Dolly

I went to visit Ken's folks this weekend, only to discover 4 birdcages instead of the normal 3. This is Dolly, a 2 year old blue crested amazon. She's sweeter than the other birds & is fond of Ken's mom.

snippet from a googletalk chat with jo or now i know what cat farts smell like. ick.

me: woah! dinah on lap and she's letting go some stinky farts! MAN!

Jocelyn: LOL

ROFL

Jocelyn: poor Kit

me: just thought i'd share. >8^)

Jocelyn: >^^;< ...oo00OO

me: LOL

Jocelyn: jsut thought I'd illustrate

me: ok she just jumped off my lap now.

Jocelyn: hehe

relieved?

me: i guess she is.

Jocelyn: I meant you

LOL

me: i'mnot the one that farted.

Jocelyn: but you might be the one who's relieved not to have a farting cat on your lap

me: i'm a bit insulted she had to wait until she was on my lap to fart but otherwise...

she's too cute to be upset at.

Jocelyn: heh

LOL

still funny

me: yeah.

i know. tmi but i had to share.
btw, i found 3 more four-leaf clovers yesterday. what the mess?

Clover Redux

I found four more 4 leaf clovers when i got off work. 0.o okay, this is odd. Cool, but odd.

clover!

I just got back from getting lunch. Got out of my car & saw a patch of clover out of the corner of my eye. Did a double take, went back & looked again. Yup, 4 leaf clover staring straight at me.

Gaudy!

in texarkana. be home tonight. saw this outside a store here called angel's. you can't see it, but the top had what looked like a weird squiggley pattern until close-up inspection revealed it to be where the pink paint in peeling. nice.

Dinah Kitten

Just testing. In the mean time, here's a pic of my, new kittie, Dinah.

church ninjas, or how to get steamrollered into a choir
i've been church hopping since ken's death, trying to find a denomination and congregation that meshed with me. mostly, i've tagged along with ken's folks.
my friends, hillary and q, for reasons of their own, have decided to try other churches.
tonight, we decided to be sneaky & do a reconnaice mission at their wednesday bible study. we were discovered! the bible study had been canceled due to a potluck, but upon discovering that we could sing, they asked/begged us to join the choir. we ended up singing at rehearsal and had fun. they were very nice and friendly. learned about the way they do communion, etc.
we're going to attend on sunday, too. might even get alice to come along. 8^)
q had to leave early to check on her dad in the hospital. it's not good.
i wish i knew what to do or say...reminds me of when i lost ken. i didn't know what to say then either.

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c just called me. she just got out from seeing cirque jungle fantasy & is amazed. i can hear her excited voice...lol

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alice and i are planning to a roadtrip to texarkana this weekend. she found a quilt show and realized she hadn't been in a long time. i may have to skip the email ladiez night, though to do this. i don't think alice wants to go alone. i know i wouldn't. having a friend with you is half the fun.

defiying gravity
been listening to that song from "Wicked" quite a bit today.
it's helped me put things from this past year into an upbeat perspective today.

"Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!

It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't pull me down!"

hell, yeah i miss him. always will, always do.
but i can't mope every second. part of me feels guilty when i don't, however i just have to live. it's all i know how to do.

i think starting to log things in here again will help. i've been trying to reserve my lj for art only.

since i started knitting, hillary, q and the gang have been getting together on tuesdays for a knit/draw/whatever night. it's been great fun for me.
q helped me start a pattern tonight. *i'm learning to read patterns! yay!* i'm doing this one with this yarn that q gave me way back when i started knitting a few months ago.
the gang is getting together at hillary's on friday. looking forward to it.

gone
i hadn't logged into a yahoo email account of mine in quite awhile. i had the same login for my IM, so i thought it'd be ok.
nope. lots of emails, contacts...gone. including many love letters from ken.
while i do have them printed out, it's just heartbreaking that they are gone. i have more emails from him saved at my other yahoo account, but still...
this month will mark a year that he's been gone. it still isn't right...

i bumped into an former co-worker today. she's been doing well.
she had heard about ken's death and being a widow, offered me this advice, "you never get over it, you just learn to live with it." and it's true. it's what i've already noticed so far.

hadn't been here in awhile. mostly just doing my thing on my lj, drawing and art-ing. i haven't been keeping up with bingereading at all, even though i've still been reading tons of books.

thanks to hillary, q and the gang, i've taken up knitting. it's fun so far.
had to run by hobby lobby and pick up more yarn for a scarf i'm working on.

been visiting alice some. she and i have been following the massive olney thread at CBR.

all other details are on my lj i suppose...can't think of anything else to add.

books for the soul
i seem to fill my time up more with reading than drawing as of late. if it not fluff to make me forget my pain for awhile or research for a possible idea for a webcomic, i have noticed that i'm leaning more towards books with a spiritual side.

ken's parents presented me with a copy of The Journey by Bill Graham for my birthday, along with other nice things. Jocelyn treated me to dinner and a copy Henri J.M. Nouwen's Life of the Beloved. i haven't started The Journey yet, but i am in the middle of Life of the Beloved and am enjoying it so far.

but it was a week or so ago, while at the library, i picked up a couple of Madeleine L'Engle novels that i had never read in my youth and decided to try for light reading. one, A House Like A Lotus, turned out to have some passages that made me think...I wasn't even looking for something with insight, but here God places it in my lap.

Ursula, a neurosurgeon, is speaking with teenage Polly:

"Sometime I'm going to take a real sabbatical. But it's been good for me to keep my hand in during all these months. Norris Ormsby called me in today on an interesting and tragic case, a young woman in her thirties who has had a series of brain tumors. Benign, in her case, is a mockery. After her first surgery, some nerves were cut, and her face was irrevocable distorted, her mouth twisted, one eye partly closed. A few days ago another tumor was removed, and several more smaller ones were discovered. I agreed with the decision not to do further surgery. She said that she is looking with her mind's eye at the tumors, willing them to shrink, seeing them shrink. And she quoted Benjamin Franklin to me: Those things that hurt, instruct. An extraordinary woman. A holy woman. She looks at her devastated face in the mirror, and she says, she still does not recognize herself. But there is no bitterness in her. She sails, and as soon as she gets out of the hospital she plans to sail, solo, to Bermuda. At sea, what she looks like is a matter of complete counter to general thinking today, where we're taught to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Pain needs to be moved though, not avoided."

Polly, speaking with her older friend, Maximiliana, who is speaking of loss and life after explaining about her infant daughter that only lived a few days:

"There isn't anything that happens that can't teach us something," she said, "that can't be turned into something positive. One can't undo what's been done, but one can use it creatively." She look at me and her eyes were seasilver. "I'm glad I had the experience of having a baby. I wouldn't undo it, have it not have happened. The only thing is to accept, and let the scar heal. Scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the body. Did you know that?"
"No."
"So I shouldn't be surprised if it's the strongest part of the soul."

Maximiliana, reads a passage in a book to Polly, after talking about just what a soul is:

She took a long drink and put her glass down. "Do you believe in the soul, Polly?" Max never hesitated to ask cosmic questions out of the blue.
"Yes." I thought maybe she'd turn her scorn on me, but she didn't.
"So, what is it, this thing called a soul?"
This scarred thing, full of adhesions. "It's-it's your you and my me."
"What do you mean by that?"
"It's what makes us us, different from anybody else in the world."
"Like snowflakes? You have seen snow, haven't you-yes, of course you have. All those trillions of snowflakes, each one different form the other?"
"More than snowflakes. The soul isn't-ephemeral."
"A separate entity from the body?"
I shook my head. "I think it's part. It's the part that-well, in your painting of the harbor at Rio, it's the part which made you know what paint to use, which brush, how to make it alive."
Max looked at the silver pitcher, sparkling with drops, as though it were a crystal ball. "So it's us, at our highest and least self-conscious."
"That's sort of what I mean."
"The amazing thing is that one's soul, or whatever one calls it, is strongest when one is least aware. That's when the soul is most aware. We get in our own way, and that diminishes our souls." She pushed up from her chair and headed toward the table, which was already set with silver and china. "Be an angel and bring the food out to the verandah."
We ate comfortably together. Max had a book with her and began leafing through it, looking for something.
"There's a passage our conversation reminds me of..."
"What?"
"In the Upanishads-a series of Sanskrit works which are part of the Veda. Here it is, Pol, listen: In this body, in this town of Spirit, there is a little house shaped like a lotus, and in that house there is a little space. There is as much in that little space within the heart as there is in the whole world outside. Maybe that little space is the reality of your you and my me?"

what did i learn?
that in this current culture, this current day and age, we run from pain, when it is what makes us stronger. Oh, no one ever said it would be easier to bear and live through, but it makes you a better person, if you let it. If you wallow in grief, despair or bitterness, you will never grow or become strong.

jocelyn and i had a good long talk while she was here. she says she thinks i'm going to make it.
we talked of many things, but i think, from what i can remember...it has been a week, about the soul and where you go at death and such.
"You're doing all the right things and saying all the right things," she told me after explaining that she's seen some folks wither away or let bitterness take over after a death. She said that she could see me become the person who i'm meant to be...like she was awed to get to see it.
it make me think, who am i? who was i before ken died and who will i become?
even i can see some difference, but i just don't know what's to come.

i don't talk about religion much, simply because i don't want to seem the pushy type of christian who shames or guilts you into church or the type that beats you over the head with a bible into submission. no one ever converts anyone in the manner truly, but they have given us all such a bad rap, so i keep silent and avoid awkward situations or accidentally insulting someone.
i do believe that God is going to help me through this and that he will make it work out for the better. no, it's not what i wanted, but i will deal. it'll be okay. He knows i'm hurting and He'll find a way for me to use that pain into becoming something else, someone better, maybe even who i'm meant to be.

i am aware that it will not be easy, pleasant and could even possibly be scary. but i cant' just sit here and wallow until i die. ken wouldn't want that. i think he would be very disappointed if i did. just like he would be if i gave up art and life in general. i've come to believe the suicide is the most selfish act a human can do. they think it's an easier way or that it will be better for everyone else, but it's not. it's worse...i can't explain it well, but it's the reason i have for keeping going everyday, besides the fear of disappointed ken and well, who knows what the Big Guy Upstairs has in store.

today is one of my better days. misty-eyed but no uncontrollable sobs. and that brings me to another thing...
i have learned a few things over the past few months about that fateful day when ken was taken from me.
as they were trying to keep him awake until the ambulance arrived, ken's parents heard him speak, slurred and mumbly. they weren't always able to make out what he was trying to tell them. through krista, i learned that ken's father thought he heard ken say, "take care of kathryn for me." i got teary-eyed when i heard.

and at the hospital, after the surgery and the terrible diagnosis, krista decided to go see him one last time before they took him away for the organ donation. she laid her head on his chest.
their cousin, dennis, and krista's boyfriend, greg, both swear they say ken turn his head to krista and try to move an arm, as if he was going to give her a reassuring hug. krista didn't notice anything. dennis and greg told her and the family. ken's folks see it as God gave ken a chance to say goodbye to krista, for she needed it greatly.
i admit, i'm a little jealous when i hear about it, but i don't begrudge her either. it has been hard on all of us, and she knew him far longer than i.

i think i've done enough introspection and thought for now.