in the sand to say “This is WRONG!” It is sad to think that many of the honest stitchers out there are going to suffer when it is a smaller minority that have done such huge damage to our industry in the past 6 years... but I am going to find special ways to encourage those honest stitchers in different ways. That is what change and creativity is all about.

Please be patient with me over the next 2 weeks as I get away from it all before making some big changes. Enjoy the sunshine, finish up those craft projects that you’ve been neglecting and then check back with the Dragon in August for some fun ways to boost your creativity!!

She’s Grown Up So Much In Just A Week!

Friday morning we headed down to King's Landing Historical Settlement in Fredericton with Bethany to pick Erin up. She’d been down there since Monday morning as a Visiting Cousin where they are assigned to one of the family houses of the village, dress in period garb and learn activities or do chores from that era as well as attend school for 2 hours a day. I knew that it would be a wonderful, enriching experience for her... but I wasn’t quite prepared and how much she’d grown up and changed in just a week!!



King’s Landing is one of the most beautiful attractions in our province where you can watch history come alive all around you. We’ve been down several times with the girls as tourists and it was getting to hold the reins on a wagon ride back to the main entrance last summer that first got Erin interested in the Visiting Cousin program.



Bethany was both eager and regretful when it came time to go get Erin. She has missed her sister a lot, but she also enjoyed being an only child for 5 days! She and Nick posed for my camera on our way down to the Ingram Barn which also doubles as a theater.



When we dropped Erin off on Monday, we’d learned that she would be Erin Lint for the week, one of 4 daughters in the household. Friday, on our way to the barn for the 1 pm presentation, we decided to stop by the Lint House to see where she’d been working and eating her main meal each day. We arrived just as they were finishing up their meal and surprised both Erin and her “sisters”. In fact, the very first comment was “OH! So THAT’S why you’re so tall!!” as Nick and I stooped to avoid the stove pipe!

How much more self-assured Erin seemed at first as she moved about the room doing her chores and gathering her dishes... but then with a twinkle, a squeal and a hug, she didn’t seem all that different. She even managed to have part of her braid come undone and Mother Lint had to fix it for her before their performance.



Each group of the 21 children put on a small skit. They all took part in some period dancing, recited a poem that they memorized during their school time, introduced themselves in character and sang “God Save The Queen” together. After the presentations, we were given an hour with our children to tour some of the village that we hadn’t seen and returned to the Lint house to sample some of the baking Erin and her sisters had done that week. Here is the hearth where they helped cook the meals...



One of the houses had running water... but not theirs!



Some of the wealthier houses boasted beautiful pantries like this one...



Erin loved the archway in the hedge to the lovely garden behind the Ingram house...



Finally, we met up with all of the other Visiting Cousins as they gathered for one last treat. After a week of walking around the entire village on foot, they were given a wagon ride through the village back to their dorm to change back into this century’s clothes and say their goodbyes.



It was a wonderful experience for her. She woke each morning at 6:30 to do farm chores before breakfast, milked a cow, churned butter, gathered eggs from the chickens, dipped candles, wrote with a quill pen and ink, tried needlepoint and dying wool, helped prepare the main meal each day and do household chores as children of that era would have. She learned that potato bugs sizzle when you throw them into the fire, that weeds grow faster than crops, that sheep can get amorous, that baby pigs are adorable, that skirts rip at the hem if you step on them, that writing with ink and a quill pen is very messy, that there wasn’t really a ghost haunting one of the washrooms, that not having a watch or seeing a clock most days is not necessarily a bad thing and that she has made some wonderful memories that will last a lifetime.

I discovered that my daughter is spreading her own wings a bit and learning new things. I must remember not to hold on too tightly when it comes time to let her fly.

Stitch & Ditch...

Nick is away at a conference for a few days and I never sleep well when he is away, even when I am totally EXHAUSTED! Why has the dragon been so silent lately? Here’s what happened.

First of all, Mum and John did find a house less than a block from ours and have now gone home to pack like fiends. Yay!! By the end of August, they should be surrounded by boxes in their new house trying to decide where everything goes.

Secondly, I have been stitching my little claws off until very late most nights but there was a project that demanded our attention due to all the massive thunderstorms that we’ve had on an almost daily basis. One week ago, the storms were so bad that I actually unplugged all my computers. We woke up to a huge crash around 2 am and the whole sky was light up with almost continuous flashes of heat lightning and actual fork lightning. Nick’s school got hit that night and the ventilation system on the roof was totally fried!! The poor custodians have to wait to wax all the floors and do any painting or they will be absolutely stoned! As the lightning crashed around us, I remembered a statistic that said you were 10 times more likely to be hit by lightning that to win a lottery in your lifetime... and I had just purchased my tickets that night. I lay in bed thinking “I don’t care about winning the lotto- just don’t let our house get zapped!”

Because of all the torrential rains we’ve had, Nick and I decided that fixing the drainage problems in our back yard had just become top priority. While he finished the last few days of school, I dug up the old drain tile that we put in over a dozen years ago leading to our front yard and then extended it all the way down to the road.



Next, Nick and I found where the old drain tile curved around in the backyard so that we could add a T joint and the new drain tile to run around the whole perimeter of our back yard. The main idea is to catch most of the water trying to run into our yard from all the other properties (we are the low spot on Highmeadow) before it reaches that window under the deck that leads directly to my office!!

Nick was a trench-digging fiend on Tuesday before he headed off to his conference yesterday afternoon and managed to complete the trench all around the backyard. We bought the drain tile on the weekend and had it coiled up in our yard all ready to go.

This morning, I dropped Bethany off at day camp, picked up Erin’s knee socks that she will need to dress in period costume all next week at her camp and bought a nice floppy garden hat to keep me safe from the high UV index. Don’t I look stylish??



Erin insisted on capturing the moment before I got down to the tasks at hand.



First, I got the T joint spliced into the original drain tile with the help of our next door neighbour.



Then, the nice dump truck man deposited 4 tonnes of gravel on our driveway so that I could start placing the drain tile. What a big pile of rocks to move all by myself!!



The next task was to place a few inches of gravel, one wheelbarrow load at a time, along the bottom of the trench and check to make sure that everything was slanted the right way.



Luckily the breeze made it feel cooler than it was, but it was still hot, dusty work. I did 3.5 hours this morning and then another 1.5 hours tonight to get the trench base filled, the drain tile measured and laid and some of those trenches filled in for the next band of rain which may hit overnight.

By the end of the evening, I had the whole left side of my garden trench filled in with gravel over the drain tile.



I even got the back curve done where we will be extending that bed slightly once our loads of topsoil arrive. (Right now, my shoulders don’t even want to think about that!!!)



Of course, I still have plenty of work cut out for me tomorrow as I space and fill along the back of the property ...



and down the right hand side...



In the end, it will be worth it. This is what SWEAT EQUITY is all about. I am also going to have cut biceps and shoulders worthy of She-Hulk by the end of this gardening adventure!

I kept a little tally with rocks for every wheelbarrow full of gravel that I moved today. Those tiny rocks don’t seem to do the sweat justice.



But, as I headed in to shower yet again and get the girls to bed, it did seem that the pile of gravel was a bit smaller than it had been this morning. PLEASE tell me that it looks smaller!?!!



Time to take a few ibuprofen and tuck myself into bed! I don’t think I could hold a needle tonight if I even tried!