Ben and Blackie

Dear Readers, it is a very sad day today in our household.  It is always heartbreaking, if you have beloved pets whom you have cherished and cared for over the years, when the time comes to say goodbye and send them back to their Creator.  This is such a day for my husband and me.  

Sharing a few photos, while looking back and remembering happier days, when Ben and Blackie were both young and healthy.  They came into our lives when we were living two hours' drive north of here in another town.  As stray cats living in the neighborhood, they were captured, neutered, and released back to where they were found.  Ben showed up in our back yard first, three or four years before Blackie.  Somehow they knew we were safe people and they adopted us, living on the back patio.  Putting out food and water helped, of course! I could not bear to abandon them to a questionable fate when we moved to our current home in 2014.  So I figured out a way to bring them with us, and turn them into strictly indoor cats.  After about a month, both had adapted very well and enjoyed their new lives.  And we enjoyed loving and caring for them.

Ben was about 16 when he began suffering the ills of old age and he left us in March of 2023.  

Today it was Blackie's turn. 

We are so grateful for the mobile vet service, Paws into Grace, that will come to your home to euthanize an ill and dying pet.  Both cats, having grown up in the streets, still retained elements of the feral behavior, and the stress of having to be caged and taken to a busy, noisy clinic when they were so old and so ill would have been too cruel.

We said goodbye to Blackie this morning.  She was such a sweet natured little cat, and we are already missing her terribly.  Lots of tears.  I am not ashamed to say so.  

Before I sat down to write this post, I realized that today is exactly three years, three months, and three days after Ben left us.  Seems like that ought to mean something, but I don't know what.

 Goodbye, sweet little furry friends.  We thank God for the joy you brought into our lives.

You will never be forgotten. 

 

2026 Reading List

A list of books read in 2026

 January 2026

1.   Hesychasm, The Bedewing Furnace of the Heart, Zacharias Zacharou 

2.   The Winter Pascha, Thomas Hopko

February 2026 

3.   Grace for Grace: The Psalter and the Holy Fathers, Johanna Manley

March 2026

4.   Prayers by the Lake, Nikolai Velimirovich 

April 2026

5.   Fighting the Hate, Melanie Phillips 

6.   The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 1, Beth Brower 

7.   The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 2, Beth Brower 

May 2026

8.   The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 3, Beth Brower

9.   The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 4, Beth Brower 

10. God, Where is the Wound? Healing Remedies for Today's World, Siluana Vlad

11.  The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 5, Beth Brower

12.  Theology of the Ordinary, Siluana Vlad

13.  The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 6, Beth Brower

14.  The Liturgy of Death, Alexander Schmemann 

June 2026

15.  Theo of Golden, Allen Levi (oh my what a story! I am so glad I read it.) 

 

 

Beautiful

Just because it is so beautiful . . . sharing this painting by French artist Henri Biva (1848-1929).   You can see more about it here.   It's now the wallpaper on my phone.  With the screen's light shining through it, it is even lovelier.  You can click on the image to see it even better.  The details are amazing.  Each leaf and each blade of grass, the leaves on the water . . . 

 

 

An Unaccustomed Flurry of Book Buying

It seems like several years have passed since the last time I chose to invest in any fictional works.  I always try to find what I want at the local libraries, city and county.  I have so often been disappointed in many of the new books I have bought and, as we all know, books are expensive these days.

This rule of thumb has been broached, however, just recently.  All because I could not find this Emma M. Lion series at the library except as audio books.  So I took a leap of faith and purchased Volumes One and Two, as a test. Well, they exceeded my expectations (!) and so I followed up with Volumes Three, Four and Five, which arrived Sunday.  When these have been read, there are still Volumes Six, Seven and Eight to procure, with a Volume Nine reportedly nearing publication.  

In addition, a friend highly recommended Theo of Golden by Allen Levi, which also arrived Sunday.

Looking forward to several days of happy escapism into other places and other times . . . 

I Dare to Show My Face

Fun with mirrors.

Not really one to show my face in this pubic space,

but maybe once in a while, 

and a little differently . . . 

 Hello!

 

 

Bibelots, Gewgaws, Curios, Tschotschkes and Doodads, a Lot of Unnecessary Stuff of Sentimental Value

One room in my home is filled with unnecessary but (to me) fun or pretty stuff, and I have "papered" the walls and decorated the bookshelves in this room with these many and diverse things.  Having lived such a long time, one does tend to have eclectic collections of bibelos, gewgaws, curios, tschotschkes and doodads.  I don't want to hide them away in drawers, forgotten, so I have chosen to put them on display.  I am the only one really interested in them, so I am very grateful to have enough space in my home for "a room of one's own," to quote Virginia Woolf, where I have free rein to decorated as I please. 

And now, after just stating that no one else is interested in these, I will proceed to bore everyone out there with some little details . . . 

An overall glimpse of one small area on the east wall of my little study/office/reading room.

 

A mirrored display shelf that was my mother's.  The various houses were also hers.   The green plate on its decorative wooden stand was one of a matching pair brought back from China just after WWII by my dad who was there with the US Navy.  My paternal grandmother purchased the ceramic angel in honor of my birth way back in the 1950's.  The three pitchers I acquired here and there.  The small tin box was originally a gift from my mom, a Christmas stocking stuffer. 

 

A collection of Christmas books.  I used to have twice as many but culled them down when we made the big move from one city to another several years ago.  Believe it or not, I do actually get rid of a lot of books, knick knacks, and other things every so often.  Actually, paring down and simplifying are two activities I enjoy very much.  Maybe you don't believe me, seeing all this stuff!  My mother loved crafting; she made the woolly sheep and the green Christmas wreath magnet you see here.  The pine cone I found on a walk.  The miniscule red woven basket I bought at a church bazaar.

 

The wooden box belonged to my maternal grandmother.  I have no idea what it was originally used for.  I just liked the design, and no one else was interested in it.  It's been with me for over 40 years now.  The glass puffin with the tiny fish in his belly I bought at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.  I once had a membership there; it was close to my workplace, and I'd go over on my lunch break to de-stress from the hectic work environment by watching the fish serenely swimming about in their various displays.  The blue and silver fish I purchased at a gift shop in Langley, on Whidby Island, in Washington State.

 

Sometimes I use the tops of picture frames as shelves for little doodads.  Here we have a hummingbird's nest; a bronze bell from China in the shape of a lady (my dad, again); a pink ceramic box shaped like a tea table, with a tiny tea set on top, complete with red roses in a vase; a vintage crystal salt cellar once considered essential for the well-dressed dining table; a blue glass heart; a pewter box with dragonfly design; and an angel with a choir book in her hand.  Mostly gifts from various people over the years.

Thank you for coming along on this little tour.  I could show a lot more, if anyone is interested.  But I understand if not.   One person's treasure can be another person's junk!  I will just say (no doubt already obvious to you all) that I do not like bare, sparse, empty rooms!
 

Far and Wide, Across the Years

Just a small corner on one shelf among all the bookshelves here . . .

An old-fashioned glass pop bottle (you recognize the brand, right?  Even though it's written in Hebrew?) that I brought home with me from my first visit to Israel in 1974.  It was empty for years but I filled it with pancake syrup a couple of decades ago so that the beautiful Hebrew lettering would stand out.

A small oval icon of the Incarnation (Madonna and Child in western terms) that my Orthodox Christian Godmother brought me from a monastery in Greece a few years ago.  

A glass box full of small white moonstones that I gathered along the shore of a lagoon near my home when I was still in high school about 1966.  

Some books waiting to be finished or started, the authors mostly from countries somewhere across the sea:  Serbia, Russia, Mount Athos in Greece . . .  

 It's a well-traveled little corner, spanning the years of my life, while also wandering across several countries far and wide.  My own international wanderings are limited to Israel, Jordan, England, Wales, and France, all so many years ago.  These days I wander around the world only virtually; my traveling days are over.  But I am quite satisfied with that.  

 

MAKING A GIFT FOR NONNA WITH SKYE- Botanical Printing in Tuscany

This is someone I follow on Y**T*** and this little 11-minute presentation was so interesting and the results so lovely that I just had to share here.   I hope you enjoy.

Of Wheelchairs and Reflections

I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that just before Christmas I tripped and fell, hard, and fractured a bone in my knee.  So for the past six weeks the wheelchair has become my new best friend. 

The good news is that it was a small fracture and the bone was not displaced.  But my oh my, how it hurt!  I am sorry if I sound like a big baby, but this is the first time in my 70+ years that I have broken a bone, so it was all new to me.  

The other very good news is that the bone has healed now enough for me to start putting my full weight again on that leg.  I cannot tell you how much a person's life can change when they must manage to get around on one leg only!!  Thus, the wheelchair.  They tried to have me use crutches instead, but it was quite impossible!  I had to stress that I am an old lady, and I would surely fall down if I tried those horribly unstable crutches.

And so, as of today, I can leave the wheelchair and begin walking on both feet, using a walker.  I am told it will be another six weeks before I am comfortable enough and strong enough to try using just a cane, and then sometime after that finally get back to true independence.  

I am so grateful for everyone's prayers (having shared this on Instagram weeks ago), and that the fracture was not a horrible one with shattered bones, requiring surgery (yikes!).   

This is one way to practice patience, and obedience to the doctors' instructions, and learning to ask for help with the simplest things, and gaining even more appreciation for my husband who has had to take over many tasks around here all by himself for a while.

It's all good.   

Morning Sunshine

Here are a handful of photos from this week's morning walks around the neighborhood.  The week has been mostly clear and sunny, even hot; but rain is coming for Christmas Eve and forecast to be with us for three days.