The rose and its thorns

I sure have been a neglectful blogger lately, but once again life is getting in the way.  We've had a few weeks of more ups and downs, but I'm hoping that this week we'll get back to some semblance of normalcy around here.  This photo -- taken in the garden last summer -- seemed appropriate to life recently.  The beauty of roses, and some painful thorns, too.

The thorns?  My dear uncle, among my favorite relatives, died last week.  We knew it was coming, and in reality we'd lost him a few years ago as the result of  Alzheimer's.  Still, his passing has been sad, and I will miss him.  He had a big impact on me, and I'll always treasure how proud he was that I became a lawyer.  We spent this past weekend visiting with my aunt and cousins, attending a memorial service for him, and generally gaining some solace from being together.  On the heels of my mother-in-law's death, this has plunged me into a lot of thinking about what it means to be at this stage of my life.  I am grateful every day for my parents' good health.

But the roses have been sweet!  My sister has just moved into a new home, an adorable house in a great neighborhood with beautiful hillside views.  I've spent a few days driving between her old place and new place with carloads of her stuff.  It has made me remember that delicious feeling of moving into a new space and organizing everything tidily -- and that has caused me to engage in a few closet-cleaning and purging binges.  It's always satisfying to get more STUFF out of the house!

And, after bringing stuff out, I'm going to bring something new in -- I've been in the process of buying a new sewing machine!  Gosh, they sure make fancy machines nowadays, and the machine I think of as my "new" Bernina is well out of date, not to mention the fact that there are things about it that I've always been dissatisfied with.  So I've been exploring and trying machines and reading online and I've made a purchase -- but more on that soon!  Very exciting! I swear, it's like buying a car -- there are so many choices and features.

So, this week is about getting my sewing room organized, and catching up on household stuff, and doing a few City and Guilds exercises, and doing some fun stuff with Caroline.  I'm ready for a boring, no drama week!

Oh, I forgot to add: I had a nice surprise today!  I was out running errands today, and stopped into a store and came across this lovely little book, Spirit Animals:

This is just the sort of thing Caroline loves, so I grabbed it (thinking Christmas stocking) and as I flipped through it, I came across illustrations by the talented Lisa Congdon, my friend and daughter of my friend Gerrie Congdon!  What a delightful surprise!