Phantom Whispers

Joy. Pure unadulterated joy!!!!

Oh I have so many things to tell you, so many things to say. But my time is limited as I am preparing for another jaunt out of town. This time I am off to Hampton, VA to teach two classes at Art & Soul. The both should be great fun and I am looking forward to it. If only I had every prepped and ready to roll it would be good. Heck, it would be more than good, it would be fine.

And I do so want to tell you all about the wonderful time I had at ArtFest and at Newport for the Paper Arts Festival and I will. Just not now as I am feeling the wait of time and things not done heavy on my shoulders. So all my tales of wondrous adventure and fabulous folk will have to wait until I am home again, home again.

But I had to share with you all the best news I’ve had in ages. Today I got a call from my brother that we hadn’t heard from for almost two years. He just disappeared on us.

It left a huge hole in our hearts and it ate at my father.

But today his voice came to me, precious and scarred and scared, over the phone lines, making the connection and wanting so much to know that we still cared.

Silly one, of course we do.

We always will.

Love you, Stanford.    

I’ll be back with you all in May.

Late snow or what?

Okay, now I said I would talk about the camping trip to our property in Eastern WA. It's a gorgeous place way, way out in the country. Like in no power, no water, no nothing. Nothing but good clean air, beautiful scenery and lots and lots of space. Which is good.

However, when we decided to go to the property to check on our partner's building (his future home but currently a shell) to make sure it lasted through the winter the temperatures were in the 50's. Hey, nothing a gal from WA can't handle on any given day. I realized as we drove through the snow in the two mountain passes that I was ready for winter to be over. More than ready. I was done with the gray skies and gloominess of winter. How nice to be heading off to sunshine and more temperate climates.

Yeah, about the temperate climates. As we approached the town near our property it started to snow. It was already snowing at home we learned from a call our partner had gotten on the way. Oh well a little snow not so bad.

It kept snowing.

All night.

And I have no pictures of the snow as my camera's battery died, as usual.

Did I mention we were staying in the house shell? The not caulked or air tight house shell? The house shell that was a nice balmy 30 degrees?

Oh, yeah, you know I wasn't a happy camper. I thought I didn't like the noise of a generator. Well, it was more than welcome that night as it powered two space heaters and a lamp and brought the temperature up to all of 36 degrees. While the plan was to spend a couple nights, it got cut short as I just am not cut out to be making trips outside for the potty (no outhouse yet) when it is that cold.

It was cold. The guys didn't think it was so bad as they were both wearing long johns (actually silks from when they ski). Would have been nice if they would have mentioned that idea to me. No long johns here, just a couple of layers of sweats that didn't do much to hold out the cold.

And I find that when I am that cold all I want to do is eat and sleep in a nice tight little fetal ball. We ended up eating most of the food we had brought that night, leaving bacon and eggs for breakfast. There wasn't enough light for me to read by so we played cards until our hand got too cold to manage that. Then it was off to bed at about 9:30. Plenty dark and plenty cold.

So the little camping trip got cut short. I'm not complaining. It was fun in a masochistic kind of way and it really made me appreciate heat and light. And I was able to figure out something that I really want. Who knew?

Who knew I'd really want an outhouse?