May 2023

Time has been passing quickly. I looked at my website and realized I have not added any new stories since February. To be honest, not much has been happening. I haven’t taken any new trips or done anything exciting in the past few months. I mostly stay home and chat with my friends around the world through technology on my laptop. It’s wonderful to have friends all over the world.

I have been in the apartment I am renting for 10 years and due to health conditions I didn’t think I would be here 1 year, let alone 10 years. I moved in with only some clothes and a few kitchen items. Everything I owned fit in my camper van. Over the years, and mostly since Covid, I have accumulated lots of kitchen items because I make almost everything I eat from scratch. I bought more clothes, and many other things. I have accumulated way too much stuff so I decided to give away and donate a lot of things. So I contacted some friends and homeless shelters and gave away lots of things. Still, I have lots of things so maybe I will get motivated to do some craft projects.

I gave away my sewing machine, but I still have fabric and batting material. Maybe I will start making some quilts again. On one of my early camping trips in my camper van I was at a campsite and a group of women were making quilts. I told them I always had wanted to make one. They told me if I went and got fabric they would teach me how to sew one. So, I drove about half an hour to a store and bought fabric, thread, and needles. They taught me how to make a simple quilt. Since I seem to overdue things my first quilt was a queen size one that was all hand stitched, and that is how I seem to make quilts. It’s not hard, just time consuming. I think there is a picture of my 1st quilt, it is a purple square quilt, in the story I wrote last fall when I was visiting my friend in Maryland who I gave the quilt to. She had it on the bed in her guest room.

Otherwise, I have been home and staying in touch with friends, cooking and trying new recipes, and resting. This past week I somehow got a virus in my inner ear and have Vertigo. That has not been fun, being dizzy and having to move very carefully. Guess God wants me to slow down and take it easier than I was. I have two old fashioned lava lamps and two salt lamps and weren’t using them. About a week or two ago I decided to use them and put the large salt lamp in the living room dining room area, and the small one in my bedroom and leave them on because it is supposed to release negative ions or something like that. At night when I go to bed and read I turn on both lava lamps, they are different colored ones, it’s nice to look at. Somehow when I turn my light off and go to sleep I seem to sleep better. Is it from the lamps? I don’t know but they may help.

The other thing that has been happening is that I had dental work done and had six crowns done which was a long process. Not sure it’s for the best because it changed my bite and it feels different, but guess like other things in life I have to get used to something being different and adjusting to it.

It would be nice to take another trip this summer and fall but I have to see how things unfold. My landlady wants to sell the apartment I am living in and I don’t want to purchase it, so it depends who buys it whether or not I can stay here or if I have to move, and if the rent will increase. So many unknowns. A few months ago I was looking at options whether to move, or where to go, etc. I have lots of options. I kept praying to God to bless it or block it for the actions I was taking. God blocked the places and gave me other thoughts so for now, I am staying where I am and giving things away so it is not so full in my small apartment. It feels good to be able to once again give things to people and places that can use them. I had lots of hand crocheted baby blankets I made. Before Covid I donated hundreds of them to the NICU at a local hospital, but they closed that part of the hospital so I donated them to the homeless shelter with the other items like clothes and art supplies, etc. It will be a blessing if a child that is scared and homeless gets a nice soft handmade blanket to cuddle. That’s what I like to envision, or children coloring with the crayons, colored pencils, and coloring books I gave them.

I feel so beyond blessed and grateful for the life that I have been given and worked to have through actions that sometimes I didn’t want to take but that were suggested to me over so many years. I have a Higher Power that knows what is best for me and if I invite myself into God’s day, and not God into my small limited human day, my life is so much better.

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