no excuses..

but i just can't seem to get the whole routine of blogging down. it's been months and months and even more months. and it seems much has happened.

by the end of the semester last year, i was so positive that 2008 was going to be such a great year, and yet i'm disappointed; in mid december, i was scheduled for a much needed and long awaited hysterectomy, so i just knew i was going to feel so much better physically. i was sure it was going to make everything in my life smoother and less struggle without the constant pain and problems i'd been having for the last few years... additionally, i finally successfully completed a class i had struggled to pass on 2 previous occasions.... i was enrolled for the spring semester, had a great schedule worked out... halli was settled into college life and all was well with her... things were as always, smooth sailing with lover-man............

i had the surgery. it went just fine. but unexpectedly, they ended up removing ALL my parts, because i was inundated with endometriosis. and while my recovery was much easier than i had anticipated, the result of my suregery is now hormone replacement therapy. i really felt great for the first month and a half after surgery, but by valentine's day i began to have phantom pains in my abdomen, i lost all energy and motiviation. i spiralled completely out of control. i quit school, withdrew from the university. i began to avoid my family and friends and especially the world outside my house. i adopted a puppy.

what the hell is all that about? i have no job, no purpose. i have nothing to do every day. i take care of the animals. sometimes, i take care of a few domestic tasks. some days, i've played around with my art supplies and managed to create a few things, but mostly, i've turned into a vegetable. a root vegetable, buried in the ground, the weight of the earth over my head. and i've brought it all on myself.... i have no answers and no excuses.

just a quckie...

it's been so long. i'm not sure how well they'll come thru, but i'm posting pics of the latest bag i made for our niece, miss lily. rather than a book bag size, this one is only about 9" x 10" w/ the boxed bottom. i had started out with a different purple for the panels, but the fabric was too stretcy and not fun to work with. i ended up in my attic storage, dragging down this bolt from 10 years ago. originally i was going to make curtains for my purple bedroom with it, but my room has been 2 colors since then, so i was happy to use some of it! i added the obvious w a black and white photo that i colored on fabric to add some detail. i didn't use neck ties for the straps, they didn't seem right for a young girl. so i just pieced together some bits and made hers a patchwork strap instead. it ended up a bit long and narrow, but lily is growing up tall and thin, so hopefully it'll work for her!

beyond bags, life is good. school is busy and i procrastinate much too much. scrabble rocks, even if i'm ridiculously slow. i will improve. thank you for your infinite patience, my tall drink o' water. you're the best...

ho-hum

see? this is exactly why i've never blogged... it's been 2 weeks since my last confession. and just like sinners, we all know there's been at least ONE good little bit worth relaying. yet somehow, i don't get around to it. mostly because there's really NOT anything to go on about.
i've been back in classes for over 3 weeks now and it is of course, kicking my ass and i love it. i'm constantly amazed how so many people get thru school, with jobs and lives and kids and numerous other distractions. i do one thing only. go to school. i have no job. my daughter isn't around to tend to in however small a fashion she had needed me prior to her leaving. it takes me about 6 minutes a day to feed the cats. michael is just pure help, he's no worry, he does most of the cooking even, so i'm not spending time doing that either! so where are all my hours going? i know i study quite a bit and spend more time than the average student working on whatever assignments i might have, researching and delving into it all, more than is necessary for completion... and i play some brainless solitaire at least once most every day. but dang! that's all i'm doing. that's it. and i feel like i don't have enough time to get to stuff. so today, i've cleaned around the house some, i've laundered some and now, i'm blogging some.
and that's about it. that's all i've got to offer this week. nothing clever, cute or compelling or for that matter even very interesting. i have to go make 3 gestalt principle books by monday, read about 330 pages, study for a quiz and finish a tiny little bit of spanish homework. that's what it all consists of right now, school stuff.
i'd rather start making a bag for the babysitter in california. i suppose that's something out of the blue to happen to me, it's actually sort of cool; i got an email from mom adams that included a request of me to make one of my bags for a girl that babysat that grandbabies while her and christine, michael's sister, were visiting family in california. apparently, the babysitter admired the bag i made for michael's sister and liked it so much she wants one too! i'm so flattered and excited! but so far, i haven't made a bag for someone i don't know, each one has been for one of the women in my life. i've created each bag with that person in mind. so it will be a new sort of challenge to create a 'generic' bag. i'm anxious to explore that approach to my bags. ah, but alas, my schoolwork takes precedence over exploratory sewing!
so that's it for now. until next time. which will probably be awhile...

empty nest

all these years as a single mom never prepared me for the onslaught of emotions that i've experienced these last few months and days... for over 15 years, i've been a single mom of one daughter. i've always thought the term "empty nest" wouldn't apply to me, i mean, i was simply one woman with one child, not a mom of a houseful of many! and yet, after moving halli into her dorm and then coming home, i feel the vacancy left by her absence, the empty of my little nest. even though she's been out with friends and gone from the house for the majority of our time at home this summer, she still lived here! and now she's in maryville. oy. she'll do fine, she's doing fine, i know, i've talked to her a dozen times in 2 days! i don't worry about how she'll get thru things, she's a smart girl, and what she doesn't know already, she'll learn, maybe the hard way, maybe not, but she'll learn and she'll be fine.

FOR HALLI

don’t let the big bad world meddle with the very best parts of the essential you; your humor, your compassion and your convictions. don’t forget who you are inside and what you’re made of… i thank you for the beautiful music you’ve brought to my life every day. blaze a glorious trail through the path you’ve chosen to take…i wish for you all the lush experiences of mind that come with learning and education. may you always be thirsty for knowledge and persevere without end to be everything you want to be. be the you that I know is yet to come; the smart, talented, beautiful, sophisticated, determined, powerful force of a woman. i know that you will continue to touch the lives of the people you meet as you have so deeply touched all of ours.

bloom where you are planted my daughter.

it's crazy how it makes me feel, her being gone. of course halli has been the biggest part of my life since she was born, but i never felt i defined myself only as a mother. so why do i feel so strangely vacuous and stranded and UNdefined? i suppose because i am. she has literally gone away to become the woman halli, to begin to know herself, to start her life. and she's left me here to live mine. and that's maybe the scariest part. to begin to redefine myself, to become the woman kenda, to begin to know the new me, the me i haven't met yet. crazy scary wide open. i have no child at home to define me, no career or even a job at all to define me. my delineations are comprised only of my physicality, my man and my home, but other than that, it's wide open. and while i'm literally ages beyond her, just like halli rae, it's all waiting for me to choose, whatever i want to make of it, the rest of my life, a blank slate in many ways. crazy scary wide open empty nest ... time for me to jump and take flight. and it begins.......

grrr, obsession

i've been so unorganized with all the pics i've taken the last few months, it's taken me oodles of time today to find and crop and compile a few pics for my new blog! i've been messing and messing with formatting the page, the colors and set up, trying to put things together in a pleasing package, and finally, i'm satisfied with this "good enough for now" version... i've even filled in some things in my profile but don't seem to be able to come up with much in the way of specifics, seems i have a really bad memory and tend to not have favorites of things. i suppose i enjoy lots of different aspects of many different things and that makes it difficult to narrow things down sometimes!
all the same, here it is. the new look for my new blog. for now. chau!

i'm new to this

i suppose everyone has gone thru that first time of posting a blog. i find it a bit nerve wracking, honestly... to have my insides on the outside, exposed to the www, to those who might just float across this or to those who might read intentionally, it's an unusual sensation for me... don't get me wrong, i'm not necessarily a private person, i'll tell anyone just about anything, personal or otherwise, if they're interested enough in my thoughts to talk about it... it's the format, the venue in which we're exchanging. that's the struggle for me, to not see you, to be absent when you react, to miss your verbal and body language feedback that we would experience in a face to face conversation... as much as i've always claimed i don't care what people think about me, it's that very reaction from people that i use to gauge myself and my own thoughts and my own responses. i mean, it's not like i'm going to necessarily tell you what you want to hear or agree with you just bcuz i think that's you might not like me if i don't, it doesn't mean i won't be frank, i usually am, oftentimes to a fault... but it's a strange thing, i've thought about it more and more recently, this way my ideas and thoughts are absolutely driven by outside influences, like there's nothing generated on the inside until i have your ideas to feed from, i feel i'm just all reaction to the world and people around me... i don't know, i guess that's really kind of stupid when i think about it, cuz everyone is like that, certainly. i mean, we're all products of external influences, there's no doubt, but i really feel like if i don't get feedback from those around me, i can't keep thinking, my own thinking, it just sits on pause, waiting........

ask michael, he knows, my michael, the wonderful man who puts up with me and my freaks! he understands how important it is to me to get that feedback, how in a way, i need it to function. that sounds really scary, doesn't it? maybe i should grow up and start thinking for myself. or do i do it already? cuz i mean, that sounds really bad, that i don't think for myself or have any original ideas... it's not like that. cuz i always have an opinion, i think i more just need external prompts in order to form my ideas and make them 'gel up' and solidify! yes, that's it, i just need prompts! i'm not a non-thinking imbecile! wow. this blog thing might be really good for me.