Dear Blog — It’s 2019? How have you been?

The last I said “hello” was March of 2018 and I think I vowed to start blogging again. What happened? Well, not much blogging, that’s for sure.

So, I’m going to try again. I loved (at one time) looking back at old posts and photos and also loved the challenge of writing something intelligent, witty, insightful, or just at least grammatically correct. Finding that Facebook is causing my writing and sentence structure to deteriorate, I’m going to see if I can improve on things. Of course, this is going to require me to hook my phone up to ye’olde laptop to transfer photos more often.

Just home from a 3 day quilting retreat, I’m thinking about all the fun times we had, all the sewing I got done, and how interesting it was to spend time with 20 women that I had never (or barely) met before. Should be able to write some interesting thoughts here soon.

In the mean time – to insert a photo has become cumbersome on wordpress, but I’m going to try. — and once again, promise to start writing again.

An old photo of some blocks from Cape Cod Log Cabin, which has actually been finished and sits on my coffee table/trunk in the sitting room during spring months. More to come 🙂

Kayaking – calm cove – small ripples

Well, to keep my “new year’s” resolution going – I’m posting for the 2nd day in a week. What slowed me down yesterday was that I tried to switch themes on my blog and totally blew it out of the water, so to speak. Thank goodness I live with a geek who actually knows what he is doing and can fix things like this. So, today’s post is in his honor — and here’s his photo from this afternoon’s expedition.

Hubby sets out into the cove in his kayak

I’ve Got a Pebble in My Hand

I am a musician and also love to listen to various kinds of music.  One of my favorites is country music (being from a farm in the Midwest, it’s sort of in my blood).  Today I was listening to a country station while doing laundry and heard a new song.  As is a very typical theme for country music, it was about lost love or almost-lost love.  And one of the lines in it was about having a pebble “in my hand” and throwing it into a river.   Somehow I missed the connection so I’ll have to listen to the song again — because somehow that pebble was supposed to indicate whether the almost-lost love was going to come back or not.

Anyway, what caught my attention was the “I’ve got a pebble in my hand” line.  One of my thoughts when I debated starting blogging was writing about the effects our actions have on others and how we go about our business in this world often not thinking about those effects.  Like a pebble dropped into a pond (or thrown into a river) we leave ripples behind us long after we have left the area.

Each morning when I wake up —  I have a “pebble” in my hand.   The things I do and say during the day as I interact with others (or not) determine what kind of ripples my pebble leaves behind.  Each day I have the opportunity to leave good ripples behind me.   I can think about what I say and how it will affect people.  I can think about my actions and how a smile or kind word can brighten someone’s day and perhaps that person will in turn be in a positive mood and brighten someone else’s day — the ripple effect.

In the case of the environment — I have a huge pebble in my hand each time I use my car to go someplace.  Today, I parked in a remote lot, loaded up my bag and walked to all my errands in town rather than driving to them.  It took a lot longer, but there were several ripple effects.  I ran into a friend on the street that I wouldn’t have had time to talk to if I’d been driving by.  I got more exercise than I would have.   And I used a little less of that $4.45 per gallon gasoline.  Many good ripple effects of my actions.

I have a pebble in my hand — I will think about that each morning when I get up — the possibilities — I have a pebble in my hand —