starting a list of all things good:
my dog
cooking
fresh blueberries
north carolina in august
reuniting with old friends
a good friend in a time of distress
good, honest advice in a time of distress
my roommate
my parents
my sister (who flew in an F-18 today)
my brothers (most of the time)
hot tea - sleepy time tea to be exact


i just need good karma right now... trying to put positive energy into the world.

focusing on all things good.
peace, jw

earlier tonight i was starving for stimulation. for one reason or another, i was feeling very under-stimulated and bored. i unpacked my bags, started laundry, returned most of the phone calls from the weekend, and started to write a letter and still found myself longing for stimulation. then the phone rang... and it was an old friend whom i had not spoken with for over a year. if you had known me three years ago, you would have known that this friend meant the world to me and that he understood me, my world and my state of mind better than anyone else in life. but it got to the point that we could not have other relationships without sacrificing the relationship that we had built with one another. i don't know if that makes sense to anyone, but the bottom line is that the friendship that we had was special and as the best things in life tend to do, it ended abruptly and we didn't speak for over a year.

what do you say to the person who stole part of your heart and didn't offer it back until after you had replaced the missing piece with something else - with other experiences, with different types of love. i realized when we were trying to talk, that what he had to give back no longer fit the way that it had. and then... i definitely felt stimulated. sad. relieved. proud that i kept my marbles together. sad that i had forgotten what it felt like to feel so many emotions at once. disappointed that i got to this state and lonely because i am in this position, missing a friendship that once brought me so much life.

overall, though, i feel content with the state of things and the progress that was made by simply speaking and listening - as two of my favorite sayings go, "love conquers all," and "time will do the talking." thank goodness for that.

i have been LOVING looking through old photos! This was taken when my friend, grace, and I went drove home from Seattle last August. I had been working in Idaho, so I picked her up in Seattle and we took the long way home - driving from seattle, west around the cascades, down hwy 101 through oregon and northern california, camping at some of the most beautiful campgrounds along the way. We went to Montgomery Woods, one of the tallest Redwoods in CA is there and then drove East through nevada, utah, and colorado - stopped at the Fat Tire Brewery in Fort Collins, CO and then through Kansas and down through Oklahoma to catch I-40 so that we could make it to Memphis for the Memphis Cultural Festival and a Redbirds game on Labor Day weekend with Leah. It was a great time for sure. ah, memories...