Mockingbird Hill Cottage

My friend Jan passed away at 2:30 am this morning. From the day she was admitted to the hospital until today was just under 3 months. Joe had said that she slept a lot yesterday, but at one point, she opened her eyes and said “Thank you.” He started crying.

I’m so glad he had that private moment with her, that moment of acknowledgement and love. He has been there for her every step of the way, as she was for him. I’m still numb, as I was sleeping when the text from Joe came through.

We all called her Aunt Jan back in the late seventies and eighties. When both Joe and I were living at her place, we called it Aunt Jan’s Home for Itinerant Artistes. She loved people and they loved her back. She was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, and Joe was the son of a Methodist minister – PKs, both of them. She was generous and kind and funny. I’m very grateful to have been her friend. When I started feeling trapped in Detroit, feeling that I had to stay there to watch out for my sisters, both Jan and Joe encouraged me to audition for graduate school, to make the move that would change my life. They knew I had to make that change even before I did. I’m forever grateful to them.

May she rest in peace. I know that heaven is celebrating a new angel.

Stay safe.

Hope for spring. I just discovered the daffodils on the edge of the woods. I’ve also seen the shoots from the earliest-to-bloom day lilies emerging from the ground. But, as usual in March, one day is quite warm and the next is freezing. We had a lot of rain last night and now…yes, you’re right…today will be windy all day long.

This has been such a stressful time. My blog security company is trying to find out why the database can’t be backed up. They did manage to stop the other backup and told me it was happening to several other accounts as well. Now they have to dig further. In the meantime, I had two hours of sleep the other night, got up at 5 am, and when Don came downstairs, I just started sobbing. Lack of sleep, the world, the blog stuff, but mostly because my friend Jan has stopped eating and drinking and we now know she has entered the final weeks of her life. She is very frail. She rarely speaks and when she does, she doesn’t always make sense. Joe and I are in constant contact. Hospice says it will probably be within a week or so.

Yesterday was her birthday and I asked Joe to let me know when I might call him, so that he could put the phone up to her ear.  I did that yesterday morning and she actually said to me, “Oh, hi!” I wished her a happy birthday and told her I love her. She said “Thank you.”  Her voice was very shaky. I told her I didn’t want to tire her and then there was silence. I loudly said, “Give the phone to Joe” so that he would hear me, which he did. Oh, how grateful I was for that moment when she knew it was me. That was an unexpected gift.

I take my phone upstairs with me at bedtime in case Joe needs to reach me.

There’s just too much going on right now and none of it is easy or peaceful.

I finished The Grey Wolf   this morning. Excellent, as always. Now I’m on to Nemesis, which I picked up from the library yesterday.

You can click on that envelope icon and send me an email comment. For those of you who read the blog on phones, the set up is different. You have to scroll down past the posts and there you’ll see all the sidebar information. I believe the envelop icon is the first thing you’ll see in that section.

I have a new little tour on the YouTube channel. I’ll give you the link tomorrow.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday. The blog issues continue. An additional problem: my security company backs up the database every day and I discovered that the backup from about 5 days ago is still ‘hanging’ and has never stopped. What???  Even more intriguing (because that’s the only way I can look at it to stay sane) is that they can’t seem to stop the ongoing backup and the whole thing has been escalated to their ‘top engineers.’

Really? Am I the first client this has ever happened to?

Here is where I am with all of this. I can’t try a new theme until this backup business is sorted out. Which means I can’t see if a new theme might eliminate the ‘comments’ problem. But do I even want to try to resolve this? My host renewal is in June and that’s only a few months away. It’s expensive. Expensive enough that I feel I can’t spare that money – at least at this moment in time.

Is the universe telling me something, maybe even bashing me on the head? Is it time to release the blog in this form? I find I miss writing posts, so I would have to find something – maybe on Substack. But I’m not sure how that would work out. Is it possible to post photos on Substack? Do I go back to Blogger? That would be very strange. But the expense of maintaining this blog is a challenge, especially when I haven’t worked in over a year.

I’ll know more soon, I hope.

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Happy things in this section:

I saw a robin the other day.

We’ve had two days of rain, which we desperately need.

Today is sunny.

And the peepers appeared on Sunday! We are thrilled to have them back, though it got so cold last night that they didn’t peep. We’ll hear them again when it doesn’t go down below freezing, which will be on Wednesday. March is always up and down, so we still have some nights ahead of us where the temps will drop considerably.

I cleaned the office/studio yesterday, with a slight reconfiguring. I’m gearing up to start painting again.

I’ve been unfair to The Grey Wolf. This is mostly because I can’t concentrate on reading for any length of time. But I am getting to the point in the book where I will have to set aside a chunk of time and stay with it until the end. Sorry, Louise, but as you know, we’re dealing with a coup here.

I’ve been in the queue for the newest book by Gregg Hurwitz, Nemesis  – I think it came out in early February- and it’s finally on its way to me via our library system. Maybe it will arrive today…

Don made an apple pie and it’s delicious.

I’ve got a bit of spring fever.

I miss you all, but remember to click on the envelope icon at the top of the sidebar on the right to send me an email comment on this post. It worked out well last time. I heard from several readers and I responded and it was very nice.

Stay safe.

Happy Tuesday.