Gifted Gifting

Here is a little slice of my life for yall.

My indulgence for myself this month was 2 books on the PNW, the setting of most of my (full length) stories. A book about the flora and fauna and the geology of the area. The other was an adult coloring book of the same.

Do you know they don't have fireflies as we know them throughout that region? I'm so glad I researched that before I included them in a pastoral scene! I really was looking to see when they appear there, being that region is north of me, and happily saved myself from an inaccuracy. (So happy!)

Anyway, it made me think since so many of my stories are in that setting, I needed a good reference book at hand. (Google leads me down too many rabbit holes.) 
I thought the coloring book would help me become more familiar with the wildlife especially if I use the pictures in the other book as guidelines. Easier for descriptions and environments and other details.

So, I ordered the books.

Now, you may know I have a granddaughter.
This beautiful child (while I can still get away with calling her that-- she's about to turn 15.) If you've followed this blog, or looked at many of my pictures on Facebook, you have seen this child's work.
She is as gifted in her art as I am in mine (I say modestly)
Her art is not the same as mine.
I draw my scenes with words.

She actually draws her scenes.

For a long time now, she has mostly drawn people. Anime to start. Actually it was Sponge Bob to start, almost as soon as she could walk and talk, and hold a pencil, pen, crayon, or chalk. But she has advanced past sponge bob, and even passed beginner's anime. 

She drew a couple pictures of her mother, from photographs. So lovely.

She has tried landscapes. 

She can't help what colors and lines flow from her fingertips  any more than I can do more than direct the barrage of words that flow through mine. 

She was with me this weekend, and I showed her my coloring book, and while looking through it she seems to have fallen in love with the pictures. You could almost see her mind adding in the colors -- with her alcohol based markers, specifically. So she instantly knew the medium she'd use, and was applying colors as I arrange words at such times.

It's not often our gifts arrange themselves in such harmonious fashion., and those times will become even more rare as we both age.

Perhaps someday she will illustrate my books.
Or create backdrops or CGI images for productions of said books.
What a nice family connection that would be for future generations.

So
Happy Birthday (early) Hailey, and ENJOY.
Enjoy using your Gift with my gift to you. 

And I'm gonna buy another coloring book. 

Join my Caravan! :)

I have had a dream, for most of my life, to see the
Pacific NorthWest. I want to breathe in trees and lakes and mountains.

The closest I have got to this, in this lifetime, is when my sister included me in a trip into the Great Smoky Mountains. There was an instant peace there, a sense of being "home" that I have never ever in my life known.

A childhood home,perhaps... 

As a grown-up, I feel there's something more, and I still want it.

I'm losing my mobility and my health, and have begun trying to make this dream of mine come true. I have some (relatively little) money saved. I have pictures to look at everyday to encourage myself to spend my money on that dream instead of pizza. I'm still working on it. I have scents and incense to breathe in what I can from this far out. 

When I've thought about it, it has been as a road trip. With a few select people, most of whom I suspect will have lives too complex for them to leave when I finally do get everything together. 

And, as much as I like a road trip, I am not a distance driver, so someone else would have the bulk of that responsibility, but I want them to do it my way. That is, no freeways, no hurry, let's meander across the plains (may as well, because no matter how fast we go, it's going to feel like forever, especially after the mountains (finally!) come into view. Days become weeks, driving through the here to get to the there in the flatlands. Been there, done that. 

I don't want to have to be in certain towns by certain dates because of reservations or anything. I want to go until we're tired of going, and stop at the first stopping place we find, be it a hotel, motel, campground, or a park of some other sort. I want to pull off at odd little stops and walk down odd little paths to odd little or large waterfalls, and eat in odd little towns. Tourist stops, if they are the natural kind. Not interested in flashing lights and crowds and staged events. I want to see the world --or just the country -- as it is in the open.

Now, today it popped into my mind that perhaps I'm being too close, or closed-minded, in my choice of companions for travelling, and that I should ask around and find if maybe there are others interested. There are certainly others who share interest in some of the things that piqued my interest and fostered the dream. (Haven't yet found many tree-people yet though.)

The thing about this thought is that it isn't exactly me. I'm uncomfortable with persons I don't know well. Heck, I'm uncomfortable with people I DO know well.

As a child it was considered being intensely shy. Then for a period of time it was some type of social anxiety or phobia. Now it is extreme introversion. And although it's not as strong as before, believe me it IS still extreme, almost to the point of phobia.

Anyway, this ranks highly in the category of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever had, So I laughed at my crazy self and went about the business of my day.

When I got around to the delights of my day, one part of that was reading my horoscope. Which said, I kid you not, that I would have a crazy idea that day and however wild it seemed to be, I should consider it seriously. That it could have merit and meaning for whatever vague plans I had been considering. 

That made me laugh, too. Almost as funny as off-the-cuff socializing was the idea of me taking a horoscope more as a specific rule for the day than a general guideline for some time or other before I die. 

The same advice was repeated, in different words,  in my career horoscope, my money horoscope, and it also appeared in my magical tarot card draws that I actually have NO participation in. 

So, I thought maybe I should put it out there. Anybody interested in joining my (thus far imaginary) trip to the PNW? .

You'll need your own money, and it would really be a big help if you have a car, because mine is not up to the trip (although it might surprise us all, that's not a risk I wish to take). Actually, an RV might be even better, and a truck camper thing would be best. They can usually get in campgrounds that RVs can't. 

So, having provided your own vehicle to drive yourself (or vehicles if our group becomes too large for just one) and your own financing, you are invited to join a trip planner who has made no plans, no reservations, nor mapped out a definite course for no specific time frame.  

Come one, come all, no need to shove. Surely together we can figure me out!