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My fun little new camera (taking center stage until I can afford to replace the Big Gun Canon, which I discovered was broken when we got to Monument Valley) can do these swell panorama shots. These were my first efforts, so please pardon the bulges in the sea. I think it’s particularly fitting on the day that has been nothing but black and white in Colorado.
From our hotel on Great Exuma.
Elizabeth Beach, Great Exuma.
Quote of the day: “As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?” — Anne Frank
Daily gratitudes:
Soft things
Snuggly cats
Stark contrasts of nature
Ice cold water
Low carb pizza
NEED MORE WARM. NEED MORE BEACH. NEED MORE BLUE WATER.
Great Exuma, Bahamas.
Quote of the day: “Some of the choices you make might not always turn out to be the best ones, but at least you are learning as you go.” — Elizabeth Berrien
Daily gratitudes:
That the rain/snow reminded me of an old folk song that I cannot quite remember
The virtual gift of a cardinal from a blog friend
Homemade Moco Loca
Counting down the days
MKL
And on a sad after-note, the world has lost a wonderful being. Colonel Meow passed away last night. Rest well, Colonel. I’ll toast you with a glass of single malt.
This is a fun sight in tropical locations…the directional arrow pole. This one was at our wonderful lodging on Three Sisters Beach, and there was another on Stocking Island. And I’ve seen yet another in Empire, Colorado – I’ll have to find those images and share them with you. We’ve had some lovely times in Salida, which is in the “Banana Belt” of Colorado, and so has a milder climate than some parts of our state. In fact, we make “rum runs” to this cool little town, because yes, it is the only place that we have been able to find our favorite Antigua rum for sale. Given our current temperature of 21 degrees, I think I’d stick with Great Exuma. As they say, soon come.
Great Exuma, Bahamas.
Quote of the day: “A smile is the most beautiful colour in the world.” — Xingyun
Daily gratitudes:
Clean dishes
Warm blankets
Doing research
Sweet tea
Head bonks (which can lead to lovely Maine Coon mind-melds)
Perhaps this wasn’t what you expected to see, based on the title of this post? But if you know me, you know I don’t have two sisters, and if you know this blog, you know you can probably expect to see a photograph of some lovely warm place – like Great Exuma. (In fact, that’s something you can generally rely on – finding an image of someplace warm and beautiful when you visit this blog.)
These rocks, which are right in front of the place we stay, are known as the Three Sisters. I asked several locals about the legend and got a different variation of the story each time. The essence of the tale is that an English sea captain came to the island and met three beautiful sisters. Each of the sisters fell in love with the captain, and when he sailed away, each sister tried to swim after him, and drowned. These three rocks rose from the sea to mark the spot the sisters died. Bahamians consider this to be a very romantic spot and a place of good luck (though I suspect the sisters would disagree}. It is bitter cold here in Colorado again, with snow and accidents and light breezes that freeze your earrings in your ears. And the countdown to a warm and wonderful return continues….
Great Exuma, Bahamas.
Quote of the day: “Better to be strong than pretty and useless.” — Lilith Saintcrow
Daily gratitudes:
Being able to ride the bus on long, cold commute days
The pigeon downtown with the white mohawk
Toddlers bundled up for winter
The softness of the snow this morning
Snuggling under the blankets
I love this shot – it looks like a slightly abstract painting to me.
It’s the end of a long-short week – curious, isn’t it, how four-day work weeks can feel as if they are six days long? I’ve had a lot of thoughts this week – about the future, about possessions, about forgiveness, about mortality – and have reached no particular conclusions, except that I am looking forward to the future. And the rest of those things take work – except for mortality, of course, because we have so little control over that.
Exuma, Bahamas.
Quote of the day: “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” — Gloria Steinem
Daily gratitudes:
Watching tiny children determined to open heavy doors
Increasing the weights in my workouts every day
Snuggles with Mr. Man
Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in “Royal Wedding”
That stuff that melts ice on the sidewalk
It was a pretty sunset in Colorado tonight, but this one was prettier. Can’t wait to get back and warm my cold popsicle toes in the sand.
Great Exuma, Bahamas.
Quote of the day: “Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” — Rabindranath Tagore
Daily gratitudes:
Mr. Man serving as a foot warmer
Walking
My silver dragonfly necklace
Looking forward to the weekend with MKL
Certain shades of blue
How selfish mourning is.
It neither benefits nor honors the dead.
It will be nine years this year since I lost my father, and eight since I lost my mother. To all outward appearances, I am reconciled to that loss, which is all one can ever be. You never get over it, you just readjust.
Except in dreams.
In dreams, such as last night’s, they live. And they die all over again.
Those are the worst dreams, where you go home, you see them, they give you food and advice, and you talk about when you can get time off work to see them again, the conscious self crossing swords with the unconscious self to accept and deny reality, and then, slowly in the dream, there comes the dawning that they are both dead.
It as if they have died all over again. And in the dream, you have that same sense of endless emptiness that you experienced only then, in reality, except without the comforts of reality to sustain you. That feeling creeps into your waking consciousness and you awake, eyes closed, wondering where in the world you are, and why this weight is filling your closed eyes with tears and if the wind outside that is brushing the chimes is warm or cold.
You remember that your childhood house, now in dreams, strangely borrowed and restored to your memory of it, is now remodeled. The green shag carpet and the books are gone from the living room, the knotty pine cabinets and red cracked ice table are gone from the kitchen. The new owners have the put the refrigerator in a place that does not make sense.
You look out your bedroom window now, on a January day, and see that the snow has melted some, and know that there are daffodils eking their way out of the old ground somewhere, and remember the buttery smell of thousands of daffodils from your childhood.
You do not know what to do with yourself.
So you write about it, before you get up to feed the cat and make coffee. And you wonder about the weight of the human heart.
This was what was up there this morning, and it was lovely in the clear blue. We are approaching the start of the National Western Stock Show here in Denver, one of Kelsea’s and my favorite mother-daughter traditions. Usually “Stock Show Weather” is as bitter cold as it can be, but I think we may actually have slightly warmer temperatures than the Polar Vortex has offered us in the past 10 days, which deserves a yee-hah. We are going for opening day on Saturday, so you can look forward to a photo report next week. Llamas and horses and pigs, oh my!
Lafayette, Colorado.
Quote of the day: “It was rather beautiful: the way he put her insecurities to sleep. The way he dove into her eyes and starved all the fears and tasted all the dreams she kept coiled beneath her bones.” — Christopher Poindexter
Daily gratitudes:
Working on the couch with Mr. Man
My sweet cousin
House spirits
Today’s mid-morning hot air balloon
My daughter spending the night