Meanderings....

I've kept notes the last few months, things I'd write in my blog if I only had the energy or felt well enough. Maybe I'll throw one of those out here now.

One thing I want to emphasize is that even if I write so often about poor experiences with doctors and tremendous pain, I want you to know that I also have incredible beauty within my life each day.

There is much I view outside our living room window that blesses me, like the little goldfinches, born here in birdhouses built by my husband. I see them clinging with clenched, tiny feet to tall mullein spikes in the garden, to glean the seeds (and spread them, invasive weeds that they are) throughout the county and wherever goldfinches go in the winter!

Young bluebirds and goldfinches and others enjoying the water in our birdbath, looking glad they don't have to make the arduous flight to the river each day.

The garden-fresh salsa I make and freeze. Tomatoes that burden drooping branches, garlic dug up in the back flower bed, cilantro, onion, green chiles growing in the garden, all combine to make a flavorful concoction that gifts me time and time again. When I see it overflowing from the blender; when I see jars full and in the freezer; when I thaw it out and savor it on corn tortilla chips.

Breezes when they pour through the open windows and signal that they have come from the ocean to the west of us.

Late night winds that toss the American flag hung proudly from our front deck.

Soft ears on a dog lying on my lap while I watch TV.

The sight of a small deer, born in our back yard, bedding down out there under the oaks during a storm.

Deadheading flowers, a chore that has always been so quietly therapeutic for me.

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Please keep in mind that I write what I do, sometimes allowing the "primal voice," so that others who are living with this chronic central nervous system pain can read something with which they relate, and so that those who do not understand this condition can have reasonable understanding and compassion on the ones in their lives who suffer with this, be it Multiple Sclerosis, Chiari Malformation, Syringomyelia, spinal cord injury etc.

PS, the photo above is one I took at Chilkoot Lake in Alaska, just one of those little blessings while we were waiting and hoping for big brown bears to come up the salmon-filled river.