Earth Day 2016

Hello from the Pacific Northwest: where it has been sunny and hot and gorgeous all week. Yes, that sentence sucks, but here’s why:

It’s been a long week, emotionally and physically. I’ve gardened, taught my children, my writing class, biked, hooped, written, started a half dozen blog posts…when the sun comes out here, we drop nearly all responsibilities and enjoy it. Catching up on the yardwork, garden, outdoor activities calling to us from the drizzly indoors.

So now, I’m exhausted. The sun vanished behind a layer of drizzly clouds, and I’m spent. The sun-watching has caught up to me. I’m nauseous, I have a borderline migraine due to sinus pressure, and I’m so very tired.

My children are growing into brilliant young men before my eyes. My parents are aging. I’m a year out from my cancer diagnosis and I’m thinking: Now what? I survived, I want to make a difference – not just, “…rage against the dying of the light.”

We are not promised tomorrow…the passing of celebrities, the season of rebirth in the church as we celebrate Easter, as I move into the next stage of my life…

I am thankful for my supportive family, my readers, my still-forming on-line writing group…I know you’ll be here tomorrow when I am feeling better, when I begin revealing some of my novels, when I can.

“But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”*

What is laying heavy on your heart?

*Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.