72° F or 20° C at the moment.

Very exciting day yesterday, the day started out very depressed, or I was depressed not the day. Just fed up with being ill, feeling horrible and it pain 24/7.
But in the evening W. took me shopping and we went to the wonderful shopping center called Bridgeport, it's got nice small stores with lots of cafe's and terraces. We went to the AT&T store because as you all of course know yesterday was the launch of the long awaited iPhone and of course I have one. I heard horror stories about 13hour line ups and people camping for 2 days in front of the store. But we just could walk in, no line nothing and walked out 10 minutes later with an 8 Gig iPhone. Nothing lifts a girl's mood better than some retail therapy. My taste is a bit different, I don't shop for clothes or make-up, you can't make me any happier that take me shopping for a gadget. I looooove my gadgets.

Everything you've heard about the iPhone is true, it's gorgeous, it's absolutely stunning. Worked like a charm with my home wifi network, I can now browse the web, make calls, watch a video, read my email, wherever I am. I'm such a lucky girl!


Stunning piece of hard/software!

I can now sit on my bench in the yard, drinking my morning espresso, throw the dog's frisbee, read the newspaper and if want to, read some email or do some shopping.
Below is a pic of my bench where I drink my coffee every morning, it's under a giant pine tree that shelters me from the rain and sun. I sat there in the winter, fall, spring, year round. Every morning I will drink my coffee there. Unless it's raining cats and dogs, than Gwen, the dog, doesn't want to to outside ;-)


My Coffee 'Klatsch' bench, with the KittyPenthouse and Nyx in her hammock. ;-)
The dangerous item with the red handles you see lying on the bench is my 'gopher'. I use it to pick up the frisbee so I don't keel over and faint every time I bend over. Very handy item!


Bench from the other side, with a view of the Kittywalk and Kitty Penthouse.

85° F or 30° C today. Tomorrow we expect 72° a drop of 13 degrees again. Did I already mention that a wacky barometric pressure drives me nuts? Guess I did. Makes me cranky, achy all over like you've been hit by a truck, and extremely tired, Not just tired from exercise or so but really wary bone exhausted. Like the whole world is pressing on your shoulders.

I've decided that to give more meaning to my life that it's necessary to focus my creativity on something else than creating drop dead gorgeous print work. Since I'm not allowed to do that anyway because of visa restrictions it's not good to obsess about that.

I've been busy designing metal jewelry, and for me that's the most important and exciting time. Planning what to make, gathering the materials, can you find the right stuff etc. It's also exciting because I will be firing metal for the first time, so I'm looking forward to that. Some people ask me who I will sell it to, I guess that doesn't matter much to me, I always have a problem of parting with something I designed, I guess I get too attached to it. So I'll just design a collection without selling it. It's the journey that counts ;-0

I'll also be making and designing Prayer Beads. Prayer Beads were known in the earlier days as rosaries with the Catholics and Malas with the Buddhist. Islam and other faiths still use them as prayer beads.
The ones I will be designing are more Spirit or Pagan beads, you can use them to focus your attention on when meditating or as remembrance object for a special episode or occasion in your life. You can wear them as a necklace or bracelet or hang them in your home on the wall or small remembrance altar. These beads always have some sort of symbolic presence, like numbers, colors or the form of the beads.
A wonderful example of spirit beads is this one from Susan Simon. Click here for her website.



Another kind are these Prayer Beads called the Evil Eye Rosary from Treasures By Tasci Click for the website.


I can vaguely see the direction I'm heading with this 'giving meaning' to a meaningful life ;-) Will keep you'll posted on the progress of the bead project.

58°F or 15°C at the moment.
If you look at the US weather map you'll see that we're together with SF and Seattle are in the yellow, that is cooler area. Fine with me, the sun was out today and white fluffy clouds drifted by.
7 years ago we lived in Sacramento, CA, the desert of California, it is so hot there you have to drive with two fingers on your steering wheel otherwise you'll burn your hands. ;-) Living up here is a breath of fresh air, I really missed the seasons in Sacramento, there are only 2seasons there, summer and winter. Over here we have the beautiful red and yellow fall colors when the weather starts to change. Gorgeous!

Had my lovely espresso on the deck, I love my espresso machine. Nothing beats having a good strong espresso in the morning to wake you up. The cats played in their kitty condo in the yard. For those of you who do not know us so well, we have 2 cats, a special breed called Devon Rex. They have the most soft curly fur you will ever feel and they do not shed. Their faces look like little pixies and some think they look like gremlins. Some people hate them and think they're ugly, we think they're beautiful, unique and so loving. They're really 'in your face' cats, they like to 'help' with whatever you are doing. They're not so talkative as Siamese but they do chat. ;-) They're extremely agile and active. We have build a cat ramp through the house so they can run all over it high up in the air.


The black and white cat on the right is Nyx, she the female and left is Luke the male. Luke just arrived when this pic was taken(last year) and they're getting to know eachother ;-)


Where aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrreeeeeee you? Chicken huh?


Half an hour later, already best buddies, and never stopped being that, they love each other so much it's so cute ;-)


Luke 'helping' his dad. Whatyadoin'?

They're too cute for words, they enriched our lives so much. They give love unconditionally. Because they have no undercoat and thus catch a cold easily they can't be outside too much, but when the sun is out they love to sunbathe in their kittywalk. To see a larger version click on this photo. The others are as small as you see them.



My day was relatively peaceful and quiet, the grocery delivery person came. Yes we're so lucky that we live in an area where we can shop for groceries online at either the Safeway or Albertsons. Excellent for people like me who can't get out of the house and still need to do their weekly grocery shopping.

We shop at either store for staples like paper and pantry stuff but for real food we go to Trader Joes or the WholeFoods, plus that we have a share in a farm here close by that deliver ashare of the harvest all through the summer and fall. We already had some lovely strawberries, lettuce, kale, bokchoy, French radiches, sugar snaps, plus we have a weekly fresh goat cheese and eggs.
How much more healthier can you get huh?

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Bleh....
The exciting discussion I was gong to have with myself about the meaning of the the word 'meaningful' will have to wait. Today was a bleh day. Barometric changes affect my health and all of a sudden we went from 62 to 90 today. My legs are killing me, I was in so much pain last night I couldn't sleep even after 2 pain meds I woke up an hour later crying in pain. Lately when I get up in the night the soles of my feet are numb and I stumble so much, I have blue marks all of my body from bumping into things. I guess I will have to go see my dr. and get tested for MS. I have been putting it off because I'm scared to death even thinking about it, I really don't need this on top of everything else.

So a I wasn't in a very meaningful state today, tried to get on with my day as normal as possible, routine is essential. Had some lovely espresso outside on the bench in the yard while reading the paper and throwing Gwenny's frisbee. All the while biting my tongue not to cry from the pain in my legs. The poop-a-scoop girl came by today and we talked, she has MS as well and is doing well at the moment but expects a relapse every day. I did my exercise on the vibration plate with weights and everything but I don't think it helped. Finally at 2:00 I gave up and went to bed to have my siesta and medication.

Tonight went out with W. to the craft store and bought my supply of beads and tools. Had a wonderful simple dinner at Quiznos on the terrace. Now I'm getting ready for bed and hope tomorrow I will be in a more enlightened state of mind to amuse you all with my unique views and opinions. For now ta-da and have a good one.

PS: for those of you who suffer from grammar and style OCD and and seeing red because of my also unique use of grammar and style, please remember that English is not native language. Now take a deep breath and let it go.... see? That wasn't so hard was it?

Today, seemed like a very good day to finally start this blog. Don’t know why, just an irrational thought. I have a lot of those :-)
I’ve been dragging starting to write for months, wanted to change the look, than the layout, the header, finally I just settled for the default.

There’s something scary about a blank page, the first word you write ruins practically the beauty of the white space. So it has to be something meaningful, I pondered, it has to make a statement.

But it didn’t come to me, so here it is, just a start.

And that how life is, isn't it? It starts somewhere and along the way it becomes meaningful. Sometimes. Not always though. Many times you have to work very hard to make it meaningful, so sometimes you succeed and many times you fail.

But as many books that you will read on how to create a meaningful and productive life will tell you its the journey that counts not the destination. I can already tell you now that some days that statement irritates the hell out of me, but when I'm in a more peaceful relaxing, meditative state of mind I will be the first to nod and to smile knowingly. Hypocrite that I am ;-)

As of lately my life has become less meaningful, I really didn't know what to do with it. I no longer have a professional life. There are 2 reasons for that 1. Some government people who are paying my disability allowance declared me a 100% disabled because I have a rotten illness and 2. visa limitations here in the US of A prohibited me from contributing to the US tax system and to our household income. In other words people on a non-immigrant visa in the USA, accompanying their spouses are not allowed to work. So in a way me being disabled is a good thing, I don't have to get annoyed with the US regulations that forbids, mostly women, to lead meaningful productive professional lives. Saving me a lot of stress and the need to argue with clueless bureaucratic nobodies.

In the beginning when they tell you your will receive a 100% disability pension you think, 'yeah, whatever'. Somehow you don't connect the dots of receiving a disability pension with being disabled yourself. You still wake up in the morning thinking that someone has played a big joke on you and everything is going to be fine, again, somehow, sometime, one day, any day now, really! But when years pass and you do not get any better and they still tell you you're really disabled, you start to ponder if they could possibly be right. And if they're right than what the heck are you going to do with the rest of your life? What's left of it anyway.

So I've come to the point that I had to decide that I will have to accept the inevitable fact that I'm not going to wake up one morning and be magically healed. I will have to invent some new ways to give my days and life meaning. I mean reading email all day and shopping online can be fun but it gets boring very quickly. It's my hope writing about this on this blog will somehow lead me to that road that's called 'meaningful'. I looked it up on Google maps but no such road it said. So my guess is I have to invent it myself. Maybe tomorrow I should ponder about the meaning of the word meaningful. Hmm... interesting.

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