My favorite un-planted, not on purpose, accidental, just show up in droves, flowers!!


My favorite un-planted, not on purpose, accidental, just show up in droves, flowers!!
a little busy these days.
at the tail end of a five year long project.
We went from THIS…
to THIS…
So almost done…right??
Oh wait…there’s THIS…
Well, we still have 4 days until our best friends show up for an extended visit!! They helped us build this, from the ground up!!
FOUR DAYS!!!!!
YIKES!!!!
Maybe I’ll keep them outside for a while. It looks almost finished from out there!
We’ll put them in the B and no B, the building on the right, until the inside of the Casa is all ready! (It’s not really leaning like it looks)
Whew! What an accomplishment!!! I am so proud of James!!!
Sigh…………..
Computer acting up today but try one of these links, or just Google (yes, it’s a verb now)
“In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel
I like this song better loud and when I have room to dance around!
Questions this week are great!! Very thought provoking!
If a distant uncle dies and you were always his favorite and leaves you $50,000 (any currency) in his will, what would you do?
Put it in the bank. That would buy us another whole year in our house!!!!
What sound or sounds do you love?
Have to agree with Cee, that it’s usually the ocean…but at this time of year it is the bird orchestra that tunes up and plays it’s Daily Opus…just before sunrise. It is truly spectacular! You probably have an orchestra in your area too. You may just need to get up early to hear it.
What’s your middle name? Why?
I also have a middle-name story.
I never had one as a kid. Always just Kathie Bessey. Then I found out Mr. Bessey was not my biological father. So I rebelliously took it upon myself to add my birth father’s last name as my middle name. I became Kathie Kelly Bessey. Then I married my son’s father and again, still a little miffed about the childhood deceit I experienced, dropped the Bessey and became Kathie Kelly Arcide. That Arcide guy did not stick around for long but now it was my son’s name too, so I kept it.
Then, as time passed (and I did some serious personal therapy), all was forgiven so I added back in my “real” Dad’s name and became Kathie Kelly Bessey Arcide.
One of the best stories I have ever written is about that. You can read about it here…
https://chosenperspectives.com/2016/02/25/its-never-too-late/
What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week?
Honestly, I appreciated Blogging. The whole experience. The discipline to write and post often. The wonderful new friends I’ve made. A terrific excuse to carry my camera around with me everywhere. The kick in the butt to go for a walk even when I can barely move my legs, just because I might capture a photo for my blog!
I love all of it!
OK, see if you can follow my logic this week. Unity makes me think of the only church I have ever attended with any regularity in my adult life. I picked it in the beginning as a reaction to the oppressive and emotionally blackmailing religious upbringing I had survived. When I first found it, Unity of Bellevue seemed like the place where all the peacenik, flower children had landed.
So I stayed…well, off and on, for more than 40 years now.
I stayed for the open mindedness. I stayed because they had the Galaxy painted on the ceiling of the kids Sunday School area. I stayed because they had a class called The Joy of Sects….go ahead…say it out loud. I stayed because there were these beautiful banners hanging all over the sanctuary, banners of Jewish symbols, because Unity of Bellevue shared it’s building with a local, slightly rebellious Jewish community leaving their main synagogue. I stayed for the workshops and guest speakers, like The Three Amigos (a Unity Pastor, Jewish Rabbi and Muslim Sheikh…Listen at your leisure for a wonderful talk.)
But mostly I kept returning to the Unity church for the music. Every summer in August, they had a service that was a great celebration of music from 40 years before. My favorites were the years 1967 and 1968. It was just music and congregation members standing up and speaking about what that music or year meant to them. I totally regressed and stayed up all night making “love Beads”. Then during the service that Sunday, I wandered through the audience putting necklaces around people’s necks! (Flashbacks of Woodstock!)
Many incredible musicians at this little church but my favorite was these two women named Garnett Hundley and Beverly Daugherty. http://www.garnettandbeverly.com/
Just about anything they sang (and they had a spectacular variety) was fun or beautiful or inspirational.
This is a long way to get to my song for this week, but the following is one of my favorites songs by those two women I would hear at the Unity church. Maybe not their most beautiful or modern piece, but the message for me is the thing!!
Wish I’d heard this as a squashed kid!!!
Couldn’t find the lyrics but again, their website is http://www.garnettandbeverly.com/
Thought I’d include info about this weekly challenge.
Here are the “rules”:
Feel free to use the Song Lyric Sunday badge by copying it into your post or add it to your site to show you are participating.
Cee Neuner has all these great “challenges” to get us talking with each other, sharing photos, flowers, personal history, etc.
Today I am participating in her Share Your World challenge, four questions she poses (and answers herself) each week.
What did you or did not like about the first place you lived without your parents?
I loved having the option to go live with my aunt, uncle and cousins when, at 15 years old, I basically ran away.
But, having fled my childhood home to escape oppressive responsibility (way too much for my age), and ending up living with a completely different set of restrictions was really difficult.
Oh, and the complete culture shock of leaving the casual and delightful beach life of San Diego,
only to find myself in Natchez, Mississippi…well, that was a huge adjustment.
Talk about Culture Shock!
What is your most favorite smell/scent?
the ocean………..
Would you prefer snowy winters, or not, and why?
Absolutely NOT. Yeah, yeah snow is pretty and all, and it provides the means for one of the world’s most popular sporting activities, but as Steven Wright, the comedian, used to say if we were meant to go barreling down snowy mountainsides, god would have designed us with boards nailed to our feet…well, that’s not the right quote, and apparently I am very easily distracted because I just spent 40 delightful minutes listening to old Steven Wright comedy routines…looking for that quote.
I don’t like snowy winters…
What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.
I had a great week, appreciating life so much and capturing some pictures I really like! Here’s a slide show:
All along the boardwalk in Mission Beach (San Diego), apparently to prevent the REAL “owners” of the beach from hanging around, the buildings have been topped with these scary looking Seagull deterring apparatuses.
Poop prevention, I suppose…but what the heck is the beach without seagulls??? I think this is actually for the Tourism Industry because the locals learn how to dodge a dive bombing gull about to let it fly when they are just kids.
I bet in the Northwest, we would have actually cleared the tops of poles like these to provide nesting platforms for Osprey…poop or not!
OK, this one might be another of those “stretches” I am apparently so fond of, but I had a date last night with my “husband”. First one in a while and I am back in love.
Helen’s note to us is what inspired me to address the theme today of Numbers with the following song. Feels like Home by Bonnie Raitt. I consider it my song with James, our song if you will…although there seem to be several of those. (He is pretty sexy playing the base with his band on Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell!)
Here’s the connection to Helen’s story…the shortest version I can come up with.
My son was also fascinated with like numbers showing up places, but for him it was always ONES. 111111. Any place he saw them…digital clocks, bank temperature signs, score boards, car mileage, etc. Any time he spotted all ones, it was magic, and of course, had to mean something. For most of his life we had talked about doing something special on the date 11/11/11. As he got older, establishing his own life, and I experienced some measure of financial success, I decided we could do something really big on that date and started dreaming and planning for it. I wanted to take us all to Fiji. What a great place to be on that momentous calendar date.
Ah sigh. You know how life is. And as that time got closer, I realized a dramatically paired down version of the original 11/11/11 dream needed to happen. So now, with James, my son, his wife and their two sons, and my sister, it became a trip down to Southern California. Not exactly Fiji but Disneyland for the boys and staying in condos on the beach in Oceanside was not a bad second. As the time for the long awaited moment drew near, we went to the perfect spot. We went to Mount Soledad which is one of the highest little mountains in San Diego (La Jolla actually), very significant in my childhood as it was a favorite spot to visit for the spectacular view. (Really interesting Wikipedia article about Mount Soledad below)
So on the morning of November 11th, 2011, we were on top of the world, amazing 360 degree view of San Diego (reaching almost to the border of Mexico). We were gathered in a group hug, poised with our camera phones ready, waiting for our digital clocks to click over to 11:11 on 11/11/11.
And THAT’S when James asked me to marry him!! What a wonderful mush head!
Oh and by the way, we’ve been together eleven years!
You can read more on our story here:
https://chosenperspectives.com/2016/08/28/song-lyric-sunday-82816/
and here: