This past week has been filled with medical emergencies of one kind or another. Not mine, but those I love. So far everyone is either stabilized or we hope they will be soon, for which I am grateful. So what better way to respond to the fear that comes with people we love going through medical horrors?
Silliness and laughter.
This one from my mother (I always love getting the things my mother sends) is more sweet than silly. I’m so impressed with this little girl who clearly has Celtic blood running through her veins! Have I mentioned that my husband descends from Vikings? Not the war waging, marauding, raping and pillaging ones, but the farmer, seafaring adventurer, music and dance lover ones. Can you pick? I just did. And anyway what do the celts have to do with the vikings, you might ask? Well, probably other than culturally influencing each other, intermarriage and the like, not much, but this is the way my brain works. Welcome.
And then there are these photographs that my sister-in-law sent, which are just too funny and fabulous.
In another life I want to be a travel photographer so that I can have animals climbing all over me. It’s important to clarify – non human animals, like a cheetah sidling up to me or a tiger cub or a baby gorilla… Okay, whatever.
For those of you who’ve followed my Travelogue vlog, the following conversation will make complete sense, for everyone else maybe not so much…
“Did they take blood?” I asked.
“There’s no blood test to see if you have cyanotoxins?” my husband told me.
“How’s that possible? They should have taken blood.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered because there’s nothing that can be done if I do have an infection.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, even though I do not hold a medical degree.
“Sunburn and a torn ligament,” he replied.
“I have one word for you… “
He said nothing.
“Chartreuse,” I said. BOOM!
And so it goes. My poor husband. Thankfully it wasn’t anything worse. The torn ligament will heal over time and the sunburn, if in fact that really was what was causing his swollen, angry red ankles, has already dissipated.
In other news our flight home went off without a hitch. In fact it was as good a flying experience as one can have in these crazy times we live in, pandemic and all.
I gave a workshop the day after we returned home and am giving the Advanced Dorset Button Workshop this coming Saturday. As I will not be offering this workshop again, take it while you still can! If you want to sign up for it, do, there’s still space. We will be making Dorset Buttons like this one:
Cherry Blossoms
And this one:
Next week I am giving my The Basics Workshop, which I have also made kits for.
X-mas Came Early
And this one:
Summer Lilacs
In other words, when you sign up and opt for the kit, you will receive everything you need for The Basics Workshop.
And finally I’m going to end with this adorable video from my mother, because Mom’s videos are always a great way to end a post or anything else, for that matter. ❤️
The Dorset Button Workshop, which is for those who’ve never made a Dorset Button or do not feel entirely confident with making one yet, is this Saturday! There are still some spots available, so don’t hesitate in signing up as I will not be giving this workshop again. We have a lot of fun and I demonstrate and go over all the different places where you might run out of thread and how to attach a new thread, how to wrap the ring, how to center those spokes, how to make the center and then we veer off and add some other things and stitches to the traditional Dorset Button. By the end of the workshop everyone will have made at least a couple of them.
A Dorset Button with Beaded Drizzle Stitches
For those of you who’ve been following along with my husband and I, we are leaving for Las Vegas today and will be flying home tomorrow just in time for my Dorset Button Workshop. Don’t forget to sign up!! I will be sending out the link later and for those who sign up in the next 48 hours, I’ll send out the link no later than Saturday morning.
Traveling is an encapsulated version of life. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people that greeted each day with their arms wide open. Someone once said or maybe I read it somewhere, I can no longer remember – if you want to be a _____________ person, then act like that person. In order to be the kind of person who greets each day with open arms, then act like a person who does that. Which means a healthy dose of gratitude, being present, seeing the upside to each moment, having compassion and the ability to see the humor in almost any situation. And then making the decision that whatever is going on, is best faced with open arms. It’s a kind of practice really and, for me anyway, requires a degree of vigilance as well. Also laughter. Did I mention the laughter part?
This has been an amazing trip. We did push ourselves, but I wouldn’t have done it any differently. Okay maybe suggested to Richard that he wear socks when we did The Narrows, but honestly who knew to suggest that? Not me, anyway. I didn’t wear any socks and was just fine, so…
After a bumpy beginning we are now in full travel mode as in we-have-to-cram-as-much-as-we-can-into-each-day-or-we-might-miss-something. This is how R and I travel. We are the same in this way and as a result we travel really well together. Even when things go awry, and they almost always do, we still keep going, joyfully, yet determined. We are very determined. However we have been forced to slow down quite a bit because of the lacerations on R’s feet brought about on our 3rd day slogging over slippery rocks in the river bed that makes up The Narrows. If any of you are travel bugs and want to see a day to day video travelogue of our adventures, I made up a playlist on my Youtube Channel, A Travelogue, but will add the videos below.
Day 1: Getting to our destination. Spoiler alert – it was a rough beginning.
Day 2: Discovering the unexpected, and the reason we love traveling.
Day 3: A great adventure!
Day 4: Exploring and taking it easy, which for us means we still pack a LOT into the day!
Day 5: Slot Canyons and a small detour.
Day 6: More detours, kittens, yes I just said that, and getting back to our base. Video will be posted tomorrow morning.
Day 7: taking it easy, ie recalibrating. That’s today. Who knows what today will bring!?
The whole thing about traveling, in my experience, is that the most wonderful things happen when I’m able to be open to them, whether that’s meeting interesting people along the way, finding little caves to explore, the glorious feeling of seeing a vivid blue/green striation amidst grey beige rock, the massive and majestic rock formations that are everywhere you look in this part of the world, that vivid pink flower on a cactus in an otherwise arid landscape, the list goes on and on.
Inevitably unexpected things happen that force us to change our plans. When we went to Iceland, it was my shattered elbow. We didn’t let it stop us, but we did have to recalibrate a bit. On this trip it’s R’s lacerated feet. We’re having to slow down and not do quite as much as we had planned. In the end we come face to face with our own frailties and mortality as human beings. This feeling is what drove us to take this trip now and not wait any longer. We aren’t that old, but we’re not that young either. We figure we have so many places we still want to see on this planet of ours, we’d better take the opportunity to do as much as we can, while we still can.
Adventures are never smooth. That’s why they’re called adventures, though this was not what I was thinking during some of the more challenging moments yesterday as we embarked on our trip west. It began with a shock to the system when we arrived at the airport expecting curbside checkin only to find there wasn’t any and then we saw how many other people were also traveling. No more stories of planes half-full, breezing through security because everyone was staying home, no this was more like “Christmas came early”.
We walked over a mile through the maze that now constitutes a TSA line. Luckily we had left our house earlier than we’d planned, because it took us over an hour just to get through security. Our plane was boarding by the time we found the gate. Grateful to have made our flight we took our seats. The flight was packed, the airline personnel seemed particularly stressed or maybe it was just that we hadn’t flown in over a year, so the whole experience was like being punched repeatedly in the face.
I was determined to drink tons of water with the hope that I’d stave off any headaches, however this plan failed miserably. So there we were sequestered in airplane seats that I swear were even narrower than when I last flew just a year and a half ago, wearing masks that steamed up our glasses and added to the feeling of claustrophobia and general discomfort. Am I complaining? Yes. Yes, I am. This was supposed to be a funny bit about the perils of traveling. Well, let’s see if I can recalibrate… Nope. It was basically like signing up and paying quite a bit of money to be tortured for 4 hours. In addition my plan to avoid getting a headache by drinking gallons of water failed miserably and so in addition to having to pee every 15 minutes I also felt as though my head was going to explode and I began to feel nauseous.
I could go on and on, the car rental turned into another “adventure” and I put that in quotes because the whole idea of an adventure is that it’s supposed to have elements of fun. No? Okay, whatever. Suffice it to say, there were shuttle busses involved, more long, long, long lines, endless waiting, waiting, waiting, lack of staff everywhere to accommodate the hordes of people all of whom had the same, increasingly seeming bad idea as we did. “Let’s go have an adventure!” Well, not so fast bucko. Maybe we should rethink this whole “vacation” idea.
And then we finally got to the car lot and things became downright comical. First of all we couldn’t find the car, nor could we read the woman’s hand writing who’d written or told us or both (who can remember at this point?!) where the car was. Finally we found it, got in and then couldn’t figure out where the gear shift was. Oh, right it’s that little row of buttons under the radio. What?! Oh and the window wipers? They’re touch sensitive so every time my husband went to push one of the buttons to make the car move the wipers would start. How does one turn the wipers off, one might reasonably ask? Who knows. Eventually I roped some poor unsuspecting employee, the only one on the lot, in to give us a tutorial on the basics of our vehicle and finally, finally off we went. Still it was touch and go. I found a power cord for my phone, plugged it in and now the car was paired with my phone, which set off a whole new set of absurd conversations such as this one:
Me: where are we headed?
Hubs: Pastel Canyon
Me: ? Type in Pastel Canyon and get 20 different locations none of which are in the state we are currently in. There isn’t a Pastel Canyon.
Hubs: Hmm… did you type pastel, as in you know, pastel?
Me: slightly exasperated. Yes. I know how to spell pastel.
Car Voice: In 3 miles, turn right.
Hubs: That can’t be right?
Me: Where is she taking us? I haven’t been able to find the right place!
Hubs: Well I have it on my computer. It’s in the bag in the backseat.
Me: rummage around, find bag with computer, open computer, but we have no wifi… We have no wifi.
Car Voice: Turn right.
Hubs: I printed out a sheet with directions. It’s in the front.
Me: desperately look around, but cannot find sheet. Where is the sheet?
Car Voice: now quite determined and insistent Turn right.
Hubs: It’s right there in the pocket.
Me: It’s NOT right there in the pocket or I would have already found it and we wouldn’t be having this conversation!
Hubs: It’s right there in the pocket.
Car Voice: Recalibrating
Me: NO! It isn’t. Oh, wait. Right. Here it is.
Hubs: ___________
Me: This must be the wrong sheet. It doesn’t say Pastel Canyon.
Car Voice: Continue for 81 miles…
Hubs: Can’t you turn that thing off. She’s nagging me.
Valley of Fire
I could go on and on, but we did eventually make it, despite the fact that our rental car is making bizarre noises any time you accelerate, causing my husband to say, “This is the worst rental car EVER!” And then a little later he added, “I hate everything about this car.” Which has now become a running joke.
and finally we made it here, which is just on the other side of Zion and where we spent our first night.
Oh and not a single bison sighting… unless you count the bison who gave up his life for the bison burger my husband ate last night for dinner.
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