Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

You are here: Home / Archives for blogging

Grateful Thanks & Bits of the Birthday

at by

Before I ramble on about my birthday, let me take a moment to say how much I love all of you.

Truly.

I don’t know if anyone who is not part of this amazing world of blogging and bloggers would understand just how much love and compassion and support we give to each other. I’ve been a part of it for going on 5 years and, yet, I am still knocked for a loop when I share something that is personal and sometimes fearful and you all come through for me. With prayers, with support, with love, with everything that is good about us – you, my friends, are there for me. Your prayers for Scout helped her. I know that. I believe in that. So many of you kept checking back to see how she was doing, to see whether I had posted an update. Many of you sent me private emails expressing your concern about her.

I’ve shared with you the stress and worries that plague our family. You always have an encouraging word. You always hold us in your thoughts.

Words are inadequate but I do thank you sincerely. I am blessed by your friendship, by having you in my life.

Thank you, dear friends.

Okay, a little birthday stuff. Though we were immersed in worry about our girl, Don took me out to lunch. I expressed a desire to eat at a favorite restaurant that serves this amazing dish called Lentil Cakes. Believe me, they are scrumptious. So we drove south quite a ways to this charming town on the Hudson River.

The restaurant was closed.

What? Apparently it is always closed on Wednesdays. Feeling somewhat down anyway, I thought: It figures. Nothing is going well. Let’s just go home. But Don suggested we walk a few blocks and we discovered another restaurant – new to us, filled with sunlight and happy people and we decided to eat there. Great food, wonderful staff. After lunch, I was surprised by this:

Two lovely ladies brought it to the table and started singing Happy Birthday. Don joined in. And suddenly, everyone in the restaurant joined in. I mean, everyone! With smiles and laughter, they all sang to me. It was so lovely. I joined in the applause at the end of the song, for I was applauding their sweetness and generosity. It made my day.

You might remember that my birthday present came early this year – 2 months early – when I discovered a Singer Featherweight in a little shop. We decided that would be my big birthday present and, so, Mabel joined the family. But Don thought he had to give me a little something.

Hello! I won’t be returning these. (Actually, I rarely return anything. I never want to hurt anyone’s feelings.)

I specifically asked for this one. I couldn’t justify buying the new Lee Child in hardcover. But I figured it would be totally justified as a birthday present. Right?

And this magnet for our refrigerator:

Answer: Decades younger. This has always been one of my favorite quotes and it reminds me that age is a state of mind.

And at the risk of posting yet another photo of myself, here I am eating my unbelievably sinful piece of cake:

I normally shy away from posting a lot of ‘me’ photos and as I look back over the past week’s posts, yikes! There are a lot of them. I promise to back off on them as of today. Enough already.

With my new vow in mind, let me share this with you:

Miss Scout had her legs shaved for her IV’s. She rather looks like a poodle, don’t you think? The techs put that animal print bandage on her when they took out the last IV and, though they told me I could take it off when we got her home, I’ve left it there. Such adorableness.

After an exhausted morning yesterday, she is perking up and I’m definitely seeing signs of my feisty girl. This morning she greeted me with some playful pounces as I came down the stairs.

Grateful. Thankful.

New scarf in the shop!

I really love this one.

I will be back at 8:00 EST for A Favorite Thing. I don’t know how many of you will want to link on this holiday weekend, but everyone is welcome.

Happy Friday.

What a Mess: Where I Blog

at by

Reality Check on Tuesday.

I ask you: how the heck can I work this way?

Look at the table. It’s a smallish side table I got at auction a few years back. I fell for the tealish color. It has two drawers that hold a lot of stuff. This table is next to my Blogging Chair (as I have officially christened it) and it is always overwhelmed with pens, scissors, yarn, iphone cords, notebooks, various scraps of notes to myself, and in the midst of it all is the lamp, which is too large for the table.  Add to this the fact that I have to torque my body back and to the left to retrieve anything from the tabletop and you see my dilemma.

In the lower right hand corner of the photo you see the edge of the vintage wicker ottoman I have in front of the table.

It is, I’m sorry to say, just as full of stuff:

The copy of Design Sponge at Home has been there for over a year. It has basically functioned as a place to put my laptop when not in use. When I’m on the laptop, I use that groovy Woodstock coaster for my drink of choice – usually my morning coffee. Again: little notebooks full of (to me) vital information, yarn info, scrawled notes for my blog, legal pads, magazines and catalogues.

What a frigging mess.

This, my friends, is where the magic happens. This is where I write my blog. And crochet. And watch television.

I have to find a better way.

Some of the things I need to have at hand are over on the desk, but frankly, I think more of this….mess….can be moved over there. I might have an idea: perhaps a table switch?  The one by the sofa just might work here.

Oh, crap. I don’t know. It also just might not.

I still haven’t shredded, by the way. We are now at the 8 day mark.

Drumroll.

The answer to yesterday’s quiz? My blue jeans.

I was sitting in the car and holding the iPhone with the camera on and I saw this image and quickly took the picture.

My jeans have never looked so lovely.

Happy Tuesday.

What Blogging Forces Me to Do

at by

Short answer: See the world with fresh eyes.

Like many of you, we are going through a tough time. My father is struggling and fading at the age of 89, my mother is in a nursing home and will be for the rest of her life, my beloved dog just died, my other dog is older, has trouble breathing at times, is slowing down significantly and I worry about her, both Don and I freelance and work has been alarmingly slow if not non-existent, we are older and in a world that is youth-oriented, it’s not so easy to find another job, we struggle to get the money together for our ridiculously high mortgage payment every month and we seriously wonder if we’ll be able to stay here, I seem to worry about money constantly, Don has been ill (but is now getting better, thank goodness.)

There’s more, but enough of the list.

I’m not feeling sorry for myself. There are people everywhere who are battling even bigger things, whose list of woes would make mine look puny. I’ve heard from fellow bloggers about their own struggles and am keenly aware that everyone has a story or two or three about their level of stress and worry at this moment in time.

Life can be hard and unforgiving.

This act of writing a blog, of writing a virtual daily journal, has saved me more often than you could ever know.

I have to come up with something every day. I blog about my life. I’m not a niche blogger. I can’t take refuge in a post that shows pictures of things I found on other blogs or websites. I don’t work that way. So, as I would be in any case, I have to be honest. Sometimes that honesty results in a post in which I pour my heart out. Sometimes it allows me to be silly. Sometimes it results in a fresh look at the world around me. As I think about a post and walk around with my camera, I see the world with fresh eyes. I see the beauty in bare branches of a tree against a blue sky, in the fading of a flower, in the pattern of sunlight on my wooden floor, in the animals who share our land with us, in the beauty of a piece of pottery – oh, the list is endless.

Often, I start to write and the humor of a situation suddenly becomes apparent and I find myself smiling.

I see the beauty in the landscape around me and I find myself smiling.

I see the simple pleasures of my everyday life that have nothing to do with stress or worry or money, but have everything to do with thankfulness and gratitude.

I let go of fear. I let in love.

Blogging has given me that. Writing is cathartic. Healing. The camera lens offers me a look at my world that I never really experienced until I started this blog. This daily exercise of writing a blog has helped me work through so many problems, has helped me to see the joy of simple things, the funny side of something I might have considered negative without the aid of writing about it, the blessings that I do have.

The important thing

is to pull yourself up by your own hair,

to turn yourself inside out,

and see the whole world with fresh eyes.

Peter Weiss                                      

That’s what blogging has done for me.  That’s what it forces me to do. And I’m so grateful it does.

Happy Sunday.

              

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

Thanks for visiting! Feel free to browse, read and enjoy. All content is my own; including photos and text. Please do not use anything on this site without permission.

Disclosure/Privacy Policy can be found in the Navigation Bar under ‘About MHC.’

Also, I love receiving comments! I do, however, reserve the right to delete any comment that is in poor taste, offensive or is verging on spam. It’s my blog. If you’re a bot or a troll you’ll be blocked. Thanks!

Archives