My limelight hydrangeas looking very autumnal.

Thanks for understanding about my taking a break, though I knew you would. Honestly, this is a stressful time for me. There’s a lot on my plate. A lot of that involves change. I have to take the train to NYC on Sunday for the first time in a year and a half. I’ll be staying in a hotel. I’ll be working with lots of different people on Monday and Tuesday, then returning home on the train. Then I’ll be doing it all over again late in the week. I have to get a COVID test tomorrow and pray that results get back in time for me to work on Monday – something I have absolutely no control over.

I’m coaching via Zoom. I’m constantly making lists in my head about what I need to take to Brooklyn when I move there for six weeks. It’s very exciting and, at the same time, very nervous-making. Don and I have been together every day since February of 2020. I’ll be apart from him. It’s strange, all of this. While I’m enormously grateful for the work opportunities, I’m also reluctant to leave our nest.

Yet, I’m determined to do my best to live in the moment during the next few months. I have the opportunity to work on a film – something I’ve never done before. I am going to work alongside my dear Jim Parsons, and Ben, who I’m coaching via Zoom, and Sally Field(!) who is playing Ben’s mother. Very exciting stuff at this point in my life, and certainly something I never thought would happen.

But change is hard for me. As you know, I’ve been suffering from anxiety over the past two years and though there are stretches where it doesn’t make its presence known, there are also times that it does.

Anyway. I’m blessed and I know I’m blessed. But I’m also stressed. That’s the reality of it. A new phrase for me “Blessed and Stressed.”

Then there’s the world outside my door and the pain, death, inequities, willful ignorance, anger, climate change, and on and on.

I have to take a break at times.

We’ll take it as it comes, but there will be certainly be times in the next few months where I won’t have the time to blog. Days on the set are usually a minimum of 12 hours and that doesn’t include commuting back and forth from my apartment. There will be times when I just can’t  blog. Once I get some sort of rhythm going, I’ll know more.

Love you all.

Stay safe.

Happy Thursday.

Today’s version of a foggy morning.

As I write this, the sun has finally broken through. The mornings are cooler now, but the temperature will go up to 76 today.

I was very busy yesterday, picking up some new jeans I’d ordered (I desperately needed them), running some errands, cleaning, doing laundry, unclogging the bathtub drain (success!), watering houseplants. Today I will be coaching Ben for an hour and figuring out where to get my COVID test on Friday. This is not the rapid test. It’s the PCR test, which needs to be done 72 hours before I report to work on Monday. Rapid tests are not a problem. The PCR can be, in terms of getting the results on time. So I have to do some research today and make some calls.

It will work out.

The problem with jeans – the kind that stretch, which I need these days – is that they eventually stretch out of shape. And then I end up looking like a misshapen old woman. Usually I ignore that fact because I’m always at home and Don doesn’t care. But now that I’m going out in the world for work, I need to look a bit more stylish. Actually, a lot  more stylish.

No news yet on Greta, though I did just see a comment on Facebook from my nephew’s wife saying that she was “slowly improving.”

I watched a hummingbird dine on my zinnias yesterday. And we’ve had a doe and her young fawns dining in the back forty. A lone monarch flitted though the garden. And I heard a Carolina wren singing yesterday morning. At this time of year, I’m so happy when I hear bird song, other than crows cawing which seems to be the predominant melody at this time of year.

Okay. I’m off to get ready for my coaching session.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

This was the state of the sky on our walk the other day. I took the day off from walking yesterday, but I’m going to get back out there this morning before my coaching session. I like this kind of sky – deep, dark, foreboding. Interestingly, no rain occurred that day.

Today, on the other hand, we’re supposed to get big thunderstorms with gusty winds in the afternoon and early evening. And maybe a bit more rain tomorrow, then six or seven days in a row with no rain.

Don’s off to recycle. I’m going to try to get some chores done before I coach in the afternoon.

I’m still waiting for my doll to arrive. I’ve been tracking her journey from Liverpool to the States. There was a murky period there where England said it was ready to leave the country and the US said it had been notified that a package was being prepared and nothing happened for at least four days. Sort of like purgatory for international mail. But over the weekend, it was processed through JFK, then went to the Jamaica, Queens postal facility, then to Stamford, CT, then to Jersey City, NJ. Now it’s in Albany. I’m betting it gets here Friday. But – that being said – I’ve seen things leave Albany and end up in Springfield, MA for no rhyme or reason. The circuitous, sometimes baffling, journey of mail is weirdly fascinating. And often maddening.

Nothing else to report of any note. The new dollhouse is still filled with dishes of dried coffee grounds, hopefully absorbing all the musty smells. Since I’m busy with coaching, I’m not feeling impatient. I’m going to let those grounds sit there for a while.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.